It was a whirlwind weekend of moving up furniture and boxes last Friday, shedding furniture at local consignment shops, sorting boxes to the right spaces, unloading and distributing them, shedding even more, etc.But it was good work. It didn't take as long to get things back into a semblance of home as it did to shed things.And it wasn't so difficult to honor the old house that we were leaving,...
Monday, 27 April 2015
Monday, 20 April 2015
Moving to a new garden
We've been so fortunate to have a new "piece of earth" to move forward to -- there's so much that we've established of a new garden, over the past 6 years, from my raised beds for vegetables and pocket meadow in front, to the native woodland garden below the house (my gardening companion's work).We...
Saturday, 18 April 2015
Wednesday, 15 April 2015
creating a new garden, Golden ragwort, native woodland wildflowers, natural gardening, woodland restoration
Creating a new space and garden
Consolidating to a smaller house is an "interesting" process. We're going to good space.We've enjoyed it as a weekend and summer home, so we've gradually been changing things to suit it better to be our new space as home. (It was built by an architect as his own eco-friendly house, so it...
Friday, 10 April 2015
leaving a garden, leaving an old house, native plants used as foundation plantings, natural gardening
Native plants used as "foundation" plantings
From left to right:coral honeysuckle, fothergilla, Euonymus, mountain laurel, Leucothoe, Aquilegia, with Christmas ferns and bloodroot, and Carolina jessamine on the front porch railAnd lots of water oak catkins on the front pa...
Kohlrabi: a versatile cole crop
The weird stem enlargement is about the size of an apple...Kohlrabi (Brassica oleracea var. gongylodes) is one of the many cole crops (cabbage, kale, collard greens, Brussels sprouts, broccoli, cauliflower, and more), which have all been bred from just one plant species. Kohl is the German word for...
Thursday, 9 April 2015
A flourishing woodland garden
It's been wonderful to see how the front woodland garden along the path is flourishing this spring, along with the "foundation" plantings in front of the house.Even the assessor (from the bank of our buyer) on Tuesday (admittedly a plant enthusiast) admired the nice combination of mountain laurel, rhododendron, fothergilla, and coral honeysuckle in front of the house, as well as the native crested...
Saturday, 4 April 2015
A woodland garden
It was so nice to see the woodland border thriving, in spring guise, returning from the mountains to the Piedmont in the final stages of relocation.This was a created woodland spot; it was shallow dry grass beneath a water oak when we bought this house. And there was no pathway to the front of...
Wednesday, 1 April 2015
Paring down books
I've been paring down my gardening and natural history books, with upcoming consolidation to a smaller living space.It's an interesting process (not without angst).I think about and weigh (based on my de-cluttering inspirations): have I looked at this field guide lately? Do I really want to know as much about dragonflies as this very nice guide provides? Ditto about caterpillars? ...