I am hoping to lay a paver patio at the back of the house that gets early afternoon shade. This will make a nice cool spot to sit and rest / cool down while working in the yard. I plan on it being about 10 by 12 for the patio part. The other part around the steps up to the gate has already been done.

Long term I would like to finish fencing the lower yard. I also need to paint the outside of the house. I might just do the bad spots for this year. I also need to finish painting our hallway inside. I already have the inside paint. I was waiting for the go ahead from my husbands lung doctor. He thinks he is clear enough now of the pneumonia for me to paint but said it would be best to wait until I can open up the house when I do it.

I have been very busy cleaning out the shop loft sorting and organizing and big time purging. It is all so much better now.

The tile in the kitchen is down and we will grout it this week. Next we will work on the upstairs and when the weather gets nice paint the outside of the house.

The yard...... I am so excited and do not know what I will do exactly. I know I want some pine trees in the back and am researching deer resistant plants. DH and I will argue because he will want to get rid of the groundhogs and I won't let him. lol

I'm starting all of my peppers inside today, and my toddler could not have had more fun playing in all of the slushy snow this morning.

We moved to DH's grandfather's house late last summer so I have to wait until all of the plants come up to figure out what to clean up. The house was vacant for ten years, but DHs aunt was taking care of some of the plants. One side of the house is covered with a Snowball Hydrangea and another corner is full of giant Hostas. DH's aunt said her mom planted close to 1000 daffodils in front of the detached garage so it should be pretty this Spring.

We are also training for RAGBRAI (cycling across Iowa thing). I would also love to pull myself together long enough to train for an all female sprint triathlon in Wisconsin this August.

My older ester whom is still mad at me for calling her a spinster a couple of years ago is getting married in October and wants me to make the wedding favors. I told her it would be neat to do flavored salts or sugars because they love to cook, but she wasn't crazy about it. She did
perk up when I mentioned flavored vodka so who knows.

Thinking about re landscaping the front of my house. The shrubs are looking tired and spiny.

1) Working on the physical me (i.e. weight)
2) House: New kitchen, exterior update, bedroom decorating

Pruning the hawthornes, planting other flower bed with encore azaleas since they're a staple here in south La. Also going to clean out storage shed, resod part of the lawn from plumbing work, and paint trim around an exterior door. I cleaned the siding and hung the laundry shelves this weekend, so off to a good start.

I just want to survive until spring. Snow today, snow yesterday and 14 inches predicted for tomorrow.

But, ever hopeful that the snow will one day disappear, this will be the year I work on the porch. I rent half of a two family home, so no gardening for me.

But I have the world's best porch, and little furniture and no hanging plants. So this year's goals--get one comfortable chair and some sort of foot rest to go with existing loveseat and coffee table. Get some hanging plants and figure out how to hang them. Get a small table to eat at and two chairs to go with it. Possibly grow some herbs on the porch, although it gets perhaps too much direct sun for that.

1. Just signed up with a weight loss clinic two weeks ago to gradually lose weight over the remainder of this year. Out walking again but not yet as much as I should--too bogged down with work.
2. In process of making final decision regarding type of window and window company to replace almost all of my windows.
3. Weed out the paperwork that is taking over my house.

Since I'm still building our house, that's all I have time for this spring. Maybe I'll have time for a garden next year.

Getting moved into the new house. Start thinking about landscaping (minimal as in grass for now).

I'd love to start growing some vegetables but I might just start them at my parent's house this year since they have a garden already and I'm not used to our new yard yet.

Start exercising again (9 months post partum... it's time. haha)

Same as you LL. We need to get out and see what's out there before we list ours. We'll still put in a garden, but I hope we're not around to harvest. lol

Me too as far as hoping to move and getting rid of more stuff! Have projects to complete around here, then have to find a place; if I'm lucky I'll have to transplant a lot before listing....the process feels daunting.

For the house....landscape the front...and maybe more, depending how deep they dig into my pocket!

For me....hopefully I can regain my health following my back surgery. Long story, short...if a doctor tells you that you have spinal stensis, get it taken care of and don't let it go until the nerves in your spinal column gets shut off.....oh my, what pain I am having in my thigh and back. I have had three replacement joints and all of them together is nothing like the pain I am having now!!! It has been three months and the surgeon said probably a year...and not what I wanted to hear.

Phoggie- Oh no..How awful!

I hope you feel better by summer. It's so difficult to be laid up, especially when it's nice out. Can you get around at all? Maybe sit and enjoy the garden from the back patio? If I lived closer, I would bring Mom and we'd help you keep the garden up :)

How awful phoggie. I hope he has you on a good pain management program.

Get my pulse fixed so I can garden, then weed and mulch my own beds. I have one area where we thought we were going to have to pull out the bordering stack of stones, and the guys who restacked them had no talent for it, so that needs redone. On the far other end of the garden bed, in the totally shady spot in the corner of the house where the bed ends near the tall, tall evergreens (thuja? cedars?) the side of the bed is collapsing. I am thinking that I need to extend the bed out away from the house several feet. The stacked stone bed here did not get restacked when I did the rest of the bed. So I need to add a lot of dirt and get more border stones and stack a new border. It is smack under the huge silver maple that covers that whole end of our corner lot. Grass is not growing there anyway. And I will have more shady area to plant! I also need to extend the front of the flower bed, and this is the sunny end. The evergreen bush that I planted there has exceeded the bounds of the bed. I guess I just figured on occasionally expanding the bed.

The house we moved from when we bought this house in late 2005 is still ours, and not because we always wanted to be landlords. I hope to get it up for sale by early summer. It has three flower beds. The shady one needs weeding and replanting. The sunny one has a tree in it that is a Threadleaf Arborvitae:
"Evergreen accent with a pendulous habit. Dense branches hold many loose tufts of long thread-like drooping branches. New growth is bright green. Grafted on patio tree form to display habit." from the Monrovia web site. When we were there the other day, I found that the tree had fallen over this winter. WE pushed it upright and propped it up, but it is by no means replanted. I got the name of a master gardener who does jobs like this, and I will call him tomorrow to see about moving this tree to our house. It has been there 10 years and is not well-rooted, so why not move it? While I have him at my house, I will ask about moving the two evergreen trees that were foundation plantings here that have now overgrown that usage. There must be somewhere else he can see them being used in the yard. Being a corner lot, we have a side yard that we are not allowed to build on. We have a very tall privet hedge along the sidewalk. I was thinking of making a perennial garden on that side of the house, since it cannot be used for much else. It is a bit of a secret garden surrounded by a wall of evergreen columnar trees to the front of the house, the privet hedge to the side, and the brick house to the other side. So maybe we could move the two evergreens to a different place in this space that would use them better. They are just squished up against the side of the house, now

So I would like to come up with a plan of sorts and start working toward that plan.

My spring involves HOSTA. I've become addicted.

And, it involves the remodel of mostly the kitchen et cetera and so forth.

' spinal stenosis'

yikes! guess I'll be asking my new doc about this. my prev doc has told me for yrs I had it - but no mention of surgery or what to do about it.
sorry to hear you are in so much pain phoggie. this is the 2nd time in 2 wks I've heard of someone with it having surgery. bummer.

My second order of business this spring will be to try to make visible progress on the large "cottage garden," bordered by large granite rocks (DH calls them boulders) we've gleaned from the edges of the fields here.)

But my first order of business is to go purple as in Purple Martins!

It was 29 degrees this morning on my back patio; the winds are supposed to be 40+ mph today. Still, I'm going on the premise that Spring may arrive, and some of my Purple Martins will survive the migration and terrible weather between Brazil and here to make it back to my site.

I "normally" have the 16 gourds hung by April 15, and the PMs "normally" arrive here between April 23 and May 3. This may be a later year.

At 7 a.m. I was bundled up in coat, gloves, and hood. I ran out to the pole to install the top eight arms that hold the first layer of gourds. I bring a couple gourds at a time up from the basement storage and pre-nest them with cedar shavings and get them ready to hang.

I will have the entry holes closed off with duct tape to keep any intruders out until I see the first martin. Then I dash out, lower the rack (the metal sleeve that holds the arms and raises up and down the 14' pole on a winch and pulley system), remove the tape, and let the most joyous part of my year begin.

The weather is critical, since Purple Martins eat only flying insects. If it's too cold for the bugs to be flying, the martins will starve. They time, and halt, their migration as the temps and food supplies dictate.

This photo is from a few years back, but they'll look the same (to most people, LOL!) when they come back this year.

I can feel them in my bones. That first loud, clear,call of last years birds' returning gives me chills of joy.

Caroline, that is a wonderful ritual to have with those Martins! How sweet for you to share spring's arrival with birds who have flown so far. I have robins who have been here since February. I told them they should have checked with the weather channel and they would have known to slow down their trip.

My new spring project is below. I have one of those big oak entertainment centers. It is a nice one by Hooker. I had to have it, even though the TV we had at the time filled less than half of the TV cabinet portion. I bought a couple of cubes of drawers to hold bills and postage and checkbook stuff and filing for paperwork and had that in there with the TV for years until we moved to a bigger screen.

Well, every time we move to a bigger screen these days, the TV people make the icons on our menus smaller or the print on the screen smaller. Our 38" screen is too small already and we are going BIG. 70" DH says! So I need to ditch the Hooker cabinet, which is fine with me. I hemmed and hawed about maybe getting a table and chairs to put there. Then I decided I needed the storage that the Hooker cabinet supplies, plus I finally made my gnome garden and I need a place to display it, near the patio door-window. So I spent a couple of weeks on Craigslist and investigating a couple of sites where people are making old buffets and dressers into entertainment centers.

I ended up with something I did not expect, because I never expected DH to like it. It is ornate and kitschy. It reminds him, he says, of the great movie palaces. We have a couple of restored theaters here in Detroit and they are ornate as all get-out. Gold leaf up the wazoo. So this is what is going to replace our big TV entertainment center. A big TV will mount on the wall over top of it, and a recliner that I had to put out in the garage when I got my lift recliner will come back inside and will sit next to it. I am working on it to get rid of white "antiquing" that was done to it. DH did not like the white they used to accentuate the acanthus leaves and cracks and crevices, so I have stain pens and am darkening all of the white areas to dark walnut and then lightening the high points with cherry. I have red mahogany for other areas and a darker gold leaf paint to redo the gold because DH also does not like the weathered look and wants it all shiny and new. I am going to remove the top drawer and use the open space for the receiver, DVD, and cable box. I am thinking to put colored glass over the front of the open space. I just ordered 2" lions head drawer knobs with the lion holding a ring in his mouth. I ordered from Lee Valley Tools in Canada, and got the hardware to hold the glass door in place, as well. I ordered enough lion knobs for the top drawer, just in case we ever use it again. I wanted to keep it and hinge it down, but DH did not want to have to get up to lower it to operate the TV, though I told him we could just leave it down unless company came. The top of the chest is "faux marble" so I am thinking plastic of some kind, though it may be stone. It is made of pieces of stone or something, put together like a true butcherblock is made of pieces of end grain wood.

Question: Should I gold leaf the lion toenails on the lions feet at the bottom of the chest? I do have a second color of red-ish gold that I could use.

Here is a link that might be useful: Lions Head Ring Pull at Lee Valley

WOW Nancy you scored on that chest. It is really nice. The drawer pulls are perfect for this piece. I always love bling. I would do the toenails in gold. LOL

Chris,thanks. We went back and forth about the lions head pulls versus a different one that had a more prominent pull and a vase design on the center pull. I thought the lions heads were appropriately over the top, though!

I also got a leather chair with actual springs in the seat. You have to love this place - Fred will furnish your home with 'something' if you are on a budget, or you may find a nice antique there. We don't haggle like we should, though.

Here is a link that might be useful: Fred'sUnique Furniture

Love that link, Nancy. You always find the greatest stuff and it fits in your life. Wonderful

And what are my plans? First this is what I'll be doing plans or no. All summer long. My garden. More pictures to follow, but this one is my present to everyone.

Nuns orchids in bloom. Right now. HARDY orchids which grow in the dirt. Stayed outdoors in our zone this winter.

OH My your orchids are GORGEOUS ML.

Fun stuff Nancy. Great chair. It looks like it was just re-covered.

Naw, it is not new, it is filthy. I was online last night reading on how to clean it. If we don't have saddle soap, I read I can use Dove soap suds, as long as I keep the water to a minimum. Follow up with a good oil mixture of one part white vinegar to two parts linseed oil. I can get that at the Lowes where my sister works a half mile away.

ML, those orchids ARE gorgeous! How tall do they get? They look 3 or 4 feet tall. Orchids that grow like day lilies!

The bloom stalks are about 3 feet tall. Maybe 3.5 feet. The strapping leaves are a good 24 inches or 2 feet tall. They took a beating this winter, but new ones are growing. I have some bletilla orchids also, which are hardy and stay in soil out doors in the winter. Let me see if I have a picture. They are quite small though. But same kind of leaves, just narrower.

I noticed tonight as I rolled the garbage can to the street that the iris are also budding up. Some of the day lilies never went dormant over the winter. Only one is filled with buds though. DH was weeding the driveway bed, and he trounced two of my in-ground hosta. He wasn't supposed to go anywhere near the hosta. But, one of them will regrow I hope. The other one looks really destroyed. When I got a new order in the other day, one hosta fell victim to Dolly...she chewed off all the leaves, shredded the roots, and ate the top out of the crown. I thought I saw a dormant eye on it, so I took that piece and potted it up. Tonight I saw two tiny green pips about 1/8 inch around at the edges of the crown remnant. It won't be big and fine like originally, but it should live. I hope I can save it. I'm really into hosta.

Last Saturday, husband and I planted 29 creeping lilyturf on the back hill (steep), about 16" apart, in an attempt to mitigate soil erosion. These only cover like 5% of the slopes we have, lol. We plan to plant more during the next few weekends.

We also added 3 wood poppy near the top of the back hill and the front slope as an accent. The guy in our local nursery said these plants are deer-proof and will propagate very nicely!

We also got a big pallet of natural stones last weekend. We plan to use them on the back hill to control soil erosion...still need to figure out how to lay them out properly. This and the planting will keep us busy for a while. :)

"your orchids are GORGEOUS "

they sure are! I'd be happy to crop it a bit, print it out, frame it and hang on a wall. That way I couldn't kill it...

lovely cab too nancy. I'm not using my old tv cab here either - just an old type printer stand. That's all I need these days. my old cab isn't as large /overpowering as a lot of them but it's still too much for me anymore. My old monster computer desk isn't moving in with me either...

for spring? that's pretty much over here! I'm gonna try not to let the 3 bushes Jed planted last fall die... go to the laundromat while I might find a day under 90 degrees, brush pupperoni. Maybe see if I can get some curtains up to a few windows (that really means Jed). I have to get 'em washed first.