How Does My Garden Grow?

Well folks, I garden. 

Ish. 

I'm trying.

Last year when I moved into my house, I had some flower beds in the front yard.  Left untouched, I mean truly - I didn't once water, rake, or even offer a long glance in their direction, this spring began with some overgrown shrubs on one side and a lone lantana plant on the other.  When my parents were coming down for Easter, I asked them about possibly putting in some roses or other plants.  "So mom, what exactly does that involve?" 

Ha.  I had no idea what that involved.  After approximately 17 minutes of explanation, I was convinced that I had zero interest in putting in my own sweat and tears (because there would definitely have been tears).  Thankfully, this was around the same time that I had hired a 19 year old - the older brother of one of my tutoring clients - to mow my lawn.  I quickly learned that the kid LOVES landscaping.  He knew what he was talking about and was delighted to make some money, but he truly actually enjoys it.  Over one long weekend, he transformed my front yard from being the blight of the block to something actually pleasant to look at!  I do have lots of before and after pictures of this transformation.  That being said, madre raised me to be super paranoid, so I'm not inclined to post pictures of the front of my house that can identify me for all of the interwebs to find.  Ask me in person, and I'll be delighted to show you.  

This did spur me on to want to do more with my backyard, though.  

I have attempted to keep plants alive in the past, with varying levels of failure.  It took me a whole year to kill a mother-in-law plant.  From what I've gathered, it's quite a feat.  In trying to keep the front yard plants alive, I've been reminded of an unfortunate truth: mosquitoes love me.  Not in the way that we all enjoy savoring a nice steak on a special occasion.  Mosquitoes flock to me and devour my blood like tween girls devour chocolate and cookie dough at a slumber party.  Enter pinterest: apparently there are gardeners who share my dilemma and were pleased as punch to share which plants send these blood-sucking monsters running (flying?) for the hills.  

I had purchased a few whisky barrels to plant things in my backyard, so I armed myself with a list of these mosquito-repellant plants and headed off to Home Depot.  Why yes, it turns out I spend a lot of time - and money - at Home Depot.  They should really sponsor this blog.  If not, I might need to start directly depositing a portion of my paycheck there each month.  Over several trips and many hours spent outside, here is the current set up. 

Barrel # 1 - yellow and orange bell peppers

I bought the plants already like this (as opposed to starting them from seed).  I have no idea how long it takes actual peppers to sprout, but if it works I will be beyond excited.  I could eat bell peppers with breakfast, lunch, and dinner.  Oh, how I love them. 

 

 

Barrel # 2 - Angelonia

I had never seen this plant before, but they look a little like purple and white bluebonnets.  They were all over the internets as being fairly drought-tolerant and low maintenance.  The one in the very front is having a difficult time, but I'm trying to nurse it back to life.  I also left some room to plant something else in the middle of the barrel, but I haven't decided what just yet. 

 

Barrel # 3 - rosemary in the center, with sage on the side

I tried to leave some room in this guy too, for planting more when I get around to it.  Supposedly putting dried sage in a campfire keeps mosquitoes away, so I decided to grow some.  Watering this barrel is my favorite part of taking care of these plants because it smells amazing.

Barrel # 4 - some more angelonia, with some shrub in the center

What can I say?  It looked okay, so I grabbed two of them and put them in the cart.  No idea what it's called.

 I also potted some basil.  Word on the street is that basil is the easiest herb to take care of because you can tell by looking at it exactly what it needs.  Mine look pretty puny, and I guess we aren't communicating on the same wavelength.  I'll research some more.  In the meantime, though, I made some Berry Basil Tea a few weeks ago when I had friends over for dinner.  It is possibly the most Martha Stewart I've ever felt in my life - going outside to gather basil leaves to make my very own iced tea from scratch.  I was called out for heating up store-made frozen burger patties, so I had to compensate somehow.  

  The reviews on the tea were mixed.  The smell of the basil when you're right about to sip the tea does not correlate well to the flavor of the tea, so it is rather confusing for the tastebuds.  I happened to enjoy it.  I'm lazy, so this was semi labor intensive as far as recipes go.  To do over, I'd double it and get a full gallon of tea from one batch. 

"Cascading geranium" was one of the so-called mosquito repelling plants.  I have no idea if this is the same as regular geranium.  I saw no hanging geranium for sale.  I determined to make this geranium cascade.  

(Lesson learned while hanging the basket: if you are one inch shy of reaching the hook whilst standing on your tippy-toes, it will take less effort to grab a stool or chair to stand on and hang it properly than to clean up the mess made while attempting to just jump and pray that you can reach the hook, after which you will need to grab a stool or chair to stand on anyway.)

This is the last plant out back right now.  I think it's called something yucca.  It looked cool. 

 

My mom gave me those cute pots for Christmas, along with one medium sized green one to complete the set.  The green one had broken during shipping, so I pulled a Wonderlynn and decided to use the pieces to make a mosaic-tiled pot.   (The grout is still drying, and I'll need to clean it up a little.)

Lastly, I'm making my umpteenth attempt at composting.  This was another DIY bin I found online.  It's propped up on the bucket because I learned overnight that if you leave a bucket with food scraps on your porch, ants will find it.  Thank goodness you readers have me to share such wisdom with you.

 I also finally got around to fixing my fence.  It had looked like this for awhile now: 

 I went out yesterday armed with my drill and a box of wood screws and within two minutes I had this:

 

Yes.  I see the nail and screw still sticking out.  For whatever reason, they wouldn't go through the crossbar all the way.  (Is it called a crossbar?  I have no idea.  It sounds right?)  But it's an improvement nonetheless.  I am just nailing this whole adulthood thing. (Pun intended.)

The last thing I'll add is the massive success I experienced last night at the fire pit.  My parents also gave me a fire pit for my back patio as an early Christmas present.  I've spent several evenings out there embarrassed by my inability to keep anything other than cardboard and lighter fluid aflame.  

I had some friends over to watch The Sandlot and make s'mores afterward.  (That movie is easily in my top 5 favorites.  Without question.)

Thanks to the teepee method of fire building I found online and the secret ingredient fire-starter I am now aware of, I finally sustained a fire!  Friends, this was truly a proud moment.  Prior to last night, I felt great shame at my inability to carry on the pyromaniacal legacy of my family.  That shame is now gone.

Oh, and I haven't gotten a single mosquito bite on the patio in days!  (I also put up some sweet citronella tiki torches and flame pots to create a citronella force field around the patio.  It's fabulous.)

Alright, any guesses as to the secret fire starter ingredient?  Twelve gold stars to whoever can get it first (parents excluded, as I already told them)!

Love, 

Murphy & Me

Ode to Isaac

Isaac is a nice young man.

He has a ponytail on his head.

Ten minutes after meeting me, 

Isaac wished that he were dead. 

Recently (aka when my mom was last in town), I decided to spruce up the guest bathroom upstairs.  I was inspired mostly by this picture of a gorgeous bathroom makeover.

 

I decided I could frame out the stock mirror and stain the cabinets, and voila! Gorgeous new bathroom!  Then my mom casually suggested I add some trim or moulding to the cabinets since they are completely flat as is.  Well, I couldn't really do that without doing the same thing to the drawers as well.  After a lot of measuring and trying to organize everything so I could reconstruct it, I headed to Home Depot to purchase the necessary supplies.  

Naturally, though, I didn't take a "before" pic before removing all the cabinets and drawers.  Apparently I don't have any pictures of the lovely oak finished fiberboard from when I painted the bathroom last year either.  I don't know why I would have neglected to include them.

At Home Depot, I found the trim/moulding aisle on my own... down in the lumber section.  This side of the store is foreign territory to me, and I am terrified by it.  I did my best to play it cool and act like I knew what I was doing.  After roaming up and down the aisle for about ten minutes staring at 20' pieces of seemingly identical choices, I finally found a sample board and narrowed down my choices.  I hate to make decisions, but AT&T decided that it was time for me to cowboy up and decide for myself.  The numerous attempts to send my mom the choices all failed, and I was on my own.  Ultimately, I settled on this for the cabinets and drawers:

 I was advised to go with pine over the fiberboard options because it will be going in a bathroom where there is a lot of moisture.  Figuring this out before making my purchase and getting it home made me feel extremely in-the-know. 

For the mirror, I decided to go with this:

 

The rosettes will go in the corners.  They are really not that much bigger than the moulding, but I couldn't hold them next to each other because there were more sample pieces glued to the board where I was trying to compare.  (Yes, I need a manicure.  Apparently I garden now.  A manicure will have to wait.)

In addition to not taking a "before" pic, I also didn't make an organized list of the cuts I needed.  I had them organized by where they go in the bathroom, but not by how many of each length I needed.  Quickly, I found a stool to sit on and some post its in my purse, and I came up with this: 

  

I was a little nervous that I was leaving pieces out, so I counted up all the pieces I needed.  Four for the mirror, and EIGHTY-TWO for the cabinets and drawers.  Yikes.  

 Now all I had to do was get the pieces cut.  

I thought that the store does this for you.  This is where Isaac enters the picture.  I wandered around, and he was the first soul I found wearing the famous orange apron.   I warned him that I had quite a few pieces to cut, but he was pretty apathetic.  

Okay, so the lumber section of the store is mostly foreign territory.  I have accompanied others on occasion, though, and witnessed the cutting of wood using a large, loud, scary-looking piece of machinery.  Isaac picked up a handsaw and starting cutting individual pieces with it.  Oh dear.  This poor dude is going to hate me.  I texted my mom to let her know the situation while Isaac got to work on the sixteen 11" pieces I would need.  My mom responded by telling me how impressed she was that I was getting them all cut at the store, rather than doing it myself at home.  Uhhhhh.  Am I supposed to do that?  I thought they cut it for you?!?!  She informed me that they will typically make a few minor cuts.  Poor Isaac.  At this point, I'd already been at the store for about ninety minutes.  When we got to the next cut size, a set of ten pieces, Isaac started cutting them in groups of 4-6 pieces at a time.  I have no clue how he managed this. 

He continued without complaint (but also without speaking to me), completing the fourteen 5.25" and fourteen 15.5" pieces.  Around this time, another guy was waiting with what seemed to be just one piece of wood to have cut.  I motioned for him to go ahead of me.  That was the last time I saw Isaac.  

The dude straight up abandoned me in the foreign land of the lumber aisles!  In his defense, I think that his shift was over.  At least that is what I infer from his repeated checking of the time in between cuts.  

This is when John came to my rescue to pick up the rest of the job.  He made the first two cuts for me.  When I then requested four of the next size, he asked how many more cuts I needed.  Uh oh.  He's going to make me do this on my own!! Yikes!! "Twelve?" I replied meekly. 

"Oh, let's go over to the next aisle.  It'll take us all day with the handsaw." 

Ha.  If only he knew.

After grabbing a few more items, I made it home for the real adventure to begin.

While I had my pieces cut to the appropriate lengths, I still needed to angle the ends to fit together in the corners of the cabinetry.  I was excited to finally use the miter saw my dad got me when Wonderlynn first informed me that I wanted to suggested I add some dimension to the cabinets with trim.

 

 

Remember how ridiculous it seemed to John that someone would cut twelve pieces of trim with a handsaw when the big scary machine was available?  I started to feel that way cutting my very first piece of trim.  For the second piece, I decided to time myself to see how long this adventure would take.  83 seconds.  From putting it in the miter box to cutting it and then picking it up.  A few quick calculations led me to the discovery that the remaining 80 pieces (plus the other side of all 82) would take me approximately 221.3 minutes.  

 

This discovery, combined with the realization that I don't exactly have a work table for projects such as this, explains why I spent all evening cutting pieces of trim in my living room.  Where I can watch Alias on Netflix while I work.  Somehow, I managed to cut one end of each of the 82 pieces of trim.  Tomorrow, I'll aim for the other end.  If feeling has returned to my fingers by then.  

I'll keep you posted. 

Love, 

Murphy & Me

On the Domestic Front

Ash is trash. 

When I moved into my house 13 months ago, my yard had several very large trees in it.

Trees that don't handle droughts well. 

Ash trees. 

A few weeks ago I noticed through the kitchen window that my fence gate was open.  I ran back to close it and found this in my backyard.

 

This picture does no justice whatsoever to the size of the tree.  I had a few other trees to trim, so I borrowed some tools and filled fourteen bags with tree debris. 

Fourteen.

Plus the gigantic branches that wouldn't fit in the bags.  

That was only the beginning.  I knew the giant tree in the back was dead.  Being so close to my house and my neighbor's fence, I really wanted to take care of it before the summer continued.  I tried calling around to get estimates for how much it would cost, but I wasn't getting phone calls returned.  I sent a few text messages to friends in the area looking for recommendations and one responded that he "and the boys could take care of it pretty quick." 

Hooray!! Free labor is always preferable to paid labor, right?  

I figured it would be a pretty simple process.  After all, Uncle Kevin (having seen pictures of the tree and knowing my success record with home improvement projects) assured me that I - a single, inexperienced female - could rent a gas pole saw and take care of it in half a day.  the only reason I didn't try this is the fact that I wasn't confident I could fit an 8' tool in my tiny civic.  

As soon as the recruited crew arrived and identified this tree they would be working with, they turned to one of the guys and asked: "What is it your father-in-law says about ash trees?"

Ash is trash.

Apparently said father-in-law is a landscaper, and that is his creed.  This was not the first ash tree this crew had faced.   

 They are huge.  And grow long, thin, spindly branches that resemble the long bony fingers of a giant creature in a horror film.  In my own tree trimming, I cut down branch after branch after branch of dead, leafless wood.  They are hideous.  I was delighted to get rid of this thing, even if it wasn't about to fall over and create a giant money pit.

Things started pretty simply.  Four grown dudes showed up in three pickups, with four kids.

They climbed, sawed, and cut.  The kids and I hauled to the trucks.  

The biggest hurdle was trying to keep the falling debris out of my neighbor's yard.  Being the planners that they are, these guys planned ahead.  They would cut just enough to make the branches ready to break, then put a chain around the branch, back up, and pull into my yard. 

 

(Faces hidden to protect the free labor.  If everyone finds out, they'll be less likely to help me again!)

The majority of the tree took about three hours to get down.  We filled three pickups with debris, and the guys ran to dump it all and pick up one more friend to help.  In that three hours, their three chainsaws broke numerous times.  Apparently those things are quite temperamental - chains coming lose and such.  These dudes are way more patient and determined than I am.  I would've given up quite quickly.  They just kept at it.  

 

When they got back, all that remained was the main stump.  

Given the chainsaw difficulties, they weren't able to saw all the way through.  Plan A was driving a truck onto my lawn, hooking the chain up to the truck, and trying to break it that way.  Unfortunately, the chain wasn't long enough, and we couldn't get anything (rope, tie-downs, etc.) to stay attached to the chain. 

Plan B was to muscle it and get all five dudes pushing as hard as they could.  

Again, there wasn't enough of the trunk cut through for this to work.

 

Plan C was to use the pole saw.  The chainsaws kept breaking, but this guy was pretty sturdy. They cut a little deeper into the trunk with it.  Eventually, they left and came back with a handsaw and took care of it in about fifteen minutes.  

 

 Here are the remains.  I have plans in store for the stump, so stay tuned.

Love,

Murphy & Me

We have a lot of catching up to do.

My father recently informed me that it's been too long since I posted anything.  Well, it's been about two months since he informed me.  That I haven't posted since October 9th.  It's far too overwhelming to try and recap everything that has happened since then, so I'm going to fill you in on the monumental events in my life since the beginning of May.  

Most noteworthy,  Katrina got MARRIED!

I tend to leave most of the photography up to my friends, but Libby and I did capture this masterpiece before the ceremony. 

 

It was fun to have (almost) everyone back together, but Megan's absence was notable.  

 

Thankfully, technology is crazy, and she was able to watch the entire thing from ZAMBIA. 

 Is that not ridiculous?!  Technology has also allowed me to have story time across the globe with my favorite four year old.

 

 Just look at that face.  Too.  Much.  Cuteness.

Even better, this precious mother/son duo will be making their way to 'merica soon!

The Spring also brought the much-anticipated return of baseball season.  For the first Rangers game I got to attend, baseball bingo was an obvious inclusion. 

They're struggling right now, but the Rangers are still surpassing all expectations.  Even after major changes to the clubhouse.  A few former team members have had welcome returns to Arlington with their new teams.  This, however, was too soon: 

The end of school also brought about a first in my five years of teaching.  

I successfully brainwashed my students.

Three of them.  Doomed to futures at Texas Tech, texas university, and (worst of all) LSU,

three of my wonderful students have officially stated that they now plan to attend Texas A&M University.  The two girls have practically decorated their future dorm room together.

Look at how they celebrated the good grades of their classmates!

In other news, I have a pet.  Yes.  Me.  A pet. 

Around the end of school, I started noticing this chirping noise that I was convinced was coming from my house.  I just knew there was an animal trapped inside.  I was finally convinced to go check the attic, so I went in the afternoon when the whole world was well lit and non-scary.  Naturally, I didn't go unarmed. 

This picture does not do justice, but I put on thick leather gloves, brought a giant (and heavy) flashlight, and brought along a container to trap anything on the off-chance that I saw and managed to capture something.  This happened to be my first ever trip into my own attic (I'm a great homeowner), and I was pleasantly surprised by how spic and span the previous owner left it.  So spic and span that it was clear there was no sign of life anywhere.  

After friends came over to consult, they sat in my living room for twenty-five solid minutes of silence until the chirping finally began.  We searched outside and inside.  We turned to the experts at google/youtube to compare animal noises.

Without question, I have a bat living in my backyard.

I have yet to actually see this bat.

Having stated previously that I'd be more creeped out by a rat than a bat, I had to eat crow.  I am equally creeped out by a bat.  Except that it's still outside.  And supposedly since it only makes noise at night it is healthy and not rabid. 

Still creepy, though. 

My friends suggested that naming it might make it less creepy, so we christened it Billy Bob.  Then a good friend added (since I was still not enthusiastic about this new creature) that Honey Bun is a name that has never frightened anyone.  Since then, I have almost anticipated Honey Bun Bill Bob Bat's arrival each night.

Okay not quite, but I do notice when he doesn't show up as early as usual. 

Last, but certainly not least, is the arrival of something I had been looking forward to since 2010.  

Fast & Furious 6

I bought my tickets a week in advance for the first showing, but a week later some friends gave me the best ever start to summer vacation: 

They brought me to see it again at a DRIVE IN.  These wonderful friends who had no desire whatsoever to see this movie drove me almost two hours away to a teeny tiny town to see it for the second time in nine days.  

Alright, so truthfully it wasn't the best ever movie for a drive in.  All the high speed action scenes and back-alley back-stabbing are better viewed on an enormous screen in a loud theater.  

But who could sit through a movie sitting on a patio chair in the bed of a truck, with a tiny portable radio as the only (although surprisingly great) sound system? 

Yes.  Of course I brought cowboy hats for us to wear.

On the long drive home, my friends were very curious about the back story to this sixth installment, and I realized that there were many details I have forgotten.  Don't let that prevent you from running to the next showing immediately - it's still wildly enjoyable.  It encouraged me to head to the nearest walmart and purchase the first four.  

Friends, you have until July 11th, 2014 to prepare yourselves. 

Ride or die.

Love, Murphy & Me