Being on permanent vacation

I finally moved, which has been a couple years in the making, but everything has come together in the best possible way with this place. It's in a downtown location that's ridiculously close to everything I need, yet on a quiet street that feels vaguely suburban. My roomies are great guys who already feel like family in that there are no lines of delineation when it comes to food/cleaning/etc., but rather a give-and-take attitude. There's a stacked washer and dryer in the bathroom, and all I have to do is walk down the hall to get clean clothes. My room is the best in the house, huge, with hardwood floors, two 6ft windows, a closet with its own lightbulb, and facing out onto the street (I had to get curtains, which I found were horribly expensive, even at Walmart). The gerbils stay downstairs so I'm not cursing their wheel-running at 3 in the morning, and they've finally stopped thumping their hind legs every time I or the dog walks by on the creaky floor.

But the best part is there's a bit of a front yard. It's only a few cement planters with a wrought iron gate enclosing it, but it's enough to perk up my green thumb, which is what I was busy with yesterday. Remember the movie The Secret Garden, the one with the orphaned girl who was told by Maggie Smith she'd have her ears boxed in? Well, the front looked like that, albeit on a much smaller scale. Somebody had planted hostas together, but overcrowded them so much, they were lined up right beside each other like little green soldiers. And the weeds? Gosh...there were little clover-type weeds that are impossible to pull out, tall ones that required both hands, and medium-sized ones in between the concrete blocks that were actually kind of easy to tug.

That's all done now because I spent hours yesterday pulling weeds, turning the soil over, and picking out plants carefully. I went up to Sheridan Nurseries hoping to get an 'Ellie' Astilbe, and found none. I had my heart really set on a showy white flower, so I left with two 'Chocolate Boneset' Eupatoriums instead. My idea was to plant it in the centre, and flank it with 'Kong Red' coleus, trim it with white fibrous begonias, and cap it off with euonymous at either end. It looks pretty bare right now, but I'm hoping in a month's time it'll have fleshed out considerably. While I'm pretty certain the euonmyous will take off like a bat out of hell and cover more than I'd like, I'm really gunning for the eupatorim. It's supposed to grow 120cm high and 90cm wide, which will make it a thriller of thrillers.

After hours and hours of weeding, digging, turning over soil (and wondering what to do with the old soil), that shower I took was the best one I've had in a long time. And then being able to take my work outside and sit in a chair, surrounded by a garden and solar lights, was pretty neat. It really made me feel like I'm on vacation all the time: I never have to set my alarm, I can take my work into a green space with my coffee, there's a garden for me to play with and make look appealing, and I can relax at the end of the day with a glass of wine. Plus, there's a dog I get to take out in the middle of the day — does life get any better than this?