For the last two years, I’ve planted raspberries on the side of my yard. They come from the nursery as little sticks with roots, and the proceed to die as little sticks with roots. I need some well established bushy plants, not little sticks.
I’ve seen bushes at Whole Foods and finally I bought some today. I got a blackberry, kiwi, fix, and blueberry. Check out how many blueberries are on that bush!
It’s been over 90 degrees the last couple days and over 80 for nearly a week. I’ve had the house open and, last night, I found several ants had made their way into the house. This year, I am fully prepared for the ants and I am determined to wipe them off the face of the earth. Or at least the face of the area immediately around my house.
The ortho home defense max barrier has been applied indoors and out. That helps, but my new strategy is a full on Terro attack. Last summer I discovered the outdoor baits. I had one left and put it out a couple weeks ago. It is now being frequently visited. However, there are still ants foraging all over the patio and I saw many crawl over the Ortho barrier I had sprayed down. I went to True Value tonight and picked up more. There are now 7 of them in the backyard and on one side of the house. Hopefully by morning the ants will be noshing away at every station and dragging that lovely stuff back to their nests.
Inspiration struck last week when I was cleaning up the yard. It always looks so plain. I would add a window in that big space except that’s the pantry. Instead, I made it starry. $45 on eBay custom made in the white I wanted. Nice!
I love it. It’s got the nice colonial feel appropriate to my area, and stars are kind of a thing for me. Plus, it matches the little ones in the kitchen.
Our snow has been melting slowly but surely. As it disappeared it has revealed more damage.
I had been contemplating replacing the thorny bushes on the side of my front yard with raspberry bushes (why grow thorns when I can grow fruit). That has been forced up as the plan since most of those bushes are crushed and broken now. I ordered 10 3-year heritage raspberry bushes today, so I’ll soon be digging stuff up and replanting.
I’ve also been debating the landscaping on the front of my house since I moved in. That is also a newly urgent plan. The small pine trees on either side of the house had most of their branches stripped off by the snow. The other bushes are largely broken up. I realize they will eventually grow back, but I didn’t love any of them and I see no reason to leave it ugly when I can just do something nice.
That project will wait a bit. The need to repave my driveway has also become more urgent. There is a strip that’s gravel and it’s become kind of mushy since the snow melted. When I do that, I’ll also do the sidewalk. If I’m doing those, I should also fix the front stoop. I want to fix the first step, which is too short, and also widen the whole thing. Right now, only one person can stand up there and open the door. It’s cramped and I can’t put anything on the steps. I’d like to add about 18″ on either side, and this will obviously get rid of some of the space to landscape.
That is also a biggish project. I’ll have to get some quotes soon but I’m trying not to think about it for now. I’m kind of overworked lately and the raspberries will be plenty for me to do for now.
We’re down to probably 8″ of snow in the yard. This has made life much more fun for Pi and K who, until this weekend, couldn’t even walk around out there. They love the snow. Pi especially loves to push her tennis ball into the snow, move it around with her nose, pounce on it, grab it, and throw is somewhere else.
The one tree that we lost is still laying in the yard (and will be for a few more weeks). However, the girls are taking advantage of it. They have turned it into a fort. Both love to get in under there and hang out.
Another foot-ish fell on us here in our nation’s capital today. The novelty has worn off. The girls and I are both feeling pretty cooped up. Here are some pics.
This really shows the height. You can the top of my blue toter recycling can toward the right and the tip-top of my 4′ picket fence by the trees.
I had measured 32″ on Sunday. Some of that melted and compressed between then and Tuesday. Today, it measured about 42″ which means something like 12-15″ more than last night.
You can see it’s almost up to the windows in front:
But Pi and K are enjoying it even if they can’t run around much.
I have power again and am happily working at home today. Before we get MORE snow on Tuesday, here are a few more pictures from the weekend blizzard, including my lost trees.
The obligatory tape measure picture - 31 inches
Pi and K trying to peer over the snow
The front yard
Pi and K, dwarfed by the drifts
My mighty cedars, might weighed down by the snow
The bent trunk of one that hopefully will survive
Pi and K resting at the Hilton down the road when we were without power on Saturday night
My little house has survived pretty well so far. The power has been out for about 8 hours and will likely be out at least through tomorrow. That means it is cold and dark…but not down the street at the Hilton where the girls and I are camped out! Here it is well-lit and toasty warm.
The yard didn’t survive quite as well. My side yard is lined with very tall cedars. They bowed under the weight of the nearly 3 feet of snow. One is lost - it fell over and broke off at the roots. I knocked snow off as many as I could this morning to save them, wading around in snow up to my hips.
Overall, I feel fortunate. A friend lost 10 large trees. Two broke through the walls of his house and more are resting on the roof. That is a great fear of mine. He has a good attitude about it, which I admire, but in the face of that kind of problem I can’t feel too bad for myself. $99 and a pet deposit solved our problems for the night.
We don’t get a lot of snow in DC, but we’ve had two “storms” in the past week. We got about 8″ over the weekend and it’s snowing again now. Fortunately, tonight’s snow is good snowman snow.
After walking the dogs at about 10pm, we stayed outside and made a snowman and two snowdogs. They helped: the noses are old stale peanut butter cups from 2 Halloweens ago, and Pi helped by eating one off the snowdog.
While building these, someone called the cops on me. He drove up very slow to my address, shone his light on me, and, upon seeing I was not suspicous, he turned around and left with a wave. He was quite amused that the suspicious person was either a girl making a snowman or the snowman itself.
Mowing the lawn today, I was very sad to discover a dead squirrel in the back yard by the new fence. I don’t know what happened to him. It looked like he had just fallen out of the tree and landed there. It wasn’t from my old rat poison. That was all gone before I found the rat weeks ago. We gave him a proper burial, but it was indeed a sad day for Dogs and Jen’s wildlife.
