This is what I’ve asked the stylist to give me.

Check back later to see how close we got to this haircut…

UPDATE: Gonna wait to post my photo til after I get the color done in the next week or two. Haircut very close; color should get me even closer.

Stay tuned…

As a total newbie when it comes to growing flowers and veggies, I know I have a lot to learn. And in my latest post at Babble Voices, I am sharing the first 17 lessons I’ve learned about what works and what does NOT work in successfully cultivating the garden of my dreams.

I share my mistakes in hopes that you may be spared from repeating them

As I mentioned the other day, Jon’s parents live in Fountain City, the same area of Knoxville where Betsy lives. Yesterday evening at about 6 pm, Jon was over at his parents’ house and saw two owls hanging out in the trees in the yard. He grew up in that house and says he’s never seen an owl hanging around there in his whole life.

Here’s one of the two owls in the yard.

NC in her natural element. She just does this stuff.

Inspired by “The Happiness Project” by Gretchen Rubin, I’ve created a list of 15 fundamental “personal happiness truths” that I believe help to make me a more sane, productive and basically happy person (when I AM those things, which I am not all the time, or since Henry died, probably even most of the time).

I’m sharing my carefully curated list over in my latest post at Babble, and I’m hoping that some of y’all will  read mine and then chime in with your own personal happiness truths.

Do you have an iPhone or an Android smartphone with a camera? Are you on Instagram yet? If not, YOU SHOULD BE! It’s great fun, and I’d love to connect with you there.

If you are using Instagram, look me up; you can find me there as kgranju.

As I mentioned last month, I am attempting to grow heirloom Amish muskmelons vertically on trellises this summer. What that means is that as each melon grows, it has to be supported on the trellis so it keeps growing on the vine until it’s ready to be eaten, rather than dropping off the vine due to its own weight.

In the photo above, you see my first baby melon big enough to need its own melon sling, and what I am going to use for now are the 99 cent cotton bandannas they have at Walgreens, and which I wear on my own head while out in the garden.

I think this solution will work for my melons as they grow, but I’m not entirely sure. I’ll keep you posted. And in the meantime, some clever person who sews should invent some kind of trellis sling for garden supply stores and catalogs to carry and sell to gardeners growing fruits like this, and also for vine veggies like squash and cucumbers. With the exploding popularity of small space, urban and square foot gardening, vertical growing is something lots of people likely want to try, but they don’t have a clue what they will rig up to solve this weighty produce problem as their gardens grow upward. A line of cloth trellis slings could go big.

So who wants to take this attachment gardening idea and run with it?

Another view of my DIY bandanna melon trellis sling.

Today while I was out walking I got the sudden urge to peek into the backyard of a house not too far from ours -a house that’s been for sale and sitting empty for months now.

It’s a lovely late Victorian foursquare, and when Jon and I bought our house in the same neighborhood, it was owned by a couple who had obviously poured their hearts and pocketbooks into their yard and garden. Much of it remained hidden by a high fence but what you could see was AMAZING – so pretty that they could have rented it out for weddings and such.

But soon after we moved in, they sold the house with the amazing yard to a really nice young couple with two very small children. The new owners thought they’d like city living but ended up hating pretty much everything about our neighborhood. It just wasn’t their style. So just about as quickly as they moved in, they were gone, and they’ve rented the house out for the past five years.

The renters were all perfectly nice, but over the years, the spectacular gardens and yard have been pretty much ignored, and have grown unruly and messy. They don’t look anything like they did when Jon and I first moved here.

Several months ago, the house’s owners decided to move their renters out and put the house on the market. It’s now been for sale and empty since March, I think. And so today, I decided to take a peek for the first time ever behind the high fence in the back yard to see what the space looks like.

And WOW is it pretty. Like our own yard, it slopes all the way down to the creek. However, UNlike our own backyard – which we’ve yet to work in at all since we tackled the years-long project that is Casa Hickju – you can see that at one time, this other house’s back side contained an absolute showplace of a garden.

But just like the parts of the property I’d already seen, the back garden and yard have been allowed to go wild for the past half decade. With just a little TLC, though, it could be magical back there once again.

Here are some photos I shot of what I found behind the fence today. Someone needs to buy this place!