August 16, 2015 by Pointes of View

On The Road

Ohio / I-80

We just got back from our vacation in upstate New York. The road trip was a long 11 hours (I did zero driving, thanks to my husband), but the scenery was really pretty most of the time, which helped a lot.

We went through Ohio, passing Toledo and Cleveland, and a touch of Pennsylvania before hitting New York.

We hit a patch of heavy rain on I-90.

Once we passed Syracuse, it was picture perfect. Blue skies, fluffy clouds, farmhouses, barns. I hadn’t been here for eight years and it felt good to be back.

August 2, 2015 by Pointes of View

The Garden Wall

I just wrote about unearthing a bunch of stones in our backyard and creating a pathway (above) and repairing the wall around our maple tree with the new stones.

My next project was fixing our garden wall, parts of which were non-existent, mainly because the stones were buried so far underground. In the above “before” picture, you can see where the wall starts to disappear near the base of our Rose of Sharon.

First I tackled the section of wall inside our backyard. You can see that the ivy and pachysandra have pretty much taken over.

Mid-way through.

And here’s the finished wall with Sam inspecting the new area.

Side note: Sam is always with me when I’m planting or working outside. I love working alone because I can get into my zen space, but I do really enjoy having him out there with me. He’s very curious about the worms. He’ll poke his nose to them and then jump back when they move.

With that section finished, I needed to now conquer the section of wall beyond our back gate. What does one call that, our side yard? (Sometimes our three-year-old hangs out with me in the yard, too, for short amounts of time, digging or watering plants.)

A view of the section from the opposite side.

I wasn’t 100% sure where our property line was, but I was 99% sure it was either right at the wooden gate or inches after it.

However, I went ahead and emailed the neighbors, just in case to give them a heads up, since the wall extends all the way to the sidewalk (after the wooden fence ends), so essentially there is a part of the wall that we share. They appeared skeptical at first, but once I fully explained the project, I was offered help and also a wheelbarrow.

Figuring out where to put what stone was the hardest part. I worked section by section instead of layer by layer, because it just seemed like the easiest way. At least for my brain. The worst parts were having to fix multiple layers (the stones are so heavy!) in order to get the top layer just right.

Here’s the finished wall – woohoo!From the backyard.And from the front yard (here’s the section of wall we share with the neighbors).

As I was collecting dirt (to fill in parts of the wall) from another section of the yard, my shovel made the unmistakable “clunk” of hitting stone. I quickly covered it up and walked away.

July 31, 2015 by Pointes of View

The July List – 2015

1) July was a quintessential summer month. The 4th was spent at my husband’s Uncle’s house, with family, swimming and hamburgers and hot dogs on the grill. If I had been more ambitious, I could have made the day even more ideal with a homemade apple pie. But I brought store-bought guacamole instead because sometimes momma just can’t.

2) Speaking of holidays, there’s one house along Lakeshore Drive that goes all out in the decorating department. Christmas, is of course the big one, but the 4th of July display was definitely impressive (for lack of a better word). The girls call it “the silly house” or sometimes “the crazy house. Indeed.

Sweet pea ricotta and warm cabbage salad. Mmmmm!!

3) I’ve been dying to go to Chartreuse, a new restaurant near the Detroit Institute of Arts, since it opened in late spring. My husband and I made it down a few weeks ago and we were not disappointed. It was on par with our favorite San Francisco restaurants, which speaks volumes, if you know San Francisco. Or me.

From appetizers to desserts, everything was fresh and flavorful and the portion sizes were not too small or too big, something that a lot of places don’t get right. Can’t wait to go back.

4) Our Rose of Sharon is in bloom! It has beautiful lavender flowers (which was a fun surprise – we didn’t know what color they were since we moved in after they had bloomed last year) and is doing well considering its shady location.

However, since it is in a shady spot, it has grown SO tall in its attempts to get sun. So the only way to really see the flowers is from one of the bedrooms upstairs or by standing in the driveway. Might need to remedy that at some point. How, I’m not sure yet.

5) Because I’m a gardener now (HA-ha) and because Shirley told me to, I went to the annual (24th) Grosse Pointe Garden Tour. There were six gardens on the tour and I made it to five. My Dad’s and his wife Lyn were visiting at the time, so she and the girls came along on Friday for three and I went solo the following morning in a nasty rainstorm to see two more (I’m so hardcore).

It was nice to see different aesthetics,which ranged from simple to eclectic, manicured to wild. Like going to a museum, it was inspiring to see these gardens and they gave me some ideas as to how I might want ours to look someday.

6) At the Garden Tour shop, Lyn bought us this cool strawberry plant (potted by Shirley – she’d put together dozens of potted plants for the Tour, including a couple Crocs as planters, which were very cute).

We’ve gotten a few strawberries, but I have to fight the squirrels and birds for them. I ran out of the house one day, shaking my finger and yelling at a little black squirrel who had just scampered up the maple tree with a strawberry. He tsk-tsked back at me with his beady eyes. The struggle is real.

7) I wrote a letter to the Board at the Yacht Club, asking (begging?) them to please plan for a recycling program. The containers you see above (and no, I do not always eat like this. Usually I also get a side of onion rings and finish the little ones chicken tenders.)… that’s what food is served in when you eat outside (not just take-out. And the Styrofoam! I can barely stand to look at it).

Hundreds of these containers get thrown in the trash daily during warm-weather months. The way I see it (thank you, San Francisco) not recycling is pretty much littering. I have yet to hear back.

8) My girlfriend Sara from SF (now living in Ireland) came for a quick visit! I took her to Sister Pie, a favorite spot. Although not a favorite because of the pie.

I know, I know! You love the pie. I don’t love the pie. I’ve tried to love the pie. What can I say. Either I’m wrong (which doesn’t seem possible because I feel like I know pie?) or my pie taste buds are out of whack. Either way, I do love the cookies and this time I tried a coconut lemon, thyme mint, ginger and shortbread. All yum.

9) There are tiny little weeds like this one all over our yard (not bigger than an inch or two). I usually give a pull and that’s the end of it. Sometimes I need the help of a shovel. One day, I decided to figure out where this weed was coming from exactly – how far its roots went and all that. After 30 minutes of ripping up a big section of the garden, I had a bucket full of roots and still did not get it all. Maddening.

10) Most valuable gardening lesson I have learned thus far: when pulling a particularly stubborn weed, keep your eyes and mouth closed. Number of times I have regretted not following my own advice: too many to count.

11) In the middle of a blah part of Detroit (gas stations, fast food restaurants, freeway on-ramps) near the Grosse Pointe City border, lies this pretty little farmhouse. I posted the pic to my Instagram account and people recognized it immediately. It definitely grabs your attention when you pass by. I’ve always wanted to snap a picture of it and got a chance one evening during a break in the rain. I wonder what its story is.

12) I got out on the water for the first time last week on a friend’s boat. It was divine. Lake St. Clair is a beauty. I’ve said this before, but one of our criteria for moving was that we needed to be close to the ocean or other large body of water. In Hawaii, I was 20 minutes away from the beach. In California, five. Here, half a block. If we follow the natural progression of things, we will need to retire on a lake house. Not a bad prospect.

We have another month of summer, but I’m already seeing oak leaves on our lawn from our neighbor’s tree (nooooo!). We leave for a road trip to upstate New York next week, so the blog may be a little quiet in early August. I’m sure I will have a lot to share about our adventures.

July 27, 2015 by Pointes of View

Digging in the Dirt

So, you know I’ve been spending a ton of time in the garden lately. I forget what in the world I was doing in our azalea/rhododendron flower bed (probably weeding), when I moved one of our decorative stones and heard a “clunk.”

Underneath was another stone. I covered it back up. But I couldn’t stop thinking about that buried stone. The fact that it was there, under the dirt, probably meant there were others. And if there were others, that meant only one thing: new garden project.

I couldn’t help myself and a few days later I investigated. There was another stone. And another and another. Over the next couple of days, I dug up about 30 stones.

I’m not the strongest person and it was definitely a workout. I woke up in the morning with muscle aches all over, but I kind of love that feeling (which I haven’t felt since I took kickboxing before my wedding).

So now what? After unearthing all the stones, I let them sit for a day or two and thought about what I wanted to do with them. The most obvious solution was to make a border around our maple, as that’s where most of them were found, presumably a border had been there years ago.

Ta-da! Figuring out which stones to put where was like a puzzle and took quite a long time. I think it adds just enough polish to that area without taking away from the plants. I love natural materials in gardens

(Side note: speaking of gardens, I never used to say “garden.” I’d say back yard or front yard or just… yard. Here, everyone says “garden.” At first I thought it was a throwback to the Motherland (people are quirky here, who knows), but now I think it’s because people actually garden in their outdoor spaces. I really only started to call it my garden once I started garden-ing so that makes sense.)

I also used some of the found stones to repair the outer wall around the maple. It was dilapidated, falling in places and missing stones in others.

Of course once I was almost finished creating the two-stone-high section of wall, my husband came out and asked if I was going to make it three levels, “to match the other part of the wall.” Oh my gosh. Instead of going back and redoing everything, I tapered the wall down from three levels, to two and then one (near the boxwood). Perfect (okay, not really perfect. But I can’t go back).

I also widened and repaired, I guess is the right word, our back stone walkway. I wish I had a “before” pic because this one is a huge difference. The only stones that were there before I started were the slate one. You can kind of see they are darker and flatter than the others.

There used to be narrow pathway of slate (the path was made up of one line of six stones and some were broken and/or missing). More puzzle pieces. I moved some of the slate pieces so that they would flow better with the new stones (although technically the stones I unearthed are probably much older than the slate. anyhoo).

Finally I added a few decorative garden stones (the frog and three circles) that the previous owners left behind. I used to think they were ugly and/or dumb, but I love them here.

I love that yard work is never over. I hate weeding and the bugs (the bugs! three worms per every stone unturned!) and I also hate when you are trimming the hawthorn tree and a large branch with multiple thorns (they are huge) falls on your head. But it also means that I’ll never run out of things to do or get bored.

Case in point: after I stood back and admired my creation, I glanced over to the garden wall just beyond the bath. It was crooked, falling and sections were missing stones. I couldn’t look away. Next up: operation garden wall.

July 19, 2015 by Pointes of View

How Does Your Garden Grow?

I knew our next door neighbor was an expert gardener, because everyone told me so. “Oh, you live on such and such, do you know the ____? She’s an expert gardener.” I met Mr. M in December when he and his daughter were stringing outdoor lights, but I didn’t meet Shirley until a couple months ago.

Naturally, she was tending to her garden. We said a few nice words and I didn’t see her again until a few weeks ago, when she called to me from across the fence. She was in the process of dividing some of her plants and would I like any. Umm…. yes, please.

Shirley’s garden

She invited me to walk through her yard to see what she would be digging up and what I might want, so the girls and I popped over for a tour. She told me the names of the plants, what kind of flowers they had (if any), what environment they liked. I learned that she is mainly self-taught, having gathered a lot of her gardening knowledge online (I still think to a large degree that gardening is a talent, rather than a skill and she clearly has that special something).

Digging up Solomon’s Seal.

After our walk-through, she instructed me to get potting soil and any soil mixture that said “compost”on it and a couple days later, she called me over again. She had already pulled up several hostas, which are perfect for a shady yard like ours, and sedum, which is great for ground cover. I loved the Solomon’s Seal (in the hosta family) for its height and simple lines, so she dug some of it up and I added it to the pile.

Transplanted Solomon’s Seal in our garden. I spaced them a little too far apart, but next year they will have lots of room to grow and multiply.

Shirley’s garden gets a lot more sun than we do (thanks to our two huge maples, birch and other large trees), but I decided to try some sun-loving plants anyway. She dug up a bunch of daisies….

cranesbill (aka wild geranium)…

The cranesbill in our garden

Example of a large, thriving cranesbill plant. Image via chaletnursery.com.

dianthus, a low-growing shrub with pinky-purplish flowers…

and a bleeding heart, which produces tiny rows of pink heart-shaped blossoms in the spring.

Close-up of bleeding heart blossoms. Image via michiganbulbs.com

After an hour or so (she did all the hard work!), I had a wheelbarrow full of perennials. She also threw in a pair of gardening gloves when I mentioned that I had none.

She walked over with me to our backyard, so she could show me the proper way to transplant, and I also wanted her opinion on where to put everything. She made a comment that she’d never been in our backyard, which I was surprised to hear (she and her husband have lived in their home for 12 years and the people we bought the house from lived here for over twenty).

Sedum before and after photos. You can sedum them along the border (haha).

We started with the garbage bag full of sedum. I watched as she planted the first clump. Use a shovel (she let me borrow hers. It was waaay easier to work with than our large man-sized one and a few days later I bought my own) to break up any roots and dig a hole for the new plant.

Close up of the sedum.

After placing the plant in the hole, add a handful of potting soil and a handful of compost mix and cover up the roots with dirt, being careful not to pack the dirt too much (Shirley reminded me that plants need three things: water, sun and air). I asked if I needed to replant all the plants that day. Yes, I did and the quicker the better.

Three hours later, I was done. Towards the end, I was being less and less careful, throwing leaves and flowers into the dirt with the roots. I just wanted to get them in the ground.

Transplanted daisies, monarda and evening primrose (the yellow flowers), in front of a lily plant, which we already had and which I later moved to another spot.

I’ve always loved the idea of gardening, but I haven’t done much of it. I come from a family of ridiculously green thumbs (my grandpa always had the heartiest fruits and vegetables, my grandma the most beautiful roses and orchids and my mom is a natural as well), so I hope some of those genes will start showing up in me.

More daisies next to our dogwood tree.

Initially I was hesitant and overwhelmed about where to begin. But where do I put everything? Shirley told me to think about what I wanted to see when I looked out onto the yard from the patio. What did I want it to look like? And go from there. Can the daisies go over here? Try it. If something dies, you pull it up and try something else. No big deal.

I’m glad she gave me the responsibility of decision-making because ultimately my sense of ownership and pride is that much stronger. About a week after the big planting day, our lawn guys came and trampled over a bunch of my new plants and blew dirt and debris onto many others. I cried. Hard.

The rhododendron I was so worried about (I thought I may have over-pruned it) is slowly coming back.

When we first moved to Grosse Pointe and were living in our rental apartment, my girlfriend Ingrid told me to buy a plant to take care of. She said it would help ground me. Maybe I was so emotional because after a year of feeling so unsettled, I was finally starting to feel rooted to this place.

The beauty of gardening is that if something doesn’t go as planned, you can always start over. That’s also what I love so much about living with seasons – everything is constantly changing, renewing itself, reminding us that life is cyclical. You watch things thrive and die and come back to life seemingly right before your eyes and there’s something so profound about that.

Lately, I’ve been spending at least an hour a day (sometimes hours) weeding, trimming, watering, planting and envisioning our garden in the years to come. And it all started with a chat across the fence. How does your garden grow?

July 3, 2015 by Pointes of View

The June List – 2015

How is it already July? Summer is flying by, as it should. We’ve had many nice days and many rainy days, including a wild lightning storm that went on for hours (the lightning woke me, not the thunder).

1) One recent wind storm blew several branches onto our backyard, including this huge section of a maple tree (resting at the base of our birch tree).

2) We’d been wanting to try Rose’s Fine Foods, a quirky diner in Detroit featuring locally sourced food, for quite some time and finally went for breakfast. I had pancakes, which were too heavy, and the Crybaby donut (a house specialty) of the day (blueberry), which was fantastic.

I would definitely go back for breakfast (but not for the pancakes), although the lunch menu looked more exciting, with items like rainbow trout and ground lamb tacos.

3) Our oldest graduated from Kindergarten with a formal ceremony and punch on the lawn and everything. She wore Lilly Pulitzer, which is pretty much a requirement here in Grosse Pointe.

4) Speaking of formal, everything in Grosse Pointe (dinners, gatherings) is soooooo formal. In San Francisco, if I asked myself, “am I under-dressed?” the answer would always be No. Here, the question is, “am I over-dressed?” and the answer is always No.

On one hand, I find this amusing (hilarious, even). On the other hand, I kind of love it. I’m a girlie girl. I like dressing up. And it’s nice when other people make the effort, too (can I get an amen?). Sure, I wear cutoffs and tank tops (which I bet I do more than anyone else here) but I also like that at any given time, if I want to dress up, I can. Without anyone asking me if I just came from a baby shower.

5) Went to the first Tuesday Market of the year at Eastern Market with my mother-in-law and our littlest. I picked up the yummiest cheeses – aged gruyere, white cheddar and imported parmesan (which was the most expensive at $12.90 a pound and of course the only cheese the girls will eat now).

We had lunch at Supino Pizzeria. The thin-crust pizza was delicious and my favorite part was the shaved sausage. Genius. I usually don’t like sausage on my pizza because I hate the chunks. Problem solved with the shaved technique. Why didn’t I think of that?!?

I also bought small cilantro and parsley plants at Eastern Market for I think one or two dollars each? And re-potted them in larger pots (vs the ground, thinking I might want to bring them inside at some point for decoration. The mint I bought at a local nursery. All the herbs seem to be doing well with very little care. Such a change from San Francisco, where I tried so hard to keep herbs alive with never any luck.

6) The local shoe shop wasn’t able to fix a broken zipper on my beloved Frye boots (the guy said he couldn’t fix it and if I found a place that did fix it, it would cost more than the boots were worth). The guy at Tip Top Shoe Repair in downtown Detroit didn’t blink at the broken zipper and fixed it for under $20.00.

When I went back to pick up my boots, I noticed an urban garden (I later looked up the name – Lafayette Greens) was right next door to the shop. I took a little detour and walked through it. The veggies looked amazing – so healthy! – and the quirky sculptures were fun.

7) I gave our four-year-old’s room a summer makeover by exchanging the fluffy pink comforters with Hawaiian quilts made by a) my grandma (the one on the left. I used it as a kid) and b) the little old lady who lives next door to my Hawaii family (she made one for both me and my sister, just because).

8) Speaking of next door neighbors, on Father’s Day the girls went next door to help our neighbor set up her fairy garden. They were beyond excited. Super duper cute.

9) The fishflies are here. Every summer they come for a couple weeks. It’s a lake thing. I just read that a female fishfly lays up to 4000 eggs. They stick to everything (as you can see) and smell like fish (surprise).

They live for only about a day, so, for instance, if a few hundred of them happen to land on one of the trees in your backyard and then die, the next day you may be walking under the tree and a slight wind will blow, causing all those fishfly carcasses to rain down on you. Pretty darn gross.

10) We amped up the backyard with a new teak dining set from Thos Baker (our summer budget has been blown. ouch). The table arrived split, so we had to wait another three weeks for a new one, and then the umbrella arrived cracked, so we had to wait another several weeks for that. But now it’s all here and we’re enjoying it.

We wavered between a dining set (husband’s idea) and lounge chairs (my idea), but ultimately went with the dining set and it has worked out great. Sometimes he’s right, what can I say.

Weber's Way to Grill: The Step-by-Step Guide to Expert Grilling

11) We also bought a new fancy Weber grill, another of the husband’s wants that I didn’t see the need for (at least not for this year). But guess who has been grilling several times a week and who just bought a new grilling cookbook? Yep. I think I was anti-grill because I didn’t understand it, but now that I’m figuring it out, I am loving it. Go me.

12) When people find out I’m from California, the first thing they ask is how I like Michigan. They want to hear that I love it and there are many reasons why I do. I always say that I love the weather (with a reminder that Northern California weather is nothing like the rest of the state). Summers here are picture perfect, with boats on the lake and lush greenery and sounds of kids playing outside ’til the sun goes down.

So even though I still feel very much in limbo and even though I feel like living here has brought some disappointing realizations (friends stuff, music stuff, other things that are seemingly trivial but such a big deal, especially when I am tired and cranky, which I pretty much am all the time), I have never regretted the move.

So…I’m on the right path. I just need to keep walking it. Sometimes in cutoffs and flipflops, and sometimes in Lilly Pulitzer and heels.

Pointes of View

A City Gal's Traversal of Small-Town Suburbia

Other

On The Road

The Garden Wall

The July List – 2015

Digging in the Dirt

How Does Your Garden Grow?

The June List – 2015

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