Garden Inspirations, Parkway Planting and Creative Use for Vintage Dishes

Look! Our morning glories and lilies opened within a day of each other. The long, cool spring has been good to our yard.

I'm still working on filling in the foundation beds, which we just started this year, but I'm already debating about what to do with the parkway.

We have a lot of tall trees on our block, not as ancient or towering as some of the giant elm trees that our village is known for, but old and shady all the same. So far, all I've done is plant hostas around them. I haven't even edged the rings yet.

Very few of the parkway plots along my street have any sort of landscaping, other than the trees. But a block or so to the east, the parkway gardens begin. Here are a few pics I snapped on my last walk 'round the hood. I want to create a complicated-looking, but easy-to-care for plots. I think some of these look amazing.

I took this photo because I really like the light green plants underneath the dark purple foliage of the tree. We do have room in the parkway for a few more trees; it looks like there were some cut out in the last decade or so. I need to check with the city to see if I can request new ones, or sneak one or two in like some neighbors have. At any rate, I'd love to try something with purple leaves. (And I should ask them if that red rope actually keeps dog walkers from letting their dogs poop in the yard or trample beds.)

This bed is comprised of annuals, and while I'd have to replant each year if I tried something like this, I do like the bright, cheerful carpet they create.

Okay, this one's not technically the parkway, but I like how they have taken out more than half their grass and planted ivy. I want to get rid of as much of our grass as possible. On a corner lot, we do have a ton of it.

While I'm not overly fond of the shape of the stone or the pillars it rests on, I do like the idea of putting a bench in the parkway that would be too heavy for someone to walk off with.

Ultimately, I think I want something like this. It will be very, very hard for us to achieve this. The frontage for this lot is your average city plot; ours, on the corner, is as wide as this on one side and--I'm not kidding--at least five times as long on the other side. That's a lot of plot to plant and maintain. But it's gorgeous. I suppose I'll try a segment or two each year until it's done.

But this I can try in the near future. I saw them at the Custer fair last week. Garden "flowers" made of antique dishes. The stem was a length of rebar attached to the back of the largest plate; they were all glued or cauked together, I'm not sure what the material was. They came in all colors, but my eyes were attracted to the cobalt blue.

I especially liked the bird bath. What I think I might do is try to find enough vaseline glass to create either a flower or a bird bath, and set it in the garden somewhere with a UV light shining on it. It would give a fun, glowing effect at night from the uranium content of the glass.

Wouldn't that be awesome at night? Time to hit the resale shops!

Calling All Housebloggers...How Do You Unclog Old Pipes

With all the long-haired hippie types living at The Box House, our drains frequently clog, even with hair traps over everything. Most of the time, a plunger will work, even for the tub. However, the time between clogs seems to be getting shorter.

The problem is, we have ancient cast iron pipes that are probably rough and rusty on the inside, making them perfect hair catchers. I'm loathe to use non-mechanical means to unclog, because I've been told that Draino and the like are too corrosive for old pipes. What's everyone else using? Our tenant suggested bleach, but the info I'm finding online is rather conflicted. Some plumbers say okay, others say no.

So, I'm hoping someone will chime in with their fail-safe, house-safe method for unclogging a drain. Thanks!

Box House Garden Update: Cherries, Honeysuckle, and an Experiment with Moss

We took a major break from home improvement projects this week, and don't feel the slightest bit guilty about it! Instead, it has been a week of catching up with client work and enjoying the garden. Luckily, I had one project that I could drag outside with me and work on at the table. It's the most time I've spent in the garden all summer, if you don't count the hours of actual gardening.

Few things are more satisfying than watching your yard transform through your own efforts. From mud pit to oasis in one year! Here are a few garden updates:

Just about everything growing to the right of the washing machine is a weed tree; I cut them all out to ground level early spring, but they're coming back. But because there are at least four different kinds growing there, including a lovely purple-leafed something-or-other, I'm letting them stay for contrast and to hide the garbage cans from view. I'll cut them back again in the spring.

Our honeysuckle vine is in bloom; this is one of the few things we had planted last year, and it's doing well. We planted two other vines along the side of the house this year to keep it company.

Just a couple of comfy chairs. The forsythia I planted in the corner is doing well; I can't wait to see it in bloom next spring.

Some random planters; ignore the super long grass in front of them. It's been very cool these last weeks, and raining like crazy, so it's growing faster than my crappy push mower can handle. Mom tried some super-powerful fertilizer that she's been spraying on the foliage of our plants once a week, and I'm not kidding, everything tripled in size in about 10 days. It's the healthiest coleus we've ever had. (Oh crap, I just realized I still have to plant the ferns I bought two weeks ago.)

Front flower bed that I (mostly) planted this year; there aren't many things growing here yet. It's anchored by a dwarf cherry on each end, and another forsythia in the middle. In the background, you can see the overgrown grapevine on the back yard fence. Most of the hostas we have planted throughout the yard came from the base of the grapevine; it's amazing how fast and how big they grew as soon as they were divided and transplanted.

The same grapevine as seen from the back yard; to the left of the chairs is a peach tree. Yeah, I know, peaches in Chicago! How cool is that?

Between the two cherry trees, planted last summer, there were maybe two dozen cherries. This is a first for me, growing fruit. This year, because there were so few, we're letting the birds have them. And my goodness, the robins were out there today, gobbling them down whole! When we start getting substantial crops, then I'll think about covering them in netting.

This is probably my favorite stretch of the garden this year. It makes me smile every time I step out the back door. The limestone fragments were something cheap we picked up from Home Depot; they come in groups of five, backed with a plastic mesh. I plopped them here because this section of the yard gets muddy when it rains. The sandy dirt I packed between has already washed away, but the stones themselves are settling nicely. I dug up some moss that was growing behind the house and transplanted it between the stones; I don't know if they'll take hold because it does get a fair bit of sun in this spot. If not, I'll probably try growing creeping thyme between them instead. The grayish-green patch is grass seed mulch. I've been using it, with great success, to patch the bare spots.

Variegated orange blossom. (Stop looking at the uncut grass. Sheesh. I'll get to it.) We actually planted two of these last year. The other one, in the park way, was peed on every day by neighbor dogs. It is one-fourth the size, and doesn't have blossoms. As all other growing conditions were the same--light, moisture, etc.--this is proof positive that dog urine hinders growth. Grrr. I actually dug the poor one up and moved it closer to the house last week. With luck, it will catch up to this one--already two and a half feet tall!--by next year.

That's about it on the updates. My godmother stopped by today, with a bunch more perennials she divided from her garden. I'm so psyched! Friends and relatives have been kind with their plant donations for our new garden. I know how I'll be spending tomorrow!

Renovation Recap, New Tenants In

I barely crawled out of bed yesterday. I think all the stress of prepping the tenants' unit, getting ready for and taking a week-long vacation, and juggling real work had caught up with me. I woke up with one whopper of a cold: scratchy eyes, sore throat, stuffed head, congestion, the works. So I dosed up on Nyquil, didn't get out of my jammies, and brought one of my client projects to bed with me, although I didn't actually get much work done on it.

I'm feeling much, much better today, and rather self-satisfied with all the work we did accomplish. We pretty much hauled butt on the tenants' unit, taking advantage of a few weeks of down time between tenants.

In three weeks, this is what we did. There are links to some of the projects:

Bedroom #1
Updated electrical, including new wiring and installation of a reproduction push button switch
Stripped the original sconces, refinished them in silver, and rewired them
Painted the room blue using Behr Venetian plaster
Replaced all switch plate and socket covers

Bedroom #2
Updated electrical, including new wiring and installation of a reproduction push button switch
Stripped the original sconces, refinished them in gold, and rewired them
Installed new smoke detector

Bathroom
Repaired door so that it closes
Recaulked tub

Kitchen
Installed new lock on door (the old one was unsafe, and not up to code, requiring a key to lock from the inside)

Dining Room
Updated electrical, including new wiring and installation of a reproduction push button dimmer switch
Replaced light fixture with a vintage chandelier, which Ted rewired before installing
Painted the room Tuscan Tan using Behr Venetian plaster

Living Room
Updated electrical
Found the original light switch hidden in the wall, and restored
Found the original sconce boxes hidden in the wall, and restored
Rewired and installed a set of sconces, circa 1920, found on eBay
Installed new ceiling fan, where there was no other light fixture
Painted the room using Behr Venetian plaster

Basement
Cleared one of the rooms in the basement to create a storage area for tenants

Garage
Although not related to the tenants, we cleared a lot of crap out of the garage

Garden
I created two new flower beds along the front of the house, pictures to come

Whew! I think I need another vacation!

I'm sure I'm forgetting a few things on the list, so I'll let Mom and Ted chime in to remind me. Now that the new tenants are in, we can refocus our attention to other portions of the house. Upcoming projects include Mom's bedroom, installing two new doors in the basement, and clearing out (the goal) 30% of the junk in the basement as we reorganize all storage areas. Oh, and Ted and I have hopes of moving to the basement soon. We'll see how that goes.