Windemere

        Despite the tone of several recent posts I really don't have any problem with nature, plants, etc. I really do enjoy nature , I just dislike when nature doesn't like me back so much. Having gotten two horrible doses of poison ivy in the past couple of months with just the barest interface with the nature in my back yard I think I'm pretty justified.

        In an effort to help maintain the karmic balance of life I undertook two projects last week. The first of which was a concentrated kill every god-damned thing that even looked like it might be a vine or had anything even close to three leaves. Trusty sprayer in hand I unleashed gallons of chemical death upon the green things in my yard that may or may not have contributed to my weeks of tortured itchy/scratchiness. In doing so I discovered a truly amazing number and variety of invasive weed-like plants, trees,etc throughout the grounds of stately Windemere manor. I discovered, and promptly sprayed, american pokeweed, thistle, crabgrass, nutsedge, poison ivy, poison oak, english ivy, porcelainberry vine, and a very elm-like tree that will not die.

        The most ironic thing for me is that I have all of these various things in my yard that will not die or go away no matter what torture I impose upon them. I have a holly bush/tree and a crepe myrtle that I have cut back to just a stump only to have them rebound with a vengance. I am hardly a green thumb gardener by any stretch of the imagination but these things seem to be masochists and the more I work to eradicate them the stronger they become in their resitance and fortitude in coming back with renewed vigor.

        After all this death and suffering I felt it only fair to work on restoring some nature to the back yard. So the second project, aimed at restoring the karmic balance, was to re-do one of the backyard flower beds with some new plantings that are less invasive, nicer to look at, and appropriate for being planted within 2 feet of the house. One of the things that frustrates me so much about the existing plantings at my house is how inappropriately scaled everything is. Holly will grow into a 20 ft tree and crepe myrtles easily get to be 9ft tall with a 9ft canopy. These two things were planted 4ft apart and 3ft away from the house. I'm sure that when the were bought from a nursery and planted they looked great cause they were the plant equivalent of a labrador puppy. But just like the small cute puppy these things grow into great big giant beasts. (to be fair there is far less drool associated with the crepe myrtle)

        I have been meaning to work up a comprehensive landscaping plan for the whole property so that as time and resources are available I can tear things out and start over with new plantings that are appropriate for the climate, reasonably low maintenance, and are scaled to fit the spaces they are planted in when they are full grown. Although I haven't even begun to work on the big plan I needed to at least do something with this flower bed to help keep all these invasive weeds at bay.

        Without a whole lot of forethought and planning I ran to Home Depot and browsed through their perennials and carefully read all the tags on sunlight, water requirements, plant spacings, and dimensions on full grown sizes. It is baffling to me that people screw up plantings so badly when the nursery and growers provide so much great info right on the tags on the plants. This really isn't all that difficult. Within a few minutes I had picked out some nice grasses and a few colorful perennials.

        With plants, mulch, potting soil, and a keen desire to clean things up I headed home to get things under way. The first step was to dig up about 4-6" of the existing bed to remove the top layer that was just over run with all of the invasive things I've already mentioned above. Despite having treated things several times it seemed like nothing would keep the Ivy and weeds at bay. After whole-sale removal of the plants and the bulk of the root system I'm hoping to have an even chance of keeping things weed free for a while.

        Although weeds seem to grow with great abandon here I'm not sure how they do it. The soil here, and in most of baltimore, seems to be almost entirely clay. I'm pretty sure that with a good soaking and a really hot summer day I could pretty much turn my back yard into pottery. Which, in hindsight, might have been far easier than all this planting work. Just bake the backyard until it is pottery and then plant alfalfa and treat it like a chia pet. But I digress... With the ground having the consistency of earthenware I had grabbed a couple of bags of potting soil to give the new plants at least a gilmmer of hope of having some nutrients to get started and something other than concrete to push their roots into. Then came plants, then mulch, and then watering.

        Voila a new flower bed. Below are photos showing things as they were before I moved in and then the fabulous results. Click through either image to see a gallery of the work in progress.

Before:

After:

        Things may look a little sparse but that's the whole idea. I think that people read all the instructions on plant spacings etc but then see these tiny little plants spaced 2 ft apart and loose patience and just fill everything in so that it looks "full" on day 1. Planting doesn't usually work that way unless your prepared to spend outrageous amounts of money on mature plants. While things may look a little thin for now, after a few seasons everything will fill in nicely and I won't be continually fighting the creature that ate Cincinatti.

        For a rare change instead of getting home from work and plunking down in front of the TV and loosing myself for hours to the addictivness that is the boob tube I actually forced myself to do something slightly more productive.

        It all started this past weekend. With a solid day of rain on Saturday and scattered showers on Sunday I was actually fairly motivated to do some work around the house. Normally a weekend of beautiful weather is just too tempting for me to stick around the house and do projects. I'd much rather be out doing something. Even if that something invloves staying inside and not enjoying the beauty of the day. But this weekend was cloudy, stormy, and rainy. The perfect kind of weather to stay in the house and not feel like I was missing out on something more fun.

        This weekend's project was to scrape more paint and wallpaper off of the walls in the living room. I made a pretty substantial dent and pretty much finished up scraping two of the living room walls. Once the scraping is complete though there is still a long way to go before the wall is ready for paint. The scraping has been doing a great job of removing the paint and most of the backing of the multiple layers of wallpaper. But there is a bit of the wallpaper adhesive and stubborn pieces of wallpaper backing left behind. To remove this we move onto phase three of the removal process. Scrubbing with hot water.

        There doesn't seem any really good way to shortcut this whole process. I've tried it several different ways with varying degrees of success. The best thing I've come up with so far is to start with a paint scraper / putty knife and get the many many layers of paint off of the wallpaper. Then follow behind with a serious tungsten bladed paint scraper to remove the multiple layers of wallpaper and backing from the walls. The final step is to use hot water and a scotch scrubber sponge to soften and remove the remaining stubborn pieces of paper and the wallpaper glue.

        Tonight's project was to complete Step 3 of the process above for the walls that I had stripped clean this weekend. I didn't feel like words alone could convey the mind numbing tedium and work involved in the process so I put together a short video. Enjoy!