Our New Beds

  A new bed. 
  Originally uploaded by emira.

About two weeks ago now we moved the new bedroom furniture that Martin built into our room to much personal fanfare and delight. We went from a room in which every inch of wallspace that wasn't a door had a piece of furniture on it to a room with really only three pieces of furniture in it: a bed with built in floating bedside tables, a long low dresser and a chair. Oh and a mirror. And a laundry hamper. But trust me that's way less than what was crammed in there before. I'm borrowing the very generous Miss P's camera for the week so as soon as I'm home in decent light and manage to actually make the bed I'll share some photos. It is lovely.

Not satisfied with a mere interior improvement I also asked Martin to expand my garden bed space this weekend giving me in effect a new bed by expanding an existing bed to the other side of our fence. This new bed gets south east exposure and serves many awesome purposes:

1. It means I no longer need to try to weed underneath the fence in behind my herb garden, which is a major bonus as that was a tricky area to get to.
2. It makes mowing the lawn up to the edge of the fence a non issue as the lawn no longer comes up to the edge of the fence.
3. It provides me with a new spot to do some kind of dramatic garden design. By that I really just mean planting some bright colours next to our charcoal fence, which given that the bed is visible from the front, back and side of the house (which is next to a sidewalk that folks pass by all the time) makes me happy.

My grand plan for this bed is to have some forsythia growing there for early spring blooms (I love the thought of those tall branches covered in bright yellow flowers against the dark grey) and an ornamental quince for a dash of bright pink. In the summer I grow giant sunflowers on the other side of the fence in amongst the herbs and I may just try my hand at some sweetpeas to trail up the fence as well, but that may need to wait until next year.

At the moment my grand plans are somewhat on hold, or I should say in progress. This past weekend I got some excellent cuttings of two types of quince, forsythia and a white magnolia tree from Martin's mom. Each is a fairly small cutting and will take a few years to produce the drama I'm envisioning, but hey free plants that will help Martin's mom's garden live on after she moves out of her current house are nothing to complain about. Also, I'm imagining I'll need to use this bed as a bit of a nursery or "guest room" for some of my other plants this summer when we finally start a project to redo the lower half of the house's siding. I've got plants growing up against two sides of the house and there are some that are more delicate than others that I'll want to temporarily house elsewhere to make sure they don't fall victim to falling siding at any point. It's hard keeping that bed mostly empty in the meantime though I tell ya. I'm itching to fill it with something. Perhaps I'll see if I can't just stick a few quick veggie crops in there some radishes perhaps.