More Outdoor cleaning...

Above. The shot before I started my second day of clean up around the old outhouse. 

I cleaned out the little outhouse and pulled all the buried blocks that made a walkway to it. The poor thing does have a list to it now. The cost of fixing it would be too prohibitive at this point. I thought of painting up the door and fixing the lacey curtains for one last season.

Yes, the walkway is a mishmash of different sized pieces of broken concrete pavers I found behind the garage years ago. I figured to reuse those and all of the bricks I found tossed back in that area. Putting them back down is like working with a puzzle.

I dug out the plants that had been next to the outhouse. One of the peony bushes had been there since 1997. The root ball was monstrous! Pictured is a portion of the root ball. It weighed over 25 lbs. I have two more peonies on the other side of the outhouse that explode with blossoms each spring.

I do love those flowers so I may break this up and put them in other places.

I also removed a huge root ball of Blue Flag Iris. It was huge and apparently loved the spot it was in so much that it expanded. I put a small plant there in 2016. I may break up the roots and see if any neighbor is interested in it.

Below. Done. 

Charlie is watching a hole in the wood in the corner of the outhouse. Apparently there must be mice living in the walls. He stood guard there for a good part of the day while I was digging about.

It's funny how barren this spot looks right now and how it will change in the next month or so.

This fall I'll split up the daffodils I have on the east side of the house and move some to be near this garden. I do love seeing the daffies come up each spring with their yellow cheer.

Over in my Red Shed Shady garden, the Virginia Bluebells are starting to emerge! They are not too far off the mark for showing up. Usually the don't emerge until the first week of April.

I have so many other projects to get done, but I am happy to have finished up the work I've neglected for a few years.

I know it is too early to plant flowers, but I'm already planning my zinnia garden. Yippee!

Summer Daze

 

It is that time of year that I go for early morning walks and bike rides or whatever tickles my fancy when I wake up just before dawn.

I do like summer just for that reason. My days start when the glow starts outside. I don't like to sit inside and just wait for late morning to occur. I usually have walked the fence and checked the stock tanks by 6ish and visited with the mules.

The peonies have started to blossom like crazy and I do love them for those days that they offer sweet smells and vibrant colors. I have only pink. My husband thinks peonies are icky flowers and would mow them all down if he could. 

What can I say?
Yarrow, Peonies, Irisis, and Verbena are my choices for right now.

In the summer I love to have every flower I can cut and stick in a jar or vase all around the house. That is just me. The more, the merrier.

That brings me to the veggie garden. To tell you the truth, I'd like a much smaller garden than I've had for years. For whatever the reason, I just am not into the huge garden this year.

I know a woman and her husband who have been doing the Farmer's Market in town for 20 years. I decided this year to let her do the gardening and I'd come on the weekends and pick my produce from her display.

I'm even going to trade some new jars for some produce next week.

I bought some Giardiniera from her Saturday and put it in my Italian cold salad. Wow!

I came away with some real goodies from the market. It included a wonderfully fresh picked package of spinach. Even the other half enjoyed a spinach in his salad.

I came home with a raspberry/rhubarb pie to boot from the Mennonite Bakery. 

I was done with my busy morning by 9am.

Everyone who has hayfields has their hay down to be baled. First crop looks a bit thin and we need rain. 

I had to haul water out to the 'Forest Garden' with the 4 wheeler. 

Hmmm. Looks like I had visitors!

A gift that arrived in the mail the other day was two bags of toys.

I could not resist messing around with them. They were kind of cute in that I could bend their arms and legs!

During the hottest part of the day, I read a book on the porch and watched birds. Not productive at all but pleasant.

If the weather people are correct, Sunday will be much nicer and chances for rain will be the topic for the week.

We do need the rain on for the hay fields. 

My lavender is getting ready to blossom. This is my first year of overwintering one lavender plant and growing a second one. 

The Sage I planted last year somehow survived the winter and came back in a huge mound and is ready to blossom too.

Today? 
More dry winds and heat.

Waiting for paint to dry

This is the chair that I started some work on this past week. This is a photo I took of it after cleaning it and doing a bit of sanding.

Here it is with some bright yellow paint and aqua blue on the legs. My Grandson Dennis thought silver would be cool for the back and so the back is now silver.

I did most of this with spray paint, it is easy and very fast. I think the seat may end up white and I may put hand painted designs all over it. I may glue stuff to it too. I guess I never really plan it out but just go with what comes to mind.

Some chairs I don't bother doing anything with. I found an old cracked chair that had been refinished so many times that I couldn't do much with it. I decided to keep it and make it my Christmas chair:

It sure is fun and different.

Anyway. Charlie and I did some work on moving stock tanks and cleaning them, then I checked on the silver paint. Not quite dry.
So I tied Charlie up to the bench on the porch and he observed as I messed around with some flowers.

I picked peonies and some Japanese irises and took the old daisies from the house and set them on a piece of wood on top of my 'spool' table.

I came up with these photos.

The paint dried and I realized that I wasn't sure what my next step was for colors or design.
I put the chair aside and enjoyed some quiet time reading a book while Charlie napped.