While my garden plants are starting to come back, I am definitely missing my roses. You might not think it, but September is generally a great time for roses. After the heat and the humidity of the summer, they love the warm days, but cool nights of early fall, and they always put on a good show.
But not this year of course. While they all have new leaves, I really don’t expect to see blooms on them this season. Which makes me very sad.
So I might have been especially vulnerable when I went grocery shopping and they had a display of mini-roses out front.
I’ve never actually had much luck with mini-roses, to be honest. But when I was a teen, the grandmother of my boyfriend at the time had a garden full of them. She told me never leave them in the pot, they do much better planted in the ground. So I’m giving it a try.
As you can see, I chose a nice pale yellow. I adore yellow roses. If this one winters well, there will be more next spring.
I can’t quite explain what made me add this big yellow mum to the cart though…
Other than its absolutely fabulous, and obviously, I LOVE yellow. Like the other mums I bought, these have been planted in the ground.
This is not where they will stay, but its good enough for now. The bushes of green on either side of the gate are also mums – my pair from the townhouse – one white, one burgundy. They are covered in buds and should start opening soon. It’s going to be quite the show then!
When Dave and I started seriously looking at houses, we made up a list of must-haves. It must have a garage, it must have at least three bedrooms (so we could each have an office/studio space), it must have a bathtub (not shower only, I need to soak!). It wasn’t really a big list, actually.
So we made a list of nice-to-haves too; things we wanted, but wouldn’t make us walk away from a house if it didn’t have it.
On my list was a window over the kitchen sink. It’s a silly little thing, but I’ve always loved the idea of a window over the kitchen sink. I don’t know why… I have a dishwasher. Even when I do wash dishes by hand (rare, because Dave usually does the few things we have to do), it doesn’t take very long – certainly not long enough to NEED a window for entertainment!
Still. I was thrilled when I saw that this house did indeed have a window over the kitchen sink (In fact, every house we bid on did!)
I even had a little lace curtain (previously on my powder room window) that fit perfectly on it!
Now one of Dave’s “nice-to-haves” was no neighbours. After living in townhouses for the last 15 years, he REALLY didn’t want to live near anyone else. We both wanted a house in the country. Obviously, that didn’t happen, though there is a full-driveway-width between us and the neighbours on each side so we aren’t right on top of each other . Still, he wasn’t exactly thrilled that this window looks out right over our neighbour’s back porch. He really didn’t like the fact that could see the neighbours while he washed up the occasional pot or two. He did not appreciate my pretty little lace curtains.
Since I believe, if a man is willing to do dishes in the first place, it’s best to keep him happy doing them. So I went stash diving.
I’ve mentioned before that, when we finally get to renovating the kitchen it will be a nice, warm yellow. With that in mind, I thought this cute little pale yellow chicken print would do just nicely.!
It was a clearance bin find, and I had more than enough to make a couple panels for the little window. Like my sewing studio curtains, I kept it simple.
Though the lace bin did yield up enough trim to add a little bit of whimsy.
There was enough to trim the edges, and make tie backs. And yes… I did use thumbtacks to hold these ones back too…
But they are yellow thumb tacks at least! And now, whenever Dave is doing dishes, he can easily close the curtains and looks at hens and chicks instead of neighbours!
Now that we’ve got some more tolerable weather, I’ve been able to pay more attention to my yard. I still haven’t done too much beyond keeping it tidy, but I did go out and clean up all the dead stuff off the ones I transplanted from the townhouse.
As a reward, some of them are giving me new blooms!
Tickseed, Fancy Black-Eyed Susans, and Bellflower.
They aren’t many, but I’ll take all I can get!
The neighbours morning glory that is spilling over the fence is still going gangbusters. For some reason, the dark purple ones look like they have a portal to another dimension at their centre.
After Mom and the girls left last Saturday (we had a lovely visit, though much too short – they still had a three hour drive home), Dave and I got started on the floor in his studio.
Of all the people who’ve been working on this home (namely, Dad, Mom, Dave and I). I am the youngest (at a positively youthful 41 going on 42), and most spry. I’m also the one with the best knees. So that meant I would be the one actually laying it.
Those knee pads didn’t stay on long… I hate having sweaty knees
Not long after we took possession of the house, Dave found an amazing deal on Kijiji. Nine hundred sq. ft of laminate flooring for just $200. There was a catch… it was used, but we decided to take a look and see if it was worth it. It was. Apparently it was only about a year old. The guy we were buying from had just bought the house a few months earlier, and his wife didn’t like the floor, so they took it out and put in something she did like. And he did an excellent job of removing it. We could see very little damage on it (and for that price, if we had to throw away a third of it, we’d still be ahead).
We loaded up Dory (well overloaded her actually. FYI – laminate flooring is very heavy. Don’t put more than one room’s worth in your old, beat-up SUV… I got a good scolding from Dad when he saw the pictures) and were on our way. We stuffed it in the garage and there it has sat, just waiting for us.
Since the flooring was used, we had to be a little more strategic, and use already cut pieces wherever we could. Since Dave couldn’t help me down on the floor (even if he was physically able to, that part is a one-man job), he cleaned and sorted the boards so they were ready for me to install. He also cut boards when the needed cutting, which is not something I’d be able to do – he bought this neat little cutter that works somewhat like a guillotine, though you need more muscle than I have to get all the way through the planks.
We ended up with a pretty efficient system. We don’t normally work well on projects together, but other than a little sniping back and forth at the start, we made a pretty good team.
About halfway through, the snoopervisor took up his position to make sure my seams were nice and tight. Unlike the other two cats, he wasn’t particularly disturbed by the mallet I used to tap the boards in. He also spent some time making sure Dave was getting the boards cleaned, and that his cuts were nice and straight.
And speaking of cuts… you might notice a certain ruler in the picture above. I started out with a tape measure, until I had an epiphany.
My big quilting ruler (6″ x24″) was just perfect for measuring the size needed to fill in the ends. Not only could I see through it, but I could use the full end to draw my line (instead of having to line up ticks), and I could use the other lines on it to make sure my line was square and not angled slightly! I feel like a genius!
It took pretty much all day, but the floor got done!
I’ll be honest, it’s darker than I wanted, but again that price was too good to pass up. Dave loves dark floors (he would have gone even darker if he could) so he’s quite pleased with it. I’m really just happy to see a floor in there. We still need baseboards, crown trim, a new sliding glass door and window, and trim for both of those… and they won’t come for a while due to budget restraints… but still, putting in the floor really makes it feel like a usable room!
Now that its done. my attention goes back to drywall – we have all the materials to finished the living room drywall, so I’ll work on that while we save up some more money to finish this room.
As work on the house is keeping us busy, we haven’t had a lot of time to explore our the area much. Strathroy is the closest city (about 25 minutes away) and we know that pretty well because it has all the big chain stores – Walmart, Canadian Tire, Rona, etc. To the north of us, there’s a tiny town called Watford – we like it because it’s the closest (seven minute drive), and has a very nice Home Hardware Building Centre where we can get drywall and paint and other fun things. To the south (12 minute drive) is another tiny town called Glencoe. It has No Frills, the cheapest place to get groceries, and a Godfather’s pizza to satisfy Dave’s panzarotti cravings.
But other than that, we haven’t checked out much more.
However, the other day, we ended up taking a little road trip to Lambton Shores, a township about 40 minutes to the north, so Dave could get a mitre saw off someone on Kijiji. (We are going to have A LOT of baseboard to cut at some point!)
We ended up in the area about 30 minutes before our agreed upon meeting time, so I told Dave we were going on a side quest. He couldn’t tell because there were houses in the way, but I knew where we were – and that on the other side of those houses was a big blue lake!
We drove down the road a little until we came to one of the inevitable little parks you always find along the big blue lakes in Ontario. When Dave realized where we were, he got very excited.
That, my friends, is Lake Huron – the second largest of the five Great Lakes. Both Dave and I have grown up on Lake Ontario. Dave’s family cottage is on Long Point on Lake Erie, and used to work in Port Colborne, which is also on Lake Erie. My brother and I spent many summer days swimming in Lake Huron (much further north from here). I even got to see Lake Michigan when work sent me to Chicago. (Though it was February, which is a very… unfortunate… time to see Lake Michigan.) The only one of the Great Lakes I’ve never seen is Lake Superior.
But back to our side quest…
Because Dave’s never lived more than a five minute drive from a Great Lake, he’s been feeling very weird about where we live now. The Syndeham River does meander on by the town, but otherwise, there’s not much water around. I knew he’d be happy to see a big lake.
The little parkette we stopped at was actually at the top of a large, sandy cliff – I’m guessing about 200 feet high. Except for one spot (seen above in the last picture) we couldn’t even see the shoreline. In fact, we could only hear the water lapping the shore at that one spot too. The trees and shrubs on the cliff were just that dense. There’s no way we were able to get down to the water’s edge.
We didn’t stay very long – it was horribly hot (30C/87F) with crazy high humidity (felt like 40C/104F). Dave was melting in minutes. While he headed to the truck and its ice cold a/c, I skipped over to something that had caught my eye in the field across from the parkette.
Some pretty yellow Coneflowers! One had an unidentified beetle on it, and another had a little periwinkle snail hiding out from the sun! The flowers were mostly done, so I snagged a few spent heads for the seeds. I don’t have yellow cone flowers for my garden yet!
In the end, I got back in the truck, and we headed back to get the saw. (We also got a drill press and both were a crazy good deal).
On the way home, we drove through the town of Petrolia looking for a drive-thru for some road sustenance. I have to say, that town has the prettiest little downtown. We agreed that we’d do a day trip this fall when the weather is much more tolerable. We’re going to walk the whole downtown, then stop at a little Chip Wagon and explore a park that was full of geese. So that’s something to look forward to soon!
I know Relic… where the heck to did August go??? To be honest, the whole summer just flew by. But it certainly was a hot one. I’m definitely looking forward to some cooler temps and slower days in September. Maybe then, I’ll finally get a chance to give my “gardens” a little attention.
Even so, left to their own devices, things are doing okay out there. The plants continue to put down new roots, including the roses, which are starting to put up new leaves – a sure sign they are happy.
The Physostegia is still going strong
She’s a great bit of late-season of colour, and will be even prettier next year.
The sedum continues to bloom.
While I had several clumps of sedum at the townhouse, I only brought one. It will spread fairly quickly and is easy to break up . It’s also very easy to find at the garden centres if I decide I need more. (I wouldn’t mind a few different shades)
It looks like I will get some late-season strawberries.
They have obviously taken well to their new home.
And my Hibiscus continues to give me a new bloom every day or so.
I only got to enjoy the blooms on the butterfly bushes for a short while. Just Royal Red has a few left and they are almost done.
And last, I couldn’t resist these $4 Chrysanthemums at the grocery store (Dave’s fault – he made me go to pick up something he’d run out of and didn’t put on the grocery list!)
I did bring my white one and my burgundy one from the townhouse, but they won’t bloom for a little while yet. These new ones will be planted somewhere in the yard, I just haven’t quite decided where yet.
The past couple of weeks have been horribly hot and humid. We have a/c in the house, but just old window rattlers. They are strategically placed to the rooms we spend the most time in. Sadly, my sewing studio is not one of them.
Still, as long as the door is kept open, it’s reasonably comfortable in there. Until you turn the iron on.
I put a fan in the room, and it helps quite a bit. Unless you’re a cat at floor level…
He could easily go to any of the rooms that are cooler, or even lay in the hall between this room and the bedroom (which has an a/c unit), but no… he has to be right with me at all times.
I figure he can self regulate, so I just went about my sewing. And tried not to step on him, because of course, he’s directly in the path between the sewing machine and the cutting table.
With his “assistance” I finished up two more blocks for my Ahoy Matey quilt.
It’s a fun block that goes together pretty quick when you have all the pieces cut and ready to sew. I now have four blocks complete…
Wandering Cat Studio 