Breuer Bench

Inspired a couple of years ago by a blog post (http://www.designsponge.com/2009/07/before-after-martinas-bench-kellys-dining-room.html), I saved 2 cesca chair frames (that had previously busted caning) with the intention of building a bench. They sat in the garden for all that time, and I'm pleased to say have weathered 2 severe winters with barely a patch of rust.We have been in need of extra seating at our garden table, and I knew I wanted to make the bench work there. After pondering the different materials for the seat and back, I remembered we had leftover teak flooring from the living room, and decided this would be an excellent use of it.

So I had T chop me 5 equal pieces of the teak in the longest length we could (forgot how gross the teak smells when you cut it!), and we screwed them into the pre-existing holes in the frames. Because we wanted 3 pieces for the seat, but only had 2 holes where the caned seat frame used to sit, we used 2 smaller pieces of teak to screw the three lengths together.

We already had the teak & the frames, and both were pretty much free, so this project cost us deck screws - about $9.

Voila! A bouncy Cesca bench for two!

Lazy Veg Patch

Last year, we tried growing some veg in pots. A combination of forgetting to water, weeds and dastardly (but adorable!) little chipmunks made for not a great harvest.

This year, we decided it was time to build a raised bed. After much googling and indecision about what to use (cedar/trex?) we decided to go over to the old HD and grab some cinder block. The main reason being, there was no screwing/nailing required, and no worries about termites infesting the concrete blocks. Plus we could plant little strawberries in the holes!

It turns out a pallet will not fit in the back of the wee Ranger, so we had to load the 32 blocks in by hand with the help of the dudes in orange. Not too bad. However, carrying them from the car park to the garden was not as much fun for poor T, who suffered for it the next day. (I carried 2!) I was in charge of clearing the very weedy ground, laying out the landscaping fabric and stacking the blocks.

I was aiming for something about 2' wide, but due to extreme lack of proper planning we ended up about 3' which is a little deeper than I would like, given once the plants grow it will be a little tougher to reach the back. We decided to stack 2 high, to give enough depth for potatoes, and to stop Madra peeing on our food.

We filled this bad boy up with a mix of top soil and bumper crop, and planted red and white onions, potatoes, chives, spring onions, lettuce and carrots.

Next step will likely be to protect the top from the dastardly chipmunks with some pvc pipe and netting.

Fingers crossed we will soon be eating from our garden!

....After!

As promised, here are the 'after' shots from our planting adventures. Although I like to think I'm a 'gardener', the truth is that I pick a plant I think is pretty, read the label (sun/shade), and jam it in the ground in the hope it will like its new home and stay alive.

So far everything actually seems to be doing pretty well, except for some wilting due to my forgetful watering skills and the boiling hot weather we are having.

I started out with a new pot by the front door and hanging basket, and filled them with tulips, astilbe, ranunculus, poppies and marigolds.

The tulips and ranunculus are gone now :( but the rest are doing well.

We also picked up 100 or so bricks and edged the beds with them to stop the mulch falling out all over the garden. They need a bit of realignment, as I didn't dig a trench for them (lazy!) but they are staying in place pretty well after about a month.

So leading up to the front door we have some boxwoods and other evergreens at the back, mixed with some spiky things (dragon grass or something?) that I wasn't sure would like this very shady spot, but they have actually been thriving. At the front are some ferns mixed with some annuals, and a very cool succulent!

The once sad and lonely evergreen actually seems to be picking up, as if by being surrounded by plant friends he has found the will to live again. Nearby are hostas and my never-flowering day-lilies.

The big green bushy thing on the corner is an evergreen that is red and green, but seems to have lost its' red in the last week or so. There is a smaller one to the right too.

Around the side of the house, which gets the most sun of the foundation plantings, we had planted a couple of hostas last year, along with the 'dead' bleeding heart and the only surviving azalea. I added a tall holly bush, a peony (yet to flower), lavender, rosemary, a couple of variegated evergreens and some liriope grasses.

The tall tree thing by the door is an unknown sprout T-Rex found in the back garden and relocated to here. This is how he gardens - find something growing, stick it in the ground. If it grows, leave it (no, it doesn't matter if he has any idea what it is). The fact that there is now some kind of tree growing very close to the foundation is a little worrisome.

The sad evergreen - less gappy than before, surrounded by friends :) Last years hostas doing well, a columbine and a couple of new rhododendrons with pretty blue/purple flowers.

And of course a gratuitous pup shot for Madra's fans....

Flowers, finally! Before....

The 2+ years we have lived here, the foundation plantings have been pretty neglected. With so much work to do in the house, expensive planting just wasn't going to happen.

When we moved in, the previous owners had torn out everything in the beds, including about a foot of soil, exposing all the unpainted basement walls. There was one lonely, half dead evergreen in the front, and a giant, gorgeous rhododendron in the back garden, with a climber (virginia creeper maybe?) on the fence, along with that horrific Locust sprout detailed in an earlier post! That was it.

The grass was also having a really hard time, after all the snow, and Madra churning it up with her giant paws. (Back garden post to follow soon!)

Dad came over and planted us a couple of azaleas, one of which is still (mostly) alive.

Over the years, I have attempted to cultivate the odd plant here and there, and a few have lasted. Others, like this once lovely grass, didn't fare so well.

I thought I had killed a bleeding heart under the chimney here, but it came back this year :)

The hostas have all done well, even with the slug attacks, as has a columbine out front. But we had only the one evergreen, and the whole place was looking very bare.

So, after the wedding, we finally bit the bullet and went off to the nursery to get some much needed plants. A day of digging and planting resulted in all these plants finding new homes. Despite my terrible parenting, they are doing pretty well about a month later.

Watch out later for a post with pics of new plantings!