Victorian House Renovation in Bloomingdale, DC
Lest anyone thinks that we haven’t been doing much work outside of documenting the contractors progress, we have. its just not very glamorous, and its slow to boot. (Well and we also had a few visitors, who blissfully distracted us from drudgery of renovation – thank you friends :)
In the last two weeks, Sergey finished up preliminary work on our little dirt patch outback – soon(ish) to become an urban garden oasis.… Read the rest
So how cool is this? Nation capital’s own ginger ale. Just one of many, many, really many bottles we discovered digging out our basement/crawl space below the kitchen.
Although a lot of the bottles were kind of cool looking, I must say the sheer quantity that turned up are quite astounding. Here are some shots, and these don’t account for all of the broken glass and some of the newer ones that we recycled.… Read the rest
Pictures are nice, but video – well, its as close you will get (and we will get to remember) as actually being here. So without further ado, I give you progress from Day 1&2 of demolition
And of course, this would not be complete without the time lapse video taken by our friend Charlie Doud of what happened outside:
And finally, the progress from Day 3:
Turns out that there was good reason for us to work hard to get our little patch of dirt yard cleaned and sunny. the roses are in full bloom and we aren’t even at the end of May yet!
On a side note – there are tons of little bugs on roses – they don’t seem to be impeding the blooming, but look kind of icky up close. not sure what those are, and whether i will get around to getting rid of these.… Read the rest
The VIB – probably feeling neglected – has been given us trouble lately, we have busted glass and crumbling mortar. But this post isn’t about that. its about success! ha, take that house gods. even though its not technically house. regardless, our roses are blooming!
after what looked like a fairly successful winter for them, we cleaned up and trained the bushes and they have really taken off. However, no sooner did the buds appear, myriad of squirrels did too!… Read the rest
How to train climbing roses for many, many blooms )… Read the rest
When and how to prune climbing roses.
Time flies by. It wasn’t too long ago that we planted our climbing roses. This year’s winter wasn’t too bad, so I think they made it out ok. Last weekend, Sergey and I took about 30 minutes to prune and train the bushes onto the fence. This should be done at the end of winter, before plants start budding for spring.
This is how we started out. The plants didn’t even loose all of their leaves,
which I thought should go, to make way for fresh blooms.… Read the rest
I had realized awhile ago that I learn best from a lecture, then from reading with pictures and worst all, is all text. thankfully the internets is an amazing resource when it comes to how-to videos. including gardening videos. after some research, I stumbled on this nursery providing videos on roses. this one is especially useful for first year of my roses. stay tuned for training climbing roses, and pruning climbing roses installments this winter/ early spring.… Read the rest
rain, rain, you can come back now!
Hey-o,so we got our rain barrel installed today. Apparently it won’t help that much with flooding issues. But at least it will gather 132 gallons of water for my future garden and roses.
You can see here for more info on the DC government Storm Water program — the cost is minimal $30 instead of $300 — and if you don’t want to wait 6+ months, you can install one yourself and get a rebate from DC Green Works, the company that installed our barrel.… Read the rest