Break A Leaf: The Garden Show Must Go On

May 21, 2015May 21, 2015 / Ally Bean / 31 Comments

What is a garden, but one big stage production?

And as any well-grounded director knows, every big theater production is filled with characters.

Here’s the diva, a honey locust tree, bowing to the backyard audience, wowing them with her pale yellow scented spring flowers.

Below her, the stones and grasses, covered with her discarded snowflake-like flower petals, create an encouraging group of extras, allowing her to look her best. Always.

Meanwhile, out in the front yard along the driveway, catmint is stealing the show. He’s the star who has blossomed into his own this year, giving a most dazzling performance.

While on the other side of the front yard, under some birch trees, his understudy waits in the wings, hoping to grow-up and be as famous as his great-uncle over by the driveway.

Around back, the colorful ingénues are content, contained until it is time for their dramatic entrance onto the stage. So young. So pretty.

Near the ingénues, the comedy duo of tomato and pepper sit hopefully. Grown ostensibly for their vegetables, more often than not, these garden stars fall victim to the shenanigans of overly enthusiastic fans such as squirrels and raccoons.

And finally, no production would be complete without a character actor who supports the story. A true thespian, sure of where he is going, the stone path is always willing to allow the other plants to shine. Knowing that without him, there’d be no garden production at all.

THE END

My Neighborhood: Not Much Of A Story, But The News Is Good

May 19, 2015 / Ally Bean / 24 Comments

The economy has perked up around here and with it, the real estate market. House sales are beginning to happen faster. That is, houses are on the market for weeks now, instead of for months & months.

Neighbors who are selling their homes are sprucing up what they have, meaning that our street has looked exceptionally nice this spring. And with the subsequent home sales, we have new younger, active neighbors.

This is a good thing, huh?

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I’m seeing lots of these now.

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I realized the foregoing as I was driving, very slowly, the long way home through our subdivision. It dawned on me that as well as being outside on the move, many of our new neighbors are driving new cars. Perhaps I’m overly aware of this sort of thing because I drive a 12 y.o. car, but I was kind of amazed.

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I’m not seeing any of these.

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The cars that I noticed weren’t fancy and/or sporty. They were Fords or Toyotas or Hyundais, usually trucks or mini-vans or SUVs, middle of the line, practical. But they were bright + shiny + new.

So that’s what’s up around here. Not too exciting from a blog story-telling point of view, but encouraging from a midwest homeowners point of view. Of which I am one.

You gotta take the happy where you find it, eh?

Fuzzy The Squirrel: Color Consultant & Investment Advisor

May 14, 2015May 14, 2015 / Ally Bean / 26 Comments

IT WAS A beautiful clear spring day, so I went outside to photograph the new gutter on the back of the house. It’s the one that we had to buy to replace the storm-damaged gutter that fell down last autumn.

I WAS TRYING to decide if the new gutter, which came in Desert Sand, was going to blend, as is, with the rest of the house trim. Or, if it was going to have to be painted SW Agreeable Gray to match the house trim.

BUT AS I was standing there snapping photos I was startled when I noticed that on top of the screened-in porch roof, under the new gutter, was Fuzzy the Squirrel watching me.

SEEING AS HE was already up there and in a good place to look around, I asked him what he thought I should do about my color dilemma.

FUZZY, WHO IS always happy to be included in our plans, carefully perused the situation then confirmed what I was hoping.

“LADY, YOU’D BE crazy to hire someone to climb up here and paint this new gutter. I can barely see a difference between the two colors.…

IN FACT, I think that your monies would be better spent on buying a few more tomato plants for the deck + maybe a nut tree or two for the backyard. Much better investments. In my humble squirrel-y opinion.”

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Of Slow Cooker Wisdom And Simple Garden Plans

May 5, 2015May 5, 2015 / Ally Bean / 44 Comments

“Knowledge is the process of piling up facts; wisdom lies in their simplification.”

~ Martin H. Fischer, Physician and Author

• • •

WE SPENT MOST of this past warm and beautiful spring weekend working in the garden.

My goal, influenced by the Fix-It and Forget-It Cookbook , is to have what I’ve come to call a slow cooker garden.

A space filled with variety, but put together in a way that is simple to understand. Pleasant to look at, but requiring less and less effort each year to maintain.

That is, we’re going to fix it now with perennials, paths and stones; then forget about changing anything out there for the next decade.

• • •

SO WHAT HAVE we got going on? Well, we’ve got:

a plethora of roses + daisies + hostas in planting beds beside stone and/or concrete steps that circle the house;
a landscape island in the front yard near the street filled with grasses and mostly purple flowers;
a newly installed dry faux creek bed under the deck; AND
a lower terrace in the back yard down by the woods that features stone steps, grasses, roses plus the recent addition of difficult-to-find milkweed. *yeah*

• • •

I’M NOT SURE how our garden ended up being so multi-faceted and unique, but over the years, little by little, it did.

My hope is that when it comes time to sell this property, like the HGTV show CURBAPPEAL suggests, the awe-inspiring exterior of the property will be so amazing that this house’s relatively small square footage won’t hinder a sale.

However, be that as it may, in the mean time, I’m not worrying about real estate business-y things like ROI. Instead, I’m going to groove on all that we have going on in our pretty, pretty garden.

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