How To Make Your House Bigger, In Two Easy Steps.

Step one, cut down the bushes completely covering the garage.  Step two, haul them to the curb for bulk trash pickup day.

We have not finished--I planted three bushes and fifty four pots of asian jasmine ground cover today and my back said ENOUGH--but we'll finish up tomorrow.  This is the last of the ginormous overgrown bushes that were here when we bought the place, and I can't wait to have them gone!  I've cut all the front branches down, and most of the branches on the end bushes, but you can see how the middle ones are all up in the eaves!  There's actually a window back there, and maybe a third of the rest of our house!  Granted, it's only the garage, but still.

Maybe a third of the way done?  Piles of brush...our neighbors don't love us right now.

See the window peeking out?  Now we'll have to put blinds up in the garage.  :~)

This is from last summer...a few weeks after trimming that @#$%0 hedge.  There's a garage behind it...not that anybody can tell.  There's also maybe 30 x 10 feet of planting space in that area, and I am reclaiming it!

The irises are coming up up up, and while the grass hasn't greened yet, the flower beds are becoming colorful with snap dragons, herbs, and roses getting ready to bloom. 

Crystal Fountain Clematis (I think that's its name) getting ready to bloom!

Thrift.  A flower named after one of my favorite activities.

Tomato plants, with Sweet Alyssum to attract bees.

Lemon balm and (I think) Siberian Iris.

Same bed, with St. Joseph's lilies & amaryllis...and Schultz's furry behind.

That sprawling thing is the Peggy Martin rose.  She's come a long way from the 18" start a year ago.

The corner bed, with verbena and iris blooming.  The blank areas will be full of lantana, oxeye daisy, coreopsis and Dusty Miller in a while.

The Irises!

Rabbit's keeping an eye on the society garlic.

We spent yesterday afternoon out on the deck.  Or, I did, while Phil practiced his chip shot from one end of the yard to the other.  The cannas in the back are starting to grow--they're only six or eight inches tall yet, but they seem very enthusiastic (if you have access to Medina Granules organic fertilizer, give it a try.  It is wonderful, even if it smells like catfish stink-bait the first few days.)

Our favorite place to hang out on a balmy late afternoon. 

 If you're still stuck in a winter zone, I hope the photos brought you some hope for Spring!

More irises!

Been a little crazy, weather-wise here.  One day we're up in the 80's, the next it's 42 for the high.  Some of the irises sent up bloom stalks too early, and lost them in a later freeze.  Sad but true.  But we're Texans, here...and big swings are the norm.

I think we really are done with the freezes--I check the mesquite trees to be sure, but they have yet to confirm my belief.  Mesquites are the final arbiters of the Official End of Winter here...they absolutely do not leaf bud or bloom until it's safe to come out.  They just don't.

At any rate, I have had a wonderful time with the irises that have come out since that last freeze, and I've worked hard to identify them as they bloom.  Here is a PicMonkey photo of the irises I have identified ('cept for that peachy one), not that they've all bloomed yet, but these I know we have.  Plus a few that have blooms now...have I mentioned I love irises?  :~)

Names from L to R, top to bottom:  Immortality, Grandma's Blue Flag, ???, Dauntless, Before the Storm, Celebration Song, Magical Encounter, Carriage Trade, Drama Queen.

This one hasn't bloomed yet, but it's begun to put on a lot of new leaf growth, so it might bloom this year!  Secret Service.

Just identified this one yesterday...had to bring the bloom in to photograph because the wind was crazy!  After some searching, I found out that this one is Sable.

These are irises I grew at our place up in North Texas, when we lived out by the lake.  I had no idea what I was growing, nor did I care.  I put them all around, they bloomed, and I was happy.

Same place...and now that I'm so taken up with I.D.ing them, I hope I brought some of each of these fascinating types...I know I did bring lots of them with me.  I've dragged these poor things around for TEN YEARS, but we never lived in one place long enough or in a place with good planting conditions in all that time.  All that is changed, now that we're here.  Woohoo!

New ideas for cloth and clay dolls...

My brain has been boiling over the last couple of weeks with ideas.  I've never been at a loss for ideas, but typically I'm all over the place with them, and at least this time (while I'm working on all kinds of projects) my concept is fairly focused.  More about that later, if I can make it all work the way I envision things, but for now,
I wanted to share Baby Agnes.

She's made from a Connie Tognoli Colombian doll pattern--the 19" one with a chunky little toddler body and funny little arms and legs--with clay for the head/face/shoulders.  She wears an antique nightie.  I plan to keep her until the UFDC convention, because she's a cloth and clay doll in a style I've never done before. 

Works in progress...

Between the gardening, selling two more rent houses, and preparing for the UFDC convention this summer, I'm feeling a little scattered.  My dolls are taking the brunt of it all, but maybe that's a good thing.  The ones who have sat, ignored in favor of the Izannahs, are finally being finished, and one new one is in the works because, well, just because.

I had a cleaning frenzy a while back, and during this frenzy I vowed to FINISH all the started projects so that I could start new ones later this year.  Easier said than done, but I've made a few inroads with some of the poor dears. 

This one is a cloth and clay doll with a small version of Connie's Columbian body.  She needed a wig, and I'd had a long black wig on her...but it just didn't work for me.  So she traded with a doll-in-progress, and they both seemed to benefit.  Here are photos of before and after the switch...

Baby Agnes, before

Dragonfly Dancer, before

And then I discovered that they wore the same size wig.  Hmmm....

I love the red hair!

Iridescent colors around her eyes...

 

 

While I was gathering up To Be Finished dolls, I found this poor thing, who was assembled sometime early 2013.  There was no sculpting, just an egg head with eyes...she looked pretty weird for a while. But now she's sculpted, so least she can be Weird With Attitude.  I plan to paint her as a contemplative (plotting?) version of the Queen of Hearts.

So much potential after the initial white wash!

Then there was this rabbit fellow, and his buddy.  I used a cat food can (don't tell!) and created a top to fit it, so now it's an Easter Candy Container.  Call it "Spring on Bloom Hill".  His little bucket is so tiny--way smaller than the end of my pinky finger--and it swings on its handle.

 

There seems to be a preponderance of rabbit dolls this year, but I think I'll just go with it and see what happens.  The following is the rabbit doll I'd posted about earlier (or did I?) and then some little spool dolls that sort of "fill in the cracks" at doll shows. 

Well, that's all for now.  I have chores to do, which don't involve dolls (how sad is that?).  Hope your week is fabulous, dahlink!