Coffee Chat: Almost Spring

Hello all.  We shall not sit outdoors with our coffee.  It's a little cool yet, though I dare say you northern girls would feel it was downright balmy.  Never mind, the pollen is thick yet outdoors and John's mowing will only make me sneeze twice as hard.  Grass smells so very good to me but...ACHOO!  

I was outdoors this morning, very early, well before 9am because John had called to say he was running later than usual in coming home.  I figured while the air was heavy with dew I'd just go right on outdoors to pull some weeds.  I got the bulk of the ones from the back flower bed and pots pulled up.  I'm calling myself done with those though you can see a few very tiny weeds here and there.  I need to put out fresh mulch.  It is looking rather thin.  And so the list of outdoors jobs for the coming months is growing and growing.  Just so is it each Spring.



If the birds began to screech with their hectic activity of choosing a mate, choosing a nesting site and beginning a family, we humans also step up our pace.  In the South, it's a challenge to find that balance between not quite Spring and therefore really too cold to do much and almost Spring which is pleasant enough and perfect working weather if pollen allows and the 'Oh my word it's HOT! already...' which is the final stage and a  groaning Spring when we push through tasks despite our longing to be indoors under the air conditioning.

I've almost made up my mind about what tasks I shall do to the porches and which I shall leave as they are.  We really need new seat cushions, but they must not show Rufus's dirt.  They won't be less dirty than they are now, I just don't want to see it, lol.  Rufus is an older doggy and I reckon he's been through a rough enough life until now that he's earned the right to sit upon a chair if he wishes.  I remember our Trudy did much the same when she got older and she'd had an easy enough life all her days.   At any rate, Rufus's comfort is a consideration and so the seat cushion material must not show his dirt.

I need a new welcome sign .   The  sign I have is hard to read and warped.  Time to replace that for sure.   I'd like very much to add embellishment to the porch posts.  I'm thinking of getting these:

They come pre-primed at Lowe's.  I need 8 for the front porch and I think I need as many for the back porch.   I may have to do this in stages but I think it will be pretty and will add considerably to my country cottage.

Did I tell you all that I had to trash my chairs I had in the flower bed in front of the back porch?  They were so rotted that there simply wasn't much point in keeping them, so I tossed them in the skip in December.  I'm rather proud of those chairs, though.  John and I bought them ages upon ages ago at a TG&Y to use as our dining chairs.  We paid something like $9 each for them and while that hardly seems much now, I had to buy pairs of them each pay period and that at a sacrifice to us because money was so very tight at the time.  So to see that I had three of them still to use in that flower bed for a few years is saying something about them.   I said plenty about them over the years because the silly things were constantly coming apart somehow and were downright dangerous at times until we got every joint glued and nailed.

We were so pleased the day we went to buy a new dining table and chairs and we paid a good deal of money for that privilege.  And in a year's time every one of the chairs were broken.  For all that we had loathed the cheaper chairs we felt sorely used when those pricier ones broke apart one by one.   You'd think we'd been extra hard on them but we weren't.  Our children weren't rough and tumble sorts, either.  It was just a general lack of quality.  Our current set of chairs are metal and their style doesn't at all go with our style or our table but they are sturdy and we've had them now for a good 8 years.  We paid $7 plus a finder's fee of $50 for them all.  Naturally they will be the ones to last a lifetime...I have resigned myself that they shall last and last and last and will keep them.  

I don't know how on earth I got off on dining chairs!   I had meant to be discussing outdoors and the garden...

I don't have much of a garden, really.  Just a few little things here and there.  Mind you I've planted steadily enough over the years but I made my mistakes when we moved here of using roadside plants which spread and spread and spread in the confines of our beds and pretty much took over.   I've spent more years trying to eradicate or contain them.  Now, this year, at age 60, I am ready at last to really consider what I want from a garden.  I have firm ideas about my own likes and dislikes.

I dislike ragged edges and sprawling plants that grow here and there and everywhere.  I prefer something a bit more formal as far as edging is concerned.  I do not mind deep curving beds or straight lines or a combination of both, but plants which decide how the path shall wind and wend are out.  I have this vision of my house and yard bordered all about with deep beds of flowers and shrubs that bloom progressively from late winter to late fall, with pools of green lawns so that John doesn't have a difficult task of mowing.   I say this because there are two yards we pass each time we go to town, both of which must be a sheer nightmare to mow as there must be hundreds of plants surrounded by little circles of rocks and barely enough space between to get a mower, yet mowed it must be because there is lawn between every plant...

 I know from experience now that John will not purposely cut a flower or plant but he's none too careful of them, either.   The rosemary bush was a casualty today.  I am sure it will survive but it had grown well out of bounds of the area and when he cut the corner a bit more sharply than he'd meant to do, there it went.   So containing these plants is important.   I'd removed the brick border from this area back during winter because Maddie had dug a deep hole at one end of the bed causing the border to collapse into the hole.  I tossed all the rocks and brick into the hold to keep up from digging any further, thinking I'd get it emptied out, filled with dirt and the border restored.   Well I didn't.  I consider I'm to blame on that one.  Procrastination always costs something more in the end.

I've begun tucking daffodils and iris under the taller trees and privet at the edges of the yard where it's mostly dirt and leaf mould and not lawn.   Here I don't mind so much if the spider wort and soap wort grow and grow.  They can do as they like in those spaces.

I have a real dislike of shrubs and bushes growing right up against the house, darkening the windows and that also suits John as he is convinced someone will hide behind them given a chance though why anyone should want to hide behind prickly bushes in this middle of nowhere place is beyond me.  Never mind, we'll have none of that.  

So I want carefully planned beds about the house.   I'd hit upon the idea of containers set in the beds just around the house to keep things from growing where we don't want them but I find that too many small pots look like clutter unless carefully grouped into patches of planters with bigger ones and middle sized ones mixed in.   As well small pots are dwarfed by big beds and naturally I've nothing but a plethora of smaller pots.   So I am  trying to determine how I might afford larger planters and if I can afford them how I shall get them home.

Well there is a lot to consider in having the sort of garden I'd like to have.  It is about this time of year I remind John over and over again that we really need a truck and he agrees but does not look for one at all.  I also hint about needing a strong man who is willing to dig and lift but that so far has earned me no comment at all.

But this year, I mean to begin the garden of my dreams and I'll do it myself, thank you very much.  My first job is to get all about the house done.   I may have to make a hundred and fifty trips to the diy store for mulch and blocks and plants.  I will, however, have the start of it done by Christmas of this year.  That's my goal.   I'll do it as I do all else, a little bit at the time, until I get it done.  I mean to do some task every single week that improves the appearance of the place overall.   I'll use what strength I have, the funds I can scrape together and  paint what I must and use any pretty things I have or oddment that comes to hand for free.

Some things will be more easily done than others.  I have read of planting clematis on the trellis with roses and I have two rose trellis outside my bedroom window.  I can easily pick up two clematis to plant there and at no great expense of labor.   I have a good spot to plant more iris and daffodils in an area that is not in the path of the mower.  I have less expensive ideas overall that should make the yard look neater and nicer and for a lesser amount of labor.  As with most things I don't expect it will exactly live up to my vision but it will work out so that things look neat and nice and even pretty.  I am quite used to the house and my budget dictating how things will look in the end and I don't much expect the yard will be any different.

So you see I have Spring fever here in my home, fully indicated by the itchy ears and skin and scratchy throat I have from being outdoors for brief moments today.

Oh! I must share this quote from a book I was reading recently on English Country Cottages.   Each cottage featured naturally has a garden because there is apparently no such thing as a country cottage without one.   When asked what the best formula was for a proper cottage garden, one home gardener replied to fill borders with perennials and to never move anything regardless of size or color clashes.  I loved that quote!  Now mind you I know it's not a lasting quote nor a particularly true one, as perennials do need to be divided eventually but I understand the heart behind the quote.  Let things be planted where they are planted until they must be moved!

This is the book I am reading at present.   It's available at thrift books for about $10 if you're interested and you might find it elsewhere for less.

I have a big stack of books by my chair, all about English style.  What I am discovering is what I ought really to have known:  everyone has their own style, so it's open to interpretation.  There are crowded, clutter-y sorts of interiors and brightly colored ones and there are stark white interiors with an almost minimalistic approach and artsy sorts of interiors with lots of freehand styling going on and romantic sorts of interiors.   As with most things, I fall somewhere in between.  But there are truisms in English decoration: China, flowers, plants, books, paintings, wood tones.

I did rather amuse myself in looking through the book at the photos.  I kept peering hard to try and read the book titles on the bookshelves.  I am curious about what others read!

Do any of you keep inspiration boards or notebooks?  I used to compile a lot of magazine pages ages ago when I got all of Mama's cast off magazines but since I stopped reading modern day tripe, I have resorted to using the few catalogs that come to the house for my inspiration.   I clipped photos yesterday of window treatments, rugs, garden pieces, etc. and stapled them into the composition book I now keep.  I started this one back in August and have almost filled it with recipes and notes I make as I read the vintage magazines, ideas I jot down as inspiration strikes, questions I ask myself about things, etc.   It's rather nice to flip back through the last few months of pages and see where I tried an idea and noted whether or not it worked as planned, made a note on a recipe as to whether it was good or not, etc., even jotted down shopping lists and blog post ideas.  The notebook has really been a bonus to me, as I don't forget so many of my ideas or research once it's written down.

later...I wrote all the above yesterday.  Did you realize you've stayed overnight for this coffee chat? Lucky you that we bought that new mattress for the guest room bed in December!

The sunshine is pouring through the windows but the wind is blustery as can be outdoors.  It's been chilly here in the house all afternoon long, though it got quite stuffy yesterday afternoon.   John and I have done much of nothing today.  It wasn't my plan exactly to do nothing.  I did leave my calendar pretty much open for John's sake today so that if he wanted to go anywhere or do anything we could.  He hasn't and since I worked while he was outdoors yesterday afternoon, I have had little to do today.  The moment I start a project of any sort, he needs my attention somehow or other, so...no plans and not much got done as a result.  I'll enjoy the day off today and make up for it tomorrow.

I spent some time over on Pinterest and as always I quickly spend far too much of my time there scrolling through hundreds of images.  When you stop and think about it, it's a strange enough way to spend your time.  Thanks to the algorithms we often see what we like but it can become redundant if we don't do a new search now and then or allow our minds to open to other ideas.  I'd much rather collect images online rather than physically collect them in my home but after a bit even those files online begin to feel full of clutter.  I delete them willy nilly as I choose though some experts say you oughtn't if you have a blog or social media presence at all.   You might know that I do have a blog and Instagram account and my Pinterest account but I've pretty much ignored the experts.   I'm probably doing things all sorts of wrong anyway, but I like things my way.

Do you know what else I find I'm restless for?  Thrifting.  Plundering through favorite stores for things that are new and fresh to me.   I feel myself just itching to make changes in my home, in my wardrobe, in my yard...I think it's another sign of spring!   And I want new and fresh menus but ones that still call for good basic inexpensive foods and seasonings.  You can rest assured I'll not be going off willy nilly picking up just any old thing.  I'm going to make out a list to carry with me and follow that pretty strictly.  I've found it's always a savings to work with a list.

Well dears, I've kept you long enough, and I shall end here.  But do tell...have you started getting restless and spring feverish as well?