Mum's the word

We planted mums a few years ago to give our garden some fall color and all but 1 of the 4 have come back, to some extent at least.

What I find strange is that these autumn plants themselves came up very early in the year - probably in April or May looking very healthy and happy. But when they finally bloomed last month, they developed some kind of split personality complex - only flowering on half of the shrub. Here is the same mum, taken from two angles:

 Here is mum number two, again from two sides:

They seem to prefer blooming on the shady side of the plant. Could it be wind or other weather related? Is there some kind of fertilizer I should be using or something else I can do to make them more consistent?

This other plant is "technically" alive, though it is so puny that its future doesn't look good. See it there? Those two tiny white flowers? Yeah, that's a mum too.

We have another mum ready to join its brethren outside after our fall centerpiece gets dismantled (which is really soon because we already had to get rid of one moldy pumpkin since this picture was taken and I'm sure more are on the way). I'm so bad at seasonal decorating - except for Christmas - so this was at least a small attempt to make the table a little more festive.

Finally, while we're on the topic of autumn plants, can anyone identify this tree? It's in our neighbor's yard and I love it! Such vibrant reds! Not that we have any place to plant it, but it would at least be nice to know what it is.

All filled up

Now that the nursery is done, we have no more extra rooms in the house to store furniture. And with all of our other rooms pretty much completely decorated and filled, we truly have no more flexible space - with the possible exception of the crowded but very sparsely decorated basement.

What this means is that if it doesn't fit, it needs to go. Which is rather traumatic since I seem to have inherited my mother's love of collecting solidly-built furniture in need of some TLC. But without a place to keep it, I'm going to have to learn to control myself. It's heartbreaking, really.

Case in point - when we redid our entryway with a new, expanded Expedit and a little white bench, we ran out of room for the beautiful chevron patterned cedar chest that we kept there. After trying to find it a new home in various places in our house, we knew it had to go.

Fortunately, after a few annoying weeks of tripping over it in the dining room, where we'd temporarily crammed it, we found it a home with a family that seemed to like it as much as we did.

Next example - this piece took a lot of elbow grease to refinish but had been living in the extra room (i.e. current nursery) without a real home for over a year. Despite all our work on it, I feared it might have to go as well. Happily, we realized it could live in our hallway without significantly blocking our path:

Maybe it's not what I would have chosen to put there, but it works and meant we didn't need to get rid of it.

Even something as minor as our cheap Ikea Poang chair, which we've had for years (through 3 different addresses!) seemed like it would have to go. Right now, it's living outside in our breezeway, even though it's definitely not made outdoor furniture. It's currently in furniture-limbo and we might have to get rid of it eventually. But it can live out the winter there with the rest of our lawn furniture, which we finally brought in before it got too cold out.

It's been hard saying goodbye to old friends and it is just as hard to force myself into being disciplined enough not to buy more furniture unless I know for sure it can replace something we already have.

This won't be a problem soon. Once baby arrives I'm sure I'll have more important things on my mind than furniture. But walking around a flea market on Saturday admiring all the lovely things sure was a challenge.