Mom Projects

Next week's guest is my mother, who'll be staying with me for a month.  By the time she leaves in July, everything at the 'stead will be better.  I'm 44 (I mean 29!  I'm 29!!) and I still look to my mother to make things better.  It won't be radically different, but it will be cleaner.  It will be more organized. Things will look nicer. 

I'm going to take some time off, but will still work most days.  I'll come home from work and mom will have lists for me.  She'll show me something and say, "Jord, I'm going to put all these things upstairs," and it will make all the sense in the world.  She volunteers at the Habitat for Humanity Re-Store in Oregon - and applied those hardware organizing skills to my shed last year.  My shed looked like a store when she was done, everything on hooks, in containers, beautiful.  It doesn't look that good now!

Last year I was desperate to figure out a way to make it through winter without freezing and that colored everything we did.  This year shelter and warmth are covered and we'll move higher on the Maslow scale.  I'm NOT making a project list (mom is going to decide for herself what she wants to do), but here are some things she may be interested in:

Picture the sundial surrounded by beautiful ground cover.

Can you see the kitchen garden here, underneath the hostas, astilbe, and who knows what else?  I do too!

I've been thinking of groundcovers ever since Melanie of Our Wee Farm mentioned using them about a month ago.  Conveniently, I recently read a blog post by Ellen Rathbone, who writes Adirondack Naturalist about a new native plant nursery in nearby Argyle.  This nursery carries groundcovers native to the Adirondack climate!

I don't even have to do research to know that I already have two of these, Partridgeberry and Lowbush Blueberry!  I can see us bringing some of the Lowbush Blueberry down from the hill.  Or Wintergreen would be cool.  I'm really digging having shelter and warmth covered! There are so many fun things to focus on now!