the garden: flowers blooming

So it appears we got exactly two days of spring. It's been cold and wintery for months, and then we had a beautiful spring weekend, but this work week has been hot! And the forecast for today ... 94?!

Jessi is not so pleased with Mother Nature. But Jessi's flowers? They're loving it.

Last fall, I planted some pansies in the front yard. In our climate, they're supposed to be beautiful during the fall, die back a bit in the winter, then bounce back to life with the warm spring temps. And they've done just that in the past few days.

In the tree lawn in front of our house, this was my plan:

• Crocus would come up first. (Check. They were here by mid-February.)
• Daffodils would come up next. (Well ... they came up. But I messed them up somehow because no flowers came out of the greenery. I'll have to ask my mom what I can feed them in the fall to give them some extra energy over the winter.)
• Then tulips would come up. (And they're here! The warm weather has prodded them along nicely. Those flowers should bloom any day now. And my medicated foot powder technique appears to have successfully warded off squirrel enemies.)
• And finally, five giant hostas would emerge from the ground, covering all of the decaying bulb leaves and filling up the garden bed with beautiful greenery all summer and fall. (All five hostas, which my parents divided from their own plants, are coming up, doing just fine, and seem to be loving the warm weather, too.)

Here's a shot from yesterday evening that shows an about-to-bloom tulip in the foreground with a hosta sprouting behind it. And lots of daffodil and crocus greenery all around.

The only other flower I have at my house so far is this sweet alyssum, which I bought over Easter weekend at Frager's. It smells awesome. I put it in a big pot by the front door, so hopefully it'll grow to fill the pot and smell great every time we walk past it. Here's a picture of the alyssum, which includes a bonus cameo of Francois, who came over to visit last night while Tony and I were working in the front yard:

Actually, Tony was doing the work, and I was taking photos. He sprinked some Holly-tone plant food around the evergreen plans in the front yard. I don't know what, exactly, Holly-tone is or does. I just know that my dad delivered a bag of it to us last fall with instructions to feed the evergreen plants twice a year. Yes, sir.

And I've been seeing all of these beautiful photos from the Tidal Basin of all the cherry blossoms. Seems our tree is a little cherry tree is a liiiiitle slow in blooming this year.

My herbs also have made a big resurgence in the past week or so.

Thyme and tarragon with my celery in the middle:

More tarragon and oregano with some strawberries in the background.

I thought the chives were dead all winter, but they're baaack!

I also have a great big rosemary plant, but that didn't die back at all during the winter.

And now that the garden bed is in the backyard, I've finally been able to plant my cool-season crops. Last night I spied some turnips, radishes, spinach, romaine and arugula coming up! Hopefully the hot weather backs off a bit, so the cool-season crops survive for at least a little while! And tonight I looked at the notes I made to myself when I planted my garden last spring and realized that I already had my tomatoes and peppers in the ground by mid-April ... so I gotta get on that. Maybe this weekend?

home improvement: fix a sticky lock

Since we bought our house, the locks on our front security door have been really sticky. It took a lot of wiggling and jiggling to unlock the door. It'd always been kind of annoying, but things came to a head a couple of weeks ago when Tony and I came back from a run and the door wasn't opening. It was cold, we had no cell phones, and our neighbors weren't home. After about 15 minutes of wiggling and jiggling, the lock finally gave way.

But it prompted Tony to finally fix the lock. He Googled the phrase, "key sticks in lock fix." And guess what we found out? Fixing a sticky lock is very, very, very easy. Very easy.

Tony picked up a tube of powdered graphite for a few dollars at Frager's. He puffed a little bit into the keyhole and turned the key a few times.

Voila. Unsticky lock.

So now we know. Unstick a lock with powdered graphite.

And sincere apologies to all of our friends who have ever cat sat and had to fight the sticky door. Shouldn't have taken us this long to fix it.

decor: window shades and sheers

Tony and I moved into our house a little bit over a year ago, and for several months we'd spend our weekends doing home improvement projects. Like painting. Especially painting. Oh, the painting! Walls. Trim. Inside. Outside. Not to mention the mini-demo projects, yard work. Organizing, decorating, re-decorating, discarding. Our to-do list hasn't gone away, but we've tackled most of the high-priority projects.

Our calendar was pretty open last weekend, so Tony suggested we block off Saturday and Sunday for some home improvement projects that we've been putting off. It'd been a while since we've made multiple trips to home improvement stores in one weekend. (Specifically, two Home Depot trips and one Frager's trip.)

My favorite project of the weekend: finishing the window treatments in our second bedroom. One of the shades had been broken since we bought the house, but this isn't a heavily trafficked room, so replacing the shades wasn't a high priority.

I ended up buying vinyl roller shades, which I've always liked because they're sleek looking. And then I saw how much they cost, and that made me like them even more. I ended up with heavy-duty, room-darkening shades, for about $20 each. With the brackets and plastic pulls, the we spent just under $50. Not bad for two windows.

I have sheer curtains on the outside of the windows, so I mounted the shades on the inside. You measure the inside of your window, and the folks at Home Depot cut the shade to the right size for you.  And this is where the two Home Depot trips came in. Apparently the cutting machine at the Home Depot in Northeast has been down since the derecho storm earlier this summer. So we also made the trek out to Home Depot near Landmark Mall. The installation itself was relatively simple and required a drill and a screwdriver.

And, voila, new shades! Happy Jessi.

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From the archives:

decor: vintage postcards

d.c.: the storm

As The Storm and its 70-mile-per-hour winds approached D.C. on Friday evening, I heeded the advice of the TV weatherman, and I moved myself to the dining room in center of the house, as far away from the windows as possible. Meanwhile, Tony and my brother-in-law Ian, who was in town for the weekend, clearly didn't worry so much and grabbed the window seats at Biergartenhaus on H Street and watched folks outside run for cover and try to catch cabs. Mercifully, after living for part of the week without AC in 100-degree temperatures, the power stayed on at our house during The Storm; 1.5 million other houses in the area weren't so lucky.  

When we got out of the house Saturday morning, trees and branches were all over the place. This poor car, which was parked on 12th Street Southeast near Frager's, had a tree limb through its windshield.  

Apparently Mother Nature does not listen to sassy bumper stickers. 

the garden: inspiration from mom

If I have a green thumb, my mom's gotta have, like, green fingers, hands, and forearms. Her yard looks like the grounds of a museum. The most amazing things she has going on this year are her geraniums. Some she planted from seed, others she grew from cuttings of plants, and still others she saved from last year by keeping them dormant over the winter.  

I am in love with this deco-looking planter that she has in her backyard. I tried to convince her to let me take it home when Tony and I were in Ohio last weekend, but, alas, apparently she's also in love with it. I will have to admire it from afar. 

And how cute is this Shawnee bird planter? She has it in her kitchen window. She wouldn't let me take this back with me either. 

Mom also has a little bit of D.C. in her backyard, which is super sweet. Earlier this year, we were at Community Forklift in PG County, which I describe as a a thrift store for home improvement supplies, and she picked out this old porch post and hauled it back to Ohio. She got my dad to cut off the rotting wood, paint it, and build the birdhouses. Rowhouse birdhouses. An homage to her kid's home. Super sweet.  

And she had her eye on this lovely concrete planter from Frager's on the Hill, so my dad bought it for her for Mother's Day:

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