Gardening successes and not

After spending two afternoons this weekend cleaning up our front gardens, I thought I'd show you how they're coming along. The cool wet spring is making everything very happy right now, and our plants and lawn look very happy.

The garden bed under the window is looking full:

In fact, I have to thin the irises and black-eyed Susans this fall (I planned to do it this spring and only just read that all splitting and thinning is supposed to happen in the fall - have to remember to do this come October):

Strawberries also seem to have taken over our garden. They started out in the red planter and escaped last summer. We transplanted some to the beige planter but the ones on the ground made a come-back this year as well (we were pretty sure they were dead). Our next invasive plant perhaps? I'd be glad if we actually got to eat the strawberries, but the squirrels and birds always get to them first.

The other side is doing well too, but isn't nearly as full. When I do split the irises, I plan to put a lot of them over here. I also want to split the hostas from the right garden and move them here. The ones on the right are short and variegated and come up earlier in the year. The ones on this side are solid green and higher and come up later. They're nice but I think I want to move them somewhere else so that both gardens match. Again, something to remember for the fall.

Our biggest work today was on the two front gardens. I weeded them yesterday and there were just so many weeds at the edge of the sidewalk that I decided I need to buy more hearty plants to crowd them out.

Can you see the difference between the two pictures? More creeping phlox, this time in "Emerald Blue":

Our pink phlox never took off as well as the Georgia Blue, and it's been 3 years so we tried the purple variety. Mostly because we see it more often, so thought that maybe it is heartier. Here is a picture of a neighbor's phlox, only 3 years after she planted it:

So yeah, obviously a lot of room for improvement.

We also added a strange, tiny ground-cover-style mint variety, "Corsican" behind the thyme (can you see the two clumps back there? We couldn't resist buying it and thought it might fill in behind the thyme (which, incidentally, I have to really trim down in the fall because, yet again, I learned spring is not the time to do that - it's really dead and twiggy right now below the healthy parts):

We also added some phlox closer to the light post, and some "Homestead Purple" verbena. We tried verbena before and I'm pretty sure it got eaten by squirrels or deer, but I love the color so we're trying again. 

I also threw a couple phlox plants on this side as well:

I know in all these cases, the before and after pictures aren't particularly dramatic, but it still took about an hour of planting. Now we need to remulch - at least these front sections - so that it too will help keep the weeds at bay.

Yard updates

We've been too busy enjoying the nice weather to do much around the house lately, but we have done some lawn and garden maintenance. I had a nice picture of 6 or 7 big containers filled with lawn waste and leaves, but I seem to have misplaced it. You can use your imagination.

This year we had some help over-seeding the backyard and picking up leaves and sticks:

The big change this year was removing most of the lilacs from the front garden. After 3 years, most of them never really took off.  So we got rid of them like we said we would. We kept the one closest to the front door and the new ones

In their place, we put two Knock-Out roses. If they grow happily, they'll become 3-4 feet high dense shrubs that bloom repeatedly late-spring through early fall. It probably won't happen, but I continue to be optimistic.

The vast, cleared area from last fall is looking good, though the grass is a little spotty where we didn't manage to clear away the wet leaves. We tried over-seeding but not much is happening yet. It's still a huge improvement - so much space now!

After spending a whole nap (I measure my time in toddler naps now) weeding a few weeks ago, I'm sorry to see that the dandelions and other weeds have proliferated, so I guess I know what I'm doing this weekend as well. I tried using weed inhibitors, but they don't seem to have done much. Well at least a lot of the plants have come back after a particularly harsh winter, so that's exciting.

Finally, we're being proactive and spraying our new hawthorn with fungicide weekly this year after it was infected with rust last summer. Hopefully this does the trick! We picked hawthorn of all trees because it is supposed to be foolproof, so I don't know what that says about us....

Chair shopping makes me blue

This corner looks sad and empty. And definitely not baby proof (easy access to a very breakable lamp). We've had a plan for it for quite a while now - a comfy chair, with a standing lamp behind it.

However, it turns out that's much easier said than done.

Usually I like a furniture challenge. The thrill of the hunt. But apparently that doesn't really apply to upholstered things. That's because 1) Used upholstered furniture can be risky, so that means no Craigslist or thrift stores and 2) Ikea doesn't make particularly comfy upholstered furniture, so my go-to store is not a good choice.

The quality of upholstered furniture also seems to actually be reflected in the price. Hardwood frames, durable fabrics, and sturdy springs and foam cost money. And even "cheap" chairs start at $200. So I started out with my usual non-Ikea standbys, Crate and Barrel (and CB2), West Elm, and Pottery Barn. West Elm had the best choices for our style and price range (they were in the $600-900 range instead of CB's and Pottery Barn's $1100-$1400).

We were particularly partial to Sloan

and Victor:

We went to a store to try them out. Because, you know, we are going to pay a lot and spend some quality time sitting in them. So we want to make sure they're comfortable.

One problem: not in stores. Or at least not in our nearest store (which isn't even all that near). And no one could tell us if they were in ANY stores. The customer service rep I talked to said there is no central tracking of merchandise. Spending that kind of money for something we can't try first seems...reckless.

But we kept considering it, since no other store had a design we liked (at any price tag, even). So I ordered some free swatches. We already knew that since our other seating is brown and gray, that we wanted something bolder, in the bright turquoise blue that is our living room accent color.

Here's what we got, set against a pillow we were hoping to closely match:

It doesn't come across as much as I like but trust me when I say all the colors are blah. The linen weave set of three is our favorite texture. But the rightmost of the 3 is too green and the leftmost is too gray/boring. The closest match is the middle on the bottom row, but that is a strange microfiber suede that neither of us like.

So we are faced with deciding whether to order a chair we can't test in a color we don't love - and since the colors are custom orders, there are no returns. And thus the chair hunt continues.

Funny enough, when I went to West Elm today to add the links to this post, I noticed they are advertising "new colors" - and sure enough, there are a few more blues. Swatches are on the way!