Author: susansdailygarden

All this STUFF!!!

I consider us to be fairly good at keeping the townhouse pretty free of un-needed, non-joy producing stuff. I don’t mind storing a reasonable amount of consumables (think the tp shortage of 2020), but the townhouse is too small to keep much stuff for “some day when”. And our kids have long ago moved out and years ago stopped replying to my texts with pictures, asking, “Do you want any of this?” Code for “No”.

I have a pretty low clutter threshold, and clutter above that for more than a few days really affects me. Plus, hanging on to stuff that we used to use but no longer do, while someone else may be able to use it, just seems, well … wasteful.

Our recent condensing of the stuff from the little house up north has been interesting. We kept that place very minimal (like “when are you going to decorate?” minimal), so there wasn’t a huge amount to bring back, but still … Think kitchen items, and consumables, household staples, things that go in cabinets, but now had no place to go at the townhouse. Thankfully, there was a minimal amount of furniture that needed to come back. There were also leftover renovation materials we had no plans for, like the 500 LINEAR feet of floor trim that was left over when I, on a Black Friday order early in the morning, having never done a renovation, confidently calculated we needed 3 TIMES the amount of floor trim we actually ended up using. Yes, I did get a call from our contractor saying, “That’s a lot of floor trim!”. Hahaha!!! We should have returned the unneeded trim, but we didn’t.

And then … AND THEN … there were the gardens. The precious daylily seedlings, the Blue Mouse Ears divisions, the lift and shifts, and all the trellises. Not to mention all the hand placed rocks I used for borders …

My personal challenge regarding the gardens was: Do you have a space for those to come back? Answer: I could make way for a bit – for the super struggling, deer eaten, decimated hostas that would just die up there if I leave them.

I can’t have trellises at the townhouse over 4′ and the bear(s) up north by the camper would just play with them. So the trellises stay with the new owners

As for the daylilies, the realtor assured me the new owners said they would love it if I left the daylilies, both mature and seedlings. The deer, miraculously, left the sedum and daylilies alone. In the end, I reminded myself of the joy I get from leaving a trail of my garden creations, and I decided “All but the decimated hostas should stay”. Bless the new homeowners of the little house up north with the gardens I started. Hopefully they will maintain them them far better than I ever could part-time, and enjoy them, and maybe even add on to them.

The zucchini plant

Early summer I potted a couple zucchini plant starts I was gifted. Now, I know zucchini should be easy to grow, and indeed the surviving plant was healthy and proliferous. It’s just that the bunnies loved it so much! Every time it got a bloom – next few days, gone. It did make a few very small fruits, however the bunny got those too.

Fun, bloomful, but not able to make it to “fruitful”.

Whoo Whoo thought this was a good idea?

You live, and you learn. The raised bed gardens at the camping land up north need to go. Those silver metal boxes do not at all match the natural beauty around it.

We tried to pull the boxes out of there (notice one side is now higher than the other!), but have come to the conclusion disassembly is going to be required.

This will be a project, for sure!

Bonus – When a bear likes your solar lights as much as you do

When a bear likes your solar lights as much as you do, but nevertheless leaves it behind, semi intact, and still working, and you discover it while clearing the ferns from the area that will house next year’s 1 year old pollinator created daylily seedlings. You use a shepherd’s hook – that wasn’t bent by said bear – and holds it (kind of), hoping you will find the hanger, somewhere.

The bird feeder was not quite so fortunate.