On the Porch
Onisha Ellis
You know how people joke about watching grass grow, indicating boredom? Well, watching grass grow at our house has been pretty darn exciting. In the past we adopted the haphazard method of dealing with our grass in North Carolina. This method involved a lot of head scratching as each of our efforts failed. This year, due to our slide area, we spoke with the Soil and Water folks and took their advice.
In Florida, we didn’t sow grass seeds. We bought slabs of St. Augustine grass and voila, we had grass. Of course, if we didn’t water it frequently we had dead grass.
My husband changed his method of dealing with our apple tree that had not produced a single apple in five years. In the fall he gave it a stern lecture, threatening to turn it into applewood lumber if it didn’t quit stalling. It seems the tree took it to heart.
We do have still have some gardening questions and your input is appreciated. Why are our blue hydrangea now blue and white and is this pretty flower a weed or a plant that I can buy more of? It looks like Foxglove, but is more delicate and spindly.
It hasn’t been all gardening the past two weeks. We finally figured out how to get our sidewalk poured. My husband had been dreading hauling the concrete laden wheelbarrow. as he has painful shoulders, but we received an unexpected blessing in the form of the concrete truck driver. I call him our angel of mercy. He didn’t allow my husband to push even one wheelbarrow load. He and the handyman we hired went way above our expectations, hauling the excess concrete around the house and bucketing it up on a hill where we plan to build a water feature. They even smoothed the concrete!
Do you see our “porch dog” Gus supervising the men? My job was to make sure Gus didn’t make paw prints on the walkway. He only jumped on it once and it was easy to smooth out.
We were especially pleased to get our walkway finished as our aunt was visiting and we wanted a nice surface for her walker to roll on. We spent several days out and about with my aunt and my cousin. Lots of fun! We visited Black Rock Mountain State Park in Georgia. What a beautiful park it is!
I’m not a big garage sale fan, but my visiting family are and they always find great deals. I even found some myself. The best part of “garage selling” was discovering new communities in the area, The mountains sure have an abundance of nature and beauty. Here are two photos I took at one yard sale. I was warned a black snake was sighted heading for the old door. No worries. Black snakes are our friends.
It is quiet here now that our family returned to their home. I am back to watching the grass grow and the flowers bloom and I am enjoying every minute of it!
Old Things R New 
Did you sod or seed? Looks like you’re doing a lot more than watching grass grow and it looks wonderful. I don’t know enough about flowers to give you advice other than enjoy them until the deer eat them. LOL
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Diane, in Florida we always put out sod, in North Carolina we used seed. It seemed odd to sit and wait for the grass to sprout, The deer eat the apples.
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You are watching grass grow while I’m watching it die. At least the flowers in Florida are doing well. Strange about your hydrangeas. Where they white to begin with?
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Wonderful post! I laughed out loud twice. Your walkway looks beautiful, as well as your flowers. Great job!
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Thank you, Linda. We are slowing learning how to grow things here and I am enjoying the beauty.
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Love, love, loved it! Wonderful pictures, too. Thank you for writing such a beautiful blog!
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Aww… Divoran, you are my encourager. Gus disappeared for two days and I heard hammering going on at his home. I was afraid his true owners were building him a doghouse for getting cement on his paws. He is back again, so all is good. The chipmonks enjoyed the scraps of bread while Gus was not visiting.
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LOL, I know about St. Augustine grass dying. I’m in the process of moving to Jacksonville.
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It likes water. Hope you enjoy living in Jacksonville.
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