April Showers Bring May Flowers

I'm really not sure how we made it to May already. Wasn't it New Year's like, last week? We're on pace to set a record high temperatures here today in Georgia and I chickened out taking the doors off Penny Lane, the Jeep, because I was very unsure of my upper body strength. If you've been following me on instagram you'll know that some of my flowers are blooming! I have a super power, that is my ability to kill every plant I want to keep alive and somehow the weeds I try to kill stay thriving. I always spend somewhere around $100 any time I walk into a garden center, I love flowers. They just don't always love me back.

We had a rather wet April AND March this year, plenty of pollen, so the flowers I do have in my garden right now are THRIVING and I need to document it. So, without further ado, please enjoy some of my favorite flowers blooming at this exact moment. 

Yes. There are lots of weeds in all of these beds. I'm fighting a constant battle with them, but my end goal is to get the beds, especially in front of the house, to look like a cottage garden. The cottage garden look is almost an over planted bed, so there are just flowers EVERYWHERE. No need for mulch and you either don't have or can't see the weeds. Patience isn't my strongest virtue, so I have to keep telling myself that plants take three years to really be happy. First year they sleep, second year they creep, third year they leap. 

Standby, because coming your way very soon will be the adventure I undertake trying to build my own raised bed to plant vegetables in. I'm sure my retelling of however it's going to go down won't be quite as hilarious as the actual activity, but you know I'm an accident waiting to happen. How are your gardens doing? 

Spring Fever

HAPPY FIRST DAY OF SPRING! It's going to be a lovely day here, so I'll be in the office all day dreaming about what fun could be had in the sun. I'm so excited though, because spring means that summer is just around the corner! Longer days, more sunshine, and patio weather! I'm a firm believer that food and drinks are just better outside. It's got to be science. 

The pollen is something I'm not ready for. If you've never been to the Atlanta area around April, I don't recommend it. The oh-so-lovely pine trees drop gazillions of little pollen bombs. Literally everything turns yellow. We didn't ever really get cold enough for everything to die off, so allergy season never really ended. Poor little Albus had to get a shot and these ear drops he absolutely hates to get through it. 

Obviously, since the sun was out on Saturday, I was working in the yard again. I'm sure I'll stop complaining about the ivy one day, I imagine that day will be about a year after it's all gone forever. I pulled more ivy, planted more roses, and overall made a bigger mess than I started with. I think that's the most frustrating part. I'm not the most patient person, I feel like four Saturdays in the yard should look like the cover of a Southern Living magazine! Clearly, I have a solid grasp on reality. 

So this week will be another week of little yard projects and I'll probably be done by Labor Day. How are you celebrating the first day of spring?

I Cried Over That English Ivy

The rain held off this weekend and I thought "awesome, another day to work in the yard!" So Saturday morning I was up and at Lowe's before 10am (who. am. i.) buying the remainder of the rose bushes I want to put in front of the house. I have this very specific picture in my imagination of what I want the yard to look like. I came home ready to knock it all out and that's where the day took a turn.

I decided to use the lawnmower to clean up the leaves in the yard, because raking took way too much time and effort. Of course, I forgot how much of a pain in the butt my lawnmower is. It was free, so I can't complain, but I'm going to anyways. It's not actually propelled. That part of the lawnmower doesn't work, I have to physically push it. Guys. I fell down trying to push the lawnmower. 

Once I finished with the leaves, I moved on to clearing the spot for one more of my rose bushes. I know I talked about the ivy last week, I could write a book on trying to get rid of that stuff. I *thought* that it was being held at bay, that it wasn't growing back where the pine straw was. Then I pulled a vine and it pulled up all of the pine straw up to the driveway. I was so frustrated, I really did start crying. 

I keep telling myself that this yard thing is a work in progress, that it will be better the more I work at it, that all of the hard work is building to something. It's just very frustrating to spend six hours working in the yard and for it to honestly be at that stage where it's a bigger mess before it gets clean. I'm going to keep on truckin' mostly because I don't want it to stay in the state of disaster it is in right now. Do you have any yard suggestions? 

A Work In Progress

If I have learned one thing owning a house, it's that nothing is ever finished. There's alway something that needs to be done. For example, I don't have anything on the walls in the master bedroom. I have a painting sitting on the ground that has been waiting to be put up since I moved in. We won't talk about the cloffice that is currently the room for things with no home yet. Right now, we're going to talk about the yard. 

First of all, yard work is not for the weak of heart.  The girl who lived in the house before me is a florist, so I thought awesome, I bet there are lots of great plants and after whatever she takes with her, the beds will have great bones for me to build on. I. Was. Wrong. The whole front bed was full of English Ivy. I don't know if you have any experience getting rid of that, but if so I feel all of your pain. 

I MEAN LOOK AT THAT. When I first moved in, I spent an entire day pulling that shit up. We took a CHAINSAW. We hooked it to my step-dad's truck with chain and pulled it away. It was awful. We managed to get most of it, discovering potted plants and decorative step stones and all sorts of treasures. Also, please note the Rose of Sharon back there taking the life out of that hemlock tree. 

After an entire day of pulling and chainsawing we managed to get it to look like this. I'll have you know, that no matter how concentrated the Roundup was, it didn't do anything. I still have nightmares about that stuff growing into my house and trapping me forever. Anyways, over the summer I put out about a million bales of pinestraw, hoping that would at least cover a little bit of it. 

Then, if we're being honest, I completely pretended the problem didn't exist for about six months. This past weekend I decided I wanted to get the yard under control before the spring really got rockin' and rolling. Of course I had to pull all of the leaves and nonsense out of this bed and the one on the other side of the house (ps. if raking leaves doesn't give me Victoria Secret model abs, nothing will) I pulled some more of the ivy up, planted a rose bush, some bulbs, and made plans for a few more rose bushes the next time I go to Lowes or Home Depot. That took a WHOLE DAY. You know why? Because there was more`ivy to be pulled. I cannot. 

I know in a few weeks this will be full of color, so I just have to hold on for a little while longer. Do you have any gardening tips for me? A cure for English Ivy perhaps?