December Garden Report

Here at Acorn Cottage the winter rains have started and the leaves are falling. It makes for a very messy garden, but there's still some beauty out there.

The camellias are dependable winter bloomers in shades of white, pink, and red,

but most of the beauty is in the trees with their colorful leaves contrasting against the wet, dark branches.

The rains have caused the bright, fresh greens of ferns and mosses to suddenly pop out,

and even looking down at the ground yields a colorful array of red, rust, gold, and green.

One Year In

Often in the daily grind of restoring this old house, we tend to moan and groan about our lack of progress and how long it's taking, and we forget just how far we've come.

So today we're lifting our noses from the grindstone to take a look back at what we've accomplished in the past year.

September 2018

November 2019

•We've cleaned all the old insulation and ducts out of the attic.

Removing Old Insulation

•We've pruned lots of overgrown shrubs so you can actually see the house now.


•We've drawn plans and gotten a permit to refurbish the burned out kitchen/laundry/breakfast area.

Developing The Plans

•We've repaired the large holes that the fire department cut in the roof.

Roof Repair

•We've removed the pond, aka the mosquito breeding site.

Old Pond Location

•We've installed new sewer lines, hot and cold water lines, and gas lines in the kitchen area.

•We've installed a new electrical panel including running 100' of cable through the attic from the service panel.

•We've torn out old walls and windows, installed new studs and windows, reused old siding, and secured the back of the house.

New Framing

•We've cut a hole through a brick wall to create a whole new entrance and built a brick porch and trellis there.

Cutting Through The Brick Wall

•We've installed a water heater, restored the main bath, and created a temporary kitchen to make the house livable.

Main Bath Renovation

Temporary Kitchen

•We've insulated the new area and put up 74 sheets of drywall.

•We've installed a new heater and all new ductwork in the attic. And the heater is warming the house nicely as I write this.

New Heater

•We've had seven dead/diseased trees removed.


And woven between these large projects we've juggled the daily business of life: cooking, cleaning, laundry, lawn mowing, bill paying, shopping, hosting parties, and battling with skunks and possums over eminent domain.


Whew! What a year it's been.

Next year should be even better as we finish the pretty part of the remodel.

Diamond Pane Window

I've been restoring this little diamond pane window this week. 

When we first bought the house, you could barely see it because the shrubs were all overgrown, but there it is, peeking out over those camellias.

We quickly did some drastic pruning to get some light into the house and views out of the house. Here's the window after pruning and a new front door. 

I stripped the window with a heat gun and saw the progression of trim colors through the decades. First there was green, then yellow, then pink, and lastly, brown. I was able to get all the paint off, but the original green paint stained the wood a beautiful soft sage.

In this photo I have cleaned the bricks a bit, and primed the window and shutters. After priming I will seal the window where it meets the brick because there's a huge gap there! Then I'll paint the window frame white to match the other new windows, and paint the shutters Calypso Blue.

November Garden Report

November brings beautiful shades of orange, russet, burgundy, and gold into our lives, not only in flower arrangements, but in the garden.

Looking up through the tree canopies with the afternoon sun hitting the leaves is a sure way to bring joy to your heart.

This is the oak leaf hydrangea that surprised me with its presence last spring. From the bottom it looks orange, but from the top it looks red. 

Another surprise was this clivia. The clump is so huge that I'll have to divide it soon.

The dogwood leaves are particularly attractive with their russet-tipped yellow leaves and red berries.

This is the bark of the Chinese Weeping Elm. It a lovely, flaky, mottled bark, rather like a sycamore. 

All these fall colors are appropriate, but I also have azaleas blooming again. I researched it a bit and decided they must be "Encore" azaleas. Whatever they're called, it's nice to have their color in the garden.

The Pond

When we bought this house there was a pond and fountain right up against the house. You can see the top of the fountain in this photo. It was overgrown with ivy and bamboo, and full of mosquitos. I tried to bail it out, but it filled up again with rainwater.

When we connected the new sewer lines we had to remove the rock patio next to the pond, and lots of the plants, but the pond refused to budge.

This spring we used the jackhammer that we rented to remove the old porches, to break up the pond. We eventually pried the pieces out and removed the surrounding rocks and plants.

Now that area looks like this. I've smoothed it over a bit and added a little brick walkway to avoid walking in the dirt. I might plant grass where the rock patio was.

Unfortunately we still have this mess to fix. Apparently two layers of plastic aren't enough to prevent rot.

And we also have this strange round hole in the porch to deal with. We'll get to it eventually.

Shreddin' It

Part of my inheritance from my Dad was a chipper-shredder. That may seem odd to some, but I was delighted to receive it. I like to add a layer of mulch around my plants to build up the health of the soil.

Mulch around a Bergenia

Since I lived on a sailboat in Puerto Rico when I received the chipper-shredder, I had nowhere to put it. My sister came to the rescue and took it to her house for a few years.

My Inheritance

She recently brought it back to me.

In the course of fixing up this old house we are renovating the landscape which requires the removal of lots of overgrown and/or dead plants. I told you about all the trees recently and now we are tackling the shrubs.

We got the chipper-shredder out the other day to help with shrub disposal and tried to start it after its five year vacation. First we needed to go buy gas, then we needed to clean the carburetor, then we checked the spark plug, but still it would not run. Looks like we need a new carburetor, presently on order from Amazon.

(The carburetor arrived today and it runs fine now.)

If only we had one of these bad boys!

We would really be shreddin' it.

Getting Ready for Winter

We've been spending a lot of time in the attic lately installing the heating system. It's miserable work: confined spaces, spiderwebs, darkness, nails sticking down through the roof, and often too hot. Oh, and the HVAC engineer wants all the outlets to "wash the walls" so that means they must be placed right under the shallowest parts of the roof.

But we are eventually winning this battle. The unit is in place, most of the supply ducts are in place, and all the holes are cut through to the various rooms. We still need the big return air plenum, but most of the return lines are in place too.

Down in the new kitchen/breakfast room/laundry/bathroom area we have installed all our wall insulation and it's been signed off, so we can start hanging drywall when we're done with the HVAC.

With the insulation in, we notice that the house is a little warmer in the mornings, but it sure will be nice to turn that heater on!

October Garden Report

Not surprisingly, the Sasanqua camellias are starting to bloom. Even after a brutal pruning in the spring, they are loaded with blooms. Tough plants.

The azaleas are blooming again; perhaps it's the cooler weather, or perhaps it's the watering I've been doing. Either way, I'm happy to see them again.

The really big news is the tree work we're doing. We love trees and hate to cut them down, but we had several that were dead, diseased, or sick. So, in the last three weeks the tree surgeons have removed three dead Birch trees, two sick Modesto Ashes, two sick Elms, and an ill-placed, messy Mimosa.

Diseased Elm

(At the base of this elm were five azaleas that we transplanted. I'm happy to report that they are doing fine in their new locations.)

Diseased area

Big Bare Spot!

Don't dispare, we still have a Gingko, a Mayten, a Liquidamber, and a Flowering Plum out front. In the Jungle we have a Valley Oak, a Flowering Cherry, and a huge Philadelphus that's almost a tree.

In the back yard we have three huge Valley Oaks, two smaller Valley Oaks, a huge Magnolia, a Hackberry, a Cocculus, two Sweet Bays, two Japanese Maples, a Chinese Evergreen Elm, a Dogwood, and four Redwoods.

Chinese Elm

Chinese Elm Bark

The good news is that we now have more sun on the pool, plenty of firewood, and lots of compost, so we've been splitting, stacking, shoveling, and raking a lot lately.

One of the transplanted azaleas