Planting Projects Around the House

Well, I think I'm going to stop the "counting of the days". Wisconsin has made some abrupt changes, as many of you may have seen on the news. The entire state was released of any stay-at-home order. But then county by county, and city by city, they re-instated the orders so nobody really knew what was going on!

Some TV stations were reporting one thing, and then things would change an hour later and then they'd have to report something the extreme opposite.

I guess for right now, we will just play it close to home, we will continue to socially distance, and wait and see what happens. Texas did this same abrupt opening, and now two weeks later they have a resurgence of cases. We hope that's not going to happen here.

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The day started out with a fine misty fog coming up. I woke up at 5:30 and let the dogs out. I looked out over to the big backyard and it looked so beautiful. I had to go back to the bedroom and grabbed my phone to take a picture.

The dew on the grass was 

like little pearls of glass in the light.

I started up a pot of coffee and popped a couple apple turnovers from the freezer into the oven. Within 30 minutes the house smelled wonderful... and it woke Steve up.

We shared our early morning breakfast treat as the sun came along and burned off the misty fog.  The kids texted and asked us to bring back the long extension ladder, as they had some projects figured out for the day.  We hauled it over to their house while they were gathering supplies in Green Bay.  (nicely, they picked up some building supplies for us too!  Thank you Waylen!!!)

Now to our own projects:

Steve carried my plants out of the garage to get some fresh air and sunshine.  Today I was going to try to get a bunch of them planted!

I pulled up a pile of edging stones from a different part of the flowerbeds and trundled my wheelbarrow over to make some new beds near the pergola.  Steve said he wanted to do the digging, so he could save the "turf" to put in another spot in the yard.

He started working on another basement window, and brought up the main one for me to clean up and paint.  It sure beats the cost of replacing them with new ones. I got that done before breakfast!

Then I decided to start planting some of my flowers.

When we bought the pergola last month, the seller threw in two funky looking conical shaped hanging planting baskets.

Over the past winter I had rooted some strangling ivy branches from my big plant in the office. I had them growing in little pots on the window sill in the kitchen up until now. They were getting awfully long and one vine even started crawling up the pull chain for the light fixture over the sink. Another one had started weaving itself within the lace of my window curtain! It was time to get these ivy plants out and planted to do their job outside and decorate my pergola!!

Steve screwed in two new little eyelet hooks and I planted the ivy into these funky baskets. I interwove some of the pieces through the red lattice. Hopefully they will grow up and over and around and looked absolutely beautiful.

I have more ivy plants to plant around the bottom sections of the lattice on each side. Steve started digging up the sod and make me two little flower beds on each side of the pergola.  He was happy, he got his sod!

Then I will weave that ivy up within the lattice too. Hopefully soon it will be covered with beautiful ivy on that side.

On the other side, he started digging up flower beds to put in my precious clematis plants. These were my Mother's Day present. I have a red one and a white one for each side of the pergola as we enter it from the front yard. This will hopefully grow up the front white trellises and cover up with beautiful blooms, all summer long.

I popped back into the garage to paint a second coat on the window because the first one had finally dried.


I took time to fill the bird feeders. Today we even spotted a beautiful bluebird come to hang out at the feeders and see what was going on. We've had about five or six Baltimore Orioles now because of putting out the grape jelly. I remarked to Steve after I filled up the bird feeders, that feeding these birds is costing us more than what we pay to feed our dogs!!!


Now I took out the three long red window boxes and set them on the ledges of the front porch. Into each one I planted geraniums, two deep red ones flanking each side of a white one in the middle. This year I splurged and bought a little bit bigger type zonal geranium that seem to be hardier with a thicker stem.

After I got all three window boxes done and in place, Steve came and sat on the front porch swing with me for a while.

We relaxed and reflected on how much we were doing today compared to what we were doing a year ago. A year ago we'd only been in the house for two weeks and we were going gangbusters with projects. He had already started moving the doorway and creating a half bath with the laundry room. We were still unloading one load at a time from the rental storage unit, and I was unpacking boxes and finding places for things here there and everywhere. We were painting some things and fixing other things and rearranging things and just adjusting to life up here in Oconto --- closer to the grandchildren. It was one of the best decisions I think we have ever made.


We made up a little lunch, and then I popped back out to plant all of my precious coleus around the circular flower bed and bird bath in the backyard. These are all of the plants that I have wintered over a year after year after year since the 1990s. I got them from my friend Connie, and I've been so careful to save enough every fall to keep them going all winter long.

I planted them around in the circle and I hope they will flourish. I did keep one little cluster in the window in the kitchen, sitting in a glass of water, just in case they need to root and start a new pot.

(I bought the little Dutch boy and girl

a couple years ago

at a rummage sale in Chilton)

By this time, I think I was really starting to slow down. By 2:30 I thought it's time to crawl in bed and take a little nap. Steve was still going gangbusters on stapling a new screen in the open window frames down in the basement. But I decided it was time to take a little break and close the eyelids for a while.

It didn't last long, but was enough to refresh me so I could get back out in start cutting apart some of the ivy and figuring out what needed to get planted where.

I did plant some more geraniums in the two beautiful cement planters in front of the she shed. We brought these planters up from our last home in Chilton too. I just love how they look and I'm glad that I am able to find a nice spot to put them to catch the western sunlight in the evenings.  That cement is the original apron to the single stall garage before we converted it.

The wind started kicking up and has shifted, even though the temperatures got up into the low 70s, the wind started to bite and blast from the Northeast.

I didn't finish planting the ivy, and we headed out on the front porch for a while We got out of the wind because the porch faces the West. I actually got some sunburn from sitting in the sunshine on the swing for a while. Or maybe I got it while planting or digging. We had soft music playing, glasses of ice water, and we spent a enjoyable late afternoon just relaxing. We need to learn to do more of that!!!

I whipped up some salads for supper and we cooked up a single pasty to split, made by the pasty oven in Florence Wisconsin. We are able to buy these at the local Piggly Wiggly in Oconto Falls, and they are pretty much my favorite pasty.

We did take the dogs out for a little romp through the big backyard and then hooked on their leashes to loop around the rest of the block. The wind was blasting pretty strongly now and they said it's going to not let up overnight. So I'm glad I didn't finish planting any more of the delicate plants and flowers, and I won't even think about planting the delicate thin stemmed tomato plants yet for maybe another week.

I think we will curl up for the evening and play some cribbage and Yahtzee maybe watching HGTV shows and get some more ideas???