In My Garden

I know nothing about gardening. I couldn't even begin to tell you what plants and flowers are in my jungle backyard...

The previous owner was a gardener. Could you not tell by the Monet waterlilies mural I had in my bathroom? She left us a wonderful legacy though...


...all these flowers that pop up throughout spring and summer and colour our world, with no help from us. She even had a sprinkler system installed. Now that is serious stuff.


This is as garden-friendly as I get. We picked up some flowers for our urns. I think they're Impatiens but the neighbour says they're Begonias. Whatever they are, I hope we don't kill them with our black thumbs.

In Full Bloom

Chloe isn't the only thing growing around the HandyLuster household. Our garden you could say, needs some attention. While HandyMan has been focused on clearing out all the boxes of hand-me-downs from Mama HandyMan, I've been trying to get dishes, laundry, and some blogging done in those brief moments when Chloe isn't asking to be fed/changed/held/rocked/played with.



So we've let Mother Nature do her thing. Apart from cutting the lawn, we haven't touched the garden since last fall! No weeds have been pulled nor bushes trimmed. And luckily, the garden hasn't died despite our black thumbs. You'll have to thank the previous owner Kiki for that. She was a master gardener so we a beautiful variety of flowers sprouting all summer long. Here's what's in bloom right now. I won't name names because beyond the roses and peonies, I have no clue what these lovely flowers are :-o




Yes, the giant rose bush is threatening to eat our car!

Goldfish - check!

Just when I thought things were getting quiet around here - what with the kitchen cabinets installed and just waiting on the final touches - a long weekend tempts HandyMan and I to get a few more things knocked off our To Do list.

We were on the hunt for transition strips and door and window casing. After less-than-fruitful trips to Home Depot and Lowe's, we headed to our new favourite lumber store Central Fairbank Lumber. More than a lumberyard, this place offers a plethora of doors, lumber, hardware, siding, columns, and mouldings mouldings mouldings. Best part was that they had free samples of all the mouldings so we took a whole pile to mix and match at home. We decided on a fairly flat casing and simple backband for the window and doors.

A little bit of clean-up in the garden unearthed a nice surprise. The previous owner Kiki had a little water feature, but after we cleared it of its rocks and dirt, we discovered it was big enough to house a fish or two! We moved a rock out of the garden to use as an island and Mama HandyMan donated some floating plants. HandyMan picked up 3 goldfish at Walmart...though we worried the racoons would make a snack out of them :o\ Turns out, one of our fish met their fate not by a racoon -- but by our water pump! Yup, sucked right in... what a horrible way to go.

After that was all done, we still had quite a bit of time left in our long weekend. Check out what we did in the next post!