indiboi.com

“Chimes of the Appalachians” – Aluminum tubes anodized with Copper, with black walnut wood, hand tuned and all that jazz, made by Weatherland, oh it’s 42″ long!

I’ve been wanting a wind chime for at least a year now, but never could find one that I felt like actually paying for, and I refused to buy some cheap piece of crap. I was up at the greenhouse today, they were rather wiped out of everything… and inconveniently they’d potted up pretty much everything, making it less than desirable cost-wise. They did have an entire building still full of freakin’ Petunias though, hah. We did buy some more, but they were huge and it cost $2.20 for four of them… they do work well in various spots, but anyway.

I like the way the petunias and pineapple mint work together in my barrel… I need several more of them for my mints, the tiny pots from last year just aren’t cutting it. I don’t give the petunias long though, the mint will quickly take over, as usual. You can also see the little silver torch ‘things’ I picked up the other day, they’re a lifesaver when it comes to warding off the bugs, they’re also such a perfect height as to not be annoying during the day.

So, I had a sage plant and some feverfew, a whopping total of about three dollars… kind of defeats the driving up there. I definitely needed to make the trip more worthwhile.

They have this spectacular wind chime outside made of black pipes something on the order of 6″ in diameter. It rarely makes noise, but when it does… wow. I finally got around to looking for chimes in there, and found a couple that I really liked. Firstly, they had a smaller version of that gigantic one outside, but… it was still nearly $300, ouch. Smaller versions of that were available, but still ghastly expensive, but finally I was stuck deciding between this one “Chimes of the Appalachians” or “Chapel Bells” …and it was a tough choice. I really liked the chapel bells one, but I wasn’t sure I’d want to hear something like that on a regular basis. That one was 71″ long, with very small diameter tubes, rather spectacular in its own right, but I went with the ‘mountain chimes’ obviously.

Fortunately and also unfortunately these large chimes require quite a bit of wind to do anything. The plus is that I won’t be hearing the chime so often as to become annoying, but of course I really want to hear it now because I’m obsessive about just having bought this thing.

Finally, my mother bought me that cute little lady bug ‘thing’ made of blackened metal. I’m just giddy over it, so very cute, hah. I’ve been working on the pathway, thus it has ‘fresh’ cocoa hulls, which are a lighter brown than the ‘weathered’ ones in the ‘patio’ area of the rose garden.

Actually, I highly doubt it’s the first bird, but it is the first bird that I’ve seen… and was able to photograph. This reminds me, I really must get a digital SLR that will use my 300mm zoom lense.

I’ve been getting more and more excited about birds… similarly I’m now not annoyed with bees… even those evil wasps have a good purpose… they eat the more evil bugs (some kinds at least).

I noticed for the first time -ever- that I now have a woodpecker in the yard. It’s some sort of one with kind of gray and white wings… I didn’t really noticed it until I saw it flying, then realized that it was landing on the trunks of the trees… lol. I think it might be a Downy or Hairy Woodpecker… female, since I didn’t notice any red on the top of its head.

I believe I saw a couple of Chickadees, there are plenty of Robins & Catbirds, along with your normal Crows. I also have a few Cardinals, whee!

The back yard in June of 2003.

The back yard in June of 2005.

I simply couldn’t let the rocky earth I was digging in defeat me. I went back out there, with a vengance, taking the pick axe to every little area… raking out the bigger stones, and then deciding that I’d “simply” move the herb garden into that spot — making room for at least three of the five roses in the previous space the herb garden was using. Thankfully herbs actually like crappy soil, for the most part, so… yay for that.

That’s the photo of the area prior to my actually planting the three roses, but they’re in that block enclosed area to the right of the photo. I also moved all those blocks (still need to seat and align them a bit better) now seen toward the left of the photo, enclosing the overzealous strawberries and the other veggies. It’s all a bit of a mess at this point, but I’ll get it cleaned up fairly soon… hopefully soon, heh. The herbs seem to have survived their transplanting fairly well… my golden sage was a bit wilted today, but otherwise they seem happy enough.

My arms, and particularly my hands and feet are so very sore today, still.

I still have to find a place for two more roses… and yes, I know there looks like plenty of room… but there really isn’t when you take into consideration the little shade problem that my love of trees provides, lol. I think I have two places in mind… my less than beautiful pink carnation will get the boot — to be replanted somewhere else (no clue where yet) and…I think I have a spot actually in the “rose garden” provided I don’t run into tree roots. It seems that’s the problem… I either have no topsoil before the rock beneath, or I have tree roots, lol. The front yard, while expansive, is fairly shaded… although I don’t know if the soil really is any better or not. I think if I run up against my rose limit next year (I’m setting the limit at four, because I know I can fit that many into where the dahlias are now) I’ll probably have to start with raised beds… ugh.

The side yard has a decent bit of potential, except for the whole crappy soil problem. It isn’t so bad when you’re talking about regular plants… but roses & trees have this thing about big anchoring roots, heh…. and it’s pretty damned near impossible to get a deep enough hole dug… agh!

I guess the brightside is that the ‘rose budget’ will give way to the ‘perennial plant budget’ for next year, lol. I do have a rose I’ll probably be shovel pruning… the ugly orange/red/yellow thing that I got, it was mislabeled… the only thing saving it at this point is the fact that Justin has expressed fondness for it. It’s just that I’ve come to this discovery that my actual plantable space is considerably less than I thought, and now I need to become more selective about what I’m growing. That one-cane-wonder of ‘Sheer Bliss’ ….I love it, probably my favorite hybrid tea, but… if it doesn’t get another cane or two… it’ll have to be replaced with something more robust and productive.

The J&P roses I ordered in that ‘sort of spur of the moment trying to resist but failed’ sort of way arrived Tuesday. I put them into five gallon buckets to soak, as one does with bareroot roses, and well… they’re still there. The ‘arrive by’ date was originally the 17th, then changed to the 20th, so… of course I’d get them on the 14th!

It’s time to order explosives.

Wait, maybe it’s time to order several cubic yards of “dirt” err, I mean “Soil” …right.

…and lots of concrete blocks or… something. I’m talking raised beds… The roses were only $5 each, that’s including the shipping. This isn’t worth it, unfortunately.

You see, the yard slopes ever so less than slightly… in the rose garden “proper” I guess there’s a good foot of soil before hitting the shale, enough that I can generally get a bareroot to the proper depth.

The rose garden is, well, I figured at least, full… when they all grow up and become big little roses, well, they’ll be mashed in together tightly enough. The rose garden then bends out around my herbs & veggies, where right now I have a fairly decent Dahlia planting… it was then to curve again and I’d plant these roses. That simply isn’t going to work… four inches of soil and then the shale starts, I pick axed a foot down, and it just doesn’t end. Perhaps if I had some sort of heavy machinery I could just scrape away all that crap and fill it back in with good soil, but… again, not worth it to me, I don’t believe.

I’m not quite sure what I’m going to do at this point… perhaps I’ll give the roses away, perhaps I’ll sell them to someone… maybe I’ll plant them there anyway, knowing that if I don’t plant them they’ll die — at least they’ll have a miniscule chance. …I could also just TRY to find some space in the rose garden for them, I just don’t know. I’m grumpy.

I’m going to sound like a thirteen year old girl here for a minute, you might want to skip ahead.

I have a boyfriend. I’ve been seeing him since just prior to Mother’s day, so a tiny bit more than a month. I really like him… he’s even helped me in the garden! Major points awarded there… as well as other areas of course.

Yesterday was the ‘change in title’ which really I suppose is all the difference it truly makes, but I guess the idea is it certainly makes it easier to describe my relationship with him, versus saying ‘this guy I’ve been seeing’ you know?

I’ve avoided going to Denny’s for quite a while… normally I’d avoid it just because, well… it is Denny’s afterall, but around the middle of March I found a new reason. Last night both of us were hungry, he suggested Sheetz… and, well, I’ve had enough Sheetz to last my lifetime, including tonight. Here in “small town hell” it’s not exactly an easy thing to find food around midnight, and I wanted to actually sit down somewhere and eat. It was a bit of that ‘internal battle’ business, but I figured I couldn’t go on with being avoidant forever. Quite frankly I don’t know if I was being avoidant for my own good, or for his benefit, but as long as Mr. Denny’s and I didn’t see each other then all was well. It would figure, he was there… I saw his car, my stomach sort of turned and as much as I wanted to just say “let’s go…” I figured it couldn’t be that bad, could it?

So, I saw him… but there wasn’t any eye contact, and really no reaction.. no biggie. So, a bit later on I see him walk into this little space that allows people ‘in the back’ to see what’s going on in the smoking section, and he looks at me… and there’s plenty of eye contact that time, then there was that second look. That was it, basically, we just looked at each other… they weren’t looks of disgust or happiness, or any other discernable emotion… perhaps some of that ‘what are you doing here’ but really, it didn’t matter. I wasn’t there to see him, I was there in spite of having to possibly see him.

My heart did sink, I can’t change the fact that I reacted to seeing him… seeing me. I miss talking to him and spending time with him, but there’s nothing I can do about it, because there’s nothing I will do about it.

I’m exhausted, but you know, I’m still awake now at 3AM. I didn’t sleep very well lastnight, I think the biggest ‘problem’ so far with the boyfriend is his insistance on sleeping underneath the down comforter when it’s 90&deg outside… just being near him I turn into a puddle of sweat (well, okay… it’s only a problem when I want to sleep). This whole sleep schedule thing isn’t working for me, it’s just another one of those “I’m getting OLD” indicators I think. I really need to pick a schedule and stick to it without error… and possibly use sleep aids to help get onto that schedule. It’s the continuing problem of physical exhaustion, but my mind simply won’t shut off. Of course, whenever he’s not here I don’t really want to sleep… it’s better in so many uncountable ways whenever he’s right there next to me.

The weather has been horrible with high heat and equally high humidity… one can feel the air when walking outside. Today my camera’s lense wouldn’t stay clear of fog; being outside for even a few minutes I become a puddle, I’m not pleased. This is seriously putting a damper on my gardening activities, I can barely survive just deadheading and pulling weeds. Today’s storm destroyed one of my little Delphiniums, the flower stalk was snapped… blegh!

I’ve started working on garden.indiboi, mostly photos of the rose garden’s progress and upclose photos of the blooms at this point. As I find myself having more motivation to actually work on it and post photos I’ll try to do just that. ;)

Jackson & Perkins had this set of six David Austin roses on clearance, all told it cost me $32 for the set, quite a nice little deal. Now, I’ll be getting them in a few days, right in the middle of this heatwave horror — I’m supposed to get them either on the 17th or the 20th , damn that weekend business. I think I would be better off putting them into pots — I’m giving one of them to Matthew anyway, as it’s a duplicate of one I already have. I like it well enough, but not enough to have two of them when I could use the same planting space for something different. With the addition of those five, my total rose count will be up to 22. I still want to see if I can find a nice white English or ‘Old Garden’ — preferably Bourbon — rose in a pot at a greenhouse, but I’m not sure. I have at least figured out generally where the new roses will be going… that also means I need to dig up a big stretch of grass (again), lol. I took some spray paint and laid out some of the general bed redesign ideas… I have to keep focusing on making sure I can actually walk around… I’ve made an island of planting, basically my veggies & herbs surrounded on nearly all sides by flowering plants. It could be problematic, time for stepping stones. ;)

The strawberries I’d planted last year and yielding quite well, enough for a nice snack on a daily basis. I’ll need probably four times as many if I actually wanted to do something productive with them… such as make preserves. I suppose that’ll work though, they need to be moved anyway. The six or so strawberry plants from last year have fairly well taken over the veggie garden, thus, yes, you guessed it… more grass will need to be torn up, ammended and all that fun stuff. Thankfully for the strawberries there isn’t a terrible hurry, I’ll probably move them in the fall. This has me considering moving the whole veggie area to the side yard… I’m not sure enough about the daylight though, it could be problematic with the house possibly shading the area. I’ll just need to pay attention to the sun patterns… if it looks okay, then I’ll probably get that started in the fall too.

I was showing Zilla a photo of my rose garden the other day and mentioning how wonderful it is to go out there with coffee and cigarettes, and relax on the bench, with Justin. He remarked that it seemed like a great way to spend the holiday… I suppose that was Memorial Day. Tonight was especially amazing, to the point that I really wished he (Justin) had been here… all the baby lightning bugs were out, the air was sparkling! Add in the cooler air thanks to the sun setting and all of the birds sending their calls through the trees, it was nearly perfect.

I so very look forward to later in the summer when the perennials we’d planted get a bit more mature and hopefully start flowering. The foxgloves have just finished, the roses (some of them) are finishing out their first flush, while some of the others are just starting. I think that timing will work nicely, should (hopefully) prove to provide blooms pretty much consistently throughout the summer and early fall.

Today’s observations: There’s a tiny little tomato forming on one of the Roma bushes, there are a few tiny buds on the Dahlias, the yellow lily in the front has started blooming, two of the new lilies in the back are blooming now; the coneflowers have little buds on them, the ‘Fragrant Treasure’ Daylilies have started blooming, even the ‘Sum & Substance’ Hosta have started to bloom. I’m still waiting for ‘Tiffany’ to bloom, one of the newly planted roses this year, along with ‘Graham Thomas,’ ‘The Prince,’ and ‘Pat Austin’ as well. Hopefully the ‘Tiffany’ will actually be as labeled… my ‘Chicago Peace’ isn’t.. but maybe just a ‘Peace’ but that is still questionable; my ‘Sterling Silver’ appears to be a ‘Joseph’s Coat’ …but that’s still undetermined too. I’m not worried about the others because they actually came from a decently reputable company, versus being bodybags at Walmart.

I’ll definitely need to have a garden party of some sort this summer… hopefully with the correct timing to catch the roses & summer blooming perennials in bloom… it would be lovely.