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May 13, 2005

New beginnings

Peter found these while walking near the university yesterday. They were a little too high to jump up and bonk our heads on, sadly.

Thanks to everyone who wrote and reassured me that it is okay to cry over a broken cup. I've been thinking that maybe I'll go ahead and get a bunch of those mugs, since I know that my special mug can't really be replaced by a lookalike. Snowball assures me that Anasazi knockoffs are common and plentiful where she lives, so maybe I'll redo my whole kitchen in it. A nice big bowl in that style for mixing bread would be lovely, if I can find one. I did call Mesa Verde today but nobody was there.

And I decided not to throw the fats in front of the bus after all, because I don't know which of them broke the cup and it's not really fair for the innocent one to die, and plus throwing cats in front of buses is illegal. And they've been with me for a long time (although not quite as long as my cup), and ruined countless things, none of which I have killed or even harmed them for. So I guess I'll just forgive the stupid little shits.

Oh look, they've clawed the crap out of this chair. Ah well, that wouldn't be the first chair they've destroyed. Shits.

So today I started some seeds for the garden. Only about a month late. Here is what we need to do in order to get our property the way we want it:

Back yard:
-finish taking down the deck
-cut down the trees next to the house
-dig up the remaining roots from the lilac bush I cut down; cut off the remaining stump from the cedar tree I cut down; dig up the rose bushes
-mark out where the new patio will go and put down limestone screenings
-mark out paths
-move the tarp to kill the rest of the grass
-take the pool pieces to the dump
-build a composter
-prepare beds for the seedlings and the plants we're bringing from Pete's mom's place (since we moved to Windsor we've been storing a lot of our plants in her garden)
-plant

Front yard:
-rake up the Barbage and throw it away (the half of the front yard that was garden is full of white marble stones, terra cotta chips and cedar mulch)
-stake down a tarp to kill the remaining grass
-prepare beds and plant.

The front yard is going to contain all native plants. Southwestern Ontario is a pocket of Carolinean forest, and the Windsor area is a tiny overlapping pocket of tall grass prairie. We're going to concentrate more on the Carolinean, but might allow some tall grass prairie plants to creep in there. The back yard will be divided into four, with one area for big messy perennials, one area Japanese, one area kitchen garden and I don't remember what we talked about for the fourth area. Woodland, maybe. Where I'm cutting down trees we're going to put in a flowering crab, and plant shade-loving stuff like sweet woodruff and trilliums. This is the corner of the yard that's visible from the computer desk, where I spend most of my time.

So here is a list of the seeds I've started today. Some will go in the front and some in the back.

-purple obedient plant (front yard)
-two kinds of hollyhock, black and red
-echinacea (front yard? is this native?)
-two kinds of rudbeckia, the good old fashioned side-of-the-road kind and one with a red centre
-butterfly milkweed (front yard)
-something called "cleome", seeds harvested from the native Carolinean garden on campus. I don't remember this plant at all but I drew a picture of its flower on the bag of seeds and wrote "big, purple", so I'm sure I must have liked it at the time (front yard)
-bergamot. Even gone to seed and then stored in the freezer for eight months, it still smells divine.
-joe pye weed, one of my all-time favourites (front yard)
-lavatera: I have no idea what this is, Rob collected the seeds and mailed them to me, and he knows us pretty well so I'm sure we'll love it.
-marigolds, for dyeing
-strawflower
-thyme
-sweet basil
-coriander
-parsley
-chinese lantern
-coreopsis, a solid yellow, not my favourite coreopsis tinctoria. I had a nice healthy patch of that last year until the roofers killed it. Grr. They killed my eryngium too, the pricks.
-something labelled "? beside sage, yellow flower", from the back garden Pete put in at his mom's. It might be that thing that's like savoury but you don't eat it; does that have a yellow flower?
-silver dollar plant
-love lies bleeding. This is a gorgeous weedy trollop of a plant and I try to plant it everywhere I go. Even the seeds are beautiful, like tiny, tiny garnets.
-thai basil
-thai chili pepper

I'm hoping the weather will be pleasant enough over the weekend to get some of the cleaning up and prep work done. And since I've discovered that you can't kill a forsythia bush by leaving it in a bucket for two winters, I'm going to plant that, where I'm taking out rose bushes.

Posted by jodi at May 13, 2005 04:05 PM | categories:  crazy cat lady : projects

Comments

Posted by: Sandy at May 13, 2005 05:21 PM

Posted by: Julie at May 13, 2005 05:27 PM

Posted by: laurie at May 13, 2005 07:14 PM

Posted by: anna at May 14, 2005 09:48 AM

Posted by: sarah irene at May 14, 2005 11:00 PM

Posted by: Danielle at May 15, 2005 10:52 AM

Posted by: Snowball at May 17, 2005 04:58 PM