Landscaping on a budget....

Ok, so I am working in my garden this morning- first time all week I have been able to!- and it hits me! I MUST tell you all about what I have been doing! It rained last night, so it was a perfect time for me to pull weeds, by the way! ANYWAY! LOL

Landscaping is an expensive proposition, no matter what, extra dirt, rocks, plants,etc! On a budget? NO WAY you say! LOL Well, it does involve a bit of patience on your end. I started this last year, and am seeing great progress in my yard this spring! I am so excited! Here's what I did:

1. take a walk around YOUR YARD! yep, if you are like me...sometimes mowing is slow...... so this works best for people like me. If you are NOT like me, I know you know someone like me.....ask if you can walk in their yard... you will know them... their grass is the longest on the block! (no fault of our own this time..... the belt that turns the blade broke and we are trying to scrape together money to get a new one, and possibly have someone install it!)

In the spring you will find tons of "volunteers". NO, I do NOT mean your kids! ;) They are those pesky plants tht pop up all over the yard in the most in opportune places. some bushes, some flowers, some baby trees! DON'T throw them away! Start planning in your head how you want your yard to look! Where can you best use those plants? have a nasty fencerow you don't like to look at? put those bushes to use there! Need tall pretty flowering bushes? Put some some rose of sharon babies there. Don't like where someone else planted some iris bulbs? before they start growing, replant them!

The best time to replant things is early early spring before they start growing (bulbs) or right after they do ( the bushes, baby trees). I will tell you, Rose of Sharon bushes are very expensive, and I have probably replanted over a dozen or more last year, and will plant that many more this year. How much money have I saved? Ok, so not all make it (mowers, weather, etc) but who cares? they were free, and I will have more volunteers next year!

Granted most of the things you will replant will be green - but you will be able to shape them how you want to, and they can end up very ornamental. I have had the surprise this year of one bush I let grow (it was where I wanted it anyway!) looks like it just might FLOWER this year! how exciting! And I just thought it was a general run of the mill bush!

The best part about all this? Nope, not that it's free! It's that they were growing in your yard anyway, they are used to your soil, so when you replant them, it's not as much of a shock to their system, and they are more likely to thrive! last years "baby plants' that were mere inches grew into 2'-3' tall bushes! I will let them grow a bit more before I trim them this year, but how exciting , huh?

2. The other thing I did last year is take advantage of all the website deals on the internet for plants. I did NOT buy live plants if possible. I only bought bulbs, or perennials. Granted some can be boring, but hey.... THEY COME BACK EVERY YEAR!!!!

I will get some links on the side later today (after my field trip!) for my favorite sites.... but you can search some like burpee.com, gurneys.com, etc and usually they will have a buy $50, get $25 free, or some such deal going on. so, you are actually getting $75 worth of plants for $50.... don't forget to factor in tax and shipping! I have seen better deals than that, and you can sometimes find coupon codes but if you sign up for their emails, they will send you great codes as well!

don't forget to ask around on Freecycle for free dirt, plants, or anything else you are looking for (within reason please) to help your garden grow! right now we have no edging, but a good spade and time can take care of that, if we want to deal with it. start a compost pile to help you get good dirt going for your garden.

this you can do. if I can do it (and my family says I have a "black thumb") then YOU can do it!

Grandpa/Grandma E and Grandma (Grinka) and Grandpa B

I was cooking pancakes this morning and I started thinking about these 4 amazing people. 3 were in my life, 1 was in my life by stories I heard! Sadly Grandpa B passed when my mother was 16- he was buried the day JFK was killed :( but the stories I heard from her, I could imagine the person he was! He liked Martinis after a hard day of being a country dr, loved his garden, like grilling out, woodworking and refinishing furniture, was in 2 wars (WWI and the Korean war), had a purple heart, and a heart a big as the world!

The other 3 I had more "intimate" knowledge of, and those are the 3 I am focusing on today. The saying is "be careful what you do, kids are watching" and that is so true. Without saying anything, they were such HUGE models in my life. Such HUGE influences. Not to say my parents weren't- I will talk about them another time- but my grandparents are on my heart this morning and I want to talk about them.

My grandmothers were amazing women. They lived through the depression, raised families, survived. My grandfather, he was a character, the comic relief! He was so much fun! I can still hear my grandma yell "EMERSON!!!!" when he would have all the grandkids gathered around him telling his "ditties" or stories! LOL And not all of them were "g" rated! LOL He loved his garden. Just like my other grandfather. I can remember at his last house he had 2 rows of Peoneys, like a maze in the back yard. They were so beautiful and amazing! He would mow with a push mower, NEVER owned a gas mower, EVER. Last year I started really gardening in earnest at our house, and made sure to plant at least a few peoneys in his honor. In my other grandfather's honor I have my Iris' . They are transplants all the way from IL to MI to TN! They were originally in my mother's childhood home, then to her first married home, then to michigan when we moved we took a few, took a few to TN and when I got married, I got to take some to my new home! I love seeing them every spring, and think of him when I do!

My Grandma B- we called her Grinka, not sure who started it, think it was cousin David lol and it sooo irritated her at first! lol- she was a survivor. My mom was the youngest of 3, and grandpa was "self employed" so when he passed, he hadn't paid into Social Security (it had just started too), so she was left with one choice: start working after being a Stay at home mom all those years! I can't imagine what it was like. Losing a husband suddenly, then BANG you are forced into the workforce at 56 years old! Yep! Those were TOUGH times. We think we have it "so bad" these days. We really need to look back and see what has gone on a generation ago, talk to our parents, our grandparents and see what they did to survive back then! You would be AMAZED!

I remember her as a "cosmopolitan" as I now call her woman. She smoked, wore the fashion of the day, drove a hunter green pinto, lived alone in a great apartment! she was COOL! And boy was it FUN to go to her apartment....except for having to be quiet walking/talking! LOL But we got to play dressup with her fancy gloves/scarves/beautiful jewelry grandpa brought home from hawaii when he was stationed there. We got to look through her drawers and see grandpas medals, and look at old pictures, and books. I miss her shelves with the shutter doors at the bottom, and the brown birds. I actually have found a clear owl like she had, and even though an "ear" was slightly broken, I bought it anyway. It is a memory of her, and when I look at it, I think of her and her strength through adversity. She builds me up when I see it.

My Grandma E... She was a character. Another amazing woman with strength abounding in her physically, mentally, spiritually. Dad was the youngest of 7 children, the one before him, a girl, had died before her first birthday. Growing up there wasn't a bathroom in the house, there was an "outhouse"! Yep! Dad tells the story of how the "style" of the day was to have dark blue blue jeans. They were so poor, and grandma sooo ingenius, that she would iron blue crayons into his jeans to make sure his jeans stayed the right color! Who would have thought about that these days?

When ever we went over to the house, there was always something to do, some art project she had lined up for us. It could be gluing alphabet soup letters (dry) on a doily and a felt heart for valentines day to spell out an "I LOVe YOU " message for our parents, we always played games, either UNO, Aggravation, or something else, and we always KNEW grandpa was cheating! It was sooooo much fun!

There was always so many things to look at there too! In their first house I can remember the room with the velvet wall paper! It was sooo much fun to go in there and trace the patterns with my fingers when I was little! we would ride the ottomon that had wheels on it from the kitchen to the dining room to the living room, to the entrance hall and back to the kitchen! WHEEEE she had this great lamp and when we would go to sleep, she would turn it on, and spin it, and we would watch the patterns the light would make on the ceiling until we fell asleep. I was blessed with that lamp some years ago. She had her collection of cups and saucers and her collection of plates to hang on the wall. Several years ago my parents blessed me with one of those plates. it was one they had given to her in 1979. I know because the date is on it! It says "a good mother makes a happy home" it is in blue and white and it has a little boy and girl standing facing eachother in the middle. it is just beautiful. It hangs smack dab in the middle of my kitchen above my stove. I look at it at least once a week, and strive to achieve that every day. I have plates from my honey's grandmother too, and those are in my dining room, and I am blessed to have known her as well, and am proud of seeing those and hope I make her proud and think of her when I see them!

I hope all of my grandmothers are looking down and are proud of me and the mother I am, because who they were helped to shape the mom I am today. Firm in my discipline, my love of cooking, my love of projects. To my grandfathers I credit my love of gardening. I think about them a lot while I am out there in the dirt and hope that they help me do the best I can.

Both grandmothers taught me many things. I sure do want to share their wisdom with you. Some things that I am thinking of today:

back then there wasn't a lot of "spray oils", so my Grandma E would just use a cup of oil and a brush to coat the pan before making pancakes, waffles, etc. I am doing it now because I am out of spray oil and it is working like a charm.

Grandma B had very poor eyesight, and dishwashers.....those were the kids in the house! LOL So, she taught us to use our hands to feel for dirty spots on dishes. you can feel the spots on pans, plates, etc with your fingers before you rinse to make sure it is clean

it is ok to have waffles and pancakes without syrup, in fact, that's my favorite way to eat them! just butter!

Grandma E always made tons of cakes, cookies, etc. for the kids lunches. Time to start doing that again. I can even make bread for them to eat sandwiches on.

It's ok to sell things if you need money. They are just things, they can be replaced at a later time.

Enjoy the little things in life. Playing games around the table, sitting outside on a nice day, spending time with family