Tuesday, April 2, 2013

Spring is in the air!

The camelias and daffodils are blooming, the lilac bushes are tempting the bees with their baby buds, the garden is on the verge of showing off why the long rainy dreary winter in Portland is oh so worth it.  Spring is here and the Vitamin D is kicking in! I'm in my happy place.

I love Camelias!
To celebrate, I finally finished my latest pullover pattern!  Super fun and easy pattern for spring. The pattern is very similar to the boys pullover but uses a larger gauge and worsted weight instead of sport weight yarn so it whips up faster.  The pattern is available for purchase and instant download on both Ravelry and Etsy.

Photo Credit

Photo Credit

Speaking of long overdue projects, we finally finished a brand new planting in the spot where the roofing debris sat since last August.

Before:  Yes, the old roof sat in our front yard like this for a very, very, very, long time.
After: Plants are teency, but by next year they will rock it.
 It's a relatively shady spot, so I planted mainly shade lovers like hostas, huckleberry, camelias, trilliums, and sword ferns.  I can't wait to see how it looks in a year or two.  I used this "instant garden" method that really worked! I We had decent soil underneath the trash, but it needed some amendment.  So I just put cardboard down over the old soil, covered that with about 3-5 inches of compost, planted my plants through the cardboard by stabbing holes in the cardboard with my scissors then widening the holes with my shovel  then covered everything with mulch.  Worked like a charm and so far no weeds whatsoever.  The cardboard just smothers them out.  Here's the article I read before I started.  It made everything so easy to do!

Close up of the purple flowers.  They're twice as big now!

The new plants are so tiny, but they are full of promise.  So long as I can keep them from curious kids and rambunctious puppies away, we should be seeing more flora and less bark very soon.  And I've noticed that the penchant for bright color combos like raspberry and lime green has followed my design choices into the garden too - interesting!

Happy Spring everyone.  I leave you with some parting shots of the Easter festivities at our house.








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