Tomatoes

Andrew and I eat a lot of tomatoes. Our bi-weekly grocery bill consists of about $10 of tomatoes, as long as they look good. Due to our tomato consumption I knew I wanted to plant tomatoes, and lots of them. I picked a spot by our side gate, it's full sun until late afternoon which is great for tomatoes.

But first, I had to get the spot plantable. The previous owners like everything else they did and everything else they planted were misled(or purposely lazy) enough to think that low-maintence means no-maintence.

Here's the difference: violets, hosta, whatever other scrub brush they had=low-maintence.

Gravel=no-maintence.

About two hours of pulling, digging, and raking this very compacted clay-ey soil, I had something I could work with. I dug some holes, filled it with lovely, vitamin-rich soil and smushed my baby tomato plants in.

I planted, Roma, Cherry and Big Beef tomatoes. Roma for tacos, salsa, pico de gallo. Cherry for salad and snacks. Big Beef for BLTs, tomato sandwiches and fried green tomatoes.

I also got this pretty bird bath at the store the other day, which is just off to the side of the garage door. It brings a nice splash of color.

Finally, Living Room Paint

After almost four straight weekends of painting, we called it quits. We were done painting for a long time. After all, the ugly rooms had been taken care of. The bright lavender in the quest bedroom: check. The Buckeye red and grey in the office and guest bath: check. Ugly golden yellow/brown in the upstairs bathroom: check.

Everything else was looking ok. The living room was a little dark for my tastes. A dark brown with darker avocado-y green. The sun doesn't hit the living room until late afternoon and it stays rather gloomy in this room all day. Andplusalso, the ceilings are like twelve feet high, ugh.

We finally decided to do something about it and picked out some paint chips at Lowe's. At first I only grabbed a grey and new, lighter green. As I was waiting for samples I decided to grab a yellow, too.

And... I love it.

This is the yellow next to the grey.


This is the lighter green next to the yellow.

I'm in love with the yellow. So this weekend is another long one of painting.

Hat on Dog and Flowers

Sometimes we torture our pets. From previous posts, you know I dress up my cat, Arson.

Well, Dakota is not immune to this. However, XL dog sweaters costs a lot more than a Small.

So, we improvise.

With papa's uniform

(I call Andrew papa when talking about him to our pets, yeah I'm crazy)

Almost there...
Fail

And, bingo! For about 2 whole seconds before he ran off whimpering in the corner.

Ok, not really.

To the flowers. Saturday was a lovely day. We spent all morning running around, some were fun some were boring. Like buying shears and sunflower seeds at Lowe's. Other's were boring, like going to base for something I don't even remember. Perk: I found a way better deal for a trowel and loppers on base. Tax free.

Andrew surprised me by taking me to the nursery for some flowers for our window boxes. : )

I knew I wanted alyssum and fell in love with the African Daisies.

This box has more purple alyssum and white daisies. The other box(not pictured) has more white alyssum and purple daisies.

I should have taken a picture on Saturday when it was sunny and the daisies weren't hiding. Hopefully, the sun will come out and the dasies will grace us with their gorgeous petals.

Saturday we raged war on our yard. First, Andrew mowed then he and I raged war on a series of unruly vine the previous owners planted and let grow wild. We're halfway done and under all that vine and bush are 4 tree stumps, 3 cinderblocks and 4 metal piping things. We think we'll find a graveyard when we finish.

We think the owners were lazy and planted the ivy just to cover up the stumps. ugh!!! Even not finished and 2 of 4 stumps revealed it looks way better than a 4 foot tall clump of green mass.

The joys of gardening a new yard.