Booniverse

Well…sorta. It’s also a weekend recap too and a little WoW (the game) and a slice of Smithees all rolled up into one.

Oh yeah, and a nap. That I started on Friday when we got home and woke up at 8:30 am on Saturday. Mmmm…nap.
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What the hell??!?? Sprouts?!?? Seriously, why is it that every plant that I’m trying to get rid of goes all kudzu when I butcher it down? I mean, that stump’s got 80s hair of sprouts. That just ain’t right.
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Because Boo is wonderful, and LJ really kind of sucks for the whole pictoblogging functionality — and because I have devoted way too many hours and far too much sweat and am far too obsessed with my garden — she is hosting a pictoblog of my gardens.

Doesn’t she rock? And the Matt-Matt did graphics magic to crop things and size things and magical stuff.

So, when you come up from the street, the first thing you see is the solar lamp that my mother-in-law bought me, with a planter at the base.

I think the reason I resent it is that no matter how many times I will walk past it, I’ll never come across a faun and discover I’m in Narnia.

But it glows in the dark. And I put dahlias and geraniums in it.

Extra-relevant geraniums. Germaniums.

Then you come to the front fence garden. Rototilling it was kind of tough, because tree roots extend out way further than you’d think they would. Filling it up was fun, though, since I decided that it would be mostly perennials. I know nothing whatsoever about perennials, so I went to Colemans and just randomly picked up 2 or 3 of perennials that looked cool. I’m taking the Darwinian approach — we’ll see what lives. Right now most everything is short and nothing but the dianthis are really blooming, but nothing has given up the ghost entirely yet.

These are daisies. BadMovie wanted daisies because they remind of Oregon. In front of them is this little carpet cut flower garden that Slyon gave to me. It looks pretty wierd, since it can’t be mulched and everything else is…

Other xxxHolic fans will know why I had to get a hydrangea bush. No dead people beneath it, I’m pretty sure. Thing needs more water than you’d believe — no wonder it’s so cuddly with the Ame-Warashi.

I put in some delphinium, too.

I put a bed in front of my front porch and put in moonflowers and morning glories. I dropped down fishing line to give the morning glories something to climb. In theory, the early morning view would be great… huge white flowers and bright blue and purple flowers climbing up.

I love moonflowers. Blooms as big as my hand. They’re only supposed to bloom at night, but this year they’re staying open all day, and only blooming for a day or two. Boo took this shot:

I put impatiens along the side of the house. Impatiens are the lazy woman’s flower. No deadheading, just shade and water.

The swirly ones look like Brach’s mints.

This is the one bed I put in last summer. I had to put my transplants from the townhouse — mostly black iris bulbs. None of them are blooming this year *sob*, but most of them lived. Next year, maybe.

I put in some day lilies, including bright orange ones just to feed BadMovie’s craving for orange. Boo got a great shot of them:

There’s pink ones, too.

‘What’s that blue thing doing here?’, you might well ask.

It’s the mysterious blue plant. I bought it 4 years ago, and it spent two years just sitting there, a collection of short spiny leaves. I gave it up as a lost cause and tossed my little label away. Then the third year, it just kind of exploded. So I transplanted it, and it’s having a happy year this year, too. Anybody got a clue what the heck it is?

It doesn’t come across quite as vividly in the pictures — it’s not a forget-me-not blue, it’s a bright, bright shade.

I am sharing this next completely boring shot of my lawn with you because I busted my butt over it.

When we bought the house, the basement leaked on that side of the house. I got to learn how to do masonry repairs, but the big problem was that the ground sloped down toward the house. Last year, I just put this big mound of dirt against the edge of the house and it was butt-ugly. So this year Boo and I rototilled the whole side yard, and I brought in almost 800 pounds of topsoil and spread it and raked it and reseeded it. I think it doesn’t look so bad. Baldy patches, yeah, but considering it was a giant mudpit for weeks, and the basement hasn’t leaked yet this year, I feel pretty good about it. Go me!

But my pride and joy is the veggie garden:

BadMovie helped me get the white fencing in. And I put marigolds around it to keep out the bunnies and skunks.

I gots me tomatos growing:

And lettuce, but it’s falling to the blitzkrieg advance of the squash next to it:

And sugar snap peas! Yum! Though they don’t love the heat. Don’t think they’re gonna last too much longer.

Here’s the imperialstic squash:

All the veggies are doing good, except the green peppers. They look sad, don’t they?

Even more sad than the peppers are the strawberries in the last little side bed. I think they’re little goth strawberries, convinced life in the sun isn’t worth living. And it doesn’t help that something keeps digging them up. I put sunflower seeds in behind them — maybe it’ll cheer ’em up.

So. That’s what’s eaten up my life for the last month and a half. It’s my excuse for why I haven’t written much. But I have a new muse. It’s not a raven, but for a robin, it’s pretty demented-looking.

And while I had a digital camera to play with, I took a picture of my Alice wall.

The wall hanging, by the way, was made by my Mom. Cool, ne?

Here’s a close-up of my Alice teapot.

I have a bit of a collection of teapots, actually, but the Alice one is my favorite.

And this is BadMovie on the couch. It’s a very nice couch. And pretty nice Badmovie.

In a spat of craziness, we left the UP at 10 Monday night and drove through the dark hours until we met the sun about a half hour out from home. It’s the first time we’ve traveled the night run from the UP down as we usually save the crazy wee hour driving for the going north leg of the trip. Let me just say that night driving, if you can stay awake for it, wrocks (yo) the socks for the northbound leg because it’s just you and the early morning truckers pretty much all the way to the bridge.
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At least not today. Muahahahaha!
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Heh, it looks like this blog has turned into the all garden review. Except I’d have to actually have a garden, which I don’t yet because ARRRGH! GodDAMN fucking weed trees and Cthulhu boring bush roots (and a shout out “Hi!” to whomever is dropping by from a k-12 school in Hawaii. Heh).
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I don’t have a title or a short blurbit for today’s blog entry so if it comes out a total suck ass of an idea for either let’s just blame it on…oh the Librarian. The Librarian has been getting on my nerves all week so I deem the Librarian scapegoat for the 4th of July weekend.
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Day three: DIRT! Thought y’all would like to know that absolutely nothing has happened yet. Well…duh news there. On the plus side, I forgot to open the windows so the tea was subject to underground conditions all day today. That which does not kill it etc. and so forth.