Switch-a-Roo

Switching things around, around here.

I went from this

to this.

This is the DH's 2017 van. It has fewer bells and whistles that the wine van, which sparked a bit of jealousy in DH. I don't need bells, whistles and back up camera doodads. That, coupled with that fact I'm going to racking up some miles here, there and everywhere, it made more sense to just switch vans.  

Except it's grey.  Dark grey. With a black interior.

Blah.

Too boring and too dark. I plan on adding color to the inside.   I dislike the normal seat covers available to buy. They are stretchy, nylon, polyester, icky fabric.  Only slightly worse than the seats themselves. 

The only thing to do is to make some myself and of course, I needed to get fabric to do that. YAY!! And excuse for shopping - with a coupon, of course and sale fabrics. I wanted something fun, bright and turquoise. 

I found this great outdoor fabric for the front seats, since they will get sun.

Don't you just love it?  The pattern is large, not super busy and fun. The middle seats will spend a lot of time stowed away so I don't have a plan for them yet.  I need to figure out how to design them and allow the seats to fold down into the floor.  The back 60/40 split seat should be easier to figure out but still folds away.  Rather then use the same palm fabric, I opted for a plain turquoise canvas duck. 

I found some bath rugs to put under Odie's crate and/or in front of the middle seats, to add extra color.

It's brighter in real life.

Oh - and the majority of the miles I'll be racking up will be from my daily commute to my new job!  I started last Tuesday. So far, so good.  It's a change that will take some time to adjust to - time, schedule, tasks, errands, etc. 

Garden Project: Step Three - Relocation

In my previous post, I talked about relocating this daylilies and hostas to make way for the raised beds and new perennials and grasses. But I never showed you where they went. 

Outside the fence!  In a mud space/nasty ground cover area created by the removal of two trees over the past 10 years by the HOA. 

The clumps of daylilies were a challenge to dig out as they were up against the fence and could only be dug on 3 sides. I spread them out in the new area to give them plenty of room to multiply.  

Half of the daylilies relocated

I was convinced they would not bloom this year, given the move and the excessive heat during the first couple of weeks. But they did.

The hostas had been happily growing in the garden for about 10-12 years, with only a little setback from harsh winter weather.  One green hosta clump I dug up was divided into FIVE new clumps.   They did suffer some heat and transplant stress but I know they will be fine over time.

The variegated hostas were only marginally newer to the garden and yielded ten good size transplants that I did not subdivide.  I thought I had taken pictures of them but I can't seem to find them at the moment.