Category Archives: Garden

Fun family projects…

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We had a torrential rain last week that caused a room to flood at Chris and Lorna’s. The water poured onto a small deck and into Judy’s apartment and it had to be fixed. I love this sort of DIY project and, happily, I got to help Chris with it! (Steve is recovering from minor abdominal surgery so was not allowed to help this time.)

The physical labor was just hard enough to get our attention but not so hard as to make us give up. My favorite part was thinking about how to get a lot of water to flow quickly away from the house. It took two of us to sort it out and it meant altering the deck and installing a new French drain. Fingers and toes are crossed that it works :-).

Now I’ll go back to the digging up of the Bermuda and nut grass in Chris and Lorna’s side yard. There’s about a 6′ x 6′ section left and I hope I can finish in 2-3 weeks. I don’t have much to do in my own yard and I am in the mood for outdoor work—and it’s good to be busy :-).

Sometimes scary is good!

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I went with friends, Amanda and Karen, to see Halloween on Sunday morning. The best part was watching a very-empowered Jamie Lee Curtis go after the scary guy. We left the theater feeling exhilarated! (FYI: If you don’t like scary movies, you probably should pass on this even though, as scary movies go, it was not that scary.)

It was a pretty day and I was pumped so I decided to install a rain chain. I watched the video on this page and went to work.

I took down the old downspout and dug a 6″-deep pit. I moved a concrete urn from the backyard to the front, and then tried drilling the extra drainage holes in the bottom. Drilling 1/2″-thick concrete is hard so I decided instead to take a 41b. hammer to the bottom of the pot.

Maybe it was because of the movie, but I found whacking the concrete to be very satisfying.

I bought 2 really heavy bags of gravel at Lowe’s, and emptied one of them into the pit. Then I centered the pot under the hole in the gutter, on the gravel.

I had to order a rain chain and it came today.

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We are going to have the trim painted and new gutters installed soon so I’m going to wait to add more gravel to the pot. Once I do, I’ll top all the gravel with river rock to make it pretty. I’ll be sure to post photos of the rain chain in action the next time it rains and I’m home to see it.

OK, enough of that… back to quilt-related things :-).

Park Güell

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Antonin Gaudí also designed Park Güell, Palau Güell, and Casa Mila in Barcelona. Park Güell was high on my list of places to visit.

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There are so many whimsical shapes covered with mosaics!!!

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I didn’t love the lion’s head (below), but it’s the only thing I didn’t love.

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There are two levels to the park. The part with the undulating bench is on top, in the sun.

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The bench marks the perimeter of the space. I especially liked seeing the transitions between different tile colors and styles on the bench. And I liked that the drainage holes were well designed and obviously work.

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The plain circles that crop up like dots are really fun!

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You can see the more formal garden in the background in the photos above and below.

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The views of Barcelona were lovely.

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A colonnade holds up the ‘top’ of the park. It is massive, and the columns angle to provide maximum support.

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Stone and tile… everywhere you look! And beautiful ironwork…

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The non-formal part of the park is more organic. Rock work, no tile.

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The whole park feels happy and very alive!

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It was hot summer so the flowers were not as plentiful as they would be in the spring but those that were there, were lovely.

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We arrived at the park early and missed a lot of the crowds and heat. If you go, do that :-).

 

The Hunter Valley Gardens…

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We went back to the Hunter Valley to visit the Gardens on Sunday. It’s been rainy but we were lucky and it was a beautiful day. Most of the flowers were dormant but that really didn’t matter to me. I enjoyed the fall display.

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The hedges are skillfully trimmed. I especially liked the cutouts that allow you to see through to another part of the garden.

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There is a formal garden, very nice.

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There is a lovely children’s area with a Mother Goose/story book theme. My favorite thing was the big red chair:

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There are rides, but it’s off-season here so they weren’t working. That also meant fewer people in the garden with us so, actually, it was not a bad thing.

This is the safest, least-scary Ferris wheel I have ever seen. It made me wonder if it’s as much fun as those where, even though you are strapped in, it feels like you could fall out.

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The Japanese Garden was serene, as you would expect.

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My last photo of the day. I’m not sure that I’ve ever seen cut roses floating in water. I hope I don’t forget this…

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Visiting the Dallas Arboretum…

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NOTE: If you got the way-too-early link to next week’s Wednesday Giveaway it’s only sort of gone. It will post on time next Wednesday. If you already commented, your comments should still be there.

Lorna, the kids, and I went to the Dallas Arboretum yesterday and it looks like spring is already here! Jack took way more pictures than I did.

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Bear rarely wanted to stop for a photo.

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The cherry trees have begun to bloom. That was a surprise to me — I didn’t know there were cherry trees there!

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The crepe myrtles are lovely even when they have not leafed out.

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This is for my friend, Catherine :-).

 

Shaking hands with a shovel…

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Bruce Taylor’s guys put in our drip irrigation system last week. These brown drip hoses are perfect, but don’t look that great laying on top of the ground. 

   
 

The last time we spread mulch was 2 years ago and it has decomposed. It was time to mulch again. 
We’re lucky that there are big mulch piles that we can use but it is real work to get the mulch from those piles to our yard. It requires shoveling mulch into bins and buckets, driving it home, and hefting it into place.  
 

Steve and I both shoveled. He did the heaviest bin-lifting into the pickup. But I did my fair share of lifting and I was thankful for all those Pilates classes :-). 
  

We started at 7:30am and quit at 3:15pm with a 30 minute lunch break. We are fried but the yard looks great!
  

The mulch pile is much diminished…

 

We celebrated with home-made hot fudge sundaes!