A manlier Man Cave

The man cave got a little manlier this weekend:

Yes, the girls are now air hockey fanatics.

The cool thing is, it’s not just an air hockey table; at also has pool and ping pong.  You can see the ping pong cover leaning against the wall.  To play pool, you roll out a rubber mat on top of the air hockey part.

Now Pete just needs to hang his dart board and his Man Cave will just ooze testosterone.

Quick update

Even though I haven’t posted here in a few days, things are still hopping out in the garden.  First of all, check out the latest on the patio:

We’ve expanded it by a couple of rows and then did that neat cut-out with the tree and the flowers.  The tree is an Eastern Redbud that I dug up in the old ‘hood.  Unfortunately, even though I’ve watered it faithfully, the leaves are looking really droopy and I’m not sure it’s going to survive the transplant.  So I might be putting a new tree in this fall.

I also transplanted some peonies from the old house:

Oh, and the peas are growing like mad:

Since this photo was taken last week, the peas have reached the tops of the supports.  No peas yet, but I’m hopeful.  The lettuce, on the other hand, is growing s-l-o-w-l-y.  Maybe I should have put the seeds out earlier?  I don’t know, but I do know the lettuce will be mercilessly ripped out in another week or two whether it produces or not.

So that’s what’s going on ’round these parts…

Recycled homes

Here’s an interesting post on houses made of some unusual things, including airplanes, missile silos, and more.

The kitchen garden

I attended a seminar on kitchen gardens earlier this spring and learned, among other things, that a true kitchen garden is one that has a certain symmetry and form to it — aesthetics play a big role in the design and plan of a kitchen garden.  So there are flowers mixed in with the edibles.  Not only are the flowers there for beauty, they also attract bees and butterflies, which pollinate.  No bees equals no tomatoes in July.

I think our garden is fitting the bill nicely:

This is still very  much a work in progress, but I think you can see where I’m going with this.  Right now, we have 200 s.f. for veggies and herbs and another 120-150 s.f. for berries.

The main part is the five vegetable/herb beds, each of which is 4′ X 10′.  In case you’re wondering what’s going on in each, here’s the breakdown (they’re numbered 1-5, starting from the bottom):

1. tomatoes, basil, and marigolds — Right now, I have two kinds of tomatoes (four plants each) and will be adding another variety next week.  I have six sweet basil and am wondering if I should add more.  We love basil.
2. edamame — I’ve put in two rows and will add two more rows every week this month, so as to stagger our harvest.  I’ve also tucked in a few pepper plants along the edges.
3. Peas and lettuce (spring) / Black beans and peppers (summer) — I have spring plants in now, but have started adding summer plants.
4. Pole beans, cukes, and melon — The three bean teepees have a type of pinto bean on them, which I’m planting over the course of a month (one teepee every two weeks).
5. Asparagus, garlic, and pumpkins — The asparagus will eventually fill this bed, but this year I’ve put in garlic (to be harvested next month) and pumpkins since I have the space.

I’ve also planted herbs in the corners of beds, 2, 3, and 4 — rosemary, chives, oregano, thyme, mint (in a pot so it won’t spread), etc.  Not only will they add flavor to our meals, they’ll help repel bugs and, if I’m lucky, deer.

Bracketing the vegetable/herb beds are the blueberries (left) and raspberries (right).  The blueberry bushes have small berries on them, but I’m not going to net them this year, as I want the birds to eat them so that the plants will instead put their energy into establishing roots.  I’ve also planted flowers along the fence and in other nooks and crannies, so as to encourage bees and butterflies to visit.

On the lower right, I have a small rose garden.  Eventually, I’d like to add one on the upper end of the raspberry bed, but am feeling no rush to get to it.

The rose is cherry red and already has a few buds on it.  I can’t wait!  The blue ceramic ball is something I’ve wanted for years and only just found recently.  I’m not sure it will stay there, but I thought it would add color for now.  I planted zinnia seeds around the rose and plan to add more roses at some point in the future when my checkbook isn’t groaning from all the abuse it’s taken this spring.

Long term, I definitely want to put in paths around the garden beds and get rid of all that grass — less to mow, plus the edging is already something of a chore — but that’s a project that can wait until I’m feeling ready to lay down dozens of yards of landscaping fabric and then cover it with tons of pea gravel.

So that’s what’s going on in the kitchen garden.  Any questions?

Other green houses

Check out this post at Mother Nature Network on ten great green homes!  My faves are #2, #6, and #10.  #2 is not surprising, as it’s by Michelle Kaufmann, whose prefab homes we considered carefully before deciding to design our own.

Drinks on the patio

We have finished the first phase of our patio:

As you can see in the first photo, we still have some bags of gravel and sand left over, and we’ll be using them to expand the patio at some point in the future when we can contemplate the prospect without wanting to reach for a bottle of Advil.

Between the patio and the house, I’ve started a succulent garden and have already planted some interesting sedums, including this one:

On the other side of the back porch, the old fashioned garden is coming along nicely:

Okay, maybe it doesn’t look like much in the photo, but there is a lot going on in there, I promise.  I’ve added a rose (on the left), irises from my grandmother’s garden (far left), and various perennials in recens weeks.  On the far right, the bee balm is going gangbusters.  The gnome by the porch is a recent gift and will eventually be somewhat hidden by the lilac just to the left.

In other news, we had our first big party last weekend — Dos de Mayo festivities for my 40th birthday.  We had 60 people here and, while things were a bit snug, we had enough space for everyone.  Adults tended to congregate in the kitchen, living room, and man cave.  The children (around 20) were mostly either upstairs in the toy room and secret attic or were outside playing a no-holds-barred game of soccer that more accurately resembled a mostly female version of Australian Rules Football.

Coming up next on this blog:  I’m working on a post about the kitchen garden, which is nearing capacity already.

Here comes the sun

When we were designing our house, we made a point to pay attention to the direction of the sun and to put large windows where we wanted a lot of light. This was great this winter, when we benefited from the heat gain.

Now that spring is here, however, we don’t want the heat gain. The past few several days have been really warm and the sunlight has poured into the house.

Luckily, we had anticipated this and have been installing mini blinds (1″ aluminum) in various rooms ever since we moved in.  We started in the study, because the morning sun was blinding us and I was wearing sunglasses when I worked at the computer.  Then we moved on to the living room.  In recent days, Pete has installed them in our bedroom and the girls’ toy room, and we’ll soon hang them in the girls’ bedrooms and the kitchen.

When we want lots of light in a room, we pull the blinds up and they’re not even noticeable.  When we want to deflect some of the sun’s rays, we angle them so that the sun doesn’t shine directly in, but we still have plenty of the light in each room.

If you’re thinking about doing this in your home, you need to know that light colored blinds will reflect the light and heat, but dark ones won’t.  Also, aluminum blinds might be more expensive up front, but they’re friendlier to the environment than plastic blinds would be.  Plus, if your aluminum blinds ever break, you could actually recycle them, but you can’t recycle the plastic ones.  And believe me, plastic blinds will break — we know, because we had them in our last house and we ended up replacing every single one at least three times over the course of nine years.

So that’s what’s going on here this week.  Actually, that’s not quite true.  We’re also preparing for our first major party (around 65 people) here on Saturday, which means that we’re cleaning house like mad and making the children work on their bedrooms.  We’ve more or less finished the patio, but that’s another story for another time.

Garden porn

Oops!  It has been a couple of weeks since I last posted.  Sorry.  I’ve been pretty busy at work.  But, the good news is that I have been busy around the yard too, as I’m pretty good at finding odd bits of time here and there to work on little projects.

Take a look at the kitchen garden:

Yep, we’ve started planting.  And by “we” I mean the younger girl and me.  She is an amazing gardener.  On Sunday afternoon she helped me plant asparagus and she doesn’t even like the stuff.  I’ve also put in two kinds of tomatoes, three kinds of peppers, and one kind of bean so far, as well as various herbs.  The peas and lettuce are doing well and I’m hoping to actually get to eat them next month.  I still need to plant pumpkins, soybeans, bush beans, cucumbers, one more variety of tomatoes, and various flowers to attract bees and butterflies.

Along the fence are the six blueberry bushes I planted on Sunday and over on the right are six raspberry plants.  In both cases, the edges of the mulch are still pretty messy, but I was in a hurry to get the plants in the ground so that growing could commence.  I also need to build supports for the raspberries, but I figure those can wait for a week or two.

Eventually — and by “eventually” I mean either next year or possibly one horribly hot day this summer when I take leave of my senses — I’m going to put pea gravel paths around all the gardens.

I went over to our old house this week and thinned out some of the plants there.

Here’s the old fashioned garden that I mentioned a couple of weeks ago.

In the past couple of weeks, I’ve added more plants, although it’s hard to tell in this photo.  I’ve also laid down stepping stones from the gate to the soon-to-be patio, mulched around them, and planted Creeping Jenny as a groundcover.  Yes, I know Creeping Jenny can be invasive, but I love the bright chartreuse color, plus it’s cheap and easy to propagate.

Coming up to the gate, this is what you see:

The main way to get to our back yard from the front is to take this path from the driveway.  I put lavender on the left — some established plants from our old house, as well as several new plants — and lambs’ ears in front of the trellis on the right.  The younger daughter also planted morning glory seeds in front of the trellis, so we’re hopeful we’ll have lots of flowers climbing up the trellis this summer.

As for the aforementioned patio, it is  still very much a work in progress, although we’re planning hoping to finish it this weekend:

I know, we still have a lot to do.  *sigh*

Instead, how about if I show you one of my cute planters:

More soon — I promise!

An old-fashioned garden

Even though I prefer modern architecture, I actually like more old-fashioned gardens. Our old house had several English-style cottage gardens with lots of colors and no real order. However, that type of garden is surprisingly more work to maintain than one would guess, so I’ve decided to scale back with this house.  At this point, I’ve only planned two old-fashioned gardens, neither of which will be very large.  Here’s the one by the back door:

I know, it doesn’t look like much now, but I’ll make sure to post photos later this summer when it looks nicer.  So far, I’ve put in bee balm (green plants on front right), a lilac (behind the bee balm), a Sarah Bernhardt peony (the round support on the left), mixed coneflowers (middle), and foxgloves (back left).  I plan to do a line of annuals (vinca or petunias) along the rocks edging the bed.

As for the rocks, each and every one of those was unearthed during the excavation process and we have plenty more for future use.

The dirt area in front of the bed already gets a lot of traffic, so my plan in the next few weeks is to continue the path from the gate on the left around to where the patio will start over on the right.  Then I’ll cover the dirt with mulch and plant a ground cover (probably Creeping Jenny) for weed control.

The other old-fashioned garden will be by the other gate, which has an arbor.  Once I get that area planted, I’ll post photos.

Odds and ends

As soon as we moved in, we started working on a list of things that we needed Jeff the Builder and the guys to change, fix, or generally tweak. We kept a running list on the side of our fridge and, as we noticed things, we’d add them.

Yesterday, the guys came over to work on the list. So, for a few glorious hours, we were all together again. Did I remember to take photos? No I did not. Am I aggravated with myself about this? Yes I am.

Jeff had read this post about my frustrations with our kitchen sink and had a backsplash fabricated for us. Here’s what it looks like:

Upstairs, we discovered pretty quickly (as in, the day we moved in) that the paint on the wall behind the ladder to the secret attic was getting scuffed up. As it happens, we had a piece of diamond steel left over from when the guys had cut the piece for the kitchen peninsula. Pete hit upon the ingenius idea of using it to protect the wall:

And, just when I was feeling sad that we won’t be seeing Jeff the Builder and the guys anymore, it turns out that they might be back in June!  Pete and I have been looking everywhere for a garden shed that wasn’t absolutely hideously ugly.  We couldn’t find one, so JtB and crew are going to design and build one to match our house.  To say that I am excited about this development is an understatement.

I’ll have more garden photos for you soon.