Ranier Cherry Tree, and front yard Revisions

The hubby (he's a total sweetheard) got me a surprise the other day, and it was a Ranier Cherry tree... to replace the one that was killed by the neighbor's RoundUp. Long Story short, the neighbor used roundUp on alot of his lawn close to us, then we had a big rainstorm, and we're downhill... so it ended up killing 3 of the trees I ordered from a mail order catalog. When I tried to replace the Ranier cherry tree, they told me they no longer sold that type of cherry.
Noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

So this was a nice surprise, but with a heavy heart, I'm looking around my backyard and I don't think I have any room for it... or the chestnut trees that I acquired from a farmer in Michigan.

So many wants... so little room.

Regarding the front lawn: Saw this post from Shawna Coronado's blog, and it may be a good answer to the patch of grass in the frontyard. Especially because I did want a sitting area. http://thecasualgardener.blogspot.com/2010/05/creative-solution-for-tree-root.html My neighbor's maple tree is going to be difficult to deal with, so I already know the triangles of my plan will have to be raised beds. The floating patio is excellent so I wont have to disturb her tree more than necessary.

In other news, The weather is finally warming up to the point where I can start digging soon, and not feel like I am compacting the earth below my feet. Tonight when I get home from work, I will be working on the side garden. We bought some Garden soil, and Organic Humus/Manure so that will all be tilled in, and we will put our Sugar Snap Peas in :) !!! FINALLY!

Starting the front lawn conversion.

To brace my neighbor about my intentions, I've dropped subtle hints such as:
"Yeah I'm going to remove my whole lawn and get rid of this grass."


I've said it since I've moved in, and a few times last summer.
So after two years of much contemplation, sketching, and seed catalog fapping, I used today's good weather as an excuse to mark up the front lawn. Armed with twigs, and some generously donated kite string from a neighbor down the block, I proceeded to mark the front yard.

In the midst of my marking, my neighbor comes out the front door and asks:
"May I ask what you think you're doing?"

Well... Wow.. how to answer a venomous poison filled question such as that?
"I'm trying to mark up the lawn, so I know the exact parts to remove."

Neighbor: "Well, will you be replanting it with Grass??" This is probably the second hint that she does not approve.

me: "Well, it will be replanted with veggies, fruits, edible flowers, some shrubs...I'm trying to do some edible landscaping"

At this point, I am surprised that she abruptly turns around and goes into her house. I feel just as angry as her, but I answered everything very calmly and informatively. Oddly enough after she went in her house, I felt bad and thought to myself maybe I shouldn't be ripping up my front lawn. But that was only a fleeting one second, because when it comes down to it. This is my lawn!!!!!!!!!!
We (our family) loves our neighbors. We shovel snows, and give flowers and extra veggies. I don't have any animosity against her, but she definitely loves her lawn.

I kept on outlining the front yard, and then I used the edger to go and mark the outlines into the ground. A very productive day to say the least. I'll wait until the ground is thoroughly defrosted to finish it up.

Final Design and Implementation

After two years and countless revisions, I think we're finally ready to break ground.

I found a way to marry the two designs from a few days ago. It's a combination of:

"The Ultimate Garden Designer" by Tim Newbury

"Gaia's Garden - a home scale guide to permaculture" by Toby Hemenway

and my local friend Shawna Coronado's design. I'm glad she's a local gardener that I can bounce ideas off of... :)

Each ray of the sun will remain grass for the first year, but the in between will be filled with new soil and vegetables. The border will be lavenders and edible flowers... and Blueberry Bushes (that are only 8" tall right now, but I'm allotting each of them a 3' circumference).

So today I'm going to start with stakes and strings... and informing my labor team that we're starting soon.

The Snow dragon of Snowmageddon

I don't know how I managed to forget to post this!

But there was a crazy blizzard a few weeks ago of biblical proportions!
I believe it was 3 or 4 feet of snow, and basically at 7pm my village gave up on plowing subdivisions, so if you weren't home by then you most likely weren't going to be home.

Well after my husband and I took 2 hours to shovel our very short driveway, the kids pretty much played in the snow all day.

I went out about an hour or two before sunset and told him I'll make him a snow dragon.
Especially since the next day was Chinese new year! Although a friend of mine did point out that it was the year of the rabbit... but NO MATTER! What's a chinese new year without a dragon!! So my husband was like "have fun, see ya".

About an hour into it, I asked him to come out and help color the dragon.
He had to pick his jaw up off the ground because I completely failed to mention that it might be scale 1:1 Hey it wouldn't be awesome unless you could sit on the back!

Forming it's body and spraying with a bottle of water and food coloring

From the back (standing in the street)

His eye was a small ball with a GE Logo on it but it worked perfectly!

One hand up in the air like the rodeo riders! YEEEE HAWWW

I'm the unassuming one in my pajamas

In hindsight, a fishing buddy pointed out that if I had sprayed KOOLAID or JELLO instead of water and food coloring, that this would truly be an edible landscaping project for the winter!!! :) Hrmmmmm Tempting. Very tempting, but it'd be hard to tell if you'd really want to eat that patch of snow or not. And whose to say the yellow snow was really the lemonade flavor and not dog pee!?

But I might definitely keep that in mind. It'd be cool to taste it on the first day.

Updates while it's Gray as balls outside.

I apologize that I've been so lazy on the upkeep of this place.
I know those dishes shoulda been done, and the floor looks like it's in need of some sweeping, and vacuuming. But I look at the mess everywhere and sigh and flop over on the couch instead. C'est la Vie....

So lately, I have been trying to figure out what to do with the front yard.
I have two designs... one that's very functional-basically a Garden, and the other which is nicely stylish-true to the meaning of Landscape design.


LAYOUT 1 (horizontal)



LAYOUT2 (Vertical)


And these are the only layouts that are in the computer. There's maybe 10 more that weren't uploaded.

At this point, I can't tell whether I'm craving more maintenance and more veggies, or less maintenance and more fruit bushes. ::scratches head:: yarg.
But I have been thinking that I should be able to get enough blueberries that I no longer have to drive 3 hours to the nearest U-Pick blueberry place.
And that if I'm going to put in strawberries, I might as well put in enough so I don't have to pay/drive to the U-Pick place for that either.

On that note, I've noticed that celery which used to range from 88 cents-$1.00 is not some obscene amount like 2.99 I believe it was blamed on the weather and gas prices, but it was a sober reminder to me that I could either grow it myself, or part with hard earned money for it.

In some way I need to marry the two. Form and Function.
Not to mention my neighbor who loves her lawn might have an aneurysm and claim I'm bringing the property values down. Y'see... this is where me being a peacekeeper gets hard.
Fruits? Veggies? Low maintenance? High maintenance? Where's the sun? Can't plant high stuff there and shade everything out! how can I do this but not be the village eyesore? How can I Maximize my produce and fruit so my property pays me in groceries. the words swirl around and around my head like that simpsons episode:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XWBhnsMH4dI


I figure after all the thought and contemplation, it'll just somehow be a merger between the above 2 designs :)

The seed catalogs cometh.

It is the time of year where the seed catalogs start jamming my mailbox. Companies I've never heard of, and I don't know how they found me, but here they are... Gurneys, Burgess, Field's, and Territorial

In the past, I had been a big fan of the burpee seed catalog. Big vivid colors. Juicy melons... Hot tomatoes, long hard zucchinis. I fantasize everything I would be doing to those models in the photos. My husband grumbles about the amount of time I'm spending looking at them at night instead of sleeping. Wait wait.. Yes, I'm talking about a seed catalog, here! But seriously, it becomes the equivalent of porn for the next few months.

This has happened consistently every winter for the last three years. Since burpee has changed their formatting to look more modern, My eyes have wandered off to the GURNEY's catalog. Ohh so big, and so full of pictures.

After a couple weeks-months of fantasizing, I will eventually snap out of it and realize I need to figure out what I want to grow STAT. Not only that, I need to plan where it's all going to go. So I've been drawing, and refining over and over how I plan to have my garden layouts. I must consider not only the sun's direction, but the height of the veggies, and wait.. did I plant that there last year? Can't do it there again... This is the year to do big things! Make a front yard garden, and maybe a small water garden. If anything maybe the watergarden will be for next year.

But for now, I spend my night warmed up with fantasies of bumper harvests.
I'm sure all of you are going through the same :)

Making Laundry Soap

I recently am all out of laundry soap, and had heard some families make laundry soap.
I googled it, and came upon this guy's blog.. I read stuff from him before.
http://www.thesimpledollar.com/2008/04/09/making-your-own-laundry-detergent-a-detailed-visual-guide/


So apparently with $10 worth of materials you can make 4 gallons of laundry soap in a home depot bucket.
Plus, you only use 1 cup of the washing soda, and 1/2 cup of the borax...so that stuff can last for future batches.


Anyone ever made laundry soap before?

Well, I finally did it. Got the "20 mule team borax" and "washing soda" at Jewel-Osco (of all places) because they didn't sell it near anywhere else. Walmart, Target, home depot and menards didn't have it.

I used a bar of Ivory Soap, because I thought the whole "so pure it floats" will make it ok for my kids and I who get the winter dry skin.
My husband took the Paint mixer attachment onto the power drill, and mixed everything up in a 3/4 gallon food-grade bucket we got from a restaurant owner friend. I have to say, it's been a few weeks we've been using it, and although it doesn't "suds up" like the other soaps, it cleans just as well.

I will upload a few pix I took of ths finished product. I used 1 cup of the washing soda, and 1/2 cup of borax, so I still have tons left in the box to make at least 10 more batches of this.

What the soap look slike. The website said "chunky looking things" are to be expected. It is the Ivory re-coagulating.


A couple days after that, I know my husband has come a long way because when we ran out of dryer sheets he asked "IS there a recipe on how to make dryer sheets?" Sure enough there are tons on the internet. It's basically Fabric softener and water. So I took all those baby washclothes we've had lying around and put them in a tub of fabric softener with a little water added to it. Everytime we put the clothes in the dryer, I lightly wring a baby washcloth and throw it into the dryer. Babycloths in a tub of fabric softener and water.


$8.00 for bottle of fabric softener that is Huuuge. $4 for the borax and $3 for the Washing soda.
When I called the Arm+Hammer company to ask where I can buy washing soda, they offered to sell it to me for $2.50 plus free shipping.
I would have jumped at that deal if not for the fact that I had piles of laundry that needed to be done NOW.
But I did ask them to send me out a coupon, which arrived yesterday for $1.00 off my next purchase of washing soda.

The finished products in their respective containers


The Raw ingredients Look to last us over a year for sure!