Mary Anne Carter » Garden

Pest control

Mary Anne — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 01:19:24 +0000

One of the things that has bothered me ever since we moved down here is how many ticks there seem to be. Almost every time my family spends more than a couple of minutes outdoors, they seem to be coming inside and finding a tick or two trying to make itself at home. I’ve never been very good at removing ticks, it seems that even though I try really hard to remove them correctly the head seems to stay in the bite and then there is a swelling around the bite that takes a very long time to fade away.

The folks on the Yahoo groups that I belong to are frequently writing about how they keep a small flock of backyard chickens to help keep the ticks at bay. In addition they say that they enjoy all of the fresh eggs that they could possibly want. From time to time they offer up some chickens for sale and my hubby and I discuss the ins and outs of owning chickens. My biggest concerns involve predators and who would care for them if we went on vacation. I really don’t think we just dump a bunch of chicken feed in a trough and leave them for a week.

Mailboxes and curb appeal

Mary Anne — Mon, 07 Nov 2011 14:34:12 +0000

I think that one of the nicest ways people can spruce up their houses is by putting up really nice mailboxes. When we first moved here, our mailbox was old and beat up and rusty. The flag was sagging, and the door was hanging by only one hinge, flapping loosley around. It looked horrible! I have been telling my hubby ever since we moved that I want a new one, but I have not seen any that I like at the local stores. I did see that some of the stores sell whitehall mailboxes and other whitehall products, but I think that the stores are way overpriced, and the mailboxes are special order to boot!

I love shopping local when I get the chance, but I think that I am going to spend a little bit of time on the Internet to see if I can get any better prices and maybe even a better selection than the few that I found in town. After all, if I am going to have to order the mailbox, I may as well spend a few minutes trying to get the best price that I can get!

I look forward to the day when my hubby replaces that nasty old rusty thing with a brand new box!

Artsy look

Mary Anne — Tue, 17 May 2011 03:52:19 +0000

One of the things that I saw and fell in love with at the Home and Garden show that I went to last weekend was a beautiful rain chain. The company that sells the rain chains had a lot of them on display, and I was really impressed with how artsy they looked. My hubby and I had been talking about having to replace our downspouts later this summer because they were falling apart. I’ve always thought that the downspouts were ugly as all get-out and so I’m going to check out the possibility of replacing them with some chains rain that would divert the rain water into barrels.

With all of the recent summer droughts that have been going on, and our attempts at water conservation, I’d love to collect the rain water and use it to water the flower beds. Since our household potable water goes through an expensive filtering process that our garden doesn’t need, I think that doing this will extend the life of our water filter system and our well pump. I’m really excited about doing this – our house would look so awesome!

Saving Water

Mary Anne — Mon, 09 May 2011 14:18:29 +0000

When we went camping as kids, we thought it was great fun to take our daily shower outdoors. In fact, one summer we were sent away to an overnight camp in the mountains for two weeks and we had to take baths in the creek! That camp was when I first learned about conserving water and using rain barrels.

Until that summer camp I had never heard of rain water barrels and thought they were dirty or full of germs. But they taught us how to save the water that runs off the roof and use that water for a lot of things, like watering the garden or watering the lawn.

On a whim I decided to look online and see if there were any rain barrels for sale like the ones they used at our summer camp. We could easily put a couple of barrels at the corner of our house and reuse the water on our plants. That would lower our water bill this summer and it would be good for our plants, too. I found a good site with several pretty styles and colors. I can’t wait to show this to my husband and see which ones he would like to get.

Flowers Say I Love You

Mary Anne — Mon, 09 May 2011 03:14:22 +0000

There are special meanings for all the different flowers, and sometimes even the color of the flowers mean different things, like roses. I don’t remember what they are all all but I read about it on a florist web site one time. To me, flowers just say, “I Love You.” No matter what the type of flower or the color – I love to get flowers. They always make me feel special.

I sent my mother a little bouquet of mixed flowers for Mother’s Day. I asked the florist to make them yellow and white, so that they would brighten the room wherever she puts them. I hope she puts them where she can see them every day while they are fresh.

Garden scaping

Mary Anne — Wed, 27 Apr 2011 01:17:16 +0000

My hubby has been spending a lot of time this early spring planning his new garden. I’ve never seen him get so engrossed in a project like this one! I think that he was inspired by that flower show that we went to last month. He’s already been pulling out the Adirondack chairs and Picnic Tables from the storage shed and giving them a good cleaning. He asked me to help him with the project (which means the cleaning part) and I was glad to oblige until I discovered a couple of fresh wasp nests underneath the Park Benches when I went to pick one up and move it.

The last time I was stung by a wasp my hand was swollen for two weeks! I have a very healthy respect for those things, and although I don’t run and scream from them, when I see a nest I let my hubby deal with it while I walk away. I know he gets a kick out of dealing with those kinds of things; it makes him feel all macho, so I’m more than happy to let him enjoy his masculinity that way.

My Green Thumb

Mary Anne — Sat, 16 Apr 2011 01:03:27 +0000

This year I am taking gardening to a new level. I mastered the vegetable garden last year. Now I am adding flowers and shrubs to my yard. I have decided to add a small white fence with a trellis and a bench in the back yard. I saw a picture in a magazine that gave me the idea, and I am looking forward to creating a nice little retreat in the yard for me to sit and watch the birds.

I’ve always liked trellises and can’t believe the idea has never crossed my mind until now. Even stranger is that I would be inspired by a magazine article, with a house that looks absolutely nothing like mine!The house in the magazine was a white clapboard cottage, whereas mine is a little brick rambler. But I can imagine in my mind’s eye what the garden would look like anyway.

A nice garden trellis set off to the side, near shade trees and framing a gravel garden path would be so inviting to come home to each night. I would add a pair of wrought iron chairs, a small bistro table and a bird bath to make the scene idyllic. It can’t be that hard to do! And I’m so inspired now to make it happen!

Tree Art

Mary Anne — Tue, 05 Apr 2011 03:54:14 +0000

Isn’t this the cutest thing? I saw this online and could not get it out of my mind. What a great imagination the person must have who thought of tree art. I would love to find more of his work, but I don’t even know the name of who did this.

Cottage in the woods

Mary Anne — Thu, 10 Mar 2011 01:07:33 +0000

I was remembering an old episode of a television show I liked to watch every day called Decorating Cents. (I wish it was still on television, but I can’t seem to find it anywhere!) One of my favorite episodes was where the decorators tried to make the walls of the bedroom look like the outside of a cottage in the woods. One of the things that they did that I really liked was that they hung window boxes on the insides of the windows of the room.

I thought that was such a clever idea! Why should I only hang window flower boxes on the outside of the window? Wouldn’t I enjoy the window box even more if was INSIDE the house? I wish I could arrange for Joan London and her Decorating Cents crew to come to my place and redecorate my whole house! I love the creativity and projects that they get involved in.

Rainbow roses

Mary Anne — Mon, 17 Jan 2011 23:53:30 +0000

A good friend sent me a chain letter email today. You know the kind, you’re supposed to forward it to a gazillion friends. I adore my friends, but I hate those kinds of emails! I simply reply and thank the sender, and then delete the message. This particular email had a photo of some rainbow roses on it and it claimed that the roses were not painted, or dyed, that they were bred that way. Well that seemed unlikely to me so I went to snopes.com to check it out. Sure enough, snopes.com had an article about it. And the article linked to a news video from rueters.com. These roses are awesome, and beautiful, but they were NOT bred that way. There is a special dying technique to it.

Hibiscus plants

Mary Anne — Sun, 26 Apr 2009 18:26:21 +0000

Last summer my hubby bought some beautiful hibiscus plants and planted them in front of the house. We thought they would survive the winter left outdoors, but they didn’t. I just looked up how to care for hibiscus over the winter and discovered that we should have brought them into the house for the winter. Oh well, now we know!