What's up

The last post I created was three weeks ago, lot has been going on since then. I've visited two countries and have enjoyed the hot summer weather we had here in Finland (now it's cold again). 

So, yes, I have been traveling. First Likka, me, my mom and my sister left for Vienna, Austria where my aunt and her family live. We all, except Likka, have been in Vienna many times before and so we mainly hung out with our relatives and did not spend much time in the city. We went to see my aunt's garden plot and did some gardening work there which was fun. On one day we visited the morning exercise of the Spanish riding school in the city. We went there with Likka, but after waiting in the queue to get the tickets we found out that children under three are not allowed to get in. That was a bummer and I thought that now I was forced to spend two hours outside alone with Likka, but luckily with the ticket you were able to get in and out from the place so I first went in with the ticket while my mom took care of Likka and then we switched and my mom was also able to see the horses.

We returned to the heat of Finland to notice that the cherries had already bloomed, the apples were blooming and the weather was hot and just perfect for sun bathing on the beach. I did manage to get some gardening done on few mornings and then it was time to leave for another trip.

Two friends I've met during maternity leave and their two children, both just over one year old, visited Tallinn. We went with a boat and stayed there for one night. The first day there was beautiful and we enjoyed a lunch on the terrace of a restaurant. Then we headed to a park to drink some wine. Later in the evening the weather got colder and we walked next to our hotel to have some dinner. Next day was totally different than the first, it was cold and rainy and we spent most of the day in cafes, restaurants and in shops. We had a really enjoyable trip.

Replanting

When I moved to my own home, to live on my own, I bought a coffee bush to decorate that home, about 10 years ago. The coffee bush was so tiny back then. Now it's not so tiny anymore. It was time again to replant the coffee bush, since it had out grown from the previous pot. I was hoping that I could have found a white pot for the coffee bush from my large collection of flower pots, but I only found a terracotta one on the right size. Terracotta is not bad either, it's after all very traditional.

Now the coffee bush is covering one third of the whole window area. I would prefer to have it deeper in the room and not having it in front of the view. But our living room is not the sunniest especially on winter and the plant would die from lack of light if it would be deeper in the room. Our bedrooms are lighter and I could keep the plant there, but I love to have one big plant in the living room. It makes the room come alive.

Rabbits... sigh

Those little buggers, rabbits. They have eaten my Christmas roses and I think they've eaten bit of my pine bonsai too. So annoying!

I find it odd the rabbits have decided to eat all the Christmas roses, those are poisonous after all. I wish the rabbit got at least some bellyache from those.

Here is what the Christmas roses looked like in December.

~ ~ ~ ~

But on a more joyful note, because we had a quite warm winter the spring is here really early. The snowdrops are already blooming. Yay, spring is here!

Over the weekend

We had a studio built in our home. A friend of ours is a pro photographer and we asked him to take some baby and family photos of us. We already got some photos from him, really good stuff. I will show some on Wednesday. Now we need to deside which of those to have print and framed.

Part of Finland has got the first snow last week. South Finland got just some hail, but it has been cold, really cold. I did a bit of crafts for the christening of Likka, those will be in two weeks. In the christening she will also get her real name. Need to plan the food served at the occasion and also the decorations. We got some table cloths and other items from A's mom and cousin for the christening which I need to check. Then have I done some fall cleaning on the front yard and some sewing.

Beautiful fall

It's been a nice few days. I've tried to spend as much time outdoors as possible. Some cleaning at the terrace, washing the windows from outside, raking and picture taking. And nothing really to blog about.

Potato growing bags, part two

I'm really super duper late with this post. This really isn't the right time anymore to start growing potato. Remember the potato growing bags that looked like trash cans? I made them because I got white plastic from work. Before I had received the plastic I had thought of making potato growing bags from tarpaulin, but changed my plans because of the free plastic, which then turned out to be an ugly idea.

After making three ugly trash can bags I decided to go with my original idea. My original idea was inspired by these hideously priced Bacsac growing bags or these bit more modestly priced Zigg Zagg ones. The Bacsacs do look nice at least the colourful ones, but Hello! I won't buy them at that price. The Zigg Zagg ones I could had bought but the colours are all wrong.

I wanted my potato bags to be white and so I bought a white tarpaulin with less that ten euro. Then sewed bags from that. I made two sizes, one with diameter and hight of about 40 cm and other with 30 cm. For both I cut a square, folded that in half and sewed the long egde together. Then turned the top over the bottom half, so that the seam was now left inside the two surfaces. After that I tucked in the sides of the tube and sewed the bottom close.

Then I sewed on a handle, so the bag is easier to move if needed. For the bigger one I sewed the handle to go all the way through the bottom, because I want it to support the bottom a bit. But I admit that it was quite difficult to sew, so on the smaller one I just sewed two handles on the sides. Since I made only two bags from the tarpaulin so I'm still left with a HUGE pile of it.

So I did not put potato into the bags, instead in the smaller one I planted some fall flowers and the bigger one I'm using to store some clothes of the kid. Next summer I can use the bags as I originally intended. The bag is not maybe the prettiest one for flowers. The point in using bags as containers is that those can be collapsed later when container gardening season is finished.

Please ignore the fact that I put way too little soil into the bag and the plants are now too deep to look their best.

One thing I would like to mention. Do not use cotton thread if you plan to grow something in this type of bag, it will compost, it's better to use polyester thread, that should last longer. 

Finished front yard

I promissed here in the post about the dry landscape garden to post about the plants me and my neighbour were planting in the front yard. The front yard has been finished for a long time, but I haven't seen my neighbour in days and I've forgotten what are the names of some of the plants we planted. Maybe I can update this post once I know the names.

I bought only four plants, all junipers. Three junipers called Blue Carpet, there on the picture next to the gravel, and one juniper Andorra compact, it's supposed to grow into a wide circular but low bush, that is the greener plant on the picture. Both me and my neighbour agreed that the area needs either perennials, which grow new shoots each year or something really low that can tolerate the heavy load of the snow that is piled on this area every winter. 

My neighbour planted two junipers more, similar to my Blue Carpet, but just less blue, also she brought from her cabin the Goat's beard plant, that is now planted in front of the rain water shoe. It looks a bit sad now, but it will perk up and next year it will look amazing. Also next to the white pole I planted a Carpathian harebell from our back yard, where it was not getting enough space. On the front is also some plant my neighbour brought from her cabin. I do not know the name of that, but according to her it grows easily to cover large areas and apparently has white flowers on spring.

I'm pretty pleased with our front yard. I hope everything thrives and that all of these survive the winter. But if not we can plant something else next year.

Flower bed upgrades

In addition of creating totally new flower bed next to the compost bins I've upgraded the existing beds a bit too. In a post from May 2011 I planted some ferns, old fashioned bleeding heart and christmas rose on the bed in front of the thuja trees. Here is a picture of the bed back then. 

Aren't those just tiny! After a while the bed looked like this. Still quite bare and empty.

Then at some point I had apparently planted some tulips and hostas and common solomon's seal which I later transplanted into a different spot. Under is a picture from May 2012.

After two years there were still some bare spots. I had moved the tulips a bit to the left side of the bed. But since tulips only bloom on the spring and die sometime during early summer I needed something that grows on that spot later in summer and covers up the empty space. Also I seem to have moved the turks' cap lily bit further back, those also bloom on the spring and do not have good coverage of the area later on summer. In that area I now planted a hosta. The old fashioned bleeding heart seems to also have the same problem as the tulips and lily. It goes all yellow and ugly later in the summer, so I needed something to distract the eye from that too and chose to put more hosta there. I seems I like hostas... Here is what the bed looks now.

1. Christmas rose, three plants actually. Those have not bloomed that well, but I like the foliage too.
2. Hosta, I'm not sure which, it was in our garden before we moved in, these I just transplanted here. The leaves are light green.
3. Ferns, those have now died for this summer, but grow very nicely early on spring.
4. Old fashioned bleeding heart, it has beautiful white flowers, but it dies quite early in the middle of summer. 
5. More hosta, this particular one with white edges on the leaves.
6. Windflower, there are actully two varietes, the other one is near the number 10.
7. This is a place for the summer flowers that are not winter hardy. I need this area for wintering the peppermint and the bonsai, so I need to dig out the plants each fall from that area.
8. Turk's cap lily has bloomed already. It has not been a huge success, there is one red beetle that keeps eating the plant and I have not been quick enough to keep the beetle away.
9. Common solomon's seal, when I bought it I though it would grow tall, but this particular one does not, so I moved it some time ago from the back to the front.
10. Some new hosta 'stiletto' with cool narrow leaves and white edges. 

I did upgrade another flower bed too next to our terrace pergola. I do not think I've shown this bed before here on the blog. On that bed I used to have a climbing rose New Dawn, but it did not really thrive. Even though I did cover it in winter at least some of it's branches froze every year and I had to cut those off. So it never got really big and it kept growing wild root shoots, which grew much faster than the actual plant. Ofcourse once the rose did bloom it was beautiful, but the flowers did not last long and there were only a few of those anyway. So the rose had to go. On it's spot I planted a climbing hydrangea. I hope that is more winter hardy and blooms longer.

And here is the whole bed, everything has bloomed already, but here is the list of the plants anyway.

1. Lily of the valley, this has spread quite nicely.
2. The climbing hydrangea
3. The original hosta plant, which I have now divided to many places in the garden
4. Peony, this one has bright pink ball like flowers

We'll see how everything looks like next summer. I do like perennials, it's so easy to move them around and on spring those just grow from under all that snow and dirt and suddenly everything is filled with plants.

For our neighbour

We live in a rowhouse and because of that I have two nextdoor neighbours. The other one who helped me with the front yard lives on the left next to us. Between our back yards are thuja trees and a flower bed on our side. The neighbour on our right has a back yard behind the corner of our house. And on that corner I have two compost frames. I wonder if they have enjoyed that view. I did ask them if I can place the composts there and they say they did not mind them, but I somehow doubt it.

After two years the other compost frame was all lopsided and ugly even to my eyes. So in the name of good neighbour relationship I straightened the compost frame and created a flower bed next to the frame to cover the view for them. I was a super lazy blogger and did not take any before pictures, but I'm sure you have good imagination. Here is a picture of the frames back in 2011.

The wicker compost frame was a bit flimsy so I added a wooden pole on one of the corners of the frame and supported the two sides to that. Then I dug off dirt from the side of the compost and took out all roots and weeds.

I added an egde from paving stones on the neighbours side of the flower bed and just a piece of timber on our side. Then I first planted some hosta there, which I divided from a big bush of hosta elsewhere in our backyard. I bought a hydrangea bush which I planted in the middle and windflower next to the maple tree.

If I was my neighbour I would enjoy my new view on plants instead of a compost bin. Some grass seeds could be planted in front of the flower bed. It's still bare from the pipe renovation we had earlier.

Raised beds update

For the smaller raised bed I made I planted cucumber and for the bigger one two rows of potato. I think I have bit neglected the raised beds and the whole back yard actually, because I have totally forgotten to water the plants. I had given some cucumber seedlings to my coworker and he said that they've gotten lots of big cucumbers from the plants. In my cucumber bed only one cucumber is big enough to pick. It has been really dry and it's no wonder the plants are not growing that fast. I've got to step up on this one so we get any crop. The potato is also growing just long stalks, hope there is some potato too under the surface.

Front yard dry landscape garden

Last fall our housing cooperative had a pipe renovation going on on our front yard. All the pipe work was finished in the fall, but snow came really early last winter and the landscaping work got delayed. We had huge canyons on our front yard, but that was fine, on winter the areas are normally covered with huge piles of plowed snow anyway.

Before the pipe renovation we had three rhododendron bushes on the front yard and huge amount of narcissus bulbs there. I don't think I have a single picture from the front yard before the renovation because I wasn't planning to do much any changes in there. But when the landscaping got delayed I started to think that the things we had there were not really pretty or practical. Each winter the area is covered in huge pile of snow, some of it is plowed there and some drop from the roof. And each spring the rhododendron had suffered under the heavy load of snow. I had to cut broken branches from it yearly and the bushes just never really thrived in that place. Also the place is very hot and sunny during the morning and on the evening there is no sun at all. So when the landscaping started this year I had a new plan.

You might remember that I removed some soil from the front yard and moved it to the back yard to the raised beds. I did not need that soil in the front yard because I planned to make a zen garden inspired dry landscape garden there. The landscaping has been a long process since I first had to build the raised beds, create an area for them and move the soil. All my neighbours are quite finished with their front yards already, for me it's taken a bit longer. 

From the area I removed the soil from I spread a canvas that prevents plants growing through it (still don't know the name of that canvas). I ordered "some" gravel, about 1000 kg (2200 lbs) of it. I knew when I ordered it that that amount will be bit too much but it was way cheaper to order a giant bag of the gravel than ordering many small amounts.

The gravel came on friday and A and I moved most of it to the front yard on sunday. It has been really hot for couple of days and moving hundreds of kilos of gravel was a swetty job. But a job so worth it!

The gravel area of our dry landscape garden is beautiful! I love it! I'm not too sure what our neighbours think of it. Our front yard is very different to any of our neightbours now. At least our next door neighbour has been excited about my plans. When I told her my plans and that I would like to have a big rock on top of the gravel, she has been helping me find big rocks. I was first planning to order one huge rock, but because my neighbour found many bit smaller rocks that were quite a good substitute for the huge rock I've desided to use only these "small" rocks instead. She has been a really good assistance and consult for me. Now we have planned together what plants we will put there in the soil area that is still empty. She said that she has some overgrown Goat's beard plant at her cabin and I happen to like that plant a lot, so she will bring some from there and then I will buy some low growing evergreens and plant those on the curvy edge.

The planting will get a post of their own when that is done. But oh my how I love my dry landscape garden!