First, the good news:
Look what was waiting at my door when I got home from work last night. To non gardeners, a box of paper bags might not seem very exciting but for a gardener, a box of bags full of bulbs from Brent and Becky's is a reason for celebration! These contain a few different varieties of colchicum to add to my collection.
But wait, there's more excitement. I'm really pleased with this combination of plants that came from Vassey and Watson's Nurseries all on sale. This will look good for the whole winter. The chrysanthemum will only bloom through fall but the rest is evergreen. Maybe the mum could be replaced with a purple flowering kale when it's done blooming. Now they just need to find a pot so that they can get off of the patio table.
You may recall this gate which was one I found that I put up many years ago too keep people from coming into the garden and stealing everything (really, one time, everything that wasn't a plant was stolen from my garden, including pots which were unceremoniously emptied on the ground and people would come in and vandalize the plants.) It later got painted blue as was one wall of the garage in what Tom calls my blue phase. It was in such bad shape this spring that pieces of rotted wood came off in my hand when I closed it.
So Tom replaced it with this temporary gate that he built.
On Sunday evening, we replaced it with this gate which Tom built. The idea of a window in the gate was stolen from my pal Alison's garden. Should we stain this or leave it alone to fade to gray? Maybe paint it that bright blue color of the first gate?
I was going to build a glass panel for it but didn't want to take the time to do something really intricate that would take a lot of time, I considered buying one but the dimensions of most that I liked were too big. Then I remembered this panel that Tom started when we took our first stained glass class together about 15 years ago. It was never finished as he wasn't all that fond of the craft. Thinking that it would be sweet in the gate, I finished it just in time for the gate to go up.
It's a rather sweet panel and looks lovely in the gate.
Still more exciting news - We finally have a contractor and a date to replace the roof and a wall of our garage with polycarbonate so that it can be used as a greenhouse. I'm elated. What could be be not so good about this? Well, they'll be working two weekends to get the project done and can't start until September 27 which means that on the next weekend, October 4 & 5 they'll be finishing the job at exactly the time that the Oregon Garden Bloggers' Plant Exchange is scheduled to take place at Alison's garden with dessert at mine. Because the entire contents of the garage have to be removed for the job, it will be sitting all over the garden. "My what a lovely foliage combination and that table saw covered with a bright blue tarp really makes a statement." I had hoped to have this done before the exchange and started working on getting the project going in July but with various schedules, things kept not happening.
All in all, a pretty good day!