Halloween Highlights

The 2014 Halloween party is dead. Long live the 2014 Halloween party.  *waves tiny flag*  #threedayhangover #notreally

So I didn't go all-out for Halloween this year - the usual decorations, for the most part, plus too much food, too much booze, lol.  I managed to throw my back out Saturday afternoon while getting ready for the party, and I still can't walk fully upright. It's fun.

This was the biggest hit of the entire party - and I have to say, I enjoyed hearing people howl with laughter after they went down the hall to the restroom, at both this "melted witch" (I got the idea from Pinterest), and at the artwork in the bathroom - I replaced the botanical prints in the frames on the walls with print-outs of funny s-rays, including Kermit the Frog with a hand skeleton, heehee).


Hint: no matter how clean the tub is, the water still looks kinda dirty...2-3 drops of blue food coloring made it look crystal-clear and clean.

My personal favorite Thing:  my spider-arium, filled with polyester "cobwebbing", some "mummy gauze", and a TON of hot-glue strings; as well as two large plastic-and-felt tarantulas, and a few packages of little plastic spideys (some of which escaped and were crawling up the dining room walls away from the tank).

This year I draped all the furniture in white curtains and sheets, as if the house was all shut up and vacant - it was pretty neat looking, if I do say so myself; and it saved my couch from a pretty bad drink spill, hehe.

( I was a biker dude for Halloween this year, complete with makeup-goatee and 5:00 shadow - that's my jacket on the chair in the pic).

This pic is mostly to say, "Hey, look at this awesome giant Ficus tree!"  it's seven feet tall;  I purchased it and all of the white curtains that I used for the furniture (98" white RITVA curtains from Ikea) from my old dance studio which went out of business recently.

THE AFTERMATH.

Good lord, that's a lot of cleanup.

I may or may not be personally responsible for the empty tequila and whiskey bottles.    0:)








.

Summer and Post-Rain Yard Maintenance

In case you don't live here, it's just rained for like three weeks running.  I'm not complaining - last year's drought was the worst on record for Texas, and this year's rains (which are actually "average", if that even means anything anymore) are a welcome, welcome sight.  So is all the green - this time of year everything turns brown and goes semi-dormant for the summer, but grass and trees and plants are all so wonderfully fluffy and green this week. :)

Yesterday was the first day in nearly three weeks it didn't rain, and the entire neighborhood has exploded into lawnmowers, edgers, and people in shorts crawling around on their hands and knees.  For my part, I hit the front yard running as soon as I got home from work last night:

• "mowed" the front yard (with a weedeater - I'm between lawnmowers at the moment)
• and edged the yard and garden beds (also with the weedeater)
• pulled some weeds
• pruned a few shaggy bits off of the oak tree in the front yard
• hoed, raked, and weeded the front garden bed
• also pruned a few new suckers out of the Mexican Orchid Tree in the backyard

Before - shaggy hangy-downy bits                                                  After - not a lollipop anymore! 

I promise my house isn't yellow.  That's the sunset.  It's actually beige I hate yellow.  I hate beige, too, but I hate yellow more. 

Also?  OMG I HAVE GRASS IN THE FRONT YARD FINALLY.  It hasn't been this green in three freeping years!!

Before - shaggy bits, and even a dead shaggy bit! (broken branch)                                After:  visible tree crotch is visible

Ta-da.   Fall down go boom now.  Bit tired after all that.  

.

Tree Maintenance

Last month, I don't remember if I mentioned it - I sure as heck didn't post any pictures, because I forgot to take any (d'oh!) - I pruned that big Mulberry tree in the backyard.  It had grown about five million water sprouts (small, weak branch-lets that grow from the main branches, and are pretty much useless - at best they make a tree look ragged, at worst they can actually cause structural damage, and are highly prone to disease and insect infestation).   The sprouts had grown so long that they were dragging the ground on all sides, and the tree looked like a giant, green, hairy lollipop.  NOT GOOD.

Today, as I had the day off from work, I did the same thing to the Mexican Orchid Tree:

Before: 

This is the MOT before pruning.  It's basically just a giant mound of plant.

It's eight feet wide.  I am not even kidding.

Witness also the roll of hardware fencing sitting next to it, that I never put away after re-doing the porch trellis.

In fact, the black thing standing up against the house on the right is the old trellis.  Way to put your toys away when you're done with them, me!  Ugh.










During:

Hi, Raven!  I had to take this picture twice. Daisy was pooping
behind the tree the first time and I didn't notice.  Ewwww.

Fact: it's 113º out today.  

This is the part where I get most of the heavy pruning done and go sit inside in the a/c for thirty minutes before I can finish, so I don't DIE.

Most of the main branches that had grown out sideways, or up and then bent down, have been removed at this point.












After:

you can kinda see the similar shape of the
Mulberry in this pic, too. 

All finished, yay!  *sweat*sweat*sweat*


All the mini-sprouts have been pruned out as well, and all the smaller branches that were growing sideways or down.  I've also cut out all the suckers that were popping up from the ground around the plant, and removed some of the thick stumpy branch-ends that were left over in the crown of the plant from branches I cut off last year.  (I forgot they were there - the bush covered them up!)

I raked the ground flat, got rid of the mound of dead leaves carpeting the ground under the tree, and swept the patio stones that were covered up by the tree - you can see here that they were never taken up and re-arranged when I did the circles pattern with the stones last year.  I'm AWESOME at being thorough, aren't I?  Yeesh.

This thing was HUGE, you guys.  There's a nearly-perfectly-circular area around the MOT where there's no grass at all, even between the stones on the patio.  You can't see it in the pic, but there's also a Garlic Chives plant under the left side that I thought had died long ago.  Nope!  It just got eaten by the tree.

Raven, in his search for a cool patch of ground to lay in, has dug two dog-shaped holes under this thing, too.  SIGH.  Next time I feel like braving the blistering central Texas heat, I'll dig out the compost bin and fill the holes, then cover the area with some more of these patio stones to keep him from doing it again and possibly damaging the tree.

I was bitten by a spider while I was pruning.  Yay!  I wonder if I'll get super-powers now.




.

Gardening: I Has It!

The other thing that happened over the weekend, after I got back from vacation, was a LOT of yardwork.  This last Sunday, the front yard got a good mowing and a fresh coat of grass seed (maybe it'll grow this time..?)

The back yard got the same treatment, along with some flower seeds in/near the shady corner garden - a mix of pink and red and white Cosmos, some native annual and perennial wildflowers, and larkspurs. Yay!

I also found some really cool stuff around the yard:

a volunteer Lemon Balm seedling in the yard!!!  Another plant
joins the ranks of survivors of the Martian Death Fungus. I
potted it up to keep it safe, and to keep it from spreading into
unwanted places, as mints are prone to doing. 

New berries/flowers on the Mulberry tree

OMG LOOK GRASS!!!

The little Chasteberry I planted last Fall, going strong! 

A white Yarrow, one of only three plants in the former Herb Garden
to have survived the Martian Death Fungus in the first place.  Until
this spring, it survived as a wee, weak sprout.  Now it's glorious! 

I heart my Mulberry tree. :) 

Unfortunately for the grass seed in the front yard, and the flower seed in the backyard, last night it stormed like you would not believe.  I knew it was going to rain, but I neglected to check the weather reports, or I'd have seen that it was going to rain frogs and plagues, and wash away not only my fresh seeds, but also about half the dirt in the part of the backyard still mostly only covered by dirt.  SIGH.

plans for the veggie beds I want to build in the backyard...

Hey, guess what? I built something.  Show you tomorrow. :)


.

Success!

The new backyard plans proceed apace, largely due to the fact that I'm on VACATION this week at home. No work, just work around the house that I never have time to do!

Look What I Made!

This is the couch cover I've been working on for a friend of mine for the past month:

TA DA!!!

Only one more to go, and I'm already [mostly] done with the seat cushion covers, with all this wonderful time off.  :)

And also....

Kress and I hit the backyard for about thirty minutes this morning to move some fencing around, and the trellis that was behind the little Chastetree.  Here it is before:

And after:  

This is in the shady corner behind the patio.  It's mounted on the fence with eye-bolts now, and ready for plants!  

Here's the little Chastetree without the trellis and giant weed behind it (egad); we removed all that temporary wire fencing from around that half of the yard, too, and used it to corral the Chastetree and the shady corner, to keep the dogs out until they can deal with the new additions without digging them up. :)

that grass is going to be SO GREEN in the Spring.

I wonder how long this will be the "little" Chastetree - this thing is growing like crazy!  No kidding, it's already settled in and has already put on about 8" of height since I planted it three weeks ago!  YAY!

The Beautyberry, however, I suspect is not long for this world.  It's having a REALLY hard time getting established out there.  Here's hoping.

Meanwhile, I'm working on costumes today, and will update about that shortly over at my other blog. :)


.

Yes, have some!

My backyard, in pictures: 

YAY! 

Ok, not really. This is what it actually looks like.

But then there was a tree* planted, and under that did I get all muddy.

Yes, that's this same area.  Stupid drought. That's a big weed behind the trellis.

So now it looks like this.

Plans for the next couple of weeks include:  removing some of the stones from the patio surface, clearing the brush pile in the southwest corner, planting a second Vitex tree, erecting the shade/roof over the patio that you see in the very first picture, and raking up the dog poop from the yard (not pictured).




*Chaste Tree, aka Vitex agnus castus, the one I bought on Monday.  A Mediterranean/north African native; extremely hardy, evergreen, water- and pest-resistant, covered in purple flowers and bees in most seasons here. Not really a "tree", rather a large shrub, 15' max. 


(Also, the house:yard ratio is waaaaay off in the drawings - the house is basically just there to show where it IS; but in the picture it makes the yard look huge, and it's really only about 36x23').




.