Edges Like Sea Glass

By Leah LaRocco

Gardening

Butterfly Shenanigans

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Summer is reluctantly fading into fall and I officially added the heavy duvet to my bed last evening, since the house is quite cold when I wake up.  This morning I could swear an arctic breeze had swept through the place at night, but the thermostat said 69.  I have no idea how I will survive the winter if I am freezing now!

The yard still has a lot of action happening as summer hands the baton to fall.  There have been some updates to the house and I will post those soon, but this post is dedicated to the nature outside my door and all its lovely splendor.  Big things really do come in small packages and I find that the tiniest bits of life around this place get my heart pounding. For example, I was headed into the shed one day and noticed this adorable little flower between the boards of the ramp.  I’ve looked in two flower books and cannot find the name of it, but I am enamored!  Some would call it red, but this little gem looks to be a lively Betsey Johnson pink to me.  If anyone knows what this is, please tell me!

Another surprise that has delighted me more than I can say is the fall seedum blooming on my front walk.  The plant has been covered in bumble bees, honey bees, hairstreaks, skippers, moths, and several other bugs I can’t name.  I sat transfixed one day just watching all of them work, the bees sinking face first into the tiny flowers and emerging covered in fluffy bits of yellow pollen.  I envy their ability to dive into flowers.

Several weeks ago I pruned my clematis back and she has revived herself for one last showy display before the cold sets in.  This shade of purple looks awful on clothing, but somehow seems deep and lustrous on a flower.

I feel a bit sheepish about this next bit.  It’s kind of porny actually.  There have been some serious butterfly shenanigans going on in my garden.  I was weeding a bunch of violets out one day and came upon this little guy.  I immediately brought him into the house and was freaking out because I love caterpillars and haven’t had any for so long, but I had to find out what it was.  Turns out, I’d found a buckeye.  These were quite rare on Long Island when I was growing up and I remember finding some in my dad’s garden as a girl.  To this day, it was one of the most exciting butterflies I’ve raised.  They’re quite common in the south.

As I left my little charge on a fresh violet leaf, I discovered some buckeyes having a naughty end of summer fling next to the fence.  If anyone ever asks you how a butterfly is made, I present you with exhibit A.

All of these tiny bugs and flowers are beautiful little worlds unto themselves that unless we stop to observe, we will sadly miss.  As fall approaches and the leaves begin to turn, I encourage you to turn off the TV and make the effort to get outside, take walks, look at the undersides of leaves, follow the flight of a butterfly, and disconnect from the world behind your desk or inside your living room.  These are the things that keep me sane, that remind me there is so much more to life than my own small universe.

Today I head to Long Island for a much needed vacation from house projects and work.  The beach is calling…

Small Changes: Making Things Pretty

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The balmy summer continues here in TN, with temperatures consistently in the low 90s, making yard work a sweaty endeavor.  Lots of little changes have happened over the past few weeks, and the place is finally starting to breathe and feel like a home.

Paint can take a room from drab to fab!  My neighbor, Lindsay, was an art major and knows her stuff when it comes to paint colors.  She sat down with me one weekend and we laid out the color palette for the entire house.  I want to go for a beachy, blues and greens theme, so these are the colors that came out on top.  The place would have felt disjointed and clashy without her expertise, so I am really thankful I had help on this one.  Some of the colors I’d had in mind were too intense, and these are a good blend of cool relaxing shades.

Sneaky little sneak!  Keeping the cats’ curiosity at bay was impossible.

The guest room was the first room to paint, and I simply adore this cheery bright blue, which happens to be appropriately named “Sea glass.”  Rob said it looks like the inside of a Tiffany bag, which is fine by me!  This room is warmer than the rest of the house, so the light fixture was replaced with a fan, which makes a big difference temperature-wise.

I was able to find a lamp that doubles as a jar and filled it with sea glass and shells I’ve collected over the years on my trips home to long Island.

This room is tiny with a queen size bed in it, but I really wanted an adult sized bed in there for when people come to stay.  The Jacqueline Penney tapestry, titled “Inlet,” worked nicely over the bed in here.  The coverlet was a vintage find on one of mom’s thrifting trips that I stole from her years ago.  I’ve just been waiting for the perfect chance to use it.

The living room color was a challenge because I wanted a green or a blue that would work with everything I already had in there, artwork, accents, furniture, etc.  As I began painting, I started to worry it was going to look like Kermit the frog threw up on my walls, but once the entire room was finished, the result was a pretty green that really brightened things up the way the previous neutral brown had not.  It took a bit of getting used to, but I’m very happy with how everything blends without being too matchy.

 The biggest thing that made me start to feel like this was my house was unpacking my books, my dear old friends who keep me company on lazy days, rainy nights, cold winter afternoons, and every moment in between.  There is something about the familiar bindings, the titles that have changed my perspectives on life, the pages that have brought me comfort in hard times.  Hanging a Kindle on the wall just wouldn’t have the same effect.  For me, there is no substitute for a real book with real pages and real “book smell.”  On the back wall of the living room where the books are currently strewn about, I eventually would like to put in floor to ceiling bookshelves.  As it is, I still have eight boxes to unpack and really need the extra room.  It’s a bit of an addiction, what can I say?

Every light fixture in this house needs to be updated with the exception of one.  I am slowly but surely making my way through each room.  I still have not found a fan that I like for the living room or for my bedroom, but the kitchen and guest room have the same fan.  Ceiling fans are ugly.  There are few choices, and because the ceilings in this house are rather low, I have to find fans that can be flush mounted, which narrows my choices down even more.  Boring!

I love chandeliers, they make everything prettier.  The ugly fan in the dining room was changed out with this gorgeous little glass teardrop piece, fancied up with a pretty medallion on top.  I’m still amazed there weren’t more broken pieces.  Assembly was quite a delicate challenge!

And the hallway now has a little vintage sparkle thanks to this one, purchased at a locally owned store in Franklin called Philanthropy.

I can’t keep myself away from the gardens outside in spite of the heat, so I dug out some old irises and over-sized burning bushes that were simply…ugly, and cleaned out this little shaded bed beneath the weeping cherry.  I planted a little rose on the sunny corner, which I think will do better here due to the heat, and I’d like to plant some hosta and hydrangeas as well. 

And the newest addition to the patio has added a little conversation area out there for evenings and afternoons when the mosquitoes are at a minimum.  I found a wrought iron patio set on Craigslist for a good price and decided to spruce it up with a new coat of paint and a bright blue umbrella.  Here’s the transformation after a proverbial boob job and facelift.  It took 7 cans of Rustoleum paint, and my patio has a blue tinge to it, but highly worth the effort, I’d say!

Plus, two more whiskey barrel planters since they went down in price and one can never have too much gardening space, non?

At the moment, Rob is putting up trim in the bathroom and cursing quite loudly about the terrible job the previous owners did of hanging crown, but based on the other epic reno-failures we’ve discovered in this house, can one be surprised?  More to come!!!

The Guest Room AKA Where You Will Be Staying When You Come To Visit Me

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I never thought the guest room in my little house would turn out to be such a project, but my friend Daniel said to me yesterday, “As a friend, I have to tell you that when you start one thing, it always leads to another project.”  He was so right.  To recap, this is the room that had paneling on the walls that had been covered with wallpaper and then painted over (lazy jerks).  I went to town on that biznass and tore it all down, which resulted in ugly naked drywall that looked like it had been in a shootout.

Mom and dad came to visit for two weeks and dad, being the handy sort of guy that he is, took on the job of getting the room ready.  One of the things I wanted to do was tear down a wall that was jutting out into the room for no apparent reason.  Remember this?

I mean honestly, what the heck?!  So I wanted to tear that wall down and open it up to the tiny 6’x7′ room on the other side of that.  However, we hit a snag when dad discovered it was a load-bearing wall.  To be clear, load-bearing walls are not to be messed with or you screw with the structural integrity of your home.  I was ticked!  So dad decided to take the drywall off anyway and see what was underneath.  BEHOLD, a doorway!

AHA!!!  So that’s why the wall jutted out!  Apparently, that little space was the original closet for the second bedroom.  I still have no idea what the previous owners were thinking by opening up the wall behind it, but they made a big mistake by doing that because that wall was also a load-bearing wall that would need to be restructured and rebuilt.  After some keen disappointment on not being able to open up the two rooms, I made the decision to close the far wall back up and keep this little doorway so the room would have a closet.  After some cross-armed consideration by the men, here’s what happened.

New drywall was put in place, and the existing drywall was spackled to death to prepare it for paint.  You can see below, dad is preparing the larger opening to be re-studded and ready for a new wall.

The little room had some wallpaper that mom steamed off the walls.  If that isn’t motherly love, I don’t know what is.  In the end, the project resulted in a tiny room that will someday be a half bathroom!!!  I am most excited by this since there is currently only one bath in the house.  When people come to visit, it will be nice for them to have their own space.  The guest room saga will remain in a state of “to be continued” and I’ll be sure to update on the progress!

Outside in the backyard, I wanted to plant a kitchen garden, but the cedar planters I had my eye on were very expensive.  I discovered that Home Depot sells whiskey barrels from the Jack Daniel’s distillery in Lynchburg, Tennessee, and what better way to add some local flavor than to have some local whiskey-fied herbs on the patio?

To see how these barrels are crafted, here’s an interesting little short video on the birth of a barrel:

I lined the planters with some heavy gauge plastic and filled them with fertilized potting soil from Lowes.  The bags were so large, I only needed one per barrel.

With it being a little late in the growing season here, I was thrilled to find beautiful established herbs at Whole Foods.  For $2.49 each, I got some basil, thyme, oregano, and rosemary.  I also picked up a Rutgers heirloom tomato and some purple coneflower (Echinacea) at Home Depot.

While mom and dad were here, the temperature was brutal.  The day they left it was 108 degrees.  The sun was taking a toll on the plants with the basil leaves and thyme beginning to burn.  Since I didn’t want my herbs to go all Jersey Shore on me and bake like Snooki, something had to be done. We bought some soft plastic screen in a roll and dad chopped down some bamboo to make this awesome little shelter.  So far, the plants are thriving and haven’t burned at all.  I am so excited to make Caprese salad and pesto!

The little house finches in my hanging basket left the nest yesterday.  It was so heartwarming to look out the front door and see four little finches sitting all over the basket.  They flew back and forth from the plum tree to the basket, and by the time I got home from work they were gone.  I am so happy they all made it and can’t wait to see if any of the little ones return to build their own precarious little nest.

A Word On Nesting

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It seems that “nesting” has been a theme since I moved into this
little house.  In the weeping cherry off the back patio sits a nest from
a previous year, empty, yet longing somehow to be filled again.  I
still look at this nest expecting little hungry chirping heads to pop up
and greet me on my way to the shed.  
Then there is the case of the bluebirds.  When I moved in I noticed
a happy little couple flitting in and out of the house, then things
were silent for a while until I noticed a female tending to the place
again.  There was the incident when I was mowing and noticed the top had
been taken off the house.  I have no idea how old this bluebird house
is, but the wood is rotted with some lichens growing on it, and in spite
of tapping the nails back in, a creature managed to tear the roof off,
stealing three eggs and leaving a hole in the one that was left.  
I was
so heartbroken to see this, so upset by the course of nature that
sometimes means destruction and death for another creature.  I imagine
the mother bluebird must have been most distressed to come home and find
her eggs stolen, her home ransacked.  Mom surprised me the other day
when I came home and found a beautiful new bluebird house sitting on the
kitchen counter.  I am thrilled!  I shall take the old one down and put
this shiny new one in its place.  It usually takes a year or two for a
bluebird house to “cure” to where the birds will use it.  Hopefully with
the new one being in the same place as the old one, it won’t take that
long for new residents to show up.
An interesting tidbit about bluebird houses – you need to purchase
one that is Audabon certified.  Bluebirds use holes made by woodpeckers
or manmade houses since they do not have the ability to dig out their
own shelters.  Wrens and sparrows are often pests because unless you
purchase a house that is sparrow deterrent, you will soon find the wrong
species of bird in your house.  Hopefully, the new house will do the
trick and many generations of pretty bluebirds will be hatched there.
The great surprise of the season has been the House Finch nest in
the hanging basket on the front porch.  What a gorgeous little nest in
such a precarious place!  I now water the basket with a small watering
can from the back due to the nest being in the front nestled in among
the asparagus fern and verbena.  The mother finch has probably had
multiple heart attacks as she watches me take her home down, examine it,
and then re-hang it for her use.  The eggs were so tiny and very white,
and the little birds that hatched seem like one-inch little wisps of
downy magic.  Their little expectant heads can’t be larger than a pencil
eraser, and their bodies are so frail.  It’s amazing to me that they
survive, and yet each day I watch them grow slightly bigger and
stronger.  
 
All of this nesting has come at such an appropriate time since I
feel like I have been struggling to build a nest of my own out of the
sticks I moved into.  There has been much tearing down and rebuilding,
much fussing over what goes where, much frustration trying to get things
just so in order for a room to “feel right” to me.  It has been a task
and an adventure, and I often have to remind myself that I’ve only been
in the house for a month and a half.  The impatient part of me that
wants things ready and perfect in a snap has had to back down and
breathe as I watch Rob and dad work so hard to fix plumbing, readjust
walls and spaces, and exclaim over shoddy workmanship by the previous
owners.  The next thing to be done is fixing the electrical wiring that
is a hazard throughout the house.  With the pretty pricetag of around
$2K, it is yet another improvement I must swallow and move forward
with.  In mid July my own little nest will become safer as breaker boxes
are rewired and outside frayed wires are contained.  All in due
time….all in due time.