Monday, June 2, 2014

Old friends, open spaces..

Another weekend of mish-mash projects leaving us tired but satisfied.
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When my Grandma passed away a long, long time ago I inherited the metal furniture that had sat in her garage for as long as I could remember.  The furniture, affectionate called "tulip chairs" belonged to my Mom and her parents before that.  My mom says she remembers sitting on it as a little girl!
I was delighted to get it but it was (and is) in need of some work, I mean they are practically antique!
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This is my Mom’s Dad, Pa sitting on one of the chairs, it was white back then.  There are still traces of white paint on them.
I found a place online that sells hardware for these and order the kit.  I didn’t get the glider arms though and will have to order them as the originals are shot.  Randy says that we will sand blast it to get all the rust and old paint off, the hope is that we can find out what the original color was and paint it that color.  Once we get them all done, they will proudly be on our front porch!!

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The view from the deck is changing, little by little.  We worked on removing all the stinking (literally) scrub trees from the area and pulling out dog rose and burning bush by hand.  After that and careful direction, I let (yes, let!) Randy use the mower in the area.  There are May apples and Jack in the pulpits back here and I preserved as many as I could but there was no way I could clear all of that area by hand. 
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We’ve officially started the planting by putting the two azaleas that my Mom gave me, in the newly cleared area.  We can see them from the house and look forward to seeing them bloom next year!
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We continued on working till we got to the fern glad in the making.  I LOVE this, I can’t say enough how much I love this area.  To me it’s how the wooded areas are supposed to look, leafy mulch on the ground and beautiful fern fronds waving in the the breeze.
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Just beyond the fence is the way the woods shouldn’t look, full of invasive plants that suffocate all the natives.  I KNOW that I drive Randy nuts when I won’t use power equipment to clear places because of native plants, but if I can do anything to help restore a balance, even a little one, well I’m sure trying!
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While Randy worked on finishing up the screens I started lining the path with rocks from the disassembling of the dry steam (mud) run.
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I’m also using fieldstone to make small retaining walls where I’ll be planting.  Anything and I mean ANYTHING that I can do to slow water from rushing down the hill into the pond area.
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This continues to be my inspiration, because it’s the one area that is looking more and more like I want it all to look…

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