Instrument of Grace

Finally - the Shed

Without further ado, here she is!

She looks awfully tiny sitting there, but she's 10 x 12 feet.  I don't know why the shutters and window trim aren't white - I'll have to ask Dave the Shed Guy.  I haven't bothered him because he had surgery just before Christmas, and I wanted to give him time to recover and spend Christmas with his family.

Still, isn't she cute?  I sure think so, but then again, I waited so long for her that my perceptions are probably distorted.  I love her little cupola - pure fluff, but that's OK.  I also love her double doors on the left side and her single door in front with the windows up high.  Just wait until spring - she'll be sporting a three or four color paint job.  Those shutters and the window and door trim will be contrasting colors. Maybe even the planter boxes too. 

We moved the tiller, leaf vac, mower, wheelbarrow and tool cart inside, and that's when 10 x 12 started to look not so big. 

We still have quite a bit of stuff to move in, but before we do, Garden Man is going to put up shelves.  Bless his little green heart, he's even going to make them fit in and around the studs so nothing will fall off.  He's at the lumber store right now buying the materials. 

All my gardening stuff, fertilizers, pots, tools, etc. will go right here in this corner.

I can hardly wait. I have no idea why this whole evolution is so exciting to me, but it is.  Thank you for indulging me.

An Invitation

I'd like to invite you to come visit me on my other blog, the "everything else" blog, where I'm posting The Seven Videos of Christmas. 

While there is a disclaimer over there, I need to also post one here. I can promise none of these videos will have anything to do with gardening.  They might not all have to do with Christmas, and there might be some that aren't exactly politically correct.  The first one does have birds and critters, though.

Please come on over to Toomuchstuff and check out the videos.

Santa Came Early

I have a shed!  I will post photos as soon as I can.  I haven't been home during daylight since it was built last Thursday, except for the two days it was pouring rain.

I'm not sure why the white trim is grey instead of white, but I'll worry about that later.  I have a shed!

First Snow

It snowed a bit yesterday evening and last night. It's not much, but it is measurable and definitely noticeable.  This morning's paper said we rarely get measurable snowfall before December 17. This must be a rare year.

I braved the wind to get a few photos. Oh, the wind is fierce out there! Even with fleece lined boots and a parka, I didn't last long. The paper also said our temperatures are running 20-30 degrees below normal for this time of year.  Brrrrrrrrrrrrr!

Here's a somewhat warped pan of the back yard.

You can see we got just a dusting, but it's enough to make me smile. I was hoping for a bit more - the kind of snow that covers everything in a fresh coat of white and encourages you to sit by the fire with a mug of hot cocoa. Maybe next time.

Although it was just a dusting, the Lambs Ear is buried and seems to be struggling to escape.

The snow didn't stick to the driveway, but ice formed there in what I thought were interesting patterns.

So there you have it. Our first snow of the season.

A December Memory

I was reading a garden blog about some overwintering poinsettias in Charleston, SC.  That post brought back a long ago memory, and I thought I'd share it.  I know a picture is worth a thousand words, and unfortunately, I don't have a picture. I'll do my best to paint a picture with my words.

When I was in high school, I lived near the north end of our county, but I went to church in the main part of town at the southern end of the county.  I didn't go to the same church as my parents did, I went to a different church with a fabulous youth program.  My best friend lived just a few blocks from the church, and we got together often, not just on Sundays. 

I wasn't a gardener, at least not by choice, when I was in school.  I picked and shelled the peas and butterbeans, and that was under duress.  I noticed pretty flowers, but they didn't make the impact they make on me today. But one day, when I went to pick Donna up for an outing, I saw something that stopped me in my tracks.  I don't know why I didn't notice it before. Maybe the blooms weren't there or in full color as they were the day I stood there staring at the house across the street from Donna, my mouth hanging open.

The houses in Donna's neighborhood were little houses built probably around the 1940's. All the rooms were small, and the houses looked like doll houses arranged on the street. They were all single story with little front porches, and many had little fenced yards.  The house across the street from Donna's was no exception. But next to the house was something so amazing my eyes could hardly believe it.  This was north Florida, and we had our share of tropicals. My grandparents had a huge banana tree, and one year we even got bananas from it. There were palm trees all over town, but I had never seen anything like this.  Nestled up next to that little house was a huge shrub-like plant. It went all the way up under the eaves, and it was almost as big as the house was from front to back. It was covered in huge, red, familiar-looking flowers. I'd seen those flowers before, on plants in foil covered pots in my own living room, but I'd never seen a poinsettia that was almost the size of a house, and I'd certainly never seen such in full bloom. It was amazing.

It must have been a mild winter, and other conditions must have been just right, because I've never seen anything like that ever again. I graduated from high school and went away to college in Alabama. My career took me to Colorado and Maryland, both places with cold winters. Donna married an moved to another city, and I've never been back to that little neighborhood. I'm sure the extra cold winters of 83/84 and 85/86 did that poinsettia in, but they didn't destroy the memory. It was there, just waiting for something to bring it back to the surface.

All I Want For Christmas . . . .

 . . . . . is a garden shed!

Do things ever go the way everyone says they will?  What's that they say about the best laid plans?  Seems my shed plans aren't quite following the timeline I'd hoped for.  Truth be told, I was pretty certain the shed would be here before Garden Man had the site ready. After all, the economy is slow and companies are happy for any business they get, right?  Not exactly.  Seems like October was a banner month for the Shed Guy, Dave.  Of course, I ordered my shed in October.  Still, he did say 3-5 weeks with 5 weeks being worst case. 

I was thinking uh-oh.  Only three weeks for Garden Man to "get around to it" and get the site ready.  We had to select the exact site, do some leveling, build a frame, order crushed stone, haul said crushed stone one wheelbarrow load at a time from front to back, level and pack crushed stone . . . .   you get the idea.  That was about one and a half tons of crushed stone. And when I say "we,"  I'm talking about Garden Man and that mouse in his pocket, for the most part. I did play a part in adjusting the exact site a few inches to the left here and a few inches to the front there.  I even called the stone company, but Garden Man (and Garden Punk) did the rest. And they did it a lot more quickly than I expected. 

Shed order day plus one - the site is already selected.

Just about 4 feet behind the site are the remnants of the old pasture fence marking the boundaries of the farm that became our neighborhood.  The woodpile and green tarp belong to our back neighbors, and that's their house you can see just above the woodpile. 

Once the site was selected, Garden Man didn't waste any time getting the 4 x 4's and building the frame.

Shed order day plus nine - the frame is in place.

On shed order day plus sixteen, the stone arrived, and by shed order day plus eighteen, it was in the frame, leveled, screed and packed. (sorry no photo of that)

So, here we are at shed order day plus forty-one (that's right at six weeks by my count).  Where is my shed?  Looks like a call to Shed Guy Dave is in order, and that's what I'm going to do right now.  Christmas is only two and a half weeks away.  Will I have my shed before Christmas?  A girl can dream.