The Accidental Garden

In the fall of 2010 we decided to tear out the old deck and build a new smaller one, the space left over I thought would make a lovely little partly shaded perennial bed.  In the spring of 2012 I planted some iris, a spirea, a couple of day lilies and plunked in my willow chair that is falling apart .

This spring while wondering what else to plant, to my surprise all sorts of lovely flowers began to grow.

Violas, strawberries...

ostrich ferns....

its now filled with lovely plants most of which have come from somewhere and is my favorite place to sit and enjoy.

It reminds me a bit of friendships.  You can invite all sorts of different folk into your life, cultivate their friend ship, agonize over whether they will like you and wonder if they will come back when they leave.  But, sometimes if you just let it be, the most unlikely people will show up.  They will bring you beauty, kindness and great joy - none of which is expected.

Finally!

 I found the above desk at an auction sale a couple of years ago - paid 2 dollars for it!  It was in pretty rough shape, but was a good solid piece of real wood, not that composite wood stuff with paper veneer glued on it. So I decided to refinish it and use it in my office.

 I had this desk in the office, but it IS made of the composite wood with paper veneer and I really didn't like it - plus the drawers were so cheap (there were 2 of them, one on the left and one on the right in those spaces), that if you put something in them, they fell out of their tracks!

I took this one out and hauled it down to the give away tent at the dump.

 I built a new top for the refinished desk out of pine and tried to stain it the same as the old piece and although it doesn't look too different here, it really is much more red that the bottom....oh well!

 It is almost 10 inches less deep that the old one and that gives me more room in my tiny office space plus since I don't actually sit at the desk, there is room for the little filing cabinet where one's feet are supposed to go.  All in all, I'm happy with the final result (insert smilie face here)!

The bookcase!

Somewhere back in time, about 5 years ago we went to a garage sale and hubby bought a gun cabinet and I bought the worlds ugliest lamp shade. That cabinet has been sitting in the basement ever since. a) it's illegal to have a glass fronted gun storage, b) the glass in the door was so heavy every time you tried to open it the cabinet tried to fall over on top of you and c) it was falling apart.

I was hesitant to throw it out cause it was made from all sorts of things - old apple box ends, plywood and was definitely home made, something close to my heart. So the other day I decided to make something of it....a bookcase. One can never have enough book cases!
My first idea was to use only wood and paint that I had sitting around in my work room. So I started painting and cutting shelf brackets.
Once I got to the main cabinet, the though occurred to me that it would look nice if there was some sort of "romantic" wallpaper covering the back instead of just white paint. Also please note that I could not get the gun rack out of the darn thing. It was glued, screwed and nailed into place, so I thought I'd work around it - maybe make it a shelf.

I learned something new though, no one handles wall paper anymore! It is out of vogue, I could order some which would take about a week to come in if I wanted...I didn't want. So, I decided to get some pretty cloth and use that to cover the inside.
What a job that was!! Because of the stooooopid gun rack, it was a fight to get the material covering the walls smoothly.
After much swearing, putting in and taking out again, adding supports, taking out supports, more swearing...I finally got it as good as it was going to be.
I framed the inside of the door with gold braid, which I put in with a hot glue gun. Let me tell you what I think of hot glue guns......well, maybe not, this is a family blog!! I will say they are hot, the glue is hot, hot gluing one's fingers is not a pleasant thing......
It is finally done and in place in the spare room. I think it does look rather romantic so I've put some of my favorite romance novels in it.
Next project....... I really must do something with the worlds ugliest lamp shade....LOL

Will it ever happen?

We've been talking about "retiring", selling the farm and blowing all our money on vacations, boats and fancy furniture.....just kidding, but we have been talking about down sizing.

Our original plan was to sell the pasture and some of the hay land, keep the 2 home quarters and only run about 30 cows. Just enough to keep our hand in the farming business and free up some time so we can maybe do a little traveling or even fishing.

We bought another quarter of land this spring (couldn't resist it as it fit in so well with what we have and it was a good investment) turns out this quarter has an old, old building site on it. None of the neighbours can remember anyone living there, but there is an old rock foundation - probably from a log cabin with a lilac tree growing beside it (first picture). There are lots of really old maple trees and I'm guessing from the size of them they must have been there at least a 100 years (third picture). If we moved there and kept the quarter of hay land beside it we would have the same amount of land as the keeping the home 2 quarters but we'd be off this *&^%$* highway and away from the noisy compressor plant to the south of us that runs day and night.

This is the whole site, it's about 10 acres in total.One of the old maple trees.
Where the house would sit, just to the left of the mule in the 2nd picture.
There is a power line running beside the site, so power could be brought in fairly easily. There is a natural gas line running about a mile and a half away and because we belong to a co-op the cost of bringing that in is relatively cheap compared to what others have told us they would pay in other areas ($5000.00 as compared to $25,000.00!!!). We would have to drill a well (that could be costly) and *gasp* I would have to be able to get high speed internet!

Then there is that little thing called a house, I suppose we would need one of those and Dennis wants his "dream" shop, a few corrals and shelters for the cows and we'd be all set. The really big question is can we sell the other land? We do have a couple who have expressed an interest in the pasture and hay land and maybe even the home 2 quarters...... but, do they have the money and are they serious?

So many questions, so much planning, I wish I had a crystal ball.

The End of Summer

Summer is fast disappearing! The flowers in my planters are getting leggy, most of the perennials are done except for the roses and a couple of long blooming ones. But, larder is beginning to look filled.

The first two are the shelves in the cold room with canned tomatoes, strawberries, cherries, raspberries and some venison from last fall (hopefully I'll have some more this fall).Dill pickles and sweet mixed pickles by the wall, raspberry jam up by the bottle of wine and the case of beer (cold rooms are great for more than storing food)!
The potato bin, not as full as last year, but this summer I tossed out pails of wrinkled sprouted potatoes left over from last year so I didn't plant as many. There is more than enough for the two of us till next year....I hope!
Beet pickles cooling on the counter and I still have enough beets to give away to a lady who didn't have any.
Some of the tomatoes from the greenhouse, I still have a ton on the vines. Think I'll pick them so they ripen at the same time so I can bottle them too.

And finally the bale yard. There is only about 400 bales in there right now, we still have close to 900 to haul home from the fields.

Not only will we eat well this winter, so will the cows.

Holy moly it's been a year since I blogged! Just thought I'd drop in and post some roses (I do love my roses) and a bug. It's a Gold bug, at least that's what we called them when I was a child, it was my favorite bug. I would have posted some lilies but sadly they didn't do well this year, we had a late frost and the early ones didn't bloom. The later ones did, but were not as nice as some years.

There's not really much that has happened in the last 12 months, but maybe I'll drop in more often.

Hope For Humanity

Bug!

Angel FaceFlower Power a miniature rose
Morden Sunrise

Pasquali

Smoke and Roses

I haven't been here for a while, I guess I didn't have much to say. This summer has been different, not so much hot as humid. Even those days that were only about 75 degrees felt like 90! And it seems like almost every late afternoon or evening we've had a thunderstorm - not a lot of rain, but enough to put a stop to the haying. Last year we were finished by this time, this year we are way behind and the hay is laying in the fields to damp to bale.
My flowers on the other hand have loved the rain and warm temperatures, so sadly have the weeds!
Today they promised us sunshine but the smoke from forest fires 800 miles away in B.C. has drifted in on the jet stream pretty much blocking it out.

I thought I'd share some pictures of the roses and lilies - the colours are so vibrant this year.
This first one though is of the smoke!