Falling Slowly

The blog title is a bit misleading; it's just one piece of this week.  Dan and I are singing a duet at our ward (church) talent show on May 15th.  We've been practicing in earnest the last few days.  Our pianist is also performing her talent by accompanying us as she just recently learned this piece and performed it at a piano recital.   So we three are doing our bit together and I'm looking forward to all the performances that will take place that night.  Most of the performances you watch at these church events are highly entertaining but some can be cringeworthy and painful - I hope this isn't one of them (us, Kristie, not you - we are fully confident in your ability).

If spring arrived slowly this year, and it has, it is busting out and my son Dane and I (and Dan too one day) finished all the yard clean up over at the Yellow House to get it out of the way for all the fun to begin here in our own yard.  I now feel like I will be able to manage what gardens and plantings have been left there to carry on.  Sixteen years ago I planted 5 rambling roses in front of a fence that separates my old back yard from the yard of the little cottage that I rent out.  Over the years those ramblers grew so enormous they obliterated the fence and I could barely get in there to ever do any pruning so I let them go crazy.  Today it took us hours to chop our way into the painfully thorny jungle and we pruned them down to a few canes each and a foot or so high.  I can now see the fence and all the slats that need reattaching and nails that have popped up and need nailing.  I don't know how well the roses will recover from such brutal pruning but it had to be done.  I'll never let them get this out of hand again!  Here are a couple pictures of during and afters.

The roses in the background are a couple of those ramblers.

Here you see them from the other side of the fence.

We're about 3/4 of the way done here today in this pic

The sagging fence!  The roses pruned and thinned.  And you can tell the tenant in the barn there is an anglophile.

Remember the fence and rose enclosed vegetable garden that was here last week?  This is what it looks like now and we have covered it in grass seed.  I can't wait to take a picture when it has reverted back to lawn.  It was the right thing to do - I feel such a weight gone from my shoulders.

We had some rain this week too so when it was inclement outside, I painted some prettiness and sunshine inside.  Two pieces; one, a still life as realistic as I could paint it, and the other, a one dimensional, more primitive or folk art type.  Both are in the dining room on different walls right now where they will hang until we decide to move them somewhere else.  I also turned an area of our laundry room into a my "art" studio - cleaned out an armoire for all the supplies and then set up my easel.  I've been painting in the kitchen so this will work out better I think; a little more private and the light in that room is tremendous even on overcast days.  

This painting makes me smile - it is almost child like and so happy. 

Along with the yard work over at the Yellow House, and lots of painting and closet organizing here at home, and many other little and big responsibilities related to home and church and family, I've planted a few things here in the Rye yard; hellebores, a couple brand new roses (remember the Sweet Intoxication rose I discovered in Sydney Australia? - look at the final Aussie blog post - It's gonna grow in this yard - yay!), and a big box of dahlia tubers arrived from Swan Island Nursery that will be planted very soon.

This is Ebb Tide - look at that rich purple!  I took a pic of this one in a Aukland New Zealnd garden.  It will now grace our yard here.

Sweet Intoxication - I found both at Jackson Perkins. 

Now, to finish this post, I need to report about a restaurant they we have driven by countless times right down the street on Ocean Blvd, Route 1A but have never really noticed until recently so we decided to give it a try.  The Carriage House.  We could tell by the way the bartender, waitstaff and hostess spoke to people that this place has a ton of regulars.  Even the patrons seemed to know each other - we felt like outsiders.  Well, we will be back and they will know us!  The food was delicious!  And you get a view of Jenness Beach across the street right outside the windows.  We watched 18 surfers (Dan counted) ride the waves as we ate.  Dan had chicken saltimbocca and I had grilled haddock with a killer citrus shallot buerre blanc sauce.  The seafood chowder was so delectable and even in my tiny cup, I had full size shrimp and scallops along with fish and corn.  Again, we will be back!

cuppa chowdah - thin rich broth, loaded with seafood and corn - very savory!

Interior shot on the second level where we sat - the floor level looks completely different.

Jenness Beach across the street - the lack of verdancy will soon be rectified! 

It's just an old beach cottage converted in to a restaurant - very lovely inside with two levels of seating.  

Next week I will be in Utah for a couple days getting Dane back in college and settled in and then I head for Spokane where I will slave away planting gardens and painting rooms for my daughter while she is at work.   I can't wait - we will have a blast!!!

To end all this babbling, lovely things that bring cheer.  Burning in the entry way and making me yearn for May and carnations just being cute on the kitchen island.

Deconstructing a Garden

Today, my son Dane and I headed over to the Yellow House to rip out a large vegetable and rose garden that has been providing beauty, joy and veggies for about 15 years.  In 1999 and 2000, I cleared a 72 x 24 foot lawn area and turned it into a vegetable garden.  I built a split rail fence.  I planted about 60 roses around the exterior of the fence and grew a lot of vegetables inside every year.  The kids were pretty much excluded from yard work except for mowing.  The rose show every year has been quite a sight to behold during June and July and many of them continuing on in to fall.  Some years I couldn't keep up very well with the pruning and weeding but most of the seasons I managed.  Two years ago, I moved out of the yellow house and thought I could keep up with that 2 acre property with its perennial gardens, 200+ roses, fruit trees, large berry patch, etc.  Last summer I broke my ankle over there falling out of a tree right at the beginning of a day I was meant to be pruning the roses around the vegetable garden.  The pruning never happened; I only managed to plant a few pumpkin plants.  (As an aside, they never got watered or weeded either and I got a huge and healthy crop!).  I made the decision last fall to tear out all the court yard gardens, which I did during October, and then to remove the aforementioned veggie/rose garden the following spring and let it revert back to lawn.  That work began today.  Actually, I can't believe all we accomplished in 5 1/2 hours!  I rent the property out now and all the gardens are under appreciated and largely ignored by tenants and I have found that maintaining two large properties is very difficult.  And, since I will probably sell the Yellow House down the road, I think a future buyer will be easier to find if there isn't so much yard work to scare them off.  Now, I would buy a property like this in a heart beat because I adore gardening and yard work, but I have found that most people aren't as invested in that much maintenance.  So I feel I am doing us all a favor.  Here is what the day looked like when we arrived and how it ended.

By the way, today was super warm and not a cloud in the sky.  You all know we have had a super hard and long winter this year and the snow has just barely melted but gosh was it a glorious day and spring is truly here.  Dane and I started by removing the 4 by 8s that surround the garden itself.  Then we removed the fence.  We had to cut back quite a few huge roses to reach the rails.  Then began the laborious task of cutting all 58-60 sharp and thorny roses to the ground.  Then the hauling of all the roses to a large trailer and 2 burn piles on the back of the property.  We hauled most by piling the cuttings on a tarp and then hand dragging the tarp back and forth to the piles.  Needless to say, we obtained many cuts on our arms, legs and faces.  And burned a lot of calories! We will return every day this week to dig out the roses with roots down to China until the area is totally clear and then I will plant grass seed.  Dan had conference calls all morning but after, he joined us and cut up a huge branch that had broken off one of the enormous maples during snow storms and could not be budged and then we helped him stack the logs on the old wood pile to dry out. He also trimmed other trees for me.  I am so grateful I had help today!  In years past I did this work alone and it was so nice to have strong, willing and cheerful help.

Piling cuttings on the tarp. 

Scotty and Emma (beloved daughter in law come out to observe our work).  And that neighbor still has some snow!

Dan with the chainsaw

Lunch break!  Apples, cheese, water.  

Done for today!

You can still see some of the rose stumps and the red bag held our lunch and water.  

 Dan stopped at Goody Coles (we jokingly call it Crappy Joes) for BBQ on his way home and brought dinner to the table.  We ate piles of meat and cornbread.  If you've never tried that place before (route 125 in Brentwood NH), please do - good food!!  Afterwards, we three had a little family night and watched the very old movie "Johnny Lingo" (Dane didn't know the story or what an 8 cow woman is!  Go to mormon channel or google it to watch - funny 25 minute film but a great lesson to it as well).  And then we chatted about marriage and relationships and answered all sorts of questions for Dane - fun time!  Wonderful, productive, lovely day.

That Day In Pictures - Roses

Photo Credit belongs to Brittany Soucy

This is a picture of the driveway leading up to the kitchen door of the Yellow House.  That gorgeous pink shrub on the left is a Meidiland landscape rose that I bought about 10 years ago at a nursery; it was a clearance rose grown on its own roots, weedy and tiny in a gallon black plastic container and it cost me about 5 bucks.  The whole driveway is lined with roses like that one.  But that is just part of the rose story of the Yellow House and it's a fine thing right now to look at roses and green, growing things with a snow storm howling outside my window.  Which is a fine thing as well.  

One of my email account names is rosamundi250 and I'll explain why shortly.  We moved here to New England from Northeastern Nevada in 1998, almost 17 years ago.  I had a tiny yard back there but it was bursting with roses; I had crammed about 50 in a postage stamp yard.  There was almost no lawn to speak of because I had told my family that this yard belonged to roses and flowers and they could play in the big park right down the street.  They were fine with that. When we decided to move to New Hampshire, I was filled with anxiety in only one sense; I was leaving behind the roses.  And we were going to be students for a while and on a strict budget and how would I buy more?  So, before the move, I dug up many of the smaller ones after pruning them, and I bought dozens of black plastic gallon pots from a local nursery for a quarter a piece.  And then I proceeded to order dozens and dozens of old fashioned, antique, and modern shrub roses that I felt I couldn't live without.  After all, I had an obsession that had taken hold of me over the past couple years and it was too new to shake or reason with.  I repotted them in the purchased plastic pots and set them out all over the deck and yard keeping them watered while we packed up.  All of those roses were crammed together in the Ford Explorer.  And some had to go in the back of one of the moving vans where they wouldn't have any light for a week or so.  When we arrived in New Hampshire, many of the tiny rose plants had lost their leaves and were pitiful looking.  All these roses were the kind grown on their own roots, not bare root or grafted like you usually get at nurseries.  So they had arrived in the mail with leaves and some even with blooms.  Now they were sorry looking and I feared for them all.

The new yard was 2 acres and it was by no means prepared for a couple hundred roses.  So after unpacking, I planted a few and then I placed the rest of them, cheek by jowl, on the back sunporch to over winter.  I had no idea what I was doing.  Most of them survived.  I spent the following spring plowing up lawn and creating flower beds all over the place.  My kids and some new friends helped me plant a lot of them but I planted most myself.  I lost about 10 pounds that spring because I just dug and dug and dug every day.  Almost all thrived.  Over the next few years I bought about 50 - 60 more until I had around 250.  And one of them was Rosamundi, a Gallica rose, one of the oldest roses in cultivation, from the 1500's.  And she's striped. blooms outrageously just once a year, and her scent is heavenly.  Here's what she looks like:

I planted roses all along my driveway, about 30 of them in two rows of 15.  About 15 of them overtook the others because they grew so enormous, like the Meidiland (Scarlet), that the other 15 were crowded out and they just disappeared due to lack of light and air.  Oh well.  That driveway is quite a sight when they do their July thing.

Roses filled the back courtyard just off the kitchen, I planted them in mixed borders with perennials and annuals, and when I put in the vegetable garden, around 70 x 25 feet, I installed a split rail fence and then planted shrub roses around the perimeter of the fence and garden.  I am going to post a bunch of pictures here of many of the roses over the years because sadly, most of them will be pulled out this spring as I work to simplify the property of the Yellow House, which I now rent out, and no one who lives there will ever appreciate the roses like I did.  Or want to take care of them.  And I have new roses (though not nearly as many) and several of the Yellow House roses in our new yard in Rye.  I ripped out about 1/2 of them last fall when I dug up the courtyard so it could revert back to lawn.  The vegetable garden and its roses will revert to lawn this spring and summer but the driveway roses will remain and many others in some mixed borders.  So  for my record, here is what I did starting 17 years ago.

Roses around the veggie garden - that one in the center has already bloomed,  and when it does, it is fully covered in baby pink little roses - stunning!

veggie garden border in its early days; fence isn't finished yet at this point

Tuscany Superb 

Okay - that's more like it!