Our Home And My Passion.

 

  

  

I never promised you a rose garden.

While visiting with a dear friend this past weekend it was suggested

I take a couple days and put on my blog some history.  Some of you

know I used to have a website but after being attacked and finding

my research being used by others as their own information I decided

to remove my website.  It was so disheartening to see others use my

stuff without giving me or my site credit. More disheartening to have

others question what I have done without even giving it a try.  So it

was time to go underground and just do what I loved.

We purchased our home in the early 1990s from my folks

and worked on it when we could.

Photo from 1988 when we first moved in, oh my what memories this brings rushing in.

Here is what it was like after a few months of clean up.

2000 and the first memorial bed design.

1995 painted the outside of the house.

My plant area. 

After painting it was time for the shingled roof to go and 

at the same time we decided to redo the deck.

Our two boys were young and had a whole 

run of the back yard to play in,  The owners that had 

the house prior to my folks were the second owners. 

This was the builder's house and when he went bankrupt 

they purchased it and did some work.  They put in the 

retaining wall, shed and took out some walls and fireplace, 

then  it with an old style cook stove.  It is my understanding 

that this young couple lived here with their two kids and the 

wife die here. They were so kind to leave my folks the book 

of photos that they started and wanted to pass along the history 

of their home. What a great idea!  We are in hope of doing the 

same thing when we leave.  As you can see they left with some 

great bones of what they have done, I truly thank them.

This photo is from 2005 and you can see several items 

have changed and still are changing as we explain, we 

are a working garden and as my husband will tell you 

nothing is safely planted.  With the boys growing up 

and time for me to figure out what I wanted to do 

now that they didn't want to hang out with the folks.  

My cousin was getting out of fuchsia so I asked the 

folks if I could have their greenhouse as they weren't 

using it.  You can seek it behind the playground equipment.  

We brought it down the Gorge on a flat bed truck and 

placed it just inside the double door gate.  This is a 

great place as it gets shade from the house.  This would 

be the north side of the property, we also laid some pavers 

to make a small patio as this area would stay wet. 

You can see from this photo it was time to kill the 

grass and reseed due to the grass was dying.  

This was 2002 and we decided to kill the yard for 

another reason.  It was becoming a jungle on the 

driveway.  I have been growing Brugmansia for 

a few years and it's was time to find them a new 

place to grow.  So we killed off the grass that fall 

and before reseeding we took a serious look at the 

west side/back yard.

I took old hoses and laid it out, this will become 

the new Brugmansia garden!!

Next was to dig an edge and put the dirt 

in the center of the bed. 

The we covered the grass and edging dirt with newspapers

and watered them down to stay in place.  A friend had a 

truck load of compost that he brought over and we covered 

the newspapers.

Then we covered these and waited until spring to 

plant. Here is what the garden looked like in the 

Fall of 2003, needless to say we ran out of room 

and needed to expand the next season.

They were planted way to close but it was great to walk 

all around then and to watch then grow was just amazing.  

This was our first year of growing them in the ground and 

still had some in pots.  So after digging all these up and 

putting then in pots for the winter it was time to rethink 

our small Brugmansia Garden

The expansion of the Brugmansia Garden for the next 

year and we covered it for the winter months,

While starting to plant the garden the next year we started

to put in hostas to edge the beds.  While planting the next 

day we got rain, rain and more rain! Which delayed the 

planting for several days.

2005

Fall of 2005 photo of the front yard.

Early spring we had a bad wind storm, we lost the 

huge pine across the front yard:

As you can see it was pretty trashed and it 

was time to focus on getting the yard back 

in shape in the front.  The landscaper that 

helped us remove the lumber told me it would 

take a year to get it back to normal. Plus it would 

open up the yard to more sun now.

After loosing some very special gardening friends 

this year we decided to make a memorial bed 2004 

to honor my dear friends that had shared so much with me.

2007 Change to the memorial bed.

From above view.

2005 before the tree came down.

2007 We made some serious changed to the Brugmansia garden 

due to health issues and problems with the neighbors.  No planting 

them into the ground, sat their pots on the black plastic.

Mid summer everything was growing nicely.

Note the north fence, yep it came down!  Dear neighbor wanted

to take his fence down so he could watch me garden.  Needless

to say the first strong wind toppled the brugs over and I cried.

Long story short we had to take them to court to get the fence back up.

Then he would take boards down to look in and Dear Husband caught

him one night.  The wind was just terrible when the fence was down so we

had to move the Brugmansia to the front yard.

His peek holes to watch.

2008

By spring we had enough and invested in a new fence after the chain

link was removed on the north property line.  We did the same on the east

property line behind the front fence so we will work our way around the yard

until it's all fenced.  We just planted a small section of plants due

to what survived.  The hostas were a great idea for a low growing garden,

 Here is our favorite winter photo of the house,  2005

Fall 2007

A bird's eye view of creating the new hosta bed and starting

to re-think the west garden beds to a lower growing plant until

the whole back yard is fenced.

A bird's eye view of the front yard.

Spring 2009

2007 Old Greenhouse

2010 Making the Circle Bed

Fall 2011

Welcome to the tropics.

July 2012

Our plum deck.

May 2012  adding a new fence at the curb after removing the

roses and adding bananas out front.

January 1013 our chain link came crashing down after

a high wind storm, so it was time to add more fence.

After a few hours of work the area was ready for the 

workers to arrive to do the new fence.  We would of loved

to put back up chain link but due to the neighbor's dog

it was time to do the PVC.

 Adding more to the front of the house walkway.

March 2014 Fresh Bark Mulch

May 5 new peony bed.

May 10 Added a New Greenhouse.  

(Check the back posts for the story on this.)

In 2007 we put in our first rain barrel and today we have several! Here it the north east corner:

Here is the northwest corner of the house, we started with the blue one. 

Here is the last set we did, the south side of the house.  We currently have

one in the Brugmansia House and hope to add one to the greenhouse next 

winter.

I will add more of the later photos as I come across them.

Please forgive the spacing and hope this might appear,

every time I try to fix it, it gets worse.

February 20, 2015

I can't believe it's almost the end of February, time is just flying by so fast.  I have been spending my
Friday afternoons in the greenhouse or working to keep the leaves off in the Brugmansia house.  The Pacific Northwest/Southwest WA has been so warm this winter, no snow on the valley floor.   Around 10 degrees higher then normal and so far this month we have had plenty of rain.  The rain barrels have been full!  This past week we even saw 65 and have been in the 40s at night.  Yep everything is starting to grow!  We usually don't see this type of weather until April.  With the warmth we have had to rethink keeping the heavy duty tarp on the greenhouse.  So a week ago I thought I'd just fold it in thirds and roll the back and front to cover the top so if it got cold again all I had to do is just pull the front and back down.  While it was up I decided to cut the front and back plastic top cover.

Here is some of the stuff that we are starting to see bloom:

If you need to contact me please use the karmahappytoes at hotmail.com email address as I

don't check the gmail that much.  

Happy Holidays!

To all that follow us or just visit, we would like to take this time and wish you and yours a Happy
Holiday and may you have a great New Year!

Update on the new Greenhouse.

A couple folks emailed me and asked how the new greenhouse was going, lots of learning as it's completely different from what I did have.  I still love it!!  Only problem is I didn't have the heart to chalk the panels so I had to find a way to keep the heat in.  I didn't think of putting up bubble wrap which one friend suggested this past week.   I figured the first year would be a learning year and it has been.  So since it wasn't chalked we decided to tarp it.  Late in the fall I was finding lots of debris
from the neighbor's pine on it and the sap was just unbelievable hard to remove so I covered it with a piece of plastic and tucked it up so the windows could open.  We started with that and added the old blue tarp from the old greenhouse and soon found it wasn't big enough.  So we found a heavy duty silver one at Harbor Freight that would fit over the top.  I allow my husband to decide how to put it up and boy was that a big mistake!   We folded it in half and covered the back of the greenhouse and allowed the old blue tarp to cover the front and allow the one side to open for the door.  We soon found out with the last wind storm and the 67 mph winds that that wasn't going to work!  So the next day I found myself putting the plastic and tarps back up.  This time I decided to just put the plastic back up and cover the front with the blue tarp like we had it but the silver tarp I found covered the whole greenhouse with plenty of room in the back to tuck it into the brick area.  Photos will show just how well this worked.

Here is the plastic cover and in the spring I'll cut the bottom off so that the windows will open and then tape the top to fit to protect from the sap.

Next is the old tarp to cover the door front.

 

Here is the east side all tied down.

This is the silver tarp and how it is tied down so I can get in the front of the greenhouse.All I do is lift the front corner and slide in after untying it.  Husband would like to put  a velcro door on the front but for now we are not going to temp it.  I go in every few days and water when things look dry.  I currently have two small heaters inside to warm it at night.  Our temps so far have stayed above freezing with only a hand full of nights dipping to lower 30s.  With the last wind storm we had our power outage of a few minutes so I had to go out and reset the heaters.  I have some buckets of water out there just in case to keep warmth inside.  Next year I hope to have a rain barrel in there for water use and also keep it warm.  Might have to do this after the holiday as our temps about to drop some.

12/11/2014 Wild Ride!!

Mother Nature has not been kind to us out here in the Pacific Northwest!!  Yesterday was one of those days that started off with a nice rain, what we here call liquid sunshine and by noon the clouds did part and we got to see the sun.  Matter of fact it was t-shirt weather for a few hours!!  Then the fury of Mother Nature hit from the south!!  We fought winds in the 50 mph range and it wasn't fun!
Around 4ish the tarps were blown off the greenhouse and the classic car.  I was out putting the tarps on the car and moving the ones for the greenhouse to the garage.  I had to tie the windows down again on the greenhouse and decided I had enough of the wind.  Headed for the house in time to sat
at the front door to watch one of the neighbor's tall pines split and come crashing down.  What a rush!!  The other neighbor came out and moved her car to our driveway as it wasn't a pretty sight.
I then watched from the safety of the inside of the house only going out to move tarps on the car and the brug house.  At one point it had blown the door wide open the cement block was pushed away from the door.  Today will be clean up day as you all know I won't allow the junk to lay in my yard
like the other neighbors do.

We lost one window on the new greenhouse so I need to get that ordered but will only replace it in the spring.  Bubble wrap will be used to keep the heat in.

Photos:

Well that wasn't a lot of fun!  I dropped a large cement block on my hand and ended up in the urgency clinic that Sat. due to the one finger was all red/purple and black. I was so lucky nothing was broken and it put me out of commission for a week.  I know it was over my 10 lb limit but someone had to do the cleanup.  I don't dare say too loud my yard is cleaned up for the winter, as thing are going I'll be out cleaning up the yard again is we get another wind storm.  So far this year we have taken 2 truck loads and 8 -45 gallon bag of leaves off the yard, let me tell you it's not our trees!