Gardening Conundrum

This winter has been unseasonably warm in Ann Arbor. On Wednesday the sun was shining and it was nearly seventy degrees. All this warm weather has me anxiously awaiting spring and thinking about my gardening plans for the summer.

My garden bed that wraps around my front porch presents a little bit of a conundrum for me. The front side of the bed faces west and is fairly shady due to the trees in my front yard. Last year after I tore out all the ivy and rebuilt the stone wall I put in three cone shaped boxwood surrounded by a bunch of annuals in shades of pink. I like the boxwood because it is an evergreen which keeps the bed from looking too dead in the winter. The boxwood have thrived and are looking pretty good. I took the picture below of them yesterday.

Not too bad for winter, I think. I just need to clean up a few leaves, add some pretty shade tolerant annuals and a fresh cover of mulch and it should look really nice this summer.

The side of my front bed has been a struggle for me. It is on the south side of my house and gets full sun. I wanted something that would tie in with the boxwood and was evergreen to plant there but I haven't had much luck. The plants I planted there last summer have really withered. I forget their name (I'm a bad gardener!) but they were full sun evergreen plants with leaves that had a similar shape to the boxwood. I thought they would be perfect until it seemed like halfway through the summer the sun got the best of them. Below is a picture of what they look like now.

Blech! There is nothing cheerful about half dead plants. Anyway, I am trying to come up with something to put there that can handle the blazing sun but ties in with the rest of the bed that is very shady. Does anyone have any suggestions? How do you handle garden beds that have a variety of lighting conditions right next to each other? I would love some advice!

Picture of the Day: Squash for Sale in an Istanbul Market

Istanbul, Turkey
11.27.2009

Good Reads

Reading has always been an important part of my life. As a little girl I would sneak lights to read after my bedtime. When I lived in Japan I spent my hours on the train reading and gave Amazon Japan a lot of business sending me books in English. Although my schedule nowadays doesn't permit me to read as much as I would like I still fit it in when I can. 

Currently I am in the midst of reading "The Disappearing Spoon: And Other True Tales of Madness, Love, and the History of the World from the Periodic Table of Elements" by Sam Kean. I find science history really fascinating (yes, I am a nerd) and this book full of quirky tales involving the elements has me totally engrossed. I'm really enjoying it and can't wait to finish it.

I just finished reading "Baking Cakes in Kigali: A Novel" by Gaile Parkin. Set in Rwanda after the genocide, the book tells the tale of a Tanzanian woman, Angel Tungaraza, brought to the country through her husband's job at a university. Known for her cake baking and wisdom, Angel helps others while raising her grandchildren and dealing with the pain of having lost her own children. The book revolves around an apartment complex of expats and is full of colorful characters and stories and, as someone who enjoys baking, I loved the cake descriptions. Although the bleak realities of AIDS and genocide are present, "Baking Cakes in Kigali" is uplifting and I found it a wonderful read.

Another recent book that I enjoyed was "The Sharper Your Knife, the Less You Cry: Love, Laughter, and Tears in Paris at the World's Most Famous Cooking School" by Kathleen Flinn. The book is her memoir of moving to Paris with her new love to attend the famed French cooking school Le Cordon Bleu after leaving her job. Part of the reason I adore this book is because I am jealous and would love to do the same. The stories are about good food, adjusting to living in a foreign country and following your dreams. What more can you ask for in a book?

So, what have you been reading? Can you recommend me some good reads? I need to start planning some books to bring to Italy with me next week.

Picture of the Day: Colorful Buildings in Singapore

Singapore
12.25.2008 

Scrapbook Layout: Home Ownership Ups & Down

My house is a source of joy most of the time but upon occasion the endless things that need to be taken care of or go wrong can frustrate me. I thought I'd make a scrapbook page about both sides of owning my home.

To make my layout I started out with yellow patterned paper for the background to match the paint color of my house. I cut two strips of white patterned paper for my ups and downs lists and rounded the corners before attaching them to the right side of the layout. I chose teal as my layout's accent color since the trim on my house is teal. I sketched and cut out a circular design combining an up and down arrow and centered it over my up and down journaling strips. I then used letter stickers to add "ups" and "downs" around the circle.

I added a picture of my house in the bottom left of the layout and positioned letters above it for the beginning of my title. For the second word in my title I traced out my writing, cut it out of teal cardstock and placed it over the top of my photo. I completed the layout by adding my journaling and my lists of ups and downs.

The journaling reads, "I love my house, I really do, but some days things happen that make me wish I was still a renter and could just call a landlord instead of having to deal with it myself. When I bought my house in the fall of 2007 I knew it was quite a diamond in the rough that needed a great deal of TLC but it was a great deal in the perfect location. I didn't know at the time what I was really in for but all of the blood, sweat and tears have been worth it (I think)."

My list of ups reads as follows:
- Painting my walls any color that I like
- Hosting parties on my backyard patio
- Designing my dream kitchen
- Old hardwood floors
- Having a garden
- Living in a home with over 100 years of history

My list of downs reads as follows: 
- Pipes freezing while I was on vacation in Australia and coming home to a mess
- Dealing with the historic association to change out a window to meet fire code
- My old furnace breaking in the middle of winter
- The water line to my fridge developing a leak and getting tons of things in my basement all wet and ruined
- My old door lock locking me out of the house so I had to break in through a window (yikes!)

Update: The white space of the original journaling for my ups and downs list and my typo was driving me nuts so I redid the journaling on the layout and added yellow stripes between the items on the list. The wording is a little different but the items are the same.

Picture of the Day: Cape Point Lighthouse

Cape Point, South Africa
08.04.2004 

Before & After: Cookbook Stand

I love cookbooks. I have a ton of them and I enjoy flipping through them for inspiration. Some of the cookbooks that I have had forever naturally fall open at my go to recipes and a stranger looking through them would be able to spot my favorites by the amount of splatters on the page.

I have been meaning to make myself a cookbook stand in the hopes it would keep my cookbooks a little cleaner and out of the way when I am using them. When I found this little white cookbook stand with decorative painting for fifty cents at the Ann Arbor ReUse Center on Sunday I thought it would be an easier alternative to just buy it and give it a little make over.

The fruit design was a little to cutesy for me  and the finish looked worn and shabby so I thought a fresh coat of paint would spruce it up. First, I thought I'd add a little extra interest to it by adding a top border of drilled holes. I wanted to follow the curve of the top piece of wood so I traced it on a piece of paper and cut it out for a pattern. I then lined it up about 3/4" below the top of the wood and traced the line. I marked my drill holes along the line every 1/2" starting from the center. To protect my work surface I put a piece of scrap wood under the cookbook stand to drill into.

After I finished making my decorative holes I sanded the piece smooth (the previous decorative painting was a bit raised) and then wiped it down to remove and sanding dust. I used a grey spray paint primer and then finished it off with two coats of red spray paint.

I like how the cookbook stand turned out and this was way cheaper and faster than building something from scratch myself. Now I'll just have to start using it to see if keeps things a little tidier when I am cooking...

 

Picture of the Day: London Street Sign

London, United Kingdom
11.27.2003 

Starting Work On My Study Ceiling

Yesterday I decided to start working on my study ceiling. This is going to be quite a project to get the beadboard eventually looking decent but I am hopeful that it will turn out well when I am done.

I began by pulling down the old crown molding. It was flush with the ceiling tiles so it was sitting about half an inch below the beadboard and looked funny. It was also very narrow and I want something a little beefier so I decided to scrap it.

To remove the trim I used a thin pry bar and hammered on the end of it to get it under the molding. I then pried up each finish nail gradually widening the gap as I moved down the wall until I could pull the piece away completely.

With the molding down I moved on the cleaning up the ceiling. After the ceiling tiles had been pulled done the beadboard was full of staples and bits of the tiles still stuck in the ceiling. I used a needle nose pliers to pull all of the staples out. It was pretty tedious and I ended up doing it in two shifts because my arm was getting sore working above my head.

With the staples gone and the molding down the ceiling still doesn't look good but I am one step closer to getting it done. I still need to patch the holes and sand down the beadboard before I can paint. I love the bright aqua of my beadboard porch ceiling and I am thinking I may use a shade of blue or teal for my study ceiling. I feel like if I am going to put all this effort into fixing the beadboard I want to highlight it. What do you think? What color would you use? 

If you are interested, check out the rest of my study renovation posts: Study Blog Posts

Picture of the Day: Bananas for Sale in the Chichi Market

Chichicastenango, Guatemala
07.04.2010