dianaschnuth

This is a plan of my new garden.

The Better Homes and Gardens website kicks ass—they have this nifty Flash application that’s kind of like the Tony Hawk Pro Skater park building feature, but with gardens. That’s how I put this loverly design together.

This depicts my back yard, by the way. From left to right, I have planned: lavender, hydrangea, coral roses, yellow roses, ground cover in front of said roses, a rose of sharon, forsythia, catmint, more lavender, and butterfly bush. In front there, on the curve where there’s still a bit of dirt with no plants, that’s where the herbs go. Three varieties of basil, parsley, catnip, creeping thyme, coriander/cilantro, and whatever else tickles my fancy.

I’ll provide photos when I have some stuff planted. Until then, wish me luck… I hope I haven’t bitten off more than my little first-time-homeowner self can chew.

Just got done “double-digging” a quarter of the flower garden. Basically, it’s just turning over the soil, but doing it so that the dirt from Point A ends up at Point B, and vise versa. I was also pulling out roots and rocks as I went. Holy crap, that’s a lotta roots. I only did that for half an hour or 45 minutes, but my hands are all tired and I feel like I’ve done some serious work. At least I’m a quarter of the way done, though—only three more days of double-digging. Then off to get some Miracle-Gro Garden Soil and mix that in. Then off to get some plants.

I was surfing around online just now, basically just wasting time, and discovered that bosstones.com is no longer active. Hmm. After a little Googling, I found a Mighty Mighty Bosstones fansite that says,

I’m sorry to inform you that this site is dead. The reason being is that The Mighty Mighty Bosstones have “Basically” split-up. In Technical Terms, they no longer are touring together. They are on “HIATUS”, or so they say.

Projects:
Dicky Barrett – Announcer for Jimmy Kimmel Live – Catch him at 12:00 on ABC on weekdays
Other Band Members – They are taking time off to be with their families, and those without familes are touring with other bands like “Less Than Jake” and doing their own thing.

Wow. The boys have been together for nigh on 15 years (ten if you only include the quasi-original lineup that split a few years back), and they finally decided to take a breather. (Kind of like Catherine Wheel, who has been “parked” for the past three or four years.) Anyway, another site’s forum gives indication that this has been in the works for a year and a half now. Damn, I’ve been out of the loop.

And, as a side note, pages with white text on a black background hurt my eyes after a while.

There’s some flowering bushes in the backyard of our apartment here. Someone once told me it was called a Rose of Sharon, and a little online research proved her correct. Anyway, I decided when I first saw them bloom that I love those bushes, and I decided to attempt cuttings to take with me to the new house.

A couple of weeks ago (or maybe it was last week), I made probably almost two dozen cuttings of this plant, all of various thicknesses, about six to eight inches long apiece. I planted about ten of them in a big pot full of perlite—that white, styrofoamy, pebbley substance. I covered them with plastic to keep the moisture in, placed them by a not-too-drafty window, and I’ve been dutifully watering them every day.

I peeked through the plastic (wax paper, actually) today to see if anything was happening… and some of the twigs are growing buds! Little green leaf buds. How about that! They’re not dead… yet. We’ll see if they actually root in a couple of months.

Until then, I also have another bundle of cuttings lying dormant in the refrigerator, ready to be planted outside to attempt rooting a different way. One way or another, I’m going to have a Rose of Sharon. Oh, yes. It will be mine.