Another reason not to live here

Well, in addition to topography that can best be described as "bowl-shaped", which traps any and all particulates in a cloud hovering over the city, this part of the southeast is blessed (cursed?) with a plethora of pines and oak trees which are busily churning out various pollen granules to bedevil those of us with less than perfectly behaved sinuses.

I give you this as an example: That mess is pollen from a southern red oak tree. Which I have. Right next to my house. There's clouds of the stuff all over the yard, my roof, clogging my gutters, covering my sidewalks.

You can see what a mess it makes of the mulch.

And it's been windy, so some of it has already blown away. It was worse yesterday.

I even have oak pollen tumbleweeds rolling around on the lawn. Oh, good grief.

I need a refill for my Astepro prescription.

Sunny in Tennessee (oh, what a difference a few days make)

Tuesday it was snowing. Today, a mere four days later, it's 55 degrees and sunny. I spend over 4 hours outside doing spring cleanup on the yard and garden. I can't wait until it's planting time. It was absolutely beautiful today, and it makes me yearn for warm weather and flower gardening.

I'm getting a few sewing projects completed that have been hanging around undone for too long. Of course, that doesn't mean that I'm not chafing to start something new. I'm always looking for a new quilt design. I have some Benartex fabric in the "Cider Mill Road" line and a block design I copied from the magazine "The Quilter" in 2003 that seem to want to go together.

Then, I ran across this little beauty at the Missouri Star Quilt Company's Cutting Table Blog and now I want to make it: Small quilts have been catching my eye recently. I even ordered a book of small quilt projects from Amazon, "Fat Quarter Quilting: 21 Terrific 16" x 20" Projects". Of course, I haven't gotten it yet because I'm cheap and I opted for the super saver shipping, so it's sloooooooow. Good reason to clean up all these projects that have been hanging around for a while, since as soon as it arrives I know I'll swoon over something and have to make it.

I finished piecing "Kentucky Girl Moves to Tennessee" a few days ago. I'll post a picture along with "Golden Autumn" (I haven't made up my name for that one yet) as soon as it gets two borders attached. I spent the morning piecing a backing when I should have been doing borders. These pieced backings may use up scraps and save fabric, but they sure take a lot of time.

First day of spring

For the first day of spring, some outdoor pictures:

First, the japonica (flowering quince) and forsythia on the back corner of my lot. As you can see, they are almost completely finished blooming, although these are what you think of as spring flowering bushes. Here in the southeast, everything starts so early. One state north, my mother's forsythia is just now hitting its peak, and her japonica is nowhere near blooming. It seems spring rushes through so fast here, and before you know it we are in the dog days of summer.This is the patch by the side fence that I had almost completely dug out last fall. It's uphill from the street side where the japonica/forsythia bushes grow, on the left side yard (I'm on a corner). There was an assortment of nondescript bushes and clumps of jonquils and daylilies around the red old-fashioned roses, so much so that you could hardly see the rosebushes, which were the best thing in the bed. You can see them leafing out in a row at the back near the fence. The nandina was there so I saved it and planted another at the far end (cut off the photo, sorry). The rest, except for the roses, were yanked out (thank you, lawn guy! I don't know what I would do without the man who mows and does yard work) and replaced by a row of Japanese hollies for all-year green. Since all the spring bulbs were dormant, I didn't know where they were and figured I'd correct their placement this year. The jonquils and iris were in just the right spot, between the roses and behind the new bushes, but there was a patch of daylilies that was threatening to completely take over a holly and a rose bush. So, I crawled in amongst the mulch yesterday (the DAMP mulch!) and grubbed them out, mostly, leaving a little in the back near the fence to bloom with the iris later.

There were so many daylily bulbs? rhizomes? tubers? whatever they are! that I completed filled a paper grocery sack with the ones I removed. I didn't want them because they can be so invasive and I couldn't find a spot with enough sun that they would bloom well. The ones I left may be removed later if they don't perform. I know that next year I will have to grub out another batch because they spread so quickly. In the fall, I will buy a bucket-o-bulbs and add to the plantings between the roses. Maybe some grape hyacinth and different jonquils. It's nice to have some spring color. They would be good between the bushes in the front also.

Luckily, the daylilies I removed won't go to waste because my neighbor across the stress (a retired gentleman and avid yard-putterer) took them to add to his garden. He asked me what color they were. Who knows, since they would never bloom for me!

And, my little evergreen patch in the front corner of the fence that the lawn guy planted last fall. I may add some spring bulbs here too, if there's enough room. I think they will fit around the arbovitae.This spot was a tangle of japonica and forsythia, always overgrown and overtaken with weeds. Since lawn guy is getting up in years, he pulled in his son do to the digging. It took them several hours to extract all the roots and detritus from the bushes. There were iris that never bloomed for lack of sun, which I transplanted to the side yard, jonquil and some blue bell-shaped flowers given to me by my neighbor, which I saved; they are now coming up on the right side near the fence. The clump on the right edge obscuring the bush is more jonquils which will be moved in the fall.

I also added more azalea in the corner of the back yard under the crape myrtle. This is all such work (and expense)! However, I think my yard looks better than it ever has.

(A wee little bit of) the fruits of my labors

Here's one corner of my back patio. See the azalea border? See the lack of weeds in the azalea border? That's part of what I did today. Over the course of winter it can get almost completely covered by tiny, invasive weedy things that I don't even know the name of. But they sure love to grow in mulch. Their roots don't even make it into the soil beneath. They just burrow into the pine bark nuggets and start growing.

If it's been rainy, the weeds come up by the roots fairly easily. It's just a matter of kneeling on the concrete patio, inching down its sixty foot length, pulling weeds. Yes 60, six-zero, feet. The patio runs 3/4 of the length of the house. You can get a lot of weeds in 60 feet of border.

Of course, there was also the mulch under the trees out front, which had grass incursions to defeat and red oak leaves to rake out of the pine nuggets. FYI, red oak leaves don't all fall in the autumn, like the rest of the sensible leaves. No, some of them hang on all through the winter and let go around the middle of March. I like to think of them holding on for dear life while the new sprouts push them into the oblivion below. "NO, NO, I'M NOT FALLING!"

So, when you clean up in the spring, you have to dig all the oak leaves out of the mulch and from under the bushes, where the winter winds blew them. The leaves are smaller than an English oak, leathery, and don't seem to decompose at all. Why the south isn't knee deep in southern red oak leaves is beyond me.

I also had a robust patch of turnips under my crape myrtle to pull up. No, I didn't plant them. I think they were a gift from the birds that visited the sunflower seed feeder in that corner of the yard. Someone nearby must have planted turnips last year, and the friendly neighborhood sparrows feasted on the seed tops, came to my yard, and -- well, you know. The seeds sprouted and were well on their way to turnip-ness by the time I wrestled them out of the landscaping.

Everything is looking pretty good now. I only have to weed the flowerbed around the birdbath, and I'll be ready to plant annuals in two or three weeks. A very strange ground cover-looking weed has completely covered the semi-circle bed. There are perennials in there, so I have to be a little careful what I uproot until they are recognizable.

Oh, is anybody going to ask about the wagon wheel in the picture? It was here when I arrived, and my husband kind of likes it. Me, I'm neutral -- it IS a pretty unusual decoration, but it's a real, honest-to-goodness wooden wagon wheel and it's starting to show its age.

It coordinated with the wagon wheel chandelier that hung in the den when we bought the house. Honest - I'm not kidding. A round wooden wagon wheel shaped light fixture about 30 inches in diameter with four lightbulbs covered in frosted glass chimneys and perky little scalloped brass shades. It was UUUUUUUGLY! I replaced it with a reasonable fixture when I bought my desk and bookcase for the den. I had never in all my life seen a chandelier like that thing, until I walked into the local Russell Stover candy store last Easter and about fell over in the floor. In the center of the store hung the big daddy to my little bitty wagon wheel light. It was about six feet in diameter. They even had matching wagon wheel wall sconces. Now, if I had had the matching sconces in the den too, maybe that would have.......nope.

ADDENDUM: I grabbed this photo off Ebay. This light only has three bulbs. Imagine it larger with four bulbs and you'll have what I removed from my den. Yipes, how many of these things were sold?