Summer Yard and Garden Check-in

In spring and summer every year, I have to check in with a few updates on how our yard is going. It's about that time...

Good growing conditions this year have meant that things we planted a year or two ago that we thought had no hope of returning have come back happy and hearty. In fact, our garden is starting to look downright crowded now that so many flowers and plants have awakened and spread. The good news is that we finally seem to have escaped our early problem of having a springtime garden. Now we have azaleas, camellias, hyacinths, clematis, and lilacs in the spring; hydrangeas, lilies, salvia, and black-eyed susans in the summer; and mums in the fall.  And our greenery - spirea, hostas and boxwood shrubs fill the rest of the garden in.

Yes, black-eyed susans and salvia! I tried planting these for 3 years in a row. And this year, one (or all?) of the attempts decided to return. Finally! And, for better or worse, with a vengeance. Here are the black-eyed susans:

They look crowded under our tree, smooshed against the hostas and the irises (and entirely covering the area where the hyacinths grow - hopefully since they are different seasons they won't affect each other at the root/bulb level). I have a few more scatter throughout this garden and the one on the other side of the house.

I kept ready that since they were a local plant that thrives in our climate, they should be hearty and happy. And now finally, I believe it. Let's hope they don't take over - I have no idea if they spread or not.

Another plant that was supposed to be hearty and wasn't - until now. Salvia. I don't remember exactly which kind. I planted May Night Salvia once, that I'd ordered bare-root from a catalog. This isn't that. Once trend with these plants - the ones that come back seem to be the ones that I plant fully alive. I don't have much luck with the bare-root ones. These also are getting huge - they crowded out the little rose bush that was in between them, so I had to move it. Some heavy rains caused them to flatten out on the ground a little, so they take up a massive footprint.

Our magic carpet spirea continues to impress us in every season. Here it is in late spring. It's a favorite of bees at that time, until the flowers vanish right around now:

Our butterfly bush is waking up despite the fact that we have totally ignored it and the base is overgrown with weeds and grass. And our strawberry seduction yarrow and lilies looks awesome!

Somewhere along the way, we decided to make an effort and buy some solar lights for our path. Two years ago, my parents gave us a rag-tag assortment of lights - some had broken stakes, some had broken plastic, some didn't light. Between them all and after testing several combinations, we put together a set of six:

But fast-forward to this year and most were dead or cracked or something. Seeing a sale at Target for lights that were only one dollar each, we decided to try a few new ones:

They look cute and work (for now). I just wish that Target hadn't put the price sticker right near the top and affixed with very sticky glue. We peeled them carefully AND used baby oil and there is still a sticky spot on each one.

Next onto the trees. The baby's hawthorn is doing ok, but actually came down with a fungus - Cedar-Hawthorn Rust. It's too late to treat this year, but next year there is a fungicide we can spray on before the fungus finds its way to our tree from some (presumably nearby?) juniper.

The spooky thing is that it came down with a fungus around the same time that our little girl did - she caught ringworm (which is a fungus, not a worm). Cue the Twilight Zone music...

But that is the anomaly. The blossoming tree in the front of our house has grown taller for the first time since we moved in. Even our rather sickly looking magnolia tree is in bloom:

And this tree! It has fluffy pink puffs on it. Anyone know what it is? (And if the answer is something like Fluffy Puff Tree or something, I'm going to kick myself for not just searching the internet for the answer.)

OK, that wraps up the post, finally, in lots of pictures. How are your gardens doing?

Why you should buy the real thing

I love finding bargains, but I'm learning that some things aren't worth the savings. The kitchen is a good example. We make moderate use of the kitchen, making most of our meals during the work week from scratch. Our utensils and gadgets get quite of bit of use. For example, we now have three spatulas. Each one gets used about once a week. 

Our first new-to-us spatula came from Crate and Barrel, when we were using up some money from a gift card. I saw a nice looking black spatula that looked flexible and skinny: the Hammarplast AB spatula from Sweden (Design: Karl-Axel Andersson/Morgan Ferm). After about four years it was starting to wear down and lose its stiffness, so I went on Amazon and bought something that looked like it. The Norpro 97 My Favorite Spatula with Holes. 

Hammarplast on top, Norpro on bottom

Hammarplast on top. Much nicer construction.

It looked similar and was a lot cheeper ($5 versus $15) so I didn't think much of it. Three years later I took a closer look at the two and was surprised to see how poorly the (apparently Chinese made) Norpro was holding up, despite being half the age of the Swedish Hammarplast.

Norpro

Hammarplast

The Norpro 97 is flaking off in large pieces, while the Hammarplast is gracefully wearing down. The Norpro is also as floppy as a fish and cannot hold up anything heavier than an egg. Unfortunately I cannot find the Hammarplast online, except in a suspicious Amazon posting that seems too cheap. I assume they are out of production now. Probably because idiots like me were buying the cheap knockoff.

Vinyl isn't just for old records

Sorry to leave you in suspense - life got a little crazy right after our window install, so I didn't have a chance to check back in. I am happy to report that everything seems have gone well and we have new windows. We haven't really opened them very much because we are running our AC most of the time, but they seem fine. Honestly we weren't expecting much - this isn't a dramatic change like our bathroom remodel. It looks like it did before, just with windows that now have screens. Presumably we have better sound dampening, but we live in a pretty quiet neighborhood anyway. But in any case, here's the day, in pictures:

Because our house was built before 1978, the company had to remove the windows according to special lead mitigation processes that the government put in place since the last windows install in 2010. That involved sealing them off from the inside -

 Putting up crazy hazmat signs -

Wrapping up the old material in tight little bundles that look mina like mummies, and even putting up bright yellow "caution" tape around the whole front yard of the house. I felt like I was at a crime scene.

 Here's our giant picture window, sitting all sad and ready to be destroy:

Here's the same view from inside, with the new window being placed with the help of a giant suction cup (now I feel like I've moved from a crime scene to a heist movie - I think those are usually used to climb up the sides of buildings...)

First the installers blew insulation spray foam into the exposed window frames, then they placed the new windows into the frames. Then they caulked and capped the outside and then caulked the inside. The steps were pretty boring, so I didn't get them on film. They claimed the interior caulking wasn't hazardous but the nasty smell makes me think there were at least some VOCs.

Here are some pictures of the finished product. Unfortunately, some paint came up from the large picture window sill. The sill is pretty gross anyway so this is probably a good excuse to paint:

 Shiny new window (looks a lot like the old window but whiter):

Here's the big window - still kitty approved, apparently. You can see that now the white house trim looks incredibly dingy against the bright white vinyl and aluminum.

Here's a normal window from the outside. I wish I had thought to take a "before" picture. For me, it's one of those instances where you know it looks different, but you never paid enough attention to the previous view to really be able to place exactly how and why. Besides the bright white vinyl, I think the aluminum capping is broader.

We didn't lose any actual window or sill, though we did lose some of the frame (we have to completely reinstall the blinds to the outside instead of within the frame now). But at least now when the weather is nice we can open them up! We opened up the two side windows of the picture window area a few nights ago and it was nice to have a breeze.

Now if only the guest room and office weren't still in such a disarray from having to move all the furniture...

Here I wait...

The current state of the living room:

Let's home the full installation takes place in one day. Preferably a rather short one so I can go get the little girl from daycare early or at least on time. Since they are doing lead-mitigation because our house was built before 1978, she wasn't allowed to stay home and hang out with me while I babysit the installation. Not that I would want her here in all this craziness.

It's weird how echoey a room gets the second the curtains and blinds come down. I don't usually think of window dressing as a sound damper but it most certainly is.

Windows again

Back in 2010, we replaced all our upstairs windows. The home has all its original 1950s windows with the exception of 3 in the back of the house that got added when the previous owners updated the kitchen. While we were still living on the first floor of the house, we got new vinyl, triple-pane windows upstairs, so they'd be waiting for us as we moved ourselves upstairs. We don't open the windows too often but at least now they have screens in them so we can when we want. Plus they offer some better energy efficiency and, icing on the cake, we got a tax refund for them. Unfortunately, I remembered to blog about the process of getting estimates and some follow-on work, but seem to have completely forgotten the most interesting part (from a photographing perspective) - the installation.

Well we used up that tax refund but this year we decided it was finally time to update the main floor windows as well. We decided - due to our minimal free time thanks to the baby - to only get 2 estimates: 1 from the company #1 who did our upstairs windows (we did have some issues getting them to replace the screen but in all we are very happy with the windows) and 1 from company #2, our second choice company from 2010. We were 99% set on using the same company but wanted another estimate for comparison. It was a surprise to us - we ended up deciding to switch companies. Time will tell if we made the right decision. In the end, the two companies had identical prices (last time, #1 was cheaper by about $100 per window) and similar products. #1 offered us triple-pane to match our upstairs and #2 offered us only double-pane but with almost comparable energy values. There are way too many values to compare easily- it had a higher U value (good), similar solar gain and light transmission, but higher air infiltration rating (bad). The results of our energy audit, however, indicated that windows do not represent a significant source of energy loss.

There were 3 deciding factors:

1. Most important - the vinyl edging felt more sturdy and welded together and looked a lot prettier. Almost like wood trim. While the upstairs and downstairs will not match, we thought it was more important to have a more "wood-like" look for the main floor since it is more visible. Our upstairs window frames are more hidden by aluminum siding (rather than standing out from red brick) and, obviously, higher and harder to see.

2. We liked that they are going to install tempered glass in the bathroom. We got into a little discussion with #1 over whether tempered glass should have been installed upstairs during the first round of new windows. When #2 came to give us an estimate a few weeks ago, they said we definitely need tempered glass in the bathroom to stay within code, because the window is close to the tub. #1 says we don't, because the window isn't in the shower/tub, but confirmed with #2 that the actual rule says that you must install tempered glass if the window is within 5 standing feet of the shower/tub. To my mind, it is - actually both bathrooms are. So maybe they are interpreting the rules differently. Either way, better safe than sorry and I wish we had pushed the issue in the upstairs bathroom.

3. The biggest question we had was how to deal with the giant picture window with two smaller windows in front. #1 suggested making the two smaller windows casement windows. #2 wants to keep them as regular double hung windows, which we prefer. The only problem with going with #2 is that they would charge a few hundred extra dollars if we break the installation into two phases (i.e. doing the regular windows this round, then the picture window plus side windows in another year or so). #1 didn't charge extra to come back again later. We didn't necessarily want to get it all done at once, purely because it is so expensive. But we might as well bite the bullet and do it all together - that way they all match and we deal with the mess of installation only once.

Which brings me to the last point - remember that we did the upstairs before we had any window dressing or furniture...Even though I knew logically that it would be more complicated this time around, I groaned yesterday when they called to schedule the installation and reminded me that I have to remove all blinds and curtains AND move furniture 4'-6' away from every window "or as far away as you can." Yikes...:

Well I guess I know what we're going to be doing this weekend. Sigh...

But hey, at least this window that broke over 4 years ago is finally going to get fixed:

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