Paint!!

Every morning, I eat breakfast on the steps of the deck and look around the garden. Every morning, the white plastic chairs in the gazebo are whoopin' it up an' hollerin' out how cheap and plastic they are. Just look at them in my first post. Real loud, too, like they just hopped off the Greyhound from Alabama or somewhere. So I started looking around for replacements. Yikes! Nice chairs are pretty expensive, even at the current end-of-season prices. So I searched out some paint. Much cheaper. The kid at Home Depot who unlocked the paint jail(after asking to see my ID-I'm so flattered!) assured me a can of spray paint is good for like 3, maybe 4 chairs -HA! Do not believe the kid in Home Depot. It was barely one can per chair. But since each can was $4.97, it was still way less than even buying brand new cheap white chairs. I purchased RustOleum Hammered Paint for Plastic in Dark Bronze and sprayed till my finger ached. One chair done, 5 more to go! It wasn't long till I realized the white table wasn't going to do it with my newly refined chairs. So it was back to Home Depot for the regular ol' RustOleum Hammered Paint (2 cans @$5.97) for that. Paint is so cool. Now I sit on the steps with my cereal, and my chairs just give me a polite little nod hello. It's like I sent them to charm school.

This is not the first time Mr. RustOleum and I have crossed paths. The lovely terra cotta statue under the lilac? She's an imposter! When Tim brought her home, she was plain old cement white. She had a brief stint as an extra in P.S. 193's production of "Orpheus and the Underworld", where she was tarted up with some color, but after she came back home, I hosed her down with some TerraCotta Spray Paint and Voila! she no longer looks like some chick you'd find on the curb.

What's New

Some new photos this week:

A Daylily with Heuchera

Hydrangea and Phlox

Black Eyed Susans

Dan snapped a pic of this cool mantis

More Before Photos!

Gardening is not a rational act-Margaret Atwood

I disagree with Ms. Atwood mostly because I can rationalize anything if I want to do it bad enough. This is our house when we bought it in 1993. Again with the chain link fence... That's Tim's brother Jimmy unscrewing the door to get in. I can rationalize some gardening here big time. Note the garbage cans as lawn decor.

We painted the place as soon as we could. The pink rhododendron was there already, as was the azalea that is not in bloom in this picture. We added the weeping crabapple next to the stoop.

Now there's new windows, siding, and a new roof in progress. The lattice fence next to the pond is visible on the right. And there's Jimmy, still trying to get into the house ;-)

Here's a festive holiday shot with the picket fence in progress. Tim salvaged the bricks from a demolition on 65th Street, made the cement caps, and the fence. The house is still waiting for trim around the windows.

And here's a picture I took today (drum roll, please...)

The wisteria is about ten years old and every year we say we're going to take a picture when it's in bloom, and we always miss it. We originally planted one on each side-thank God the one on the right fizzled out-I trim the remaining one every month or so it grows so fast. The giant yellow lilies started off as one I'd picked up from Home Depot and forgot about. It started to grow and grow and grow-I've never seen a lily so tall before. It has a really nice scent at night. That's still the crabapple next to the stoop.

The other side of the fence

Here's a photo from the front garden-the other side of the lattice fence in the pond photo on June 20th. This area was so vexing for years. It was Goldilocks gardening: plants were too big, too small, too dead, too perfect somewhere else... I'm finally starting to like the current lineup. I purchased the yellowy leaved heuchera from White Flower Farm last year with the two ferns whose name escapes me and a climbing "New Dawn" rose that is not blooming right now alongside the pink rose to the left. The pink rose is an original flower carpet rose that's about 12 years old now. It looks nicer on the fence than on the ground. I added the darker heuchera behind the yellowy ones when we divided some from the front yard. It has wispy pink flowers that look really sweet next to the darker foliage. Behind the ferns is a nice shrub we got this spring at BBG, a ninebark (physocarpus opulifolius 'Minda'). I never heard of it before, but it's pretty. We'll see how it holds up.

We went away on vacation last week-it's cool when I haven't seen the garden in several days-so much has changed. I'll take some pictures tomorrow and share them.

Oh, almost forgot-one of the turtles is AWOL. Tim looked all over for him. We're hoping he's having happy turtle adventures...