One Iris out of the hundreds in our garden

I recently had a contractor doing some work give me a bit of a scare. We have vines growing all over our barn and up a 160 year old oak tree in the back yard. He was looking at the tree and jumped back pointing to the vine saying “that’s poison oak”. I remembered clearing brush away from that tree last year and not getting a rash but assumed that him being a country boy from around here he knew what he was talking about. I noticed another vine just like it in the front garden this morning and it made me do a Google search to find out what it was.

I Googled both Poison Oak and Poison Ivy and it didn’t look like what we have. So I Googled deciduous vine with five leaves and found that it is actually a vine called a Virginia Creeper. I can see why he thought it was poison oak but am very happy its not. Virginia Creeper is one of those vines that’s easy to grow and near impossible to kill. I love it on the barn, in the summer it is lush and green and in the fall the leaves turn a gorgeous red before falling off. The areas we have it are very shady and it adds so much color and texture.

Virginia Creeper in the Spring and Fall

We live on four acres and have a huge golf course behind us so there is no shortage of critters around here. In the year we’ve lived in this house I’ve seen possums, raccoons, skunks, rabbits and lots and lots of deer. I’ve been wanting a veggie garden since we moved in here but didn’t want to use the expensive chemicals to keep all the animals from eating it. I certainly didn’t want to have to worry about reapplying them and risking my garden being destroyed. My solution was an inexpensive dog kennel from Lowe’s. It is large enough for two good size garden beds and my upside down tomato grower. What I really love about this is if I have a problem with birds going for the berries I can easily cover it with netting to keep them out. If I ever want to move this it will be fairly easy, the bottom has a couple of good thick layers of weed mat underneath it so it’ll be easy to shovel the dirt out (I know this from experience).

The kennel I purchased was the cheapest that Lowe’s carries, mainly because it was the only one that would fit in the back of my Yukon. The chain link fencing comes in rolls that you attach to the frame. The frame snapped together easily and the chain link fencing was no where near as bad as I thought it would be. The instructions were horrible but I was able to figure it out and I put it up all by myself while hubby watched the kids. I plan on running an underground watering system to it at some stage but given its about thirty yards from the nearest water source it can wait a bit. I’ve got a long enough hose and sprinkler that sprays in a square pattern. Now I just need to plant my veggies!

This has been our first spring in the house and I am loving everything that’s been popping up in the garden. There have been daffodils, tulips and tons and tons of Iris’s. We missed this last year, we looked at the house at the very beginning of May, right before everything started blooming. We moved in right at the end of June and by then sadly everything had already stopped blooming.

This morning I walked outside and was met with the sweet fragrant smell of hundreds of blooming Iris’s. I’m happy I have so many of them and I can’t wait until this fall to transplant them to a better location. Right now they are in two garden beds and when they finish blooming they aren’t very attractive in their current locations. I’m going to plant them either along our fence line or give them all a large garden bed in the front yard so I can see them out my office window and fully enjoy them next year.

I’ve been doing a lot of work in the gardens removing a lot of the old landscaping and replanting. I’m also about to put in a veggie garden amongst other things. If you are a gardening fanatic be sure to check back often to see all the work we’re doing. I’d love some pointers!

I love the outdoors, we spend a lot of time out on our patio area in the summer. As beautiful as it is Mother Nature sure can make a mess of it. Yesterday I went out to pressure wash the house around the patio area. I love the look of a white house but white vinyl siding takes a lot of work to keep it clean. I pulled the ladder out, cleaned up to the roof line and thought I’d give the concrete a spray down while I was out there. I knew it wasn’t pristine but I sure wasn’t expecting what I got after the first swipe. The concrete was uniformly dirty so I never realized the amount of mold and dirt that had become such a huge part of my patio. I spent an hour cleaning the patio and can’t believe the difference it made.  I have a love hate relationship with my pressure washer, I love how easy it is to get everything looking sparkling clean but when I clean one section it makes everything around it look dirty. I clean the next section, then the next and soon realize there is no end in sight. It has to be my favorite piece of outdoor equipment, something all homeowners should have.

Last year I took my pressure washer to my parents house and gave their old fences an all new look in an hour. My dad was complaining about needing new fence boards. It took about two hours but the fence looked like new. I found that I could teach a very old dog new tricks. The two hours I spent washing the fence saved my dad a small fortune in time and supplies and gave their back yard a fresh new look.