Say Goodbye To Summer

Yet another summer has flown by!  Every year I regret how short our summers are in Wisconsin.

I really felt like I had no time at all this summer to do many things; including work on my blog!  Our landscaping project was very consuming because of how bad the heat and drought was....I had to water, water, water, water to keep the new grass and new trees alive.
Because I currently work somewhat long hours, I had to always make sure I went home right after work so I could start the watering process, which often took me four to five hours to complete. With only one outdoor faucet, I had to use a hose splitter to hook up multiple hoses so I could run two sprinklers at once...but I still had to move them around so all areas of new grass got watered, and with how hot and dry it was, we really had to saturate it. To really saturate the straw covering the new seed, I had to water each section 40-45 minutes. Erik helped me move sprinklers, but it was still a very tedious task. If we had been getting regular rainfall, it would have been much easier on us, of course, but we, unluckily, did this project in the middle of a severe drought. Our efforts paid off, however. The grass came in beautifully and our new trees are doing well.

Most people in blogland have already been posting pictures of their fall decor and even Halloween decor! I am way behind....my fall decor is still in the attic. Erik's band had many summer shows, which kept us both busy. I had also decided to change jobs and will be starting a new job in 3 weeks, leaving my current employer after nine years. My new job will have "regular" hours; which means that I will be working a regular five day week instead of four days, so my Friday day off, a day I often did my blog posts, is a thing of the past.

I will adjust to the new schedule, and hope to get back on track again and post more regularly soon! Erik bought me a new photo editing program that I have been learning also. It's  Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 4 and it's been fun learning how to use it.
Here's a few images I've played around with:

Fuschia on my front porch

Olive

A statue atop a gravestone at Holy Trinity Cemetary in Milwaukee (where I recently visited and took many interesting photos).

I finally hung up my J.Gould bird prints in the front hall (actually, Erik hung them, since I am apparently too indecisive and I told him to pick a spot and hang them before they ended up sitting on the hall table for six months!)

I had mentioned in other posts about how I was trying to find the right sized, and right type, of pictures to make a grouping over the spinet piano in the hall, without success. We ended up buying this reproduction tapestry at a local Renaissance Faire and decided to hang it by itself above the piano.

I want to add some hanging tassels to it also. This is a small reproduction of a Flemish tapestry that was woven around 1500 in Flanders, called "La Licorne Captive" (Unicorn in captivity). It is done very nicely and is of good quality. We thought it would look interesting and very "old world". I might end up moving it to Erik's "Victorian gentleman's study" when we actually start that project later on, but I think it also will look lovely in here permanently.
 On my never-ending list of things are window treatments for the hall windows. We have been in the house now for nearly seven years, and still there are no curtains on the windows in this room!!!

Thanks for stopping by!

A Landscape Plan

Like most people who own an older home (in our case, a home about 126 years old), there's a lot of work that often needs to be done. This goes double when the home has been neglected, for the most part, for many years and has had many, many owners (like ours) that did nothing with it.

One of the bigger projects that we want for the house is to give it new life with beautiful landscaping.

I often take pictures of my flower gardens for my blog, but I don't usually show anything other than the flower garden I'm featuring or small parts of the yard and shots of our big front porch. There is quite a bit that I leave out when I take pictures.

There is good reason for this.

The majority of our yard is terrible looking.  Not in a weedy, unkempt way, but just a whole lot of nothing or a whole lot of ugly and old.

Our house sits on a small knoll; we live in one of the oldest sections of town and the land must have been quite hilly there. Many of the homes sit on a small rise above the street. Some have retaining walls, some have yards large enough where they have engineered the yard to slope softly down to the sidewalk and street.

Our lot is rectangular; it's longer than it is wide. This is a very common shape and size for the neighborhood we live in. Ours has a retaining wall that encircles more than half our lot. Because our house is on a corner of two intersecting streets, we have nearly 250 feet of retaining wall.

Pictured above: Ugly and old. 

There was once many large stately trees in our front yard and in the back yard, but they were all gone by the time we acquired the house. We were told by the previous owners that they had cut them all down because they didn't want to rake leaves.

Um.......okay.

The retaining wall is very old; it's concrete. It looks like old Depression-Era WPA concrete. It probably is from about that time period, because that's when they widened the streets and put in sidewalks, and probably cut off the long, gently sloping yard into an abrupt hill that required a retaining wall.

Above: Horrible steps that may kill you.

The front walk and these steps were probably done at a later date. You can see part of the ugly concrete retaining wall that is in front of our house. Needless to say it detracts from our house quite a bit.

 We also have a smaller porch in the back, with a walkway and another set of steps. The walkway and steps were probably done at the same time as these, but don't look nearly as bad. In that walkway, the person who did the concrete pressed a penny into it when it was wet.  I can't remember now the exact date on the penny but it was sometime in the late 1960s. 

Above: The horror.

In the above photo, I was standing on the sidewalk by the back steps looking at our back yard. It is very evident the poor condition the concrete wall  is in. There is also this perfectly hideous chain-link fence. I have nothing against chain-link fences, they have their uses and their purposes; but I did find it extraordinarily strange that someone would choose this type of fencing to encircle the entire back yard of the house and wouldn't plant anything around it to screen it's ugliness. The people we bought the house from had only lived in it for two years. They were the ones whom had put in this fence. They had a young child; presumably they wanted the yard fenced so the child could play in the yard without wandering into the street, however, I wonder why they would have chosen this type of fence. From what I understand, chain-link fencing is rather expensive or, at least, no more expensive than a wood privacy fence.  A wood fence would have looked much more attractive, and also would have provided privacy. 

So, you may ask.....why am I showing these pictures? 

They are going to be part of my "Before, During and After" posts regarding a VERY big and expensive project that we are finally in a position to do here at Le Beau Paon Victorien!

A NEW RETAINING WALL!  

Yay!!!

We chose a landscape company, after shopping around for the last two months, and have finally given them the "go ahead". It is a family-owned business and one of the sons is a landscape architect. Because we are doing such a large and expensive project with them, he offered to draw up a landscape design for the rest of the yard at no cost. Most of the time these kinds of services cost some money; I have heard of people paying $300-600 for a complete design.

He took pictures and measurements of our yard and then he and I looked through a stack of gardening magazines that I have been collecting for years ( and marking with sticky Post-It notes) to see what I liked and what I wanted to have in my yard and to get an idea of my style. 

Above:  My Stacks; kitchens on the left, gardens on the right.

We knew it would be really helpful to have a professional put everything together as far as the layout and what to do with "trouble spots".  And, what's nice about it is that we can pick and choose what things we may want to have a professional landscaper do ( like a patio and pergola) and what things we may want to do ourselves. They can also lay out and prepare all the planting beds for me and then I can do all the plantings myself, using transplants from family and friends or whatever I like. We can also do areas in piecemeal, as we are able to afford it, but still have a cohesive design and know where to put what. 

It's very exciting.

We also had a land surveyor come do a new plat survey for us, since we didn't have one for our lot and there hadn't been one done recently. We wanted to make sure we knew exactly where our property lines are. (It turns out they were pretty much where we thought they were.)

A couple of weeks later, our landscaper brought me this lovely design.

  The big grey area in center is our house, the smaller grey square, upper left, is the garage. This is looking at our house from the side. The front is actually on the right.

Our landscape architect did some research on Victorian gardens, also and used elements that would reflect a Victorian style. He said he really had fun with it; he doesn't get to do many designs like this.

This is a close up of the back yard. I love how he did a circle patio, with a half-circle pergola. He also made a potting area for me behind the garage! This design pretty much has all the elements that I want (including two gates with arbors over them! woohoo!!) and is really very much like I envisioned how I wanted the yard to look like.
No chain-link fence! No overgrown weigela! No old concrete! A wood privacy fence with two gates! A rose arbor! Patio! Pergola! Lots of flower gardens!

Of course, we can't afford to do ALL of this right now, even though it would be nice to have them come in and do it all!
And, we can change anything about this plan that we want; we are not beholden to the Plan, so to speak.

But, it's fun to dream, and to plan....and to see ideas from my head take form on paper!

For right now, the only part of the landscaping project that we are doing is the retaining wall and the front walkway and front steps because they are in such bad shape. When they demolition the concrete wall, they are also going to be taking the chain-link fence out.

Our landscaper guy is going to price out some of the other areas in the design for us also, just in case we save up enough money that we might be able to have them put in the planting beds in the front that are on the design or extend the ones that I already have in place, maybe yet this year, in the fall.  We'll see!

The stone we chose for the wall is called saw-cut Lannon stone. It comes from a local quarry and takes about two weeks for the quarry to cut it. I think he said we needed 3 tons or something! Yikes!

I'll have more pictures as soon as the project is underway!  Thanks for stopping by~

                                              Above: Yuck.

Reverence

The definitions of reverence:
 a feeling of profound awe and respect, and often love.
                                            
an act showing respect; such as a bow or curtsey.
                                           
 a high opinion of something.
                                           
 an attitude of deep respect and esteem; veneration.


"By having a reverence for life, we enter into a spiritual relation with the world. By practicing reverence for life we become good, deep and alive."--Albert Schweitzer.

I suppose that today, September 11th, is a fitting day to post some pictures I took a couple weeks ago at the cemetary near my house that I often visit. Erik and I often go there, because we both find cemetaries to be places of peaceful reflection, solitude and reverence, not neccessarily places of sadness.
True, the circumstances which bring us and others to such places initally are sad and grievous; but later, they become places of peace, places of remembrance. The dead are our history and they are also reminders that life has value.
 I wish the terrorists who planned and did such horrible deeds  9 yrs ago today would have understood that life has value; especially all those innocent people, who died needlessly and horribly. I wish these terrorists had followed Albert Schweitzer's advice above. That's all I have to say about it.

We don't know anyone that's buried in this cemetary; we just go there because we like to walk in the park-like beauty, pause to enjoy the silence, glean what history we can from reading the names, visit old graves that may not have had a visitor for a hundred years or more (burials began in Prairie Home Cemetary in the 1850s). We mostly come to revere. We especially like the older headstones, like this one. There were many popular motifs that were used on old stones. A weeping willow was commonly used; as was this image of hands clasped in a handshake or as a sign of welcome. An urn finial was often used on the top of a large stone, sometimes partially draped by a  carved stone cloth, or completely draped; a sign of mourning no doubt.

There is a certain beauty is such a place; a beauty of silence, of peace, of monuments made to show where a loved one rests for eternity.

Sometimes I fancy I can hear the whisperings of the past in the wind............

You would think that a place that has seen so much sadness and tears would not feel and look so lovely. But it does....

This one is my favorite; it has a lovely poem on it that I keep meaning to write down, because I can never remember all of it. Even though the soft stone has been damaged by 117 years of rain and wind, you can still see that it was meant to look like a scroll with tassels on the side and oak leaves above. No doubt the oak leaves have some significance; most of the decorations or motifs on these old stones do. I can say that I really prefer the old styles to the new. New gravestones, to me, lack something.

Here we find the clasped hands again.

On the upper part of this same stone, there are cherub faces on all four sides.

Someone still leaves flowers regularly at this crypt, even though there are only two burials inside it (there's room for six coffins) and the last burial was in 1917.

It also boasts a beautiful stained glass window on the back.

Another crypt has these beautiful copper doors with a wreath motif on them.

This is the largest obelisk in the cemetary (and that's Erik next to it). This was an old family in town, prosperous, important.

And lastly, but not least....the man who we are 99% sure built our house in 1886-1887. He was a carpenter, contractor and builder in town, and he died in 1892 of pneumonia. He was from Vermont, and served in the Civil War. His family has no descendents here. I'm sure to be visiting him (and the rest of them, who are buried next to him) from time to time.


Thanks for stopping by!

I Was a Winner!

Back in May, I was the excited winner of a giveaway from the wonderful Martha at Lines from Linderhof.

I received my lovely and wonderful prize in early July, but I didn't post about it right away (mostly because I was reading the book and then my husband was reading it too!)

So, here it is finally;

I won this delightful book, Betty Crocker's Kitchen Gardens: A Year 'Round Guide to Growing and Using Herbs and Vegetables.

This vintage book, published in 1971, was written by Mary Mason Campbell.

This wonderful  little book is a treasure trove of information and suggestions, including how to plan, plant and care for your kitchen garden, how to capture herbs and vegetables at their peak flavor, and how to store, freeze or dry your herbs for year 'round use, as well as how to start seeds indoors, transplant, compost, and also companion plants for your kitchen garden. There are also sweet illustrations, quotes and other interesting information about the history of kitchen gardens, and the various uses of herbs throughout time.

I love that the previous owner of this book left me lots of little notes all over the book! It's obvious the person who owned it also got a lot of use out of it!

"What signifies knowing the Names, if you know not the Natures of Things?" --Poor Richard's Almanack

I'm so thrilled that I won this lovely book! Thanks again to Martha at Lines from Linderhof for choosing this book as her giveaway!

Thanks for stopping by!

Where I Blog

So this is a room that is never included on the "house tour" when people come to Le Beau Paon for the first time. This is where I blog and do all other manner of computer-ish things. (This also happens to be my new computer! wOot-wOOt!!!). This is my end of the desk. Our desk is sort of L shaped and tucked into a corner of our office, which is a bedroom that we decided was not going to be a bedroom. Erik sits at the other end of the L and in between us is a small area where the printer sits and where I have just enough space to write out checks and go through mail. There is also a large black metal filing cabinet at Erik's end, with a mail basket on top for all that pesky mail that we get. In addition to the desk and computers and filing cabinet, there is also a very small craft table that is behind me against the wall, next to my very messy craft closet. The craft table is also sort of a mess right now.

This is why I usually have no photos of this room or show it when I give the "house tour". It is the most un-Victorian looking room ever.

I don't think we could make it any less Victorian if we tried! LOL. There are three windows in this room, so it gets a fair amount of light, but the icky old cheap blinds that the previous owners were obsessed with and put on every single window in this house, are still up. There is also a really hideous ceiling fan on the ceiling. And vanilla beige wall to wall carpeting. Have I ever shared with you all my loathing of carpeting?? If not, then let me tell you again......I really, really hate carpeting.

My favorite part of this room is the teeny window that sits just behind my computer, almost in the corner. It has about a jillion layers of old paint on it (as you can see) so there's no way I will ever be able to get it open; in fact, I'm not even sure it was ever meant to open. Along the top and bottom of this window is a row of colored glass squares. This window is on the front of the house, so when I have the lights on up here and you stand down on the sidewalk, you can see the light shining prettily through the colored glass.

(You might also wonder what in the world I have on the window stool; the item on the left is my Hitler skunk; a bizarre painted figure that was apparently a popular souvenir during World War II, which was given to me by my grandfather, a WWII veteran. The other item is from when I was in dental assisting school and we had to make dozens of models for Dental Materials class. This was the only one I kept! You may have now guessed that what I do for a real job is that I work in a dental office as a dental assistant.)

Somehow our office has become a catch-all place for weird items that don't fit anywhere else in the house (decor-wise) but which I just don't want to give up. Like my pink polka-dotted dog, which I got free from Victoria's Secret for buying a truckload of panties. He's just so cute!

......And my framed movie posters. The Amadeus movie poster I have had since I was 16. It is one of my favorite movies. A video store in the town I grew up in (this was pre-Blockbuster and pre-Hollywood Video, back when there used to be independent video rental stores) used to sell the movie posters they got for display once they no longer needed them for display in the store. They sold them for $2 a piece and I snapped up this one. It hung in my room at home until I moved out and has been with me ever since. The Sleepy Hollow poster I got on eBay, because it's autographed by the cast members, (Johnny Depp, Christina Ricci, Christopher Walken, Michael Gambon and Miranda Richardson) and also Tim Burton, the director. Why do I have it? Well, I have been totally in love with Johnny Depp since I first saw him on 21 Jump Street back in the 1980s, I love Tim Burton's films, and I love the story of Sleepy Hollow, even though this movie version is quite different than the book.

Someday soon this room will get a make-over.....we have 5 bedrooms in this house and one of the rooms that has been sitting empty since we bought the house is slated to be turned into a "man cave" for my hubby; a place for his computer and bookshelves for all the billions of books we own. A couple of comfy chairs for reading; maybe a TV. We don't know how exactly we are going to decorate the man cave yet, but after that room is done, this room will be made into an office and craft room, but with a little more "girly" and Victorian look to it!

Thanks for stopping by!

The Magic Milestone Number: 100!

 It seems that I've reached what I call the Magic Milestone Number, recently: 100 followers!!!

Wow! I feel so unworthy of so many followers, (most of them much more talented than me!); folks who actually want to read my scribblings and look at pictures of my insignificant Midwestern life!!!!!

I am honored; I am astonished. I am grateful to all who like my blog and have become followers (or even those who don't follow but still take the time to browse and make comments).

And because I just recently finished a nearly 700 page biography of John Adams, Second President of the United States, for my Summer Reading Challenge, I will use one of his very apt quotes:

"A desire to be observed, considered, esteemed, praised, beloved, and admired by his fellows is one of the earliest as well as the keenest dispositions discovered in the heart of man."---John Adams

It seems traditional in blog-land to occasionally have a give-away when reaching such magic milestones, so when I have decided on what would make a lovely give-away winner gift, I will probably soon be having one here at Le Beau Paon Victorien!

I also must point out that even though the dear husband fixed my computer issues for me last week, he then decided that I should no longer suffer with my old computer (which actually used to be his) and that I possibly couldn't live any longer without having the latest and greatest in processors, RAM, graphics, storage and a flat-screen monitor (I admit; I've been coveting his flat-screen monitor for quite some time), so as of last week Thursday, when he came home with a surprise for me ( yes, a new computer), I have been busy transferring things from the old to the new, which includes all my project and document files, tons and tons of photos, as well as music files and many other things.
I say this only to explain my shocking absence from regular blogging, projects, endless photo updates of my flowers, chatting, dish envying and tabelscaping. 
I hope to back at it regularly very soon! 

Have a Happy Fourth of July!

As the nation gears up to celebrate Independence Day, also known as the Fourth of July, to celebrate the Second Continental Congress' adoption of the Declaration of Indpendence, voted in on July 4, 1776, I leave you with some pictures of Le Beau Paon dressed up for the occasion, and a small quote from Thomas Paine's Common Sense, first published anonymously in January 1776. Common Sense was a call to arms, an unabashed argument for war and a call for American Independence, something that had never been so boldly said in print before.

"Why is it that we hesitate?... The sun never shined on a cause of greater worth.....for God's  sake, let us come to a final separation......The birthday of a new world is at hand."---Thomas Paine

I'll be linking this with Summer Sundays at The Tablescaper

Thanks for stopping by!