Monday garden update

The rain isn't giving me any real chance to get out and weed or mulch  - but so far most of the plants are growing well enough to hide whatever isn't neat.  Eventually the rain will stop and the heat will fry my lovely garden... and I know this.  Yet every spring I'm so hopeful.  That's almost poetic, I think.

The water still standing outside the trenched flowerbeds 

long after a morning shower.

The great thing about establishing a perennial garden is that even when things get mostly ugly and struggle to survive the mid-summer droughts - all is not lost.  I know that when the cooler fall months come all of those straggly plants will put down new roots and come back even bigger and even more beautiful the next spring.

My daylilies are a prime example.  Bought exclusively from spring clearance sales or in unsorted bulk from various internet suppliers - the first couple years with my new daylilies usually produce little more than a yellowed strap of a leaf.. marking the spot where there will someday actually be a plant that flowers.  (And how they will flower is a total mystery until it happens.  Even if I did know what variety I planted at the time - after a couple of years I completely lose track.  It's okay. I like surprises.)  

We have dozens of varieties of daylilies in the yard - but this one

 is my absolute favorite. I wait every spring to see this bloom for the first time.  

This year's payoff for my patience includes a pretty little hybrid Lantana in the front yard.  I planted it three springs ago and at the time it was a tiny plant with about four leaves and no flowers.  The label said it was a 'hot pink' variety but I had no way of knowing if this was true or not considering the above-mentioned lack of flowers.  It didn't flower that first year.. or second... Actually it didn't even grow.  It languished.  Today I've got a nice 24" x 24" mounding clump of gorgeous - complete with real hot pink flowers.  It was worth the wait.

My fantastic hot pink Lantana.  It's truly hot pink!  

I've gotten pink varieties before only to end up

 with light orange flowers... But this is the real deal.

I have an enormous amount of respect for gardeners who use annuals in the flower garden.  I wish I could be one of them.  The fact is though - when I try I never get anywhere close to a season out of those plants.  They're totally temporary.. like paper plates.  I plant my annuals and they look great the first day - then they take a couple of weeks (if I'm really lucky) to die.  And that's why I gave up.  I started looking for perennials.. for natives.. for naturalizers.  I need a garden that grows itself.  

There's a trade-off for sure.  I often envy the beautifully sculpted and color-coordinated (and nearly instant!) annual gardens I see around town.  I get no instant gratification...  For all the work I put into the garden I usually just have dreams to show for it.... In a few years - it will be what I hope for - barring drought, flood, holocaust or Japanese beetle invasion.  However, I don't get the sense that I'm sculpting a garden... making a garden.. decorating my yard... Instead - I feel as if I am participating (albeit in a tiny little way) in nature.  

It's not a formal garden - but it is earnest.  Yeah.  I like that.  It suits us just fine.

Suggested resources:

The Color Encyclopedia of Daylilies

Monday garden update

We made a change this year to our gardening tactics... We have finally given up on keeping up with pine straw mulch. It's gorgeous. It's fantastic for the soil (if you have acid-loving plants). But in our climate (read: extreme heat and rain) and with all the aggressive soil microbes we've managed to get thriving in our garden soil - we couldn't seem to lay down new straw any faster than the old broke down and disappeared.

Common Yarrow growing happily.

We opted for a nice chocolate-brown shredded cypress mulch from a local gardening center. Delivered by the trailer-full - it's easier right from the start. The mulch is a gorgeous deep brown color when wet. The garden-center fellow warned us that some people don't like it much when it dries out as it tends to look like dirt. We don't mind. Dirt is good. As long as it doesn't look like cotton candy or astroturf - I'm fine with it.

We laid down a nice 4 inch layer throughout the flowerbeds back in January. We actually started running out somewhere in the backyard near the patio -- and really need another truckload to get everything mulched right... But lots and lots of rain delayed our plans before we were indefinitely stalled by incomprehensible insurance premium payments out of the blue.

Yarrow, fig, cannas, iris, taro, amaryllis, heather and other stuff.

The taro is a completely accidental ("natural") addition to the garden -

it apparently crept under our back fence and completely took over in less than a month.

My take on straw versus bark mulch? Well... The bark mulch is not quite as good at keeping the weeds away as the straw initially. The bark tends to pack down and the most persistent weeds find crevices through which to emerge. Straw does keep the weeds 100% away. That is - until it starts to break down... which is right away.

However, unlike straw - the bark mulch makes weeding supremely easy. Most of the weeds are actually growing in the mulch itself. Weeds rooted in nice soft loose mulch are very easy to uproot. This is good. A few minutes per few square yards with a hay fork and my weeding woes are taken care of for a week or so. Nice. With the straw mulch it was necessary to remove the straw -- pull out the weeds and then replace the straw. As you can imagine - this gets pretty tedious pretty fast and somewhere around June and 100 degrees - we let the weeds take over. I have high hopes for winning some of the weeding battles this summer.

We have tried year after year to start berries somewhere in the garden.

We finally found a nice native blackberry and voila -- results.

As noted above, we didn't actually get our mulch down until January. Not that mulch would have helped this winter... We lost several perennials this winter - including a couple of our new banana trees. Overall though - I'm really impressed with how many things came back - and are still coming back out there. Even more impressive - we don't seem to have any sprinkler system leaks despite the many hard freezes.

These guys sat around for years before they decided to do something.

Considering all of the other things we have to do around here on a given day - I have accepted that I can not have a manicured garden. To this end - I have been working for the last couple of years to 'naturalize' our flower beds. This is really just a fancy way of saying I'm not doing much of anything except providing the soil, water, and space for nature to take its course. I've been adding perennials each year and ever-so-patiently waiting for everything to get established and start to spread. Some of the pictures attached to this post show just how much this is happening in some areas - but we have a long way to go.

And speaking of following up....

Remember when we were laying out the slate tiles we decided not to use in the bathroom as a garden path? We did eventually almost finish that project. Tiles shifted here and there and it required a lot of repacking of sand and dirt (since we decided against using mortar) before the tiles decided they liked where they were and should stay...

And this is when I should be posting a follow-up "after" picture of that project. However - I missed taking that shot. In the meantime - we haven't been doing a lot of heavy duty maintenance to the yard and gardens this year -- only keeping it at bay as far as grass-cutting and the occasional weeding marathon. In addition - it's been too hot for Judge to stay outdoors much.

So.. If you take some aggressive St. Augustine grass - add to it our lack of attention - then subtract the dog who usually runs back and forth along that path 500 times a day: You get a disappearing slate path!

We don't mind the grass overtaking the path...
But something will be done about the olive vine that has eaten our gate columns.

We're not at all unhappy with this as my original intent was to do something about the muddy trail Judge was blazing back there -- and that is definitely fixed. Also - I kind of like how the slate is slowly being uncovered naturally. There's something romantic about it... Like a hint that somewhere under our yard there's something beautiful.

Or maybe I'm just lazy. :)

The Earthmaker

I was just out frolicking in the breezy backyard when I remembered something: I never got Dave to blog about his birthday present this year. Therefore, I will do it for him.

This is it. Earthmaker - the aerobic composter.

I spent a long time searching for a backyard composter since the demise of the ComposTumbler this past spring. The original plan was to simply replace the Tumbler with another until, after reading a few online reviews, realized that it was not Katrina that destroyed that unit afterall. We had assumed that when the rotating handle fell off from rust - it was a flood-related problem.. And I'm sure that accelerated the process. However, online reviews in areas not inundated by hurricanes complained of the same thing over relatively short periods of time. Not at all acceptable for a piece of equipment that can cost as much as $700.

Not only that - but we both started to realize that it was not the ComposTumbler that we had fallen in love with in the first place: It was composting. The Tumbler claims faster composting if you turn the crank handle every day... And that may even be true! However... We didn't always turn the handle every day. What happens when you don't turn the handle? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. If I leave a pile of leaves in the back corner of the yard for 6 months - the bottom layer will start to compost. If I leave a pile of leaves in a ComposTumbler for 6 months - I get a pile of rotten leaves and a few million nasty insects.

We also had a problem overfilling our cute little backyard Tumbler... There are a lot of people in this house - we produce a lot of kitchen scraps. As for garden 'clippings' (doesn't that sound dainty?) -- we produce mountains of those.

I was looking for something that didn't cost $700 - didn't have any parts to rust - didn't require cranking once a day - would produce compost unattended if necessary - that kept out mice, rats, and curious toddlers, and would allow us to add materials pretty much continuously.

The Earthmaker is what I came up with. I r smart. We like it so far although we haven't had it long enough to produce any finished compost. Still -- I've been impressed with how fast the material added has broken down and the capacity is great (I'm saying this before the big fall garden clean-out.... We'll see what I think then). It looks good, has a small footprint, and makes people say "What the heck is that?" And it's from New Zealand.

Only problem - guessing from all the flyers packed in the box telling us what to do if we found broken parts upon unpacking (which we did) -- this thing has a tendency to get a little rattled in shipping. Fortunately - customer service is good and no major problems.

We'll be sure to follow-up here on the blog with our results in a few weeks.

Does it not get hot in Houston anymore?

I'm getting a steady stream of traffic from Houston and surrounding areas over the last couple of days from search engines. The biggest question they're all asking is "Why do they say they need ice after hurricanes?"

I'm not going to go into great detail about this here as I feel that I have talked it to death elsewhere on the blog and you're all capable of clicking the 'More' links at the bottom of this post.

However - I will say this one very simple thing that I apparently didn't qualify in all of my other writings: IF IT IS HOT following a hurricane..... Then one needs ice. I'm sorry I didn't mention this before -- it's just that it's always hot here after a hurricane.

I heard from two people so far that I happen to know in the area who said the temperature earlier this afternoon in Houston was around 77 or 78 degrees Fahrenheit and that it dipped into the lower 60s last night. OKAY. That's heavenly weather right there, guys... If you've got that going on -- that's fantastic and you're right... You don't need ice. (And I'm sincerely glad you don't.)

Our temperatures were in the 90s during the day and MAYBE the upper 80s at night on the coolest nights (and trust me - we really appreciated the cool breeze)... And get this -- that's the norm here in August.

Speaking of temperatures, by the way -- it's 79 degrees here today and GORGEOUS! This cooler weather may actually start motivating me to get some more done around the house soon.

With fall approaching we need to start thinking about the gardens again.... So, does anyone know of a good, cheap bulk-supplier of pine needle mulch? Lowe's is the only game in town for us - and their price on the stuff has more than doubled in the last year while the quality has gone WAY down -- we get more sticks and leaves in the bales than straw! Seriously - let us know.. We'd really appreciate it.

We have checked out a couple of the websites at the top of the search engine but the shipping costs are terrible. Anywhere we can drive to? Any chances of a flatbed truck delivery instead of shipping through UPS or something ridiculous like that where we're paying for BOXES as well as straw?

Thanks guys.

A picture's worth a thousand words

Oh man, am I feeling the burn of not having a camera this morning.....

But since it's been days since I posted - I shall try to fulfill my blogging duties anyway by a quick run-down of status of our various projects around the house as of this moment:

• Garden: The garden has been reclaimed by native swamp in several areas following a few weeks of native daily rainfall. In areas which have yet to become bog - monster weeds have taken over because a) I haven't been out in the rain to weed b) due to extreme heat in between torrential downpours, our pine straw mulch has broken down completely in several areas and c) I haven't been out in the rain to mulch.
• Roof: I can't complain about the roof. I haven't seen it as much as I would like (see above regarding rain), but from what I have seen it looks stellar. We have noticed that in the middle of the blazing hot day it's hard to tell that we even made a color change... However, early mornings and sun-setting evenings reveal a darker, warmer housetop. I like it.
• Decor: I have recently done my duty as an American citizen by stimulating the economy through the purchase of various and sundry items to hang on the bare walls.
  
• Upstairs bath: Although no visible progress has been made on the bathroom - a few things have happened (and not happened) regarding the upstairs bath. For instance, we are now in possession of an adequate quantity of 18" x 18" ceramic tile (Mohawk Patagonia Charcoal) to finish the floor. We are now waiting for another attempt at having the second coat paint mixed at Lowe's - armed with new info from Valspar. We'll let you know how that turns out.
• William's bedroom: We have purchased and have in our possession new 5 1/4 inch baseboard for the room. (We decided to replace the standard 3" base that was originally there to bring the room more in line aesthetically with the rest of the house which sports 7 1/4 inch base - besides, boys kick stuff a lot and anything helps). This baseboard is now neatly stacked in the yet unfinished room waiting for a few coats of high gloss paint. Incidentally, we also purchased the high gloss paint. Also on its way from iCarpetiles.com: a couple hundred square feet of cool carpet tile (Style: Colure Color: Barktone) to finish the floor.
• George's bedroom: After arguing with George for a few months - we finally settled on wall colors for the room and I carried the paint chips around with me for a couple of weeks. I would have normally just had the paint mixed - but was feeling a little wary after Dave's last paint-mixing experience and didn't want to risk getting an employee written up for mixing my glaze in too dark a color or something. Soooo.. in the meantime, it appears I have lost said paint chips and can't remember the names of the colors for the life of me. Hopefully looking through the samples at the store will jog my memory. Hopefully.... Because we used those paint chips to select and purchase carpet tile from iCarpettiles.com for George's room as well (Style: Havoc Color: Moondust).
  

And that's where we are heading into this weekend. Something will get done within the next few days -- but your guess is as good as mine as far as what exactly that something will be.

92 degrees

It's hot. Really really hot. Earlier today I took a peek at the thermometer out on the back porch (yes.. in the shade) and it was reading around 92 degrees Fahrenheit. So then I started humming a song I remember from my teenage years: "Not 91 or 93 but 92 Fahrenheit degrees...."

The song referred to various research that linked ambient temperature to crime -- most studies finding that the incidence of crime (or in some cases simply the sheer violence of the crime) increased in proportion to increases in temperature. (Here's a link to the first Google result on the subject: Temperature and Crime)

Summer is just beginning... I suppose that means we're doomed.

I woke up this morning to find that the pond that we relocated from the backyard to the front porch (which I suppose makes it more of a fountain than a pond now?) was vandalized sometime last night. The irises that I was just getting started were dumped unceremoniously on the bottom of the little pool... mud everywhere... the fountainhead removed... and the pump was spitting and hissing where it hung -- mostly removed from the water. *Sigh*

When I called Mom this morning to tell her what I found she came over for a little while to try to cheer me up.... And then I spent a good chunk of the afternoon trying to rescue our six mosquito fish and one small fiddler crab from the murky depths.

When Dave came in from work he helped me remove the rest of the mud and get water back into the pond before our fish suffocated in a mixing bowl in the kitchen. The battered and broken irises are resting in a shady spot behind our front shrubs for now -- our priority was getting our little creatures back into their home... And that we did manage before nightfall. Unfortunately we did lose one fish who escaped from the mixing bowl and wasn't found until it was too late.

And from here on out - it only gets hotter.

Mother's Day Visitor

I woke up early this morning to a breakfast of pancakes, waffles, toast, eggs, and fresh-squeezed orange juice made by Dave and the boys. (Thanks, guys.) Halfway through the meal Dave rather excitedly called us all to the back doors to look out on the patio.

All we could see at first was our kitty, Jo, lying casually on the concrete swishing her tail back and forth. Then she rolled over to reveal something alive and black....

I take this visit as a friendly Mother's Day reminder to be a little more careful before I stick my arm into the plumbago to pull a weed.

Happy Mother's Day to all the mothers out there - you know who you are. :)

Inventing things to do - Or, Why it's so hard to be broke

Closing on Monday went smoothly with the only difficulty being keeping our signatures legible by the 10th or 11th page of paperwork. The funds are to be disbursed tomorrow and a check will be overnighted to our mortgage company. This means sometime next week we will be free to officially hire the roofing contractors and get things moving around here again.

In the meantime, the girls are battling a stomach virus and I'm keeping myself sane by tending to the garden before summer gets here and everything burns to a crisp. In my weeding rounds this morning I discovered a little something I had planted during the summer before Katrina struggling in the boggy back corner of our yard:

Iris x louisiana 'Black Gamecock'

I had gotten this iris from a clearance shelf at the garden center - thus the off-season planting of that summer before Katrina. We had thought it would be worth giving it a second chance at life in the low corner of our yard that never dries out. I had all but completely forgotten about it until this morning.

Three years ago that section of the yard was ideal for partial sun plants -- but since then the growing trees have transformed it into full shade. Despite this - the iris multiplied nicely. What started as one plant has become a good two-foot-square clump. They even managed to produce the two blossoms pictured above. (By the way - I never pick my own flowers... But I broke the rule this time since the poor things were blooming in a spot that only I - standing ankle deep in mud and being eaten by various swamp insects - could see.) However, the plants are struggling at about 24" tall -- no where near the glorious 36+" they can achieve.

And that brings me to the only project planned for today: Divide and relocate the irises.

Hopefully this little project will help me continue to resist the urge to run to the garden centers and buy everything that isn't rooted into the ground this year. Uh - at least until they have one of those half-dead plant clearance sales again....

Closing

It's really quiet around here... (If you ignore the sounds of the girls arguing over placement of furniture in the dollhouse and William practicing his violin. )

Other than continuing to get the yard and garden into shape... and getting a coat of primer on the front porch trim... Oh - and some caulk in random places throughout the house... Not a whole lot was actually done on the house this week.

Dave stopped by the Carpet Cottage to place an order for the bathroom tile, but they did not have a sample for us to actually hold in our hands first. A 12x12 tile was supposed to arrive via FedEx yesterday - but it didn't happen.

The rear glass of the Suburban was replaced on Thursday - and it's pretty obvious that the window hatch replacement is a later model part. (Perhaps an indication that Chevy realizes something is wrong with the original design). It's nice to keep rain out of the back - but we hate how the new part looks. Thankfully, it is behind me when I'm driving and I don't have to look at it much.

The really good news is that we'll be closing on our refinance Monday, May 5th.

Saving the inside chores for a rainy day

Laying out the slate for the garden path...
We're only about 70 tiles and 280 lbs of sand short at the moment.

It's just too pretty out to force ourselves to stay inside today. Besides - we don't have any major projects-in-progress that we can actually finish indoors today. We did decide on a tile for the upstairs bathroom floor following our natural slate disappointment. We love our Mohawk slate-look ceramic kitchen floor so much - we went back to the same slate-look collection for the bathroom and have settled on Mohawk Trapani in Charcoal.

In the meantime, we got another roof-replacement estimate from a couple of local fellows Friday morning. As far as the bid goes -- the money was almost to the penny of our first estimate (approximately $16k). However, because we feel much, much more comfortable working with local people who don't already have their suitcases packed... Also because this bid includes a 10 year workmanship warranty - as opposed to 1 year from the other guys... And because they actually gave us a couple addresses for references of roofs they've completed... OH and 'cause we just liked them better... (Maybe because Shelter actually did stand us up before) We won't be calling Shelter back.

Shingle color for the new roof: Heather Blend

But today is not roofing day - or bathroom floor-laying day... Today is work-outside-cause-it's pretty day. Hopefully we'll have some completed path pictures to share by the end of the day.

Making good on impulsive mistakes

The decision to borrow money to replace our roof wasn't exactly impulsive -- more akin to compulsive considering the condition it's in. However, Dave started thinking at the end of last week that maybe it would be more than a little impulsive to accept the first recent bid we received simply because it was from the only roofer who returned our calls. And so it was decided that he would call anyone and everyone he hadn't already attempted to contact and try to get at least one more bid before we sign any contracts. (So far one out of five more has returned our call - he has tentatively arranged to give us an estimate this Thursday...)

The consequential delay, however, weighed heavily on our mood -- as it always does these days. That probably has a lot to do with the big impulse buy over the weekend. Anxious to sink our teeth into another project, we began to discuss flooring options for the upstairs bathroom in earnest. After about ten minutes of such earnest discussion, we both agreed that we had each independently fallen in love with multi-color indian slate tiles. Blinded by dreams of 'wow factor' in the little bathroom and judgment clouded by more than 48 hours without a single home improvement project in progress -- we suddenly couldn't see any reason not to go out and purchase the tile and get started. We loaded up the tribe and went out to pick up a few boxes right away.

It's thick.. it's heavy.. it's slate!

Within minutes of getting it home and sketching out various layouts for a mixture of 6" and 12" tile ... I started to remember why we hadn't done this already. First, we would need to fortify our plywood subfloor to support the heavy tile - meaning either replace our 3/4" plywood subfloor with 1" exterior grade plywood or install backerboard over it. Then there would be the business of laying the tiles in a slightly thicker mortar bed due to its varied thickness... Oh and then there was the varied thickness itself: varying from thick to very thick. Suddenly I remembered that I had no desire to have a bathroom floor that was almost two inches higher than the hallway floor. Oh yeah - that was why we had previously decided against real natural stone upstairs. Oops.

Last night we were still left with a bunch of pretty slate tile and no home improvement projects to speak of -- other than emergency mulching of the flowerbeds to prepare for an unseasonal chance of freezing temperatures over night. Sludging through the cold and sticky mud along the trail that our beloved dog has blazed from our patio to our backyard gate gave me an idea....

Idea + shovel + a couple hours in unseasonably cold wind = ?

Can you tell I have a thing for curves?

That's right! It equals yet another unfinished home improvement project!!

But seriously - we've decided to use the 6" slate tile we have already purchased (We already returned the 12" tiles in exchange for some pine straw emergency mulch.) plus however many
more boxes it will take to make Judge's muddy garden path permanent -- and certainly more attractive.



HGTV: Building a garden path

How to recycle newspaper: Papier mache your garden!

Just prior to Katrina my mother had a subscription to the local newspaper. After the storm, we both thought it would be a great idea to save all of them with the hope of someday putting together a Katrina scrapbook. Someday. To this end - we collected those newspapers (over 365 of them) in boxes which are currently crammed into William's closet.

Realistically, it will be quite a while before I ever find the time to go through all those papers and use them to make that scrapbook. In the meantime - they're taking up way too much space. So I had the brilliant idea of going through the papers and removing the sports, funnies, classifieds, and advertisements to effectively cut those boxes in half.

We don't have a recycling program to speak of here in Pascagoula. I am not sure that there is a recycling program at all -- which is why I don't speak of it.

What we DO have is many large flowerbeds in need of some serious weed control. It just so happens that newspaper not only makes excellent compost material -- it can be used for weed control when laid in thick layers beneath your regular mulch material.

And you can always read the funnies while tending to your garden duties...

The mat of newspaper prevents light from penetrating to the soil below if laid correctly -- thus preventing weeds from sprouting. And of course you're adding excellent organic material to the soil when it breaks down. How can you beat that? (Especially if you happen to have a few hundred pounds of the stuff just lying around anyway...)

Just in case you want to try this technique yourself -- here are a few tips:

• Use only the 'newsprint' sections of the newspaper. The glossy color advertisement pages not only do not break down properly -- I also hear that the ink used is not always the best thing for your garden.
• Lay paper at least 5 to 6 pages thick for best benefit -- thicker if you dare!
• Get the papers sopping wet before laying them. Dry newspapers blow around your garden before you can mulch over them and make you want to use foul language. Wetting the papers helps keep them in place AND helps to seal the edges of the papers together -- preventing light from creeping in...
  
• Like any mulch or 'weed mat' material - be sure to leave plenty of room around the bases of plants or trees so as not to smother the good stuff.

Now I'm off to spread out our pine straw before the newspapers dry out and litter the neighbors yard....

Boing! Spring!

The lime trees are budding.

The confused desert sage is blooming despite the cold and swampy conditions this winter.

And the daffodils have starting popping up wherever the rain carried them... A sure sign that spring is right around the corner!

In the meantime - our entire yard is a complete disaster. And I feel really guilty sitting in here at the computer while the weeds slowly but surely creep ever closer to the house. Soon they will invite themselves inside for tea. I'm thinking it would be a good idea to wrap a ThermaCare pad on for my aching back (excessive painting...), throw on the sloggers (Yes I still use them, Swapna!) and do something outdoorsy.

Salt water gardening

Over the last year I have posted many many many comments about stuff that didn't survive the salt water deluge from Hurricane Katrina. Stuff... like furniture or walls or miter saws or redbud trees...

The weather is gorgeous these days as fall slowly arrives and we're outside again as much as we can be. Since the estimates from both the contractor and the cabinet company were too high for us to even consider without a grant check in hand (and possibly too high to consider with the grant check in hand) -- we are yet again facing major delays in the repairs to the interior of the house. We have turned to the garden for solace once again.

For once.. I couldn't help but notice all of the things in the yard that not only survived the storm surge -- but actually seemed to like it. So for future reference to those of you who enjoy gardening and find yourself wondering which plants are salt-water tolerant (I'm sure someone out there does this) -- here are a few from our garden:

The tea rose has been rambling out of control for months now.

I actually don't know what this desert sage plant is called formally -- but it doesn't seem to mind the salty soil at all.

This ruellia (native petunia) was actually a cutting I had started to root in a pot... The pot itself is now so solidly rooted into the ground that we can't move it.

African daisies seem to like salt water.

Satsumas like it, too. No - it's not a huge crop but if you saw the size of the tree relative to those satsumas you would be impressed.

The hibiscus was utterly miraculous. Before the storm I had been left with dead stalks that did not produce any leaves all summer. A normal person would have accepted that the previous winter had taken its toll and pulled it up. I am glad I'm not normal. The submersion in salt water seems to have brought it back to life.

One of my all-time favorite plants because it's one of the rare 'true' blues of the garden: The plumbago has flourished.

Well okay so I was snapping pictures of my plants with triumphant music playing in my head... when I looked down and saw something that didn't belong there. Yes - that is a shingle. Sigh. Insurance should have paid for a completely new roof but we were in no position at the time to argue with them ... Another reminder that no matter where we go or what we do -- Katrina's not far behind.

Signs

No, not the decidedly hokey - yet still somehow disturbing Mel Gibson movie....

Signs. I am always looking for signs, I think. At least I always seem to be finding them. I know I have hinted at this before.... Mentioning the nesting mourning dove and our anniversary redbud budding on our anniversary despite what it had been through are fine examples. I am not a kook (okay, maybe a little) - I simply don't believe in coincidence.

Every now and then I run across something that seems signficant -- but can't for the life of me figure out what it means.... I have an example to run past my blog audience -- and perhaps one or two of you who share my distaste for random, meaningless events can offer some clues for interpretation:

Before we moved here to Pascagoula - we owned a small house in Gulfport, MS. The lady who sold us the house had a passion for heirloom flowers... and managed to leave one or two things in the garden when she moved out. I was clueless and probably dug up plenty of fantastic things in the process of renovating the garden... One such thing was saved though... A huge baking potato-sized bulb with a single green sprout... much too big for me to mistake for a clump of dirt or an old weed. I asked my mother what it was. She told me it looked like an amaryllis. I didn't know what that was... she said it would get big beautiful flowers. That sounded good -- so I tossed the bulb into an empty flower pot and proceeded to totally forget about it.

Being a packrat - I never discarded the old flowerpot... but used it to toss leftover soil whenever I potted a new plant. For over five years I threw dirt in that pot... with not so much a peep from the big potato thing buried in the bottom.

When we moved to Pascagoula in 2003 -- there was so much to unpack that it took a while for me to get around to the dirt-filled flowerpots that we had stacked in a corner of the garage, but when I finally did I found one large cracked pot with a single sickly-greenish yellow sprout of something sticking out of it. Suddenly, I remembered the old bulb and wondered at how it had managed to survive for so long. I had great respect for the poor blob and transferred it into a flowerbed near the corner of the house. That year it managed to grow a leaf. I was very proud of it for this. The next year it grew two small leaves...

Now during this time I had become acquainted with amaryllis... and my gardening skills had greatly improved in general... I became convinced that the old bulb would probably never do anything more than produce a scant leaf now and then... but that was fine with me. It had earned a protected spot in the garden just for putting up with my neglect for over half a decade.

The spring of 2005 brought no improvement and the stunted and slightly discoloured leaves were hidden by neighboring chrysanthemums.... The storm surge of August 29th caused everything in that flowerbed to wither and disappear. I mean, literally, disappear without a trace... no roots.. not even a dead plant to mourn over.

When the old bulb shot out a couple of its trademark stunted leaves a couple weeks later -- I was in awe. A few weeks after that - it produced several healthy leaves... and a few weeks after that -- it managed to multiply. Really!! Where there had once been a single clump of skinny sickly leaves -- there were now two robust clumps side-by-side. I joked with Dave that it must have really liked the salt water....

But there's more! Look what I found in my garden this morning:

For the first time in almost nine years -- the old plant actually bloomed... and quite beautifully, at that. So now I'm all excited at the prospect of propagating from this bulb and spreading the old flowers all over my new garden... a touch of the past -- of our past as well -- and a fellow Katrina survivor, too! But...

What's it all about??

A mish-mashy weekend

With the weather all bright, sunny and cool all weekend - I found it very, very difficult to be inside on the computer. I consider this a rare sign of sanity.

Saturday was our day for multiple trips to home improvement stores trying to find cabinets and hardware for the laundry room. In between I worked in the yard some -- pulling mountains of weeds. Oh yes! Weeds!! One of our neighbors had been putting out enormous amounts of stuff for the debris trucks in preparation for moving out of town a couple of months ago.. and one of the things they discarded was a huge compost tumbler. I have never purposely made compost in my life -- but, then, having a huge compost tumbler seemed like it might motivate me some -- so I dragged it home. I've been stuffing it full of weeds and straw and leaves for days now. It's very exciting. I've been stopping everyone at the garbage can saying: "Wait.. can we compost that?" Dave was leary at first -- he was recalling our traumatic experience with the aluminum cans... but as soon as I convinced him that we could not compost aluminum he seemed to feel better.

By nightfall - we were back inside attempting to install the first of the cabinets. It was frightening at first -- but we felt better as soon as we got ONE cabinet on the wall.

Er.. so much better, in fact.. that we went to sleep immediately.

We really did plan on hanging the rest of the cabinets on Sunday -- but soon discovered that the 'c' clamps we would need to hold the cabinets in place had all flooded and were rusted shut. Dave got them moving again but then we didn't want to get rust on the new cabinets either. (At some point later in the day it occured to us that we could have used some sort of cloth between clamp and cabinet to prevent this.. but by then it was too late...) We opted to start working on the threshold for the laundry room door instead.

After what seemed like an eternity of cutting and sanding and Dremmeling a three foot long piece of threshold... we got it to fit into place. Then we realized that there was a dime-sized section of tile at the very edge of the floor where we had failed to grout. Dave ran outside to mix some grout so I could fill the gap while I worked on staining the threshold piece.

A very long time passed. I applied two coats of stain to the threshold. I weeded a section of garden. I helped Yvonne ride her bike and tried to show George how to sharpen a knife for whittling. The time to get ready for church was approaching when I found Dave outside - still stirring.

Okay - so we mixed too much grout.

Have you ever made instant mashed potatoes? If you have -- then you'll understand. You put some water in the pot... and then you add some potatoes - and then some milk. Then it's too runny so you add some more potatoes... and then it's too lumpy so you add some more milk.. and so on... Until you have fine instant mashed potatoes of the perfect consistency -- and enough to feed several hundred people. Well.. that's what happened with the grout.

We put a drop or two in place at the threshold and used the rest around our patio in the backyard.

At some point this week we will hang another cabinet -- I can just feel it... I know we will.

In the meantime - we're waiting to hear for news from the Mississippi Development Authority about when to apply for home grants. Originally, we were told that there would be a period for applying online before physical centers were opened to accept applications. Now, however, we are told that you will be able to do nothing but print out an application online to bring with you to the physical application center... and that all applicants must make an appointment to apply in person. Of course -- the future location of these application centers is being carefully guarded... and, as we understand it, will be subject to change throughout the application process. That sounds like fun!!

Further, the word thus far is that there will be four such centers in all for the entire Gulf Coast. This is going to make things really, really difficult for a lot of folks who aren't going to be in a position to travel long distances. But! There will also be a center set up in Clinton, Mississippi... I'm not sure why... I think someone took it literally when they were told to set up a 'central' location. (Clinton, MS is near Jackson, Mississippi... very near the exact center of the state and a good three to four hour drive away from most locations on the coast.) I'll just assume they know what they're doing at this point.

We all have a lot of practice with these application centers and the appointment-making processes (read: the 3 days worth of solid busy signals when trying to get through to the 800 number to make your appointment.. only to get disconnected due to 'high call volume' when you make it through....) after dealing with FEMA for months. I appreciate our local government trying not to disturb us with too much novelty at this point in our lives --- really, guys... familiarity is great and all, but you didn't need to model this thing after the FEMA & Red Cross disasters.

Do you ever get the distinct impression that someone out there tries to make these things as difficult as possible for a reason? You know.. that maybe if they keep raising (or randomly moving) the hoops we all have to jump through for assistance that a good chunk of people are going to just give up and go away? Yeah.. me too.

You're outta luck though, MDA.. We've got our hoop-jumping shoes on and we're ready to go.

The Garden

A long, long time ago -- long before Hurricane Katrina washed everything away... I once had a garden here. Mom and I worked long hours in that garden. We took happy afternoon trips to the nurseries just after Yvonne was born. Every morning and every evening I pulled weeds and searched for grubs and tenderly talked to the plants. It was beautiful.

Of course it did not survive Katrina. The storm surge washed away most of the raised flowerbeds. The saltwater killed countless shrubs and perennial flowers. The biggest loss to me were all of the bulbs and plants that my mother had added to the garden -- now gone completely. There were those 'anniversary' plants too. Dave and I had begun a tradition of buying live plants to be transferred to the garden for special occasions -- mother's day, wedding anniversary, Easter, etc... Most of those are gone now too.

This:

Is now this:


And this:

Is reduced to this:


For Valentine's Day this year - Dave brought me a Persian Lime tree & an Armstrong Satsuma... I think that was a hint. Well, I mean.. that and the 40 bags of potting soil might have been trying to tell me something...

Today is one of those miserable stormy days when I usually spend my time pacing around in front of the windows.... This morning though I decided to brave the cloudy skies and do some work outside. Yes, it's going to take a LOT of work -- but we can do this. I finished conditioning the soil and mulching in the southeast corner of the backyard this morning.... This is what it looked like last year when standing in that back corner:
We lost all three trees, four shrubs, and all of the perennials in the corner -- except for one miraculous hibiscus which seems to have been revived by the salt water.... So it's going to be many years before we can bring it back. We have decided to convert this corner into a little fruit tree grove... and so the work begins:

A huge improvement -- but still a long way to go ... our makeshift clothesline is still visible at the top of the photo....

Encyclical Letter "Deus Caritas Est"

Encyclical Letter "Deus Caritas Est": "When we consider the immensity of others' needs, we can, on the one hand, be driven towards an ideology that would aim at doing what God's governance of the world apparently cannot: fully resolving every problem. Or we can be tempted to give in to inertia, since it would seem that in any event nothing can be accomplished. At such times, a living relationship with Christ is decisive if we are to keep on the right path, without falling into an arrogant contempt for man, something not only unconstructive but actually destructive, or surrendering to a resignation which would prevent us from being guided by love in the service of others. Prayer, as a means of drawing ever new strength from Christ, is concretely and urgently needed. People who pray are not wasting their time, even though the situation appears desperate and seems to call for action alone. "


I think it has been obvious for the last couple of weeks that I have not quite been 'myself'. It must have been obvious because so many of you have pointed it out to me -- in concerned emails and phone calls asking: "Are you okay? Do you need a break?" Thank you - each and every one of you.

I woke up this morning and it was gorgeous. An absolutely beautiful day was beginning. I threw on some clothes and kissed my cute little boys goodbye, petted the dog, and put on some coffee. I looked around the house for a moment -- and was shocked to find that it's not so bad. We have made so much progress that if you squint and look straight ahead it looks pretty good in here. Looking out through the back doors of the porch I can see hundreds of daffodils blooming in totally unexpected places -- washed from their original beds by Katrina's surge. Hmm.. I thought they were all gone.

This morning begs the question: What's wrong with me? Why the unshakeable glumness?

My coffee and I went outside to pull some weeds from the still-unmulched flowerbeds -- once-upon-a-time before that fateful hurricane this little ritual was always part of my morning prayers. I pulled the first weed as I prayed, noticing that the topsoil I had added a couple of days ago was still in place despite the two days of rain. I laughed outloud when I realized that it had been the weeds themselves that held the dirt in place. I patted one on its leafy head as I returned to the house. There was a lesson here... I could feel it just beyond the edge of what my sleepy mind could comprehend.. but it was still out of reach at that moment.

At the computer a few minutes later I ran across a link to the English translation of Pope Benedict XVI's encyclical and started reading. I had heard much about it - especially that it was so appropriate and timely for those of us here in the aftermath of a catastrophe. All I can say with certainty is that it was just what I needed this morning.

Every morning after the storm I would wake up and say my prayers and end them with a simple phrase: "Okay, God - whatever you want me to do today.. whatever you want done.. I'm yours." And everyday what He sent to me seemed so clear: the lonely lady needing to talk, the battered man asking for some food, all of the work with Operation Vanessa, the repairman who wanted someone to cry with him over the loss of his beloved cat.... Every day.

Then a couple of weeks ago it seemed to stop. There were no more phone calls.. no more visits... drives around neighborhoods seemed fruitless... and as the donations from Operation Vanessa dwindled in the dining room so did my spirits. I still said it every morning "I'm yours" - but deep down I felt like He wasn't hearing me anymore. I wanted things to do... I wanted to see and feel and hear it all... I did.


Me. And therein lies the problem.

The Pope's beautiful encyclical on love and charity brought it all home to me this morning... Love can be intoxicating - addictive - exhilerating and without God's guidance we poor frail humans have a tendency to selfishly hoard the stuff. Today I realize that God has never failed to answer my morning prayer -- I have simply failed to listen. There are many ways to give -- some are quiet and thankless. I need to take a deep breath and remember -- as those weeds in the garden were trying to tell me this morning -- God knows what He's doing.