The Peas have come and gone...

Well, the peas have come and gone. June was a hot one in Chicago. I already had to chop the entire bush of peas down and plant a pink butterfly weed in it's place. The rooftop is still under construction, so the deck is still sitting inside our 4th floor penthouse. I doubt we'll get a chance to even enjoy the new rooftop before we move. (We found a house in the burbs and are closing on it in less than 3 weeks!)

My container plantings are doing great - everything is HUGE because of all the watering I do and the help of a good dose of Osmocote when the pots were planted.

We've already had a handful of ripe cherry tomatoes. Unfortunately, we had a micro burst of wind off the kitchen deck last week which snapped one of my tomato plants off nearly at the base. I've kept it in a pitcher of water on the deck for the past week. It's very wilted looking, but none of the leaves have dried up or fallen off...so I have some hope that it might sprout some roots and I can replant it again. It has well over 50 green tomatoes on it right now, so it would be a real shame if it were to die.

The photo below shows my globe basil plants sprouting up below the cherry tomatoes.

My Genovese basil (second from the left in the picture below) also suffered a cruel fate from the wind. I have managed to keep the entire plant (it snapped less than inch from the base) in water and it's been growing roots. So I hope to replant it soon.

Another one of the pots filling in nicely.

Below is a container that I planted up for my Mother-in-Law's birthday at the beginning of June. I saw it a few days ago and it's probably tripled in size and fullness. The colors of the Oceana salvia, the lantana, lobelia, geraniums, calibrachoas, potato vine, coleus, dusty miller and the osteospermum really remind me of an English country garden.

A huge butterfly takes a break on one of the tomato leaves.

The Roofing Supplies Arrive!

The roofer's crane arrives in our alley. The driver cleared the telephone pole by about 3 inches! Very impressive!



A semi truck full of roofing supplies arrived. The forklift took 75 bundles of foam insulation to the crane and hoisted it to our roof. The area we cleared off outside our 4th floor penthouse was the staging area for all of the supplies and equipment that the roofers brought up by crane.


A view of the extended crane from our Kitchen Deck. The deck is now crammed with trees and bushes from the Rooftop Deck.

A view from our 3rd floor Master Bedroom as the crane hoists one of the pallets of roofing supplies up to our roof


They already cut the air conditioners off from the first 3 units. (We're in the 2nd 3 units that will be worked on). Our A/C is scheduled to be shut off on the 6th or 7th depending on if all goes on schedule.

Visitor to the Kitchen Garden & Some Courtyard Photos

One of the first butterflies to visit the Kitchen Deck. This butterfly was spotted on the same lantana plant two days in a row.

Below are some photos of the courtyard as seen from our Rooftop Deck. Christy Weber Landscaping does the work. The courtyard looks really nice in the spring and early summer when the purple irises bloom along with the yellow daffodils. Right now the irises are starting to fade and the hot pink rose bushes are in bloom. Soon the yellow and orange day lilies will send up their flowering stems.

We have a small section of landscaping right outside our first floor window (you can't see it in any of the pictures) that we add seasonal flowers too (tulips, lily of the valley, muscari, pansies, canna, mums, etc.).

The soil in the courtyard is HORRIBLE. When they built this place 7 years ago I heard that they just dumped construction rubble in the courtyard and covered it with a think layer of earth. That's why when you plant something you really have to water it and nurture it to get it to grow strong enough to get it's roots to move beyond the silt and rocks into the real soil.

Spent the Day Ripping up the Rooftop Deck

Well, the roofers are coming tomorrow to start work on our complex. We are supposed to remove our deck and everything on the rooftop at least 48 hours before they are scheduled to begin working on our unit. They're scheduled to begin on Thursday the 7th, so we have to be cleared off by Tuesday the 5th.

We spent the entire day up on the rooftop pulling up the 300+ square feet of deck, powerwashing it, cleaning off the membrane, taking planters down to the kitchen deck and then moving the deck we're keeping into our 4th floor penthouse and cutting up the part of the deck we're throwing away.

PHOTO: cutting up the old 10'x10' section of deck into 5' sections for the garbage.


It was a PAIN! We started around 9:30 this morning and finished with the deck around 5:30 pm just as a torrential rain started to pour.

At 10 am we had a showing of our place which I had to do myself since our realtor never heard back from the buyer's realtor so she assumed they weren't confirmed. Well, they showed up at 10, so we got them to give us 20 minutes to get the place ready for a showing.

PHOTO: lifting up, cutting and cleaning the sections of the deck we're keeping


I hate the home selling process. It's so nerve wrecking! And now with this roof construction it really throws a wrench in our selling plans.

We don't want to do any showings until the construction on our section of the roof is done and we can re-lay the deck. Right now we have about 200 square feet of cedar decking inside our 4th floor penthouse along with 2 Adirondack chairs.

We wound up having to take all our furniture from the penthouse and repositioning it to other rooms throughout the house so we could make room for all the decking. So now the rest of the house looks more cramped because of the extra furniture here and there.

PHOTO:powerwashing the deck before storing it in our 4th floor penthouse


We also had to bring 3 cedar planters with 4 curly willows and 1 dogwood down from the roof to the kitchen deck. Our kitchen deck is crazy busy with plants right now.

The willow was an absolute pain to try to dig up (we had to dig the trees and bush out of the planters so that we could carry them down - too heavy if left in planters). I think it took me a good hour to just to dig the willows out of the 2 planters.


So now we're exhausted and sunburned and ready for some carry-out from Penny's Noodle Shop in Wicker Park!

Some pictures from the Kitchen Deck

L to R: Greek Oregano, Potato Vine, Parsley, Sage, Genovese Basil, Thyme

My "Peach Sunrise" lantana - this one is my favorite! It looks really nice planted up with the "Diamond Frost" euphorbia and the "Oceana Blue" salvia.

My "Bandanna Red" lantanas are planted up with ornamental kale and lavender.

My "Bandanna Cherry" lantana along with the "European Uprights Juicy Tidbits" fucscia

The cherry 2 cherry tomato plants are busy making fruit!

The peas have begun to bloom!

Everything is growing very nicely. We had a nice rain last night and a few more days of rain expected over the next few days.

We had a showing this afternoon and another one scheduled for Sunday. It's very hard to keep the house spotlessly clean with a 9 month old and a floral business. (I do freelance floral design and have an event going on tomorrow).

Aside from cleaning the house, I've been busy working on centerpieces of red spray roses, purple statice, yellow alstromeria, green yoko ono mums, fresh wheat, bi-color orange/yellow mini carnations and yellow mums (the kind that look like mini-sunflowers) in rose bowls. I have 36 centerpieces, 6 presentation bouquets and 12 presentation roses to make for a graduation dinner tomorrow. Maybe I'll post some photos of the finished product tomorrow.

Did some shopping today

I had some fun at Pesche's today. I walked out with:

• 1 "Margarita" potato vine


• 4 "Fresh Look Gold" celosia


• 3 flowering kale


• 2 licorice plants

"Oceana Blue" salvia

• 2 "Oceana Blue" salvia - this plant is just gorgeous as a vertical element in an urn
  
• 3 "Laguna Sky Blue" lobelia hybrid - great trailing plant


• 3 spikes


• 4 "Bandana Cherry" lantana - I'm already looking forward to watching the butterflies on this one!


• 1 "European Uprights Juicy Tidbits" fuchsia hybrid - never planted a fuchsia before...so I thought I'd get one. Maybe if I'm really ambitious I'll try to train it as a topiary.


• 4 "Victoria Blue" salvia farinacea


• 2 "Americana Pink" zonal geranium


• 2 "Million Bells" Calibrachoa hybrid in cherry pink and gold


• 4 dusty miller


• 2 "Sweet Caroline" ipomea (potato vine)


• 1 purple cosmos

"Diamond Frost" euphorbia

• 1 "Diamond Frost" euphorbia - so dainty! The tiny white petals really liven up any dark corner or dark container.

Some of the plants are for planters on our kitchen deck and some are a birthday present for my mother-in-law. I'm going to plant them up country garden style in a wooden planter that she had built near the stairs to her house.

I started an attempt at pulling my curly willow trees out of their planters on the roof so that we can clear off the roof for the construction crew. After numerous tries with my little hand shovel I gave up yesterday when one of the willows wouldn't budge.

I'm going to have to have pull out the full blown shovel and put my full effort into trying to pry the roots free from the container. (We lined the cedar planters with sheets of Styrofoam covered with landscaping fabric. I have a feeling the roots have intertwined themselves through the landscaper's fabric and that's why it's so difficult to dislodge them from their containers.

Let's talk about nurseries...

Lantana

If I had to give you a list of my favorite area nurseries it would go something like this:

1. Pesche's in Des Plaines - Great selection of annuals, perennials, veggies, herbs, shrubs & trees. These people TAKE CARE of their plants. You rarely, if ever, find any under watered plants sitting around dying. The have such an enormous variety of plants! And their prices beat out any Chicago nursery.


2. The Oak Park Conservatory Herb and Flowering Plant Sale - Yes, it's not a nursery per se, but this annual sale is great! The plants offered are geared toward urban garden spaces & container gardens that can tolerate the Chicago climate. Prices are reasonable and varieties include many that you won't necessarily find at your neighborhood nursery or garden center. It takes place in April.
   
3. Gethsemane Garden Center in Chicago on Clark - Wonderful selection of plants and bulbs. They have a great variety of indoor/house/tropical plants. If you need a big banana plant or a citrus already producing fruit then this is the place to go!


4. Platt Hill Nursery in Bloomingdale - Once again - the variety is great...it's just a long drive from the city.


5. Walmart in Mount Prospect - If you get there within a day or two of their plant shipments you can score some great prices on really healthy vegetables & herbs, perennials, annuals and accent plants. Where else are you going to get a 6 pack of annuals at $1.29 of a decent sized Japanese Maple for $29.99?


6. CityScape on Lake in Chicago - What I like about this place is that they group their flowering plants by color - i.e. all yellows are grouped together. It really makes it easy to coordinate colors, but it makes finding the exact species you want difficult. Prices here are probably the highest I've seen in the city. We suspect they make most of their profit through their landscaping and professional services, not their retail operations.


7. Grand Street Gardens in Chicago - Good if you need to pick up plants in a pinch. The selection comes and goes. Sometimes you'll score some great looking plants, other days it looks sad. Prices are a bit high, but they carry a lot of Monrovia brand plants and cater to the urban gardener. Owner is not the friendliest person in town.

Other notables:

• Grow on Damen in Chicago


• Jayson Home & Garden on Clyborn in Chicago


• Lurvey's Garden Center in Des Plaines


• Old Town Garden Center on Wells in Chicago

So Now We're Up To Speed...

Well, fast forward through the fall and winter and that brings us to this year - 2007. This is our last year living in the City of Chicago. We put the townhouse up for sale. We've started looking for a new house for our growing family. Although we love the city and our current home, we really look forward to having a house surrounded with trees and flowers.

It will be nice to wake up and see a blue jay or a cardinal outside. Right now pretty much all we see are pigeons, a resident pair of doves, and the lone robin that visits our deck.

We aren't planting up the roof deck this year because we plan to move sometime in the next few months. We emptied out the two large cedar planters and took down the lattice screens. The remaining 3 planters (which hold dogwood and curly willows) are coming down this week and being transferred to one of our parent's yards for the time being along with the Adirondack chairs.

Our association has decided to rip the roof off the entire complex and re-do the pitch since the water hasn't been draining off properly over some of the units. Therefore, we have to dismantle the roof deck and transfer it to a neighbor's roof while they work on our section in 2 weeks. That is something we're not looking forward to.

It should take 4 days for the workers to rip off the roof membrane, change the pitch, add insulation and re-roof our section. They're also taking the AC off and recharging the compressors. So no AC (with a baby in the house) for a few days! Plus they have to remove our penthouse doors & raise them to adjust for the new pitch. This is not going to be fun (especially since our house is on the market in the midst of this construction).

We did set up a bunch of containers on the kitchen deck. This year we picked up some great herbs at the Oak Park Conservatory Herb and Flowering Plant Sale. Among those plants is a striking red and gold lantana, two varieties of lavender, thyme and sage. We've got a mix of colors going this year - no particular theme - purples, yellows, reds, pinks, and whites. In that mix are:

• yellow plume celosia
• silver dust dusty miller
• lantana (shrub verbena) in Bandanna Red and Peach Sunrise varieties
• lobelia
• heavenly blue morning glory
• cleome (spider flower) in pink and white varieties
• verbena in white, pink, red and purple
• violas in purple and yellow
• ornamental cabbage in lime green and purple veined
• lavender in Provence and Goodwin Creek varieties
• basil
• thyme
• Greek oregano
• parsley
• black sweet potato vine
• rosemary
• dill
• sage
• cherry tomatoes
• poblano peppers
• jalapeno peppers
• common chives
• garlic chives
• spike plant
• jasmine
• hydrangea
• cubanelle peppers
• peas

We're still going to plant up a few more planters to fill in the sides of the deck. Perhaps some mints, licorice, calibrachoa, angel wings and geraniums to add summer long blooms.

The 3rd Summer...it's a blur

Our third summer here was a blur. Although we planted up a ton of planters and veggies our garden just wasn't a top priority. Why? Because we were expecting our first baby over Labor Day weekend. The arrival of summer marked the beginning of our third trimester and was riddled with a bunch of complications and ER visits.

All I really remember is that:

• we had more cherry tomatoes than we could eat at times
• the rosemary and basil grew like crazy
• the lantana and cleome were gorgeous

Memories of our Second Summer - Building up the Roof Deck!

We spent our 2nd summer here building up the roof deck. What was once around 80 square foot of deck on the roof was expanded to a little over 300 square feet that summer. We built an expansion of decking, 5 cedar planters and cedar lattice screens to help ease the wind blasts on the roof.

This is the original part of the rooftop deck. We added the lattice screen, cedar planters, bench and chimenia this summer.











This is the part of the deck that we added on, it's over 30 feet long along our 4th floor penthouse room.





We planted some flowering red dogwood, hardy hydrangea and curly willow in the planters along the east wall. The willow was actually taken from fresh cuttings which were rooted in water over a period of a few weeks.

The planters along the north wall were planted up with coreopsis, babies breath, cosmos, morning glory, sweet peas, regular (eating) peas, eggplant, regular and cherry tomatoes, onions and even a grape vine. The northwest section of the rooftop deck is what we refered to as the "vegetable garden" since that's where we concentrated all the veggies for maximum sun exposure.

We built 2 cedar Adirondack chairs for the roof deck. (Unfortunately a few crazy hail storms over the past 2 years have left their mark on the chairs in the form of hundreds of tiny round dents). Once we move and have time we plan to sand the chairs back down to the wood and refinish them.

Memories of Our Second Summer - the Kitchen Deck

Well, we bought a nice wooden patio set for the deck during our second summer here. It's served us well during all our bbq's and outdoor parties.

The flowers we planted up this year were in shades of blue, purple, orange, yellow and white. Among the plants we planted were: orange African daisies, calendula, sweet alyssum, lobelia, marigold, hydrangea, morning glory, pansies, violas, licorice and coleus. Herbs that graced our table were rosemary, basil, chives, mint, thyme oregano, parsley and green onions.

Everything grew really nicely until around the end of July when we were hit with a few weeks of extreme heat.

Memories of our First Summer

We have great sunrise and and daytime views of the Chicago skyline from our rooftop deck. We'll really miss this when we move! We have a great view of the summertime Navy Pier fireworks. Sitting up on the roof deck is the perfect place to watch the Air and Water Show planes as they buzz overhead on their way toward the lakefront.

Our first summer here we still didn't have any "permanent" patio furniture (note the white resin table and chairs). We did get a nice little wooden potting table and a bunch of window box planters to put along the ledge of the kitchen deck. We planted those up with butterfly bush, Joe Pye weed, mums, and some annuals. It wasn't anything too exciting that first summer, but we sure did get a lot of butterflies visiting our little garden!

We are definately going to plant some butterfly bush and Joe Pye weed in our new backyard. It's such a pleasure to sit outside reading or enjoying a cup of coffee in the morning while butterflies dance around your as they make their way from one flowerhead to the next!

Even though we moved in during the middle of the summer we managed to get some cherry tomatoes to grow in one of our deck boxes. Over the years we learned that the tomatoes preferred the northwest wall of our roof deck over the kitchen deck because the roof obviously got more sun exposure. It's a challenge growing tomatoes (or any vegetable) on the roof though - containers dry out a lot faster up there than on the 2nd floor deck because of greater wind and sun exposure.

Enjoying our Last City Summer

So, we've lived in our current Chicago townhome for the past 4 years and now we're ready to move to the Northwest Suburbs. It's time for a backyard (and a front yard)! For the past 4 years we've been limited to container gardening on our 2nd floor deck and our 4th floor rooftop deck. It's been quite a learning experience and a challenge to container garden in the "Windy City". I can't remember how many times I've found one or two of my containers shattered to pieces in the alley after a windy storm.

Although I love container gardening, I'm really looking forward to being able to plant perennials and bulbs in the ground and not worry about them freezing over the winter like most of the ones that were in my containers have done.

Our first year here we basically started with a new slate - an empty kitchen deck and roof deck with amazing skyline views.

The photo above is the previous owner's table and empty pots on the kitchen deck before she moved out.