Citadel Correspondent

Haha, the people at work laugh to see someone my age begging for dinner and saying "hooray! Love you, mommy!" :)

Oh, I'm vegetarian! No piggies for me, though I'll admit I used to think the Shake'n'Bake pork chops were pretty tasty.

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conjure-lass.livejournal.com

I soooo could never be a vegetarian. I love my meat. I LOOOVEEE MY MEAT.

On the plus side though, I have some friends who are vegetarians too, so I know a lot of vegetarian recipes.

I have a cous cous primavera that would knock your socks off.

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I ate meat until about 2000 or so... and it was okay, but I was always sort of nature's vegetarian even as a child and often turned my widdle nose up at steak and fried chicken on the bone and stuff like that.

And yes, Wednesday is spaghetti night! It has been since I was maybe 10 or so. A looong time. Yours is Friday? Wooo! Isn't having a weekly spaghetti night awesome? I have never, ever gotten sick of it.

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conjure-lass.livejournal.com

HOW COULD YOU GET SICK OF SPAGHETTI!?

I love my spaghetti with black olives and mushrooms and tasty onions. It really doesn't need meat at all. At least not to me. *laughs*

...I hate steak. My friends think i'm weird for it. But I hate sitting down and looking at that huge slab of random BEEF just staring at me. BLEH.

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rachel-reicheru.livejournal.com

I love the Mooch stories, when i moved out of home my mum got annoyed when i tried that :P your lucky ;)

Love the cicadas i still reckons osakas where louder!

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I know, they were very loud in Japan! Hee, and I am indeed lucky that my parents love to feed me. We are a family that is very focused on food. :)

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Your situation with food is so similar to the one I had when I was trying to make a go of my property in BC, it's almost eerie. I was exchanging various forms of labour (painting murals and signs, for example) for food. At least the CSA I belonged to allowed for that.

Your property is quite spacious. It does need work, and I can see where the previous owners decided that it might be too much for them.

Tiers are the easiest and least costly means of dealing with slopes, so I can see why the previous owners used them.

I would avoid lava rock like it was demon spawn (and not attractive Gojyo-like demon spawn either.) It traps and radiates heat like a barbeque. You think you had a hot summer this year? Magnify that threefold. You will turn your backyard into a broiler. There are alternatives. Let's look at them:

What's the issue with that space? Why won't anything but weeds grow there? Is it because it gets too much shade? Are you missing a decent outdoor faucet so that watering becomes an expensive proposition? Do you just not have the time?

The first thing I would consider is visualizing how you want your yard to look in five years, then ten years, then twenty. I presume you will want a combination of shade trees and evergreens at different intervals along the perimeter — evergreens for the winter, so that you have something other than brown and barren to look at; shade trees for the summer so that you have a passive cooling system that makes your backyard an attractive place when the heat starts to climb. Given the space, I would suggest planting three assymetrical 'clumps' of trees, vines and shrubs, one along each side of your yard, although in an irregular placement, not exactly midway along the fence on each side.

By clump, I mean a combination, usually an arrangement of three different shapes, sizes and colours. So, for example, you might consider a Colorado Blue Spruce, planted in conjunction with a Golden Elder, and a Virginia Creeper. That would give you a year-round blue-green evergreen, with a brilliant yellow-green (almost chartreuse) deciduous tree, and a dark hooker-green vine covering the fence that turns dazzling red in the fall. So you would have amazing colour, and a variety of shapes. You could keep the evergreen pruned down so that it doesn't grow more than, say, the height of a tall step-ladder.

Another combination might be a Golden Hops vine (bright emerald green) in conjunction with a flowering plum tree (almost violet-burgundy leaves with silvery gray branches and rose-pink blossoms) and a funeral cypress. The plum tree would be nice because then you would be growing your own fruit.

So these sorts of combinations would add visual interest and shade to your yard all year round. (Okay, I've chosen plants that work for my particular temperature zone. I'm sure there are much better selections for your area since you live in a more temperate area.) Plus, trees are not difficult to maintain. Not like flowerbeds or vegetable patches. So it's the easiest way to get the best look.

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Another thing I might consider for next year are pocket gardens.

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Woo, thanks for all the ideas! Actually, I was choosing the lava rock because it was free.... the neighbors took up their lava rock and put down river rocks. I do have river rocks around some of the other flower beds, and I like those better, but... I was lured by the "free" part. The area we're putting those in isn't very big, and it's not too close to the house, and I just wanted something to hold down the landscaping fabric. I really don't want the weeds to come back. And I loved the desert-style landscaping we had in Las Vegas. :)

A landscaper suggested groundcover on the hill, but I'm not sure how long it would take to grow and cover that area. I'd have to keep weeding and exposing myself to poison ivy, 'cause it sneaks in there. Another friend actually suggested astroturf!

I can see why they terraced it, but I'm annoyed by the use of all the wood in the landscaping. Wood rots here! It's just piles of railroad ties, rotting in my backyard. Eventually I'd like to replace a lot of it with bricks or Holland pavers or something.

I do love blue spruce a lot - they grow very slowly, but are very beautiful. They had trees at one point! I have several dead stumps around where the previous owners had some sort of trees (and now the stumps just attract ants). But you're right - evergreens would actually be a great idea, because they're so low-maintenance, and they take care of their own groundcover and weed-repellent with all their needles.

Some of those vines you showed were gorgeous!

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Okay, then you definitely need to get rid of the wood, asap. Because if you keep it, then you're going to attract termites and carpenter ants. Railway ties are usually treated with toxic chemicals like PCBs, so do not burn them. Bring them to your landfill.

It's hard to beat the cost of free, especially if you're thinking of it as a temporary fix. The only thing I would consider is if it will end up being more work to take out than haul in.

I would still get the trees in, though, because you don't live in a desert. You live in a lush and beautiful temperate zone, and the greener you go, the easier it will be on you for maintenance, on your pocketbook, and in terms of energy put into the place. Don't get stuck on only evergreens, because those shade trees really make a difference in the summer, and if your paycheck is going to a mortgage, you will want to have fruit trees because that's probably going to be where you'll get your food.

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Yeah, and I've already had carpenter ants! They were coming in from a river birch in my front yard - apparently carpenter ants loooove river birches. I love the tree, though; I had a man cut it back to keep it from touching my roof, but then he sprayed it all over with something deadly strong, so I've been avoiding it.

There's so much wood landscaping, though, that it would cost too much to have it pulled up and hauled away. I'm thinking about doing it little by little, starting with the wood closest to the house. At some point I will have to deal with my little 'wooden country bridge."

What's really sad about my considering all rock is that I have an incredibly green thumb, and I love gardening. But that area back there just frightens me. I think it's because I have so much to do in the house - painting, replacing a broken window, fixing the chimney, etc. :) I sometimes want to hang out at Menard's (the local village-sized hardware/home/garden store) and wait for those people from HGTV to show up and say "how would you like us to give you a fabulous backyard?"

I do appreciate all your thoughts, though... especially the pictures - some of those would be lovely to consider. The colors! ♥ I'd love to have some fruit trees, though I'd have to think about the yellowjacket problem-- they're really awful here unless you spray your fruit trees, but who wants sprayed fruit? How do you take care of them?

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Wasps can be such a noxious pest, but we haven't had the extreme heat lately, so they haven't been much of a problem — and easily controlled, in any case, by large fake paper nests that do double duty as Chinese lanterns (in the wasp world, bigger means better.) As far as spraying goes, I usually go after the nests and not the trees: no Buddhist inhibitions here. }D^:,`Those things are nasty!

If you don't mind getting wet, you could always put on the sprinkler when you're harvesting. The six-legged bugs don't like that much. Unfortunately, the two-legged sort do, especially if you don't wear a bra. ;^P~ (The hose usually works on them.)

The main thing with fruit trees is pruning and watering. A good overnight soak twice a week during hot, dry spells will keep the fruit plump and sweet. The pruning depends on how you want to shape the plant. The usual style is low-hanging boughs arching out from a central umbrel. Suckers need to be pruned, as well as those branches which shoot straight up off the fruit-bearing limbs.

Why don't you write HGTV and ask them if they would be interested? Explain that you're a single woman who is caring for elderly parents. Maybe they're looking for someone like you.

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(Getting back-- sorry for the delay!)

I think I'll need to get rid of several tree stumps - sawed off at ground level and recently discovered - to help with the insect problem. I have a great respect for ants, just not within a five-foot perimeter of the outside of my house, because it tends to extend their interest to the inside of my house, where there is air conditioning and food. :)

I do have a weeping cherry, but it doesn't seem to produce fruit so it must be purely ornamental. It's very pretty, though. I also have a small flowering plum, but it's very small and doesn't seem to produce fruit, either.

And YES, I have seriously considered trying to interest HGTV in my unique yard. My mom watches that channel all day so maybe she'll have an idea on who to write for what. :)

I think I'm kind of becoming sold on the 'creeping ground-cover' option for that hill, with perhaps an evergreen or two (it's really not that large). It would keep it green, give the spiders and bugs somewhere to hang without me needing to go in and bother them, and it would keep out the weeds. Some of the vines you showed - the Virginia creeper - were beautiful. I wonder if they would work on the ground... :)

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Basic garden plans for long term plantings should consider:

Colour:
Most ornamentals range the following colour spectrum of silver, grey, blue-grey, blue-green, hunter green, kelly green, bright emerald green, yellow-green, yellow, brown, violet and black (the last four tend to be rare.) One nice effect is to vary ornamental dwarf evergreens with deciduous shrubs that have bright red or violet trunks and stems, like Siberian dogwood or wild roses so that there is a nice interplay of colour in the winter when the leaves fall.

Texture: feathery leaves, fans, spearheads, spikes, fronds, umbrels, etc.. For evergreens: needles, firs, waxy leaves or powdery leaves. Grasses.

How it fills the space: Vines and espaliered fruit trees cover unattractive or worn wall and fence surfaces (although espaliered fruit needs babying) — at least during the summer. They can also crawl over pergolas and archways for shade and large-scale shaping. They create a nice background of colour and texture. So you plant them to break up a plain, boring wall-space. They aren't groundcover.

Shrubs and hedgerows provide windbreaks and privacy.

Ornamental shrubs can be shaped for interesting variety and contrast against the background space. Deciduous ones are usually chosen for the colour of their leaves in autumn (sumac, burning bush, wolf berries, etc.)

Dwarf evergreens also provide those interesting shapes and textures, although they tend to come in predetermined shapes that don't need much pruning (junipers are either ground cover or flare out, some trees are shaped like flames, some are 'fat and pudgey'.)

The shape of garden as it grows in: Height, shape, the space it fills. Think some tall and short trees and shrubs planted in 'staging areas', some perennials that can be switched out for variation in colour and texture (styles change over the years and you want that flexibility), and ground cover to beat back the weeds (usually lawn is chosen as the ground cover, but it looks like yours doesn't do well during hot summers.)

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So for your space:

Stumps. Ugh. If you can, get a professional to take those out and have the holes filled right away — a professional arborist because it's so much work! It isn't just the ants and termites you have to be aware of. When stumps decompose, they let off gasses and lye which makes the soil noxious for surrounding plants and changes the pH from acidic to alkalyne. That's bad news. If you were in a woodland area, I would say, drill holes, pour in water and let nature take its course. But you probably want your yard to look like something in a few years, so ...

If you can't afford that, consider building container gardens around the stumps.

Plant least one tall evergreen tree on the north/northeast side for winter colour, shelter for the birds and shelter from the north wind. Plant one deciduous shade tree near the house for summer coolness. If it's a fruit tree, you will have the prettiest blossoms in the spring, and they will smell like heaven, but you will get wasps.

Plant a background of 2-3 different vines right against the fence. Support them with netting. Let them crawl over the wood. They can be taken out later, when the staging areas grow in, but prior to that, you want something nice to look at. (Later, you might want to transplant them to places where you want to build secretive arbors.)

Intersperse the spaces between the vines with 2 to 3 trio-arrangements of dwarf evergreens and ornamental shrubs in the foreground. So that's 2 or 3 staging areas with 3 small trees and shrubs apiece, or 6 - 9 small to medium sized trees and shrubs in all. Choose them for the variety of their shapes, year-round colour, texture and height — the ones that grow taller should obviously be placed in the back, or kept trimmed right down. So you're constructing jewel box areas where all the different shapes, colours, textures and colours will give you lots of visual interest all year-round.

Until they fill in, (think about 4 - 5 years) plant perennial fillers in between them like wormwood (feathery, silver), daylilies (spikes), peonies/hydrangeas. When the trees start getting to be the right height and diameter, you can take the others out.

For ground cover, make sure you use a variety of colours and textures ... creeping jenny interspersed with scottish moss, for example.

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So, that's a plan for a backyard garden that will give you shade, shelter from the wind, privacy, visual interest all year round, interesting colours all year round and a means of keeping out the worst weeds (although you still have to keep on top of weeding; short of paving over everything, there's no way out of that.)

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P, thank you so much for all these thoughts... I should look up more of these online, and you're right about looking for long-term. I have just been so desperate that I was trying to think "how do I make it stop being annoying now?"

I always used to dream of what kinds of trees I wanted when I had my own yard. Japanese maples and those other purple-leafed maples often figured into my visions. I think the smaller Japanese Maple might work, but there should be nice colors on the side.

I am going to plant some bulbs this fall... and dig up some daylilies. Lots and lots of daylilies. I hate to dig up plants but the woman who lived here before me had almost completely opposite taste in flora from me. I'm hoping to find a home for them.

Anyway, just so you know, I'm memming and keeping all this in mind and mulling it over-- so thank you very much for all your time and input and thoughts! I've obviously been too stressed to think about it properly, but thinking about it properly will be fun. ♥

I am going to dig up

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(Oh, and to answer your questions - I just want to plant something, or place something, or something something, on that hill that will be very easy to care for. I will have enough flowerbeds and flowers and herbs and stuff elsewhere around the yard to keep me busy... I think other things will grow there, because it's not too shady-- the neighbors have grassy hills-- but I'd like to just have something there that I never have to worry about.

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Trees, vines and shrubs then, with landscaping fabric at the bases. I would look at permaculture solutions for the base though. What climate zone are you?

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Humid continental climate, says Wikipedia. :) Do you know of a good map? I used to know these things, back when I was buying bulbs from Dutch companies.

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http://www.garden.org/zipzone/index.php She may have meant the hardiness zone thing, that refers to the growing season, when the first frosts come, etc. - this link gives a thing where you can plug in your zipcode and it tell you the zone. Then most garden centers and catalogs sell the plants with info on them about the hardiness zones they are rated for. I'm zone 7a, which would be considerably warmer/longer growing season than you - I think yours is 5b.

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I've been listening with interest to this whole exchange - we have a huge yard (a whole acre) with very little landscaping, and what there is, is bad (yuccas, pampas grass, some shrubs around the foundation and a few small trees that have not been properly cared for. The previous owner mulched all the beds with big nasty gravel. We already lost one of our few trees, a bradford pear that had been allowed to grow too tall and thick, and we had to yank out two huge pyracanthas that were taking over the whole front of the house. So we have basically a blank canvas waiting for us to re-do the whole thing.

I have two priorities for what I want to do here: one, I want to add as much shade and privacy as possible, as quickly as possible, because I don't have enough of neither - that was really the only thing I really did not like about this house when we bought it. And the other is I would like to put in some things that will provide us some food sources in the long run, like some nut trees, and mulberry trees, and maybe some berry hedges, so we will have sources of food in the future as we get closer to retirement and our incomes go down (plus, food is just NOT getting any cheaper, that's for certain.) So it's going to be a long process, but all of your suggestions to jedi made a lot of sense, phae, and I will bear them in mind.

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If you're looking longterm, then you want to start on the trees as soon as possible. I can't imagine the possibilities that are available to people who live in such lush temperate climates. I suppose the weeds and bugs are a problem, but where I live, the growing season is so short, and the winter-kill rate is enormous (because we get very dramatic thaw/frost cycles.) To me, the places where you and jedi live are like the Gardens of Eden. What I would do to have the selection of plants and trees that can grow for you!

One thing about living in hot, humid climes is that you want to channel wind and air circulation to you, so you don't want to build windbreaks. Anything along your perimeter needs to be porous to create effective breezeways. So, no hedges.

Shade trees and vines which grow against the house are the most effective passive coolant systems you can find, but you don't want to shade your garden. Planting fruit trees next to the house is ideal because most fruit tree roots dislike akalyne pH, so their roots won't go into your cement because of its lime content. I'm not sure what to do about wasps, though. Our big fake nests work, here, but wasps aren't usually a big problem in any case.

In terms of a vegetable garden, if you're looking longterm over your retirement, you want something that is going to take the least amount of effort and provide a high yield. Because your health is a consideration, I would seriously look into 3-foot high boxes surrounded with a chicken wire enclosure, and frames over which netting may be draped. You can lay old windows over the boxes during the frost seasons to protect the seedlings, and the netting will keep most animal pests away.

I'm not sure how to combat insect infestations in your area though. Strong, healthy plants tend to repel insects for some reason, so probably making sure they are well fertilized and watered would help.

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We face the highway on one side (there's one house & lot between us and it, but it's still way too close for comfort), and we really need something to break both the visual and noise impact of that. I had originally thought those tall cypress trees, but I've been told they are too vulnerable to the high winds we get here, with hurricanes and tropical storms. The house is kind of exposed for a long distance on all sides, so I think we could do a lot of tree planting, and not risk significantly impairing the breezes coming to the house. And having some shade on the house in the warm months (which is so much of the year here) would be an energy bonus. Thank god this house has a geothermal HVAC system and a great artesian well - that was one of the reasons I overlooked the lack of privacy & good landscaping! Those save us a lot of money (and the water is SO good!) I still want to put some solar panels on the roof eventually.

Bugs are definitely a problem here - we had a horrendous Japanese ladybug infestation our first year here, and there are all kinds of insects here that I never had to deal with even in the city. (But no roaches! YAY for that!) But we do feed the birds like mad, and they help keep the bugs down a lot.

I know myself better than to plan too much in the way of an in-ground vegetable garden - I just physically can't handle that anymore. Raised beds, or better yet, container gardening, will have to suffice for that. But any other ways we can plant trees and bushes that will yield edible things, I'd like to explore. Some day I may get ambitious and even get a small coop and a few hens - I believe we are zoned for it. My hubby has to take care of them at his living history museum job, so he knows how to deal with them already. Anything we can do that increases self-sufficiency is a good thing in my book at this point.

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Although I adore beautiful avenues of cypress or lombardy poplars stretching into the distance, most places are not designed for them. From your description of the winds, you could plant a cypress, but it would need to be in a companion grouping with at least two other support trees. So, it would go on the far northeast side of the staging area, and then you would plant one sort of tall spreading evergreen (like a golden cedar) to the south and another (colorado blue spruce) to the west. That way, when a gale blows, that tree has others as backup. This is the forest-style planting.

Trees which grow in forests have less windfall because they have companions which help keep the roots interlocked and deep, and when they sway and bend, they are supported by each others' branches. When you take out trees in a forest, the remaining ones are much weaker than those that grow by themselves in a dale, and they tend to snap like matchsticks in a high wind. So, if you plant forest-style companion groves, don't take out any trees!

Another way to get trees to grow stronger, is to keep them topped and pruned.

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Yeah, that's why we lost the bradford pear and the pussy willow we have lost already (the pussy willow is reviving, one segment of it survived, but the bradford was a total loss) - the moron that owned the house before us, the same one that planted all the yuccas and pampas grass, didn't prune and top the trees. At least we got the bradford down before this storm that is barreling down on us right now hit - it was right by the driveway, and would surely have come down on top of my mustang, with my luck!

I even thought about trying a wall of the non-spreading bamboo as a wind- and noise-break - some of the varieties now are so pretty, but we are just one climate zone off from where it will grow. We can only do the rhizomatous kind, and I am not willing to take that on (it's just giant crab grass!) What I would really like to do is get a good landscape designer (one with an open mind, not a totally conventional one) to do a long-range design plan for me, with staged, prioritized lists of what we need to do over time, since we can't afford to do it all at once. I have an antique that my mother has told me I'm at liberty to sell if I don't want it (I don't! it's Queen Anne, which I don't care for, and just too pricey and fragile, it's always made me nervous, having it around.) Maybe if I can dump... err, sell... it, I can afford to get the landscaping really underway. It would mean much more to me in the long run than that damn highboy ever would.

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If money is a consideration, then bide your time and do some research. Take a slow drive around and scope out the parks and gardens that attract you the most and make note of the trees they've planted, how they've arranged them, and what would work best for your yard in terms of sun/shade, soil composition and groundwater levels. Where I live, for example, pussy willows — all willows for that matter — are weed-trees which get into the plumbing and chomp through paved driveways like they were saltine crackers and block sewers. So they are a no-go for our area.

I threw together a rough outline of a garden plan for jedi up above. Maybe that would work for you. The basic principles are the same for any enclosed suburban-style of yard though, unless you're going for a formal garden, and it doesn't sound like that's your style. If it is, look up Sissinghurst or Hidcote and follow the planting principles laid out by those styles instead.

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sir-pinkleton.livejournal.com

I applaud you turning away the pork.

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I thought you might approve. ♥ Piggies are all safe from me.

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despina-moon.livejournal.com

Dude -- your yard is huge! It's awesome and I'm glad I finally got to see it.

And yeah, houses make people poor -- I'm very happy you have your parents close by to help feed you! (My parents always saved everything and it would go bad, too. First thing I do when I visit ma? Clean out the fridge!!)

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