Ready

Well, not many interesting things have happened here in the last few weeks. I have bought more things for The Grandbaby for when he arrives in July, we haven’t gone on many hikes for various reasons, and I haven’t been doing much around the house. We are, however, definitely wanting to get ready for summer!

So on Sunday we went to Al’s Fruit and Shrub Garden Center in Woodburn and bought two magnolia trees for the yard. I was thinking we would put both of them in the front yard but now The Hubs has suggested putting one in the side yard, so now I’m not sure what we’ll do, but he definitely wants to plant one today. They are the “Vulcan” variety, with dark pink blossoms. I think they will add a lot of beauty to our yard!

Our two trees.

Also, I have received many yard decorations from my friend Linda, who with her husband is selling their house and downsizing into their R.V. I had planned to have The Hubs help me with the decorations last week when the weather was nice but he was busy, so now that will have to wait because it’s going to rain again for awhile. As soon as the sun comes back we will get out there and put up all the decorations and bird feeders. I may paint some of the stars and other decorations. Right now they are a sort of chartreuse color.

Many decorations including the new table and chairs – there are more stars too and two large gazing balls, and a bench!

Not sure where we’ll put this chiminea since we already have a fire pit, but we’ll find a place!

You can see that the dandelions have taken my sign seriously!

Here are some updates on my little patio garden. Most of the succulents are doing quite well and making all sorts of little baby succulents:

But I’m really not sure what this one is doing. Is it still alive? I think so, but it’s hard to tell.

The rosebush seems to be going great guns and enjoying the very wet feet it got throughout the winter.

This little plant has bounced right back:

I thought this pink lavender plant with the bee waterer had died, but it is coming back. I will clean the bee waterer and add some fresh water.

This lavender plant seems to have died, but I think it seeded some new little plants in the pot.

The rosemary and silver lavender plants seem to be doing well, although I do think this lavender plant needs to be in the ground or at least a bigger pot. I’d like to set up a little bed with the rosemary and lavender plants at some point.

These pretty little flowers just grew here all by themselves.

We will have to get after the blackberries coming over from the neighbor’s yard. He refuses to cut them back for some reason. We did have a very large blackberry patch in our yard due to the neighbor’s blackberries and it was nice to have the berries, but they were out of control and we don’t want them back again!

Garrett’s blackberries.

That’s about it for this update, will do another update when we’ve gotten the yard all spruced up!

Character

For the last year or so I’ve been trying to spiffy up our fenced side yard (or garden, if you live anywhere but in the U.S.). This year The Hubs had put up a tall fence made from large pallets he got for free, and last week he applied some used motor oil on the boards to help preserve them. Did you know that would work? Reuse and recycle! It doesn’t harm anything, but is obviously not something you would want to use on wood that was going to go in the house.

The Hubs changes the oil in our cars himself so he had plenty of used oil. You can also see our dandelion farm in this photo.

Now we have 4 different styles of fence in our side yard, but since I am going for the vintage “rustic” look I guess it sort of works.

One of the things on the “Honey-Do” list was to put up a bunch of things I wanted on the fence to give it more character. Today was the day for that, so after going to Home Depot to get supplies The Hubs got to work. Yesterday I had laid out each thing on the ground where I wanted it on the fence, so there was no decision-making today and it all went fairly quickly.

First he hung up some old windows he got last year. You can also see the metal “Dandelion Farm” sign, and an old trowel he came across when he was rototilling for the vegetable garden this spring. The 50-gallon drum is covering what’s left of a tree that we would like to get rid of. It was about 20 feet high and very bushy with branches all the way to the ground and The Hubs cut it down, but it is coming back so if it is covered it will be less likely to grow in again. It is a very determined tree.

Old windows.

Window and stars, and cherry tree

Lil’ Kitty

You know Bigfoot. I’m not sure why this stump is still here, but now it’s covered with ivy.

I got the little metal kitty from a company in Vancouver, WA called Rusty Birds. They have all sorts of cute animals and other metal art. The Bigfoot was made by The Sis-In-Law, he is about four feet high. They have a life-size one at their property!

Gazing ball, squirrel, container for squirrel corn, old gate, Dandelion Farm sign

The gazing ball above has been around for like 20 years, it used to be sort of forgotten under the myrtle tree and it survived for many years there. This is the first time it’s really had its own spot. There is space on the fence for many more fun things, and I will be on the lookout for anything that I think will fit in. In fact, I am planning to order this shortly. Isn’t it the cutest?

Kitty Biscuits!!

The fence has much more character now, and the patio is getting there with my new bear and container garden. None of this is perfect, of course, and there is still much to be done. I don’t do much yardwork because I’m allergic and The Hubs isn’t much bothered by the aesthetic of the yard, so we have a dandelion farm and 4 kinds of fences. But I am making the best of it, ha.

The Hubs made this fire pit for me. It is also rustic.

The neighbor won’t cut down his blackberry bushes so they come into our yard. We left these because some birds live in this section.

Dandelion Farm

As I noted in a prior post, I bought this sign the other day, intending to put it up on our front fence to give the neighbors a giggle (The Hubs doesn’t mow the lawn every week, and our “grass” consists mostly of dandelion greens.)

The Hubs doesn’t especially like this sign, so I showed him a stencil available on Etsy that says “Dandelion Farm” and said I could get the stencil and make a sign with a piece of wood and some yellow paint. He said there’s no fun in that, and that I should make my own stencil, and that it would look better if the letters weren’t so perfect. Now, I am not a person with much drawing talent. I can draw rectangles, and I need a ruler to do that. I said HE could make a stencil, because he is an artist. So, he went out to the shop and came back with a roll of white paper and an old fence board and promptly went to work.

The Hubs, diligently making a stencil

After he finished cutting out the stencil, The Hubs brushed most of the moss off the front of the old fence board and laid the stencil on top. I kept the letter “middles” off to the side so they wouldn’t get lost, and started painting the letters that don’t have middles. I just sort of dry-brushed the paint on (DecoArt Patio Paint in Fiesta Yellow). The Hubs made sure I knew that there shouldn’t be “globs” of paint if I wanted the sign to have a weathered look.

I painted the letters without “middles” first.

After going to pick up a motor and some car parts very graciously donated to The Hubs by Marnie’s Hubs, I got to work on the sign. Since we didn’t have any spray adhesive (and I don’t think it would have worked with the rough fence board), I just held the edges and letter middles of the stencil down and painted around my fingers. Well, and on my fingers.

Here is the finished product. I like all the letters except the M. I should have re-done it before I painted it.

The finished sign

Here is the sign hanging up on the side yard fence. The Hubs wouldn’t let me put this one on the front fence either. He says the neighbors are all trying to make their places look nice and this would look too primitive. (Unfortunately we aren’t trying to make our place look nice, because we can’t afford it yet.) He said we could put it up on the side fence at the top so people could still see it. I think it would look adorable on the front fence and would like to add some other vintage-y looking signs and things, but they would all have to be bolted to the fence somehow so nobody would run off with them! We live next to an elementary school and near the high school, and while we don’t get a lot of kids walking down our street we do get a few crazies and I have had an incident with my doormat, so we don’t typically put decor at the front of the house. I have a few things on the back porch (which is actually on the side of the house) but mostly decorate the fenced side yard.

It does look a little primitive, but still cute.

I have a bunch more things to hang on the side yard fence. I’m hoping The Hubs will help me put all those things out in the next couple of mornings before it gets too hot out. I’ll post photos when the fence is decorated!