A Bucketful of Dandelions and the Weed Hound

Good morning, friends!

I don't know about you, but I just do not like dandelions.  Do you?  Yeah, their cute little faces are a pretty yellow, and when you hold them under your chin to see if you like butter (remember doing that when we were kids?), that yellow is so bright it reflects on your skin. Meadows full of them can be quite uplifting. But I'm just not that wild about them. They are quite deceiving.

I've tried to tolerate them.  Really I have!  Even to the point of adding their leaves to our salads.  Yuck!  Too bitter for my taste.  Hubby keeps telling me he's going to make some dandelion wine, but that remains to be seen...

Yesterday I was out on my big John Deere mower having a wonderful time in the sunshine - cutting nice, straight, even rows in the grass (that seems to grow by leaps and bounds overnight!). I would look around me at the beautiful green stripes that reminded me of a golf course and just revel in the feeling of a nicely manicured lawn.  Yeah, even out here in the country, I'm obsessed with a clean lawn.  (but that's another issue I'm working on...)

This morning I got up expecting to see that beautiful wide expanse of lawn greeting me, and as I looked out the kitchen window........DANDELIONS!  EVERYWHERE!  Big yellow heads mixed with white fuzzy ones poking up all over waving at me.  Mocking me. Scraggly, leggy, tall and ugly - all laughing.  Where in the world did they come from?!  Was there a weed party last night I was unaware of?  Did they creep over from the neighboring fields in the dark of night?

So since we like to keep things as organic as possible in our yard and gardens, I spent an hour or so with my little Weed Hound.  Ever of that? It's a great little gizmo that plucks out the weeds from your lawn and you don't even have to bend over.  Nice, huh?  You center it in the weed, push down with your foot, twist it, and out pops the weed!  You then whack the handle with your palm and the weed flies out into your bucket.  You can actually feel the dandelion being pulled from deep in the ground.  

The battle was on.  I attacked that yard like a maniac - pushing and whacking - pushing and whacking. Two bucketfuls later, I couldn't hear the dandelions laughing anymore.

Nice.

I'm happy.

Umm, that is, until word gets out in Dandelion World that there's vacancies in our yard now....

Happy weeding!  

~ Laurie

Square by Square

Good morning, fellow gardeners!

I've got to be brutally honest with you...

I've been just absolutely droooooling for three long winters over a big, white arbor that I found online. When I came across it, I just KNEW that I had to have it - one way or another. Somehow.  Someway.  Someday.

I could picture it standing proudly in the center of my garden, surrounded by my favorite peonies and crowned with huge, fragrant pink climbing roses and lush clematis. Just like the ones we all see in our gardening mags, ya know? Do you have arbor dreams, too?

I didn't know how I would accumulate the vast amount of cash that this big beauty was going to cost me - but I just knew I had to have one. 

Somehow.  Someway. Someday.

My brother called one day and asked if we would like the grapevines that had boldly claimed the cedar arbor in his backyard.  After an enthusiastic, "Sure!", we made out way to his house and started digging. And digging.  And digging.  The job that I had so casually said, "It'll only take a few minutes to get these babies up" took us over an hour.  As I stood next to that huge arbor (catching my breath, mind you), I asked what he planned on doing with the arbor. He made my day when he said, "You can have it."  (Love ya, bro!)

After another hour long job on the following Sunday (after spending a couple backbreaking days digging out sod to create a border garden and the perfect spot for the new arbor), my hubby and I hauled my new fav thing home on a trailer and set the three pieces up on some old sawhorses in the backyard.

White paint was what this treasure needed - of course!

So...day after day...for four days straight, four hours a day --- I painted.  And painted.  And painted.

Do you know how many little lattice squares one has to paint on a seven foot arbor?!  I counted one day as I moronically stabbed the frazzled paintbrush into the little corners and sides.  I think my mind has selectively forgotten, but it was something like...ahem....468.  That's one coat of primer and two coats of paint for two sides of the arbor.  It's a job that I would not want to do again.

But I'm not complaining!  Nope!  Not moi!

Because once hubby and I erected that beautiful thing in the exact spot where I had pictured it these past few years, I knew it was worth every single minute I spent dabbing and pushing paint into that latticework.  It was a thing of beauty!  My garden was one step closer to being completed.  (sigh!)

I am breathlessly awaiting my 'Zepherine Drouhin' climbing roses and my 'Hagley' clematis to creep their way up the sides and over the top creating a crown of fragrant pink. Incredibly, they are already sporting big buds. It will be beautiful, you know.  And I promise I'll share that day with you, my friends!

The moral of this story?  Don't give up visualizing what you see in your mind's eye, whether in your garden or your home.  You just never know where your next treasure will come from!  (*wink)

  Blessings on your day!

~ Laurie