Sometimes the List of Priorites Lies

Yesterday I wrote up a whole list of what I would accomplish in the garden today, knowing from the weather forecast that today's weather would be good.

I didn't do any of it.

We recently had the doors on our shed replaced, the bottoms were rotting. But they still make a good backdrop for garden ornaments!

It was bright and sunny and in the 60s, perfect gardening weather. I did go out there, but I didn't plant any plants, or redo the hoophouse, or transplant anything.

I basically just hauled a bunch of stuff out of the shed and arranged it.

I have been collecting/hoarding a stash of junk, or junque, or garden art, for a while now, and have put up very little of it. But I've also been pinning lots of images of garden art, and when I got up this morning I just opened up the shed where it has all been hiding, and hauled it all out, and set it up. I had some partially formed ideas for what I was going to do, but then, you know what? I just kind of looked it all over, and let it speak to me.

I bought the 3 sun faces with color in them at the NWFGS. The wrought iron piece at the top came from Second Use in Seattle, a salvage store.

I like round things!

I need to get a couple of little pots to go with this metal sun.

I bought that milk jug recently too, from an antique emporium in Auburn, WA called Ye Olde Barn Emporium.

This pink colander makes a perfect well-drained container for a succulent-like Lewisia.

This pot, complete with plants, was another craigslist find.

I've had this fairy stake forever, she came from Massachusetts with me.

I need to find a better spot for this birdhouse. Although the birds have ignored the two birdhouses I've put up in protected spots. Maybe they'll take to this one at ground level.

All in all, I had a very satisfying day arranging stuff. The list can wait.

Fertilizer Friday -- Spring Ephemerals, and Some Others

The sun was shining this morning when I got up and stumbled downstairs to get my green tea with jasmine (I have given up coffee,  mostly -- OK, I indulge in a latte every few days,  but it's always decaf). I took a quick, bleary-eyed look out the sliding glass doors into the back yard, and did a double-take. Where did all that green come from? I know I've been concentrating on the new garden, in the front, but still -- how did I not notice this? And...and...there were flowers!

Ribes sanguineum/Red flowering currant

Of course, the sun didn't last all day. It rained, and then it hailed. And then it rained again. And now the sun is out again.

Marsh marigold

But I managed to get out there to take some pictures.

Epimedium 'Fire Dragon'

Epimedium perralchium 'Frohnleiten'

Epimedium rubrum

Primula 'Belarina Nectarine'

Euphorbia 'Ruby Glow'

Fritillaria meleagris/Checkered lily -- I always think of this as Pixel Lily

Dodecatheon meadia/Shooting star

Trillium ovatum

Native maidenhair fern

Ostrich fern

Yellow fawn lily

Tiarella cordifolia

Dicentra spectabilis 'Gold Heart'

Hepatica

Clever dandelion, hiding amongst the poppy foliage

Dandelion foliage is actually quite similar to poppy foliage, but without the hairs. Can you spot both?

Rain on Mexican feather grass

Agave ovatifolia

Sedum ewersii

Rain on Sempervivum

After I took these photos, I went out and took notes on names of plants with a pen and a pad of paper. Nigel saw me, and commented, "I saw you out there with your pad of paper," (In a high-pitched Alison-voice, talking to the plants) "What can I get you? Some companions, maybe?"

It's been a while since I participated in Tootsie Time's Fertilizer Friday. There really hasn't been much in the way of flowers out there to post about. But now there is.

Go to Tootsie Time and check out all the other posts from people with beautiful flowers to flaunt.

What 56 and Overweight Really Looks Like

There's been a lot of kerfuffle in the media lately about women and how they look. Apparently, people have been picking on Ashley Judd's appearance, and she has commented back, with a very well-written essay about how wrong it is to judge women on their appearance. If you're interested, you can read her article here.

The blogosphere is all aflutter about it too. Bloggers have written blog posts in support of what she said, one by Patty Hicks at Garden of Discovery, which you can read here. Another at Red, White and Grew, here. There may have been more since I first read these a couple of days ago. Here's a third I just found on Pinterest from Jennah's Garden. I also read an interesting article just this morning, and it says some great stuff on the whole "judging women's looks" situation too. You can read it here, it's called Women, Looks and Aging: Is Beauty a Bad Investment?

Anyway, I figured I would write a blog post too too. It's taken me a few days to work out what I want to say, and I'm still not sure I will be able to say it all and get my thoughts organized. So if this post veers off course and gives you whiplash because I'm trying to say too much, well....sorry. Hope you can keep up. It's going to be more personal than political. I think what happened to Ashley Judd was ridiculous. And I don't think anyone, man or woman, should be judged on their looks.

Many of my blogging friends know that since last summer I've been trying to lose weight. I really appreciate all their support for my efforts. I haven't written about it in months (I actually have a second blog called The 40-Pound Chicken Challenge, but I haven't contributed to that since last September. It's called that because my husband told me that when I lose 40 pounds, he will let me get chickens.) Many of you also know that I don't publish a lot of photos of myself on my blog, but I have published a couple, and they are not always flattering. I don't like seeing myself in photos, and whenever I see my husband point the camera at me, I make a face. He usually takes the picture anyway. And then I delete it.

Remember this photo of me from last summer, holding a chicken?

For those who are interested, I have lost a little more weight, I just haven't written about it. But it's been a slow slog. I thought I could update people on my progress, and say something about being judged on appearances at the same time.

Why have I been trying to lose weight? Partly for health reasons, but also, to be honest, because I want to look better. I don't think I will ever stand out as a beauty, but I do want to live longer, and I think there is a little part of me that is trying to recapture my youth.

Me in a towel turban and no makeup, looking like a film star -- on second thought, I don't really look much like Liz Taylor, do I?

Oh my. My first reaction on seeing this photo? Look at those crooked teeth. Blotchy skin. Little piggy eyes. Tell me your reaction, quick! The first thing you thought when you saw this picture.

The last time I wore makeup was a little over 5 years ago, for my 25th wedding anniversary. I was about 20 pounds thinner then than I am right now.

What's your reaction to this?

 My one concession to vanity and getting old is that I get my hair colored at a salon, every 6 weeks. It would be white otherwise. Lately I've been thinking of growing it out, and letting it go natural. I have a friend back east who has done that, and she looks wonderful, with a somewhat wild, white mane of distinctive hair.

I've always had a kind of love/hate relationship with standing out. I'd love to dress to stand out, but then I feel self-conscious. I think one reason I remain overweight is that I think it tends to make me invisible (I know that doesn't make sense), but I do think it's true that people tend to dismiss and/or overlook fat people. I would love to be one of those women who wears her white hair proudly. What do you think? Would a long mane of white hair make me stand out?

After all, I'm never going to look 12 again.

I might as well embrace my age.

DIY Gabion Globes for $20

I wanted some rounded shapes out in the gravel garden, for contrast against the gabion towers. I'm planning to put some of the cement globes in the new garden that I made this past winter. But I also really liked the gabion globe that I found pictures of on the internet here. But I couldn't find anywhere that sold them, so I decided to make my own. Recently on Pinterest I've been seeing pins of a succulent-filled globe made out of two hanging baskets filled with soil and wired together (you can find out how to make that here), and it triggered a thought -- I could make gabions out of the same thing!

So I bought two cheapo hanging baskets at Fred Meyer for $9.99 each. These are pretty simple ones. They had plenty of others that had pretty leaf designs and such on them, but I needed to get the simple ones that had a hole in the bottom that I could fit my hand through. (Also, as I discovered while I was filling them later, the wires were flexible enough to be slightly pushed apart to fit rocks that were a little too big for the hole.)

I removed the coir liners and the hanging chains. I found some bendable wire in my craft stash (labeled tin copper 20 gauge), and placed the two now empty baskets together, with the wires lined up, and began wiring them together.

When I was finished I had this. BTW, I didn't need the needle-nose pliers to bend the wire, I just needed the cutting blade on it to cut the wire when I was done. I could easily bend the wire with just my fingers.

Next -- out to the garden to find rocks to fill it! Believe me, I have plenty. I am always unearthing rocks every time I dig a hole to put a plant in the ground.

As you can see, I actually made two! I used my trusty little wire basket to gather rocks around the garden.

I dropped rocks through the hole, and then reached in to re-position them. Sometimes, if a rock was just a little too big to fit through the hole, I found I could squeeze it through the wires if I pushed hard enough. As I filled the gabions, I lined the sides with the larger rocks, and then filled the center with smaller rocks that were small enough to fall out, but didn't because the larger rocks lining the sides kept them in. (Hope that makes sense).

See the smaller rocks in the center?

Here they are, out in the garden, all filled up. The cement globe has a hole in it, for a little Sempervivum and some of its chicks.

Under a Trachycarpus.

I think I may make a third, and put it elsewhere in the gravel garden (which, in case you're wondering, doesn't have any gravel mulch yet).

Succulent Dish Gardens

I spent some time yesterday with some of the large dishes that I bought at the thrift store and a bag of cactus mix, putting together some dish gardens that will eventually live for the summer on top of the gabions. For now, they are riding out the cold temperatures living inside the  house. Two of them are in the upstairs bathroom, which has a skylight and is the brightest room in the house. The third is downstairs in front of a west-facing window, which I hope will provide enough light until the warmer weather arrives. I have a south-facing window that I can move it to, but right now there are tomato starts living there.

I've been busy pinning various dish gardens on Pinterest, figuring if my own artistic abilities fail me, I can imitate the layout of one of them. I actually put my first together based on a dish garden I pinned on Pinterest, here. It's not exactly the same plants, but they have the same shape and look.

My second was just free-style, me-style. I think I may have a tendency to overstuff. I'm hoping that little round succulent at the bottom with the orange-yellow flowers looks good with the orange-yellow of the dish.

The bright orange and yellow pottery dish all planted up. The bright colors of the dish aren't so obvious now, though.

My third was kind of a cross between imitation and creativity.

I still need to cover the soil with some pretty gravel. Hmm...I do need to fill up two more of these dishes for the garden, so when I go to buy the gravel, I'll just have to buy some more cute little succulents. Oh, bother!

Today's Big Adventure -- In Which I Buy Some Pot!

I mentioned in a previous post that I've been haunting craigslist lately, buying pots for the garden. Most of them have been small enough that I have been able to handle them easily. Today, I bought an enormous one, and I had to drive all the way to West Seattle to pick it up! That's about 30 miles on highway, and once we got there, Nigel and the woman selling it had to wrestle it down a flight of stairs, and then into the back of our teeny-tiny Prius.

The great green whale peers out at us from the back of the car

And it didn't fit, at least not with the hatch closed. Good thing the car has proper tie-downs. We scored some free rope and a towel to protect the back window on the car. With the help of my very patient, supportive and indulgent husband, who knows how to tie proper knots, we got it home, and out of the car in one piece.

Good thing I had some bags of soil in the car, we wedged them under it to keep it from rocking. I don't think we had to worry really, it barely moved all the way home.

The mighty Nigel with his quarry!

What do you think of this spot in front of one of the gabions?

You have to admit -- that is definitely some pot!

Another Agave Planted in My Second Culvert Planter

I am finally making some good progress on planting the gravel garden, but it really doesn't look like much, since most of the plants are still pretty small. We actually had a dry day today, with temps in the 60s and a lovely mix of blue skies and high, thin cloud. I have a few plants still in pots that I need to get in the ground, and then there are several plants that I want to transplant from elsewhere, namely some sedums, blue oat grass, black mondo grass, and Nepeta Walker's Low.

My second agave is a whale's tongue agave (Agave ovatifolia), ordered online from High Country Gardens. It's still pretty small, and I don't hold out a lot of hope that it will get as huge as the ones I've seen on the web, down in Texas, for example. Maybe it will, who knows? At least it's planted in a three-foot wide culvert pipe, which my contractor Chris Gilliam sourced for me. Unlike some I've seen, these were cut and fitted with a "beauty ring" -- which keeps me from cutting myself on the sharp edge of the culvert. A good thing, too, as I have enough to contend with, with the agaves sticking me.

Agave ovatifolia, Mexican feather grass, sedum ewersii, sempervivum 'Aqua', Allium aflatunense 'Purple Sensation'

To make up for it being so small, and possibly staying that way, I planted a glass "Agave" with it. When I was at the Northwest Flower and Garden Show in February, I bought three blue "glacicles" from Glass Gardens Northwest, with the plan of "planting" them clumped together as a fake agave.

I think they look pretty good together.

No boo-boos from today's work!

I have also been collecting ceramic and terra cotta pots from various people selling them on craigslist. And I've been haunting the local thrift stores, buying shallow dishes to make succulent dish gardens to top the gabions. I don't know yet what's going in the pots, but I like having them clustered in front of the gabions.

This square orange and yellow bowl was $7.99 at the thrift store. I'm going to plant it up with some blue-leaved succulents.

Anyway, there's a little peek at the new gravel garden. There's rain in the forecast for tomorrow and Wednesday, with clearing on Thursday and Friday. We'll see. I may still be sore from today's work.