29 April 2012 - Hereditary weeding

Yesterday, I was surprised to find myself channeling my Mother. She fought dandelions for years and years. I can remember that my sister and I were drafted at a very early age, to be part of her army.  As general of the forces, she would attack the weeds with her digger and throw them behind her as she progressed through the lawn. We always managed to poop out way before she did.

In my own garden, much to Jack's bemusement, I too, pitch weeds behind me as I work. Since he often ends up cleaning up behind me, he doesn't quite understand.  So today, while out digging dandelions, I realized I was in my mother's classic pose:  one knee on the ground, one knee up by my shoulder. I had to stop and laugh.

Then I had the "aha" moment. I remembered that my friend, Amy, gave me a lovely turquoise trug. It is a lightweight, flexible plastic container with handles. I could drag it along with me and pitch the weeds into it as I went. It certainly eliminated a lot of clean up. 

There is a rhythm you fall into, a sort of mindless being that lets you dig, while your head is elsewhere. It is an interesting place to be. 

 Our list for this weekend was overly ambitious as usual, but we still were able to accomplish quite a bit. High on our list was one: cleaning off the porch,and two: getting David to come haul all the steel, plus assorted machinery away so we could use the covered space behind the garage for storage instead of the porch. We definitely have storage issues, especially for yard equipment, and it does look pretty trashy. Jack says the only thing that saves us is that we don't have a car on the lawn up on blocks.

Quite a bit of stuff on the porch was furniture (dressers, bookcases, computer furniture, etc) that we didn't have room for in the house. this stuff spent the winter on the porch wrapped in tarps. Today we loaded the van and made two trips down to Savers, and managed to tuck a few more things in the basement. Wow! That freed up a lot of room. 

Neither one of us thought to take a before picture, which is really too bad, because the difference is astounding. Jack took a picture about halfway through the porch project. 

So, are you wondering about the blue ceiling?  Several years ago I read a tip from Martha Stewart. She said to paint your porch ceiling blue and it will keep wasps from building nests on your ceiling. We get so many wasps,  it is always a battle to keep the ceiling free of mud dauber nests, and paper wasp nests, so we tried it. And I am here to tell you that it works! Apparently it confuses the wasps into thinking it is the sky, and they think they can't build. Ha!

David came over and we filled his pickup with metal until his tires started to flatten out. Don't have a clue where he is going to put it all, probably on his porch!  He still needs to come back and take more things: three or four grinding wheels, a very large metal clad storage box, really old machines that aren't even made anymore, or that make parts for things that aren't made anymore. Very cool stuff, mind you, but we can't/won't use it not to mention we desperately need the room. 

Between the stuff that David took, and moving a lot more around, we were able to get almost everything off the porch. Lots left to do behind the garage, but that is another day.  The next big thing on our list is to replace the porch post that is currently sitting on the jack. That will go a long way toward making this area more livable and usable. But right now, it seems like gracious living.

I love to sit out here with my first cup of coffee in the morning. Even when the temps are in the high 40s or low 50s, with the sun coming in, it is very comfortable.

18 April 2012 - The little things

Some guy wrote a book called Don't Sweat the Small Stuff...and it's all small stuff. His premise is that if you let the small stuff go, it won't take over your life and you will find inner peace.


That might work for some people, but I like the small stuff. And I must admit that the small stuff, the little things give me inner peace. And not only do I like the small stuff, it gives me great pleasure to photograph it. Spring is the perfect time of year for small stuff. Buds swell, tiny leaflets appear. If you really look, you can see miniscule flowers on some shrubs. 


I found a tiny spiderweb tucked away in a crevice. It wasn't much bigger than a silver dollar, but it had just rained, and the web had caught some rain drops. 

How gorgeous is this? 

And if you look very closely, you can see the reflection of my camera in every little drop. 

 Another one of my (many) little obsessions are lichens. Lichens can be so small and so easily overlooked, but if you look really close they are minute gardens! 

Here is a patch of lichen on a rock.  You could cover all the lichen in this picture with two fingers.  So easy to miss.

 But wait. Look at this amazing small stuff!

I have been walking every day. Granted it is only around my neighborhood, but there are all kinds of opportunities to find  wonderful little things. 

Right now the trout lilies are just starting to bloom. These little beauties are only 4 to 5 inches high at most, and I mean the entire plant.

There was no way I could walk by and not take a picture.  


Guess you would not be surprised to hear that a car pulled over and the driver asked if I was okay. 

Other small things that delight me are juxtapositions, such as these redbud blossoms pooled on an asphalt driveway after a rain. 
















 In my own yard the wind anemones are blooming. Again, they are tiny little plants whose blooms are bigger than the plant. You can see how tiny they really are next to the serendipity of the snail shell and how the quarter-sized blooms overwhelm the foliage. 

16 April 2012

It's been an emotional day. Pop died two years ago, Bennett died one year ago.

12 April 2012 - Spring snow

It is only the 12th of April, and we have already had two snowstorms. The first snow was on April Fool's Day. Fitting.  The second was today. This last week has been nothing but pure Spring.  Temps in the high 70s, warm winds that worked hard on blowing leaves and blossoms out on the trees. It worked.

The wild cherries have started to creep up the mountain and are beginning to bloom. You can see the faint tint of green beginning to show as well.


I'm sure these trees are the results of birds and deer, but it is nice to see something else growing on our rather bare hillside.


Most of the vegetation on this western exposure consists of scrub oak, sage brush and patches of prickly pear cactus.

Other garden plants have escaped and moved up the hill as well. The bright green under these rocks is a euphorbia, a fairly common ground cover in this area. Again, these were probably another result of the deer.


 I recently learned there are over 2000 varieties of euphorbia. The world is an amazing place.

Here in my yard, the quince is blooming, the crabapple buds are so full and ready to burst that the tree looks pink, the maples are blooming, the lilacs have purple spikes, the plums are in full bloom. It is lovely.


Last fall we planted crocuses in the lawn so we now have spots of bright color popping up.


It is such a fabulous time to be alive.

Another great thing about living here is you can see the storms moving across the valley. Depending on the direction of the accompanying wind you may get the strong, briny smell of the Great Salt Lake before the rain hits.

In this case we had a dust storm with the wind, then heavy rain before it turned to snow.  

Before the rain, as the clouds were moving down the mountain, it looked like this.


Lots of new little chartreuse leaves, but they didn't last long. Here's the same shot from inside.About 20 minutes later.

10 April 2012 - Pink Moon

In the world of full moon names, one of my favorite names for the April full moon is Pink Moon. This year, the Pink Moon coincided with Easter and Passover.  Why Pink Moon? This name came from the wild ground phlox, one of the earliest flowers of spring. Other names for April’s full moon include the Full Sprouting Grass Moon, the Egg Moon, and among coastal tribes the Full Fish Moon, because this was the time that the shad swam upstream to spawn. I like Full Fish Moon, but Pink Moon fits. Here in Salt Lake City, blooming under the Pink Moon are many pink trees: Redbuds, Weeping Cherry, Ornamental Plum, Saucer Magnolias, Flowering Almond. So many! So pink!


No full moon pictures this month. We had rain, then snow, then rain mixed with snow. Fortunately the eight inches of snow we received quickly disappeared, but the clouds obscured the moon.


I now have a new philosophy for getting things done. One thing each day. I started out thinking that a whole lot of one little things will add up. That's true, but how come my one things tend to be big things?  My first one thing was to get out the patching adhesive and slather with patching compound. Day two would be sand the patches. Day three paint. But it just doesn't ever happen that way.


Last weekend? Day one, one thing: clean out the tool corner. Here's the before. Actually, I started this the previous weekend. Pulled everything out of the corner, then realized that the handles all had a lot of sun damage, they were dry and cracking, so everything came to a halt while I rubbed mineral oil into every one.


Took longer than I thought. Then I discovered the forecast was for rain and snow.  Ended up having to pile all the tools back where they had been. humph. Unsatisfactory, except the handles really look good.


In the meantime, Jack and I went to the Depot looking for more tool racks. The plan is to clean it out again, stain the siding, install more tool racks, and voila! Yep. One little thing.


 Oh yeah, need stain. In the basement I found four gallon cans of stain. Three were half full and one was unopened. Cool!

On further inspection discovered that two had gone bad, but one of the half full cans might be okay, and the full can was fine.


Back to the weekend. Saturday, I emptied out the area again, swept the walls down, and got ready to paint. By the time I was ready to do the painting it was too late, so that was going to become the Sunday one thing.


On Sunday, David showed up. The day took a different twist. He replaced the leaky valve out front so we could turn on the outside water. I worked on cutting out more elm volunteers around the meters and where he was working. After the valve was replaced, David and I pulled three tree stumps out of the front yard. That took another hour of digging, water blasting, and chains hooked up to his truck.


I went in to see what we could rummage up for dinner. David started working on the tiller. He got it started, then oiled it up and was able to get a couple of passes made in the garden before it quit.

Monday after work,  (one thing) Jack started painting the garage tool area.


I went out front and started working on the pruning pile, (second thing)  cutting the trimmings into small enough pieces to fit in the garbage can.


 Finished  the pile, but realized that the front of the garage could use another coat of stain. (Third thing).




An hour later, the front was finished, but now I need to get another shade of stain for the doors.


Guess that could be thing one for another day.


But moving on to thing four for Monday, after finishing the garage, joined Jack on the back of the garage and started working on yet more painting, starting with a very weathered beam.

The beam was so dried out that it was  practically sucking paint out of the can. I can't tell you how good it feels to be working on the house, getting it back into shape.


While there is so much to do, my one thing a day seems to be working. Even if one thing turns into way more than one.

And the tool space? It looks really good. Maybe tomorrow we can get the tools hung up. Progress!