Summertime!

Sooo....lots to discuss in the garden, mainly. Yesterday, I took the afternoon to work on the raised bed I built last year next to the pool. Turned all the dirt, added some rotted manure Betsy brought from the ranch and some grass clippings and even things out. Six hours later, voila!After getting things in order, I planted some dwarf dahlias (below, LOVE the pink-orange bloom)
and some white petunias. I still need to put the drip lines back in place.

The other bed, which is in the background of the picture, is filled with hateful bermudagrass, and I am in the process of poisoning it. Once it's all good and dead, I'm hoping to transplant some of my black-eyed susan seedlings, so I can see them from my office window all summer.

I moved some of the sunflower seedlings yesterday, too. The "tiny" ones, expected to come in at 4.5 feet, are planted along the pool fences. It's a bit touch and go at the moment: two got decimated by earwigs overnight, and several others are looking pretty wilty, despite my heavy watering. It may have been too early to move them.

Also along the pool fence (above) are balloon flower seeds. Nothing's sprouted yet. I planted them a little late in the season. The purple and yellow should be a fun combo, though.

Speaking of a fun combo, how about some pool and sunshine? Thanks to the wind the past few days, there's leaves at the bottom of the pool, but it was looking pretty darn good on Sunday when I floated around for the afternoon. Come a long way since last year. Mom and Dad: please note use of hooks in the background!
Pool shack, also looking super cute with hanging baskets of red petunias (that hopefully won't get eaten by budworms this year).
The baskets hung on the fence (toward the street) are bigger, so there's petunias and blue salvia in those. I'm curious to see how the combination turns out.
I was running back across the street from the neighbors' a few days ago, and I thought to myself for the first time since I've lived here, "Hey, this place doesn't look so bad."

Perhaps you agree? In any case, it doesn't look NEAR as bad as it did a year and a half ago.
I've mastered the Photomerge Panorama option of Photoshop elements to bring you this gem. A nice picture of the back yard, which, again, doesn't look that bad. At this point, I'll take it.

Please, step into my office

Well, it's almost finished! Here's what I did this weekend...

Turns out two coats of blue was mostly enough. There are a few spots that could stand to have a third coat, but since so much of the paint is covered by furniture anyway, I decided it would be ok. I'm also going to be doing a little shuffling when the chair rail goes up, so if I decide that it really needs another coat of Midnight Dream (the paint color), I can do it then.
After painting and reattaching the baseboard (in above and below pics -- quarter round will be installed at some point)...
I swept and scrubbed the floors to clean up any stray wallpaper bits and glue. Fun fact: a little WD-40 will remove dried Kilz2 primer from a wood floor. Painted the door wall white -- it too could probably do with another coat, which I might do this afternoon.
I think the blue looks really sharp. It's very crisp and dark and gives the room a nice weight.
Weight is good, since it gets so much light. Having the walls be almost completely white (if I'd done white wainscot instead of painting) would have been too much, for me anyway. I particularly love the contrast of the blue with the stripes of the curtains and patterning of the wallpaper.
And the three shadowboxes that I made a few years ago for our previous home in Pasadena finally got to come out of storage. They're on the left, and are a PERFECT fit in this room. The top has four shells, the middle is a piece of coral, and the bottom is a sand dollar.
One more...ahhh..love it!!
Ok, enough inside. This morning, I was delighted to discover one of my white pumpkins has sprouted! (Crappy pic...)
This is one of the pots next to our front porch. This flower is called mimulus (aka monkey flower) and I saw it in Boothbay Harbor a few years ago. I took a picture, but thought I'd never be able to identify it and buy some. The Grange had them a few weeks ago, and I was SO excited. The color is unbelievable, and they're just right for the part-sun location in front.
Around back again, two of my dahlia tubers have sprouted. One's picture below...
And my sunflower seeds have also sprouted. I'll give them another week or two in the bed, then transplant to the fence behind the pool and other places they can reach their full FOURTEEN FOOT height.
This is the honeysuckle I brought with from California. I transplanted it last year next to a dead tree so that it'll grow up it and look like a honeysuckle tree eventually (and attract hoards of hummingbirds right outside my office door!). It's doing quite well.
Lastly, I got a great deal on these hanging baskets, which have little red petunia starts and blue salvia starts in them. More to come on those, eventually.