GREEN FINGERS: Things Learnt From a Year of Gardening

The end of June marked a year of us being home owners. Work on the house is slow but for us there's no rush so works been focused on the garden. Working from home, our garden is my getting away from the computer time, I love going out a couple of times a week early in the morning working away with my fingers in the dirt and so far it's been going rather well. It's always great when your hobbies and interest teach you and make you appreciate things and life a little more, so I thought i'd share the big things that a year of gardening as taught me.

Gardening is teaching me the importance of being patient 

I always want everything to be flowering or growing or doing something right now. I'm not so good on the waiting two weeks for delicate little seeds to poke though and show me some sign of life. But i'm learning, if all be it slowly. I'm seeing the worth in being patient enough to give cucumber plants a little longer before tearing them up, i'm seeing the patience of watching a flower bloom into life. (although in reality you can spend loads of money and shove patience into a weedy corner by buying everything at full height and flowering, plants rather than seeds etc, but yeah, saving the pennies).  

Gardening and Pinterest fails go hand in hand

Pinterest is full of gardening ideas, whether you want a little container, something for the birds or how to create some funky art work. It's all there. Oddly enough most of my failures that so happens to occur more often that not when it comes to Pinterest happens in the garden. Like this attempt at a bird feeder made from an old baked bean can, piece of twine and a stick. Yeah that didn't last long ... 

It's awesome to know exactly how your veg is being grown

Part of our reasoning behind the vegetable patch is to be a little more healthier in our eating. While we were already eating a lot of organic veg it that was something I wanted to continue and expand, especially when you can save a lot of of money doing it yourself. We have the space and I have the time and enjoy I so why not?! I know exactly what is or isn't growing onto, around or in the soil around my patch, none of those crazy chemicals.

It grounds you

Now don't get me wrong, there's nothing worse than the feeling of soil under your finger tips, but there is something magical about getting down and dirty in the soil. Seeing the insects crawling around, hearing the birds tweeting, even the pesky squirrels deadheading my flowers. My garden is as much their space as it is mine.

Not everything grows

Wild flowers haven't been the biggest success nor were growing onions from seed. Seeds need to be sown a little further apart and other times, things grow like there's no tomorrow. Our raspberries grow like weeds and our wild sweet peas seem un-killable. It's all about learning what works best and growing with the flow. But knowing that sometimes, not everything works out and that's okay.

It's super rewarding

Seeing flowers bloom that you planted on a cold winter day, cooking up a stir fry with everything you grew yourself. Filling your house with the smell of sweet peas you battled with training up a cane triangle that continues to fall over. Every little thing, all those long hours, all the watering, all the bug bites for a bowl of raspberries daily during picking season. It's been well worth it all.

Do you garden?

HOME SWEET HOME: Crafty Office Space

Everyone needs a sanctuary, some find it in an spa like bathroom, others a walk in closest. For me, it's having an office and craft room. Of having a space to be inspired, to create and wonder. Having longed for an office come craft room - in our previous apartment my office/stock had taken over half the living room and was eating away at any spare bedroom space, it's nice to have a whole room to myself. 

As the magnolia tree sways and blooms outside, now it's leaves slowly turning crisp with the autumnal air, vintage postcards hang across the windows. Vintage advertisements so carefully torn from 1950's McCall magazines are pinned to the wall. The top shelf of the metal bookcase, once dusty and dragged banging and knocking it's way up from the basement is home to a collection of randoms picked up form estate sales - from a Carebear radio, my second Snoopy dog and scary clown a Steelers ball (well that's actually Joe's), sewing boxes to old twine and bobbins.

While it stands more office space and craft space, that will come in time, once I battle with some shelving and add some color to the walls other than those vintage advertisements.

Either way, I work and craft as I live - surrounded by vintage.

HOME SWEET HOME: The Record Room

If you know anything about our collections, it's probably that we have a lot of records. Like going on 1000 of them. I guess it's fitting that they now have their own room in what once was a spare bedroom, well they share it with another of Joe's collections, his Transformers Toys but seeing they were once taking over our apartments living room it's a big improvement. As someone who loves seeing other people's record collections and especially how they are displayed and stored (if that's your thing too i'll be sharing links at the end as to where we found/brought everything), it's about time I got around to sharing ours in my first room tour (ever). 

The record room is probably one that'll change the most over the coming years as our collection continues to expand. It's also one of the rooms that old and new furniture merge the most. While we try and pick up pieces from estate sales sometimes Ikea does the job just as well - they have a great range of pieces that is ideal for record storage which is luckily both reasonably price and most importantly, sturdy enough to handle their weight.

Above our vintage record player, singles of bands we love line the decorative mini shelves (I have no idea what they are properly called admittedly). There you'll find the likes of The Police, Pat Batener, Bruce Springsteen to Queen, with posters - The Protomen, Detroit Jazz Festival and magazine fronts framed upon the wall. We have a collection of empty/double record sleeves, Bowie, The Platters, The Beatles that will eventually end up framed and displayed too. She says, they've been waiting to be framed for over a year, it'll get done some day.

While we're not neurotic about ordering, certain shelves and cabinets become home to various types - the favorites, jazz, classical, the pop and the rock, my motown collection ordered together. Sub-organizing so many records is another matter entirely, yeah still working on that part.

So there you have it, a short and sweet sneak peek into both a collection that means a lot to me, and one of my favorite rooms because of the things inside it. No doubt it'll be featuring again as we continue to work and add to it. And as ever, if you what to know why I prefer vinyl for my music fix, just check out my 10 reasons here!

Pieces mentioned;
Sony record player

Vintage record cabinet

Tjena storage boxes - Ikea

Billy bookcase - Ikea

Galant shelf unit - Ikea

PS. Please excuse that some of these photographs aren't the best, the room has no windows, hence no natural light and turned into a right pain to photograph.

LIFE: The Small Things #8

Michigan welcomed the arrival of August with daily thundershowers, storms and even some hail. What was left of the raspberries have long blown off as the season for our plants end. Luckily some late planted dahlias are growing like there's no tomorrow. DIY projects are starting to roll out, finally having space to air revamps of vintage furniture means I can finally get my hands dirty. As we mark the first month of house ownership and the year creeps further through, here's the little things of the last week or so.

• Reading everything between our Detroit Metrotimes to the Paris Secret, the reading bug that I mentioned last time has stuck around  
• Watching it rain, a lot. It's like being back in Yorkshire. Great for saving water and therefore keeping that water bill down, great for the flowers and unfortunately the weeds enjoy it too
• Eating some fish n chips at Dino's in Ferndale to celebrate my British Yorkshire roots on Friday for Yorkshire, while the fish in it's tempura batter were delicious, the fries were far, far too salty ugh
• Pinning - cleaning ideas for vintage tiles to ideas for our bathroom revamp and record inspired decor.
• Crafting, well if DIY counts - repainting the bathroom and kitchen window frames and stills, repainting and updating the house numbers, revamping a vintage laundry hamper (post to follow). It's about updating and revamping. I'm more hand with a paintbrush than I ever thought 
• Going to the Home Depot (a hardware store basically like B&Q if you're British and need a reference) far too often - it's like we live there. It's like a twice weekly thing 
• Loving the cocktails from The Oakland (Ferndale), they might cost $10+ but they are worth every cent
• Hoping that the rain clears up, I have a garden to tame before I can plant all my spring bulbs
• Enjoying the odd non rainy evening spent on the deck drinking beer or eating ice cream with the husband
• Listening to some lady right behind us in the queue for getting into an estate sale complaining about foreigners, i don't think she was picking up on my English accent and Joe did well not to start ranting about how insulting she was being ...   
• Thinking that even though I need to tame the garden this week needs to be more about work and less about gardening, sadly 
• Finishing all the unpacking of out record collection, only took me four weeks to get there. But not that it's in any form of order ... 
• Finding a great bookcase from an estate sale for $6 that's already filled with vinyl 

What little things have been making up your world lately?

HOME SWEET HOME: A 1950's House With Some 1950's Features

So I know ya'll dying to see inside the front door that is now our home - one that we actually first visited for an estate sale. So I thought I'd start off with some background and share some of the original features that are still to be found within. Built in the early 1950's, home was one of many built during the expansion of Detroit's southern suburbs just north of eight mile. Population growth came with the expansion by Ford of it's somewhat local, Highland Park plant alongside increasing racial tensions within the city and the post war boom.

Sixty years later and the house retains some of it's original features most obviously within the bathroom. While I love the gordy blue tiling, for many it would be a total no no. Considering the age of the tiling, it's in a really good condition - it would seem wrong to tear it down, plus it suits the house,  so we'll just be taking off the peeling wallpaper and repainting.

1950's bathrooms are recognized by their brightly coloured tiles on every wall, often in white, blue, green or pink and edged with a row of black tile trim. Bubble glass windows, black soap dishes and towel railings alongside somewhat matching floor tiling make up the final pieces of the bathroom decor.

Another typical feature of this era is the laundry chute into the basement (second photo down in this group) - although when they finished the basement ceiling it's now blocked but can probably be unblocked in the future. Throw in some original doors, hinges and door knobs, a couple of vintage tie racks for good measure and we're onto a winner. There's even an old workmen's table in the basement.

With owning a lot of vintage things - furniture, pictures, book and everything in between, having a vintage feel and backdrop in the house creates a great atmosphere. Everything feels like it belongs here a little more. While the old windows will eventually be replaced, I hope we end up being caring, loving caretakers to take all these original features into the future and maybe salvage and add some back in.

HOME SWEET HOME: The Garden

Where better to start talking about the house than in the garden - probably because there was never any boxes to unpack so I don't have to hide them away to snap photos! Having been in a one bed apartment with no outside space to call our own, I've been dreaming of trees, plants and having a little veg plot since god knows when. 

We didn't want a huge garden - mainly because of the upkeep and luckily we scored gold. The previous owner clearly lovingly cared for their garden - we've inherited numerous, even if somewhat overrun raspberry and blackberry plants, lovely sweet peas to poppies (sadly flowered for the year) to lilies. There's even a wonderful magnolia tree in the front garden which happens to sit right in front of my craft room - perfect!

Being in the full sun, we're managing to pick off a breakfast bowl of raspberries daily, yet they are a little overrun and will need putting into place next year. The same area - behind the garage, is also where we're planning on attempting our little veg plot. Key word - attempting.

Towards the back of the house there's a large wooden deck surrounding which, is yet more raspberries and oh so much wild garlic all shaded by the age old Maple tree that stands proud in the middle of the garden.

Where there are a lot of shrubs, grasses and bushes the garden is sadly lacking in color - and with our hope to make the garden super butterfly, bee and bird friendly along with an English cottage feel, that's the mission to work on for next year starting in the fall with hopefully planting some bulbs for the spring - thinking tulips, crocuses and daffodils.



Until then i'll be pouring over some gardening books methinks. No doubt gardening posts will become a steady feature upon this blog from now on especially as I start to tackle and make it our own.

Exciting gardening adventures to come!

 

LIFE: On Moving In and Calling Somewhere Home

Oh my what a crazy couple of weeks that was. Remember when I hoped July would be a better month than June? Well, it's certainly been trying that's for sure. But, we are all moved into our first house, even if it didn't go as planned.

Being a holiday weekend (we moved over the 4th July weekend) most people already had plans, so we were left moving everything pretty much alone. That was until Joe took a tumble and landed all funky on his ankle which hit a concrete barrier for good measure - as you do. After bravery soldiering on for the afternoon, we ended up going to ER which resulted in taking home a pair of crutches and Joe being off work for the next two weeks.

In the end we had to hire in some help to shift the heavier pieces of furniture (we used College Hunks Hauling Junk which i'd highly recommend) and after four days of trying, numerous trips back and forth, attempting to clean our old apartment and handing in the keys, we were all moved.

The house itself is marvelous. It's so nice having space - so much space I'm not sure were to put everything. It's quiet, we have raspberry and blackberry bushes in the garden in addition to sweet peas and so many pretty lilies. It's quiet, it's peaceful and it's starting to feel like home even if I felt overwhelmed at how much stuff we had to unpack many a time.

Over a week in and we're still unpacking - it's pretty much endless, or just endlessly moving boxes around until they find a new home - the basement works well for that challenge at least. The garden (pictured above - well the deck part is) is a little unruly - i'm longing for a somewhat cooler day to really get to grips with it all. It's nice to have yet another reason to go to estate sales (like we needed another reason) but it's a great way of picking up garden equipment on the cheap - like a $2 spade. Sorted!

In fact the move seems to have been the right thing for the kitties too - they seem so much more at peace with each other and happier in themselves, perhaps it's because there's three kitties over the road that they can glare at and a couple of friendly looking squirrels that run up and down the magnolia tree throughout the day.

Either way, I'm glad we managed to find this house, for us all. We're still somewhat in the midst of unpacking, but I can't wait to share some more photographs of the place once everything is more in place!

Home ownership suits us.