gardening Archives - Storefront Life

Eugenia; Our New Pet Poodle Tree.

If you follow me on Intsagram, you will note that I have been having a string of bad luck with my garden this year.

I lost my fig tree, a whole lot of ivy, the backyard boxwoods, and most recently, my hostas have been withering up and dying. Yes, I can even kill hostas.

To remedy the situation, I have been making weekly trips to the garden center bringing home new plants. I have replaced everything except the poor dead boxwood who lived in our front door urn.

I added the cast iron urn & boxwood last summer, and it was adding a bit of class to the Storefront. Well it was looking anything but classy with the dead and yellowing boxwood. Something needed to be done.

I started searching for new replacement trees & shrubs, but they are expensive! I didn’t want to invest too much, as I am still worried our plant thief will come back and take them. With decorative trees in the $60+ range, I held off to find the perfect tree.

Surprisingly my waffling paid off. Last weekend while perusing the local Loblaws garden center, I spied a pretty ball topiary tree. You know the ones, they look like a show poodle’s tail. Well this pretty topiary had a too good to be true price on it. The poodlesque Eugenia was a good 4′ tall and had a $29 price tag. Yes you read right, $29! I thought it must be a mistake, and lugged it to the checkout. Sure enough, it was on sale, at over 50% off! Woot woot! I snatched it up, and carried it the 5 blocks home.

I planted my new pet poodle tree in the urn, and surrounded it with a few succulents and some mulch, and we now have a regal poodle topiary. We’re back to being classy. Well as classy as you can possibly be when you call your topiary a poodle.

photo 3(9) — See what I mean about the whole Poodle thing?

10424610_1437733873155387_1135352746_n — The Storefront & new tree

What do you think? Any guesses on how long it will take me to kill it and/or butcher its pretty poodle haircut?

Dirt Under My Nails

Last week, the awesome folks at Ryobi invited us to check out their power tools, and to hear the awesome Frank Ferragine (aka Frankie Flowers) talk about his new book, and how to spice up our gardens. Did you get it? My gardening pun? Yeah, I know, I’m hilarious.

Kristen & El Granto with Frankie Flowers

We got to try out some awesome tools (I’m in love with this 40v cordless mower, even though I currently have no [living] grass.) Frank also gave us some awesome tips on gardening.

BntqQJ0CQAA8UHl — Frank showing us his guns OR how light the mower is 😉

All of this was enough to inspire the heck out of me, and we spent the weekend trying to spruce up the backyard.

Here’s what we got accomplished:

The ivy got pruned by El Granto. Although I’m not sure I agree with his choice of tools, it is looking a heck of a lot better with all the dead branches trimmed.

I did not specify to El Granto what tools were appropriate for trimming ivy. — I did not specify to El Granto what tools were appropriate for trimming ivy…

The dead shrubs came out and a too big rose bush headed to Grants Mum’s garden.

Several trips were made to the garden centers as well as the adorable corner store in my neighborhood.

10261066_1419431994987145_271583326_n — Seriously, this is my corner store!

10358426_518857618218274_164696466_n — The corner store even boxes up your plants for you.

We also headed to the local garden center to pick up a bag of triple mix, and a couple bags of black mulch. We brought our old lady shopping card (cause dirt is heavy!) apparently it was too much even for our shopping cart, and one wheel gave out. OOPS!

With the mulch and dirt back at home, the planters got filled, baskets were hung, and the flower garden was tilled and planted.

photo 5(6) — El Granto picked the hanging planter this year.

photo 2(7) — I love how petunias add so much vibrant color.

We added a few perennial Hostas, some grasses, and annuals for color. The black mulch really makes the whole thing look more like a garden, and less like a dirt patch.

photo 4(7) — Everyone tells me I cant possibly kill a Hosta…we’ll see.

We added a small herb garden next to the deck. I love using fresh herbs in my cooking, and its lovely just to pop outside and cut some as needed.

This year we have rosemary, two types of basil, parsley, thyme, chives and green onions. I have about 2′ left of open garden to add other items as I see fit.

photo 3(6) — Green onions, basil, chives, parsley & rosemary (poor thyme didn’t even make it in the photo)

Our BBQ & surrounding area got a thorough cleaning, and new boxwoods were planted in the planter box beside the a/c unit. It’s been so cold this spring, that we haven’t even uncovered the air conditioner yet!

photo 5(4) — Boxwoods hiding the ugly A/C unit

While we worked our butts off, there is still so much to do in the backyard. I will be back later in the week with a Backyard to-do & project list, but I will leave you with a sneak peek of my dirty little secret.

AKA the grass-less backyard.

photo 5(7) — Embarrassed to even post this photo

HELP! The yard needs so much work, from a lawn, to a new path, and a whole lot of paint & TLC.

Burglar Proofing Flower Urns

As you know, I have a wee bit of an issue with a Flower Burglar. After my last rant, I did, well nothing. I planted a few cheap (and now shabby) plants in the front planter box (that no one would want to steal), failed at watering them, and never got another urn for the front stoop.

Don’t get me wrong, I had grand ideas of staging a stakeout and adding a flower cam, but after being indecisive I ended up doing nothing.

That was until I was at my local grocery store, and spied them liquidating their cast iron urns. This girl cant let a great deal pass her by, so the urn was loaded up into my in-laws car, and carted home.

Now this puppy weighs a few pounds, and to increase tonnage I filled the bottom with bricks. However, I wasn’t gonna let that be the sole deterrent. So we rummaged through the garage, found some aircraft cable from our outdoor curtain project, and picked up a large heavy duty eye-hook & cable ends.

We attached the eye to the house, and then attached the cable around the base of the urn.

Yeah, I know someone can still steal the plants, but hopefully they will be deterred. They COULD cut the aircraft cable, but I’m hoping our little flower thief will think that crosses the line.

So far its been a week, and no flower burglars. Wish us luck!

Introducing Pudding

This my friends is Pudding.

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