Coming Out of Hibernation & Blocking the View

Life in the Pacific Northwest seems to slow down for the winter. The rains come, the sky is grey. The plants have died back, and whatever didn't get cleaned up in the fall gets leggy or weedy looking. As soon as spring arrives, everything seems to come alive...flowering plum and cherry trees, star magnolias, and bulbs galore. This is when I come out of my hibernation, which I never really intend to enter...it just seems to happen.

I did get some indoor projects done during my hibernation. My office/craft room had become a dumping pit for the past year. There was one visible path from the door to the computer. The rest was full of piles. That got cleaned up in January. Closets and drawers were cleaned out and a carload of stuff was donated.

This past week I finally sewed some valances and made a curtain for the patio door. I've had the fabric for nearly a year! When we moved in, the house came with wretched vertical vinyl blinds. They were functional...until the slats started breaking off one by one. We were at the point where we had a good 18" of uncovered space. I also added a simple muslin curtain in the kitchen window. The cording for these blinds broke awhile back. Recently we noticed neighbors with binoculars in the window sill (Katie actually saw them using them once!) and so it was time to quickly escalate the blocking of their view into our home.

We have planted trees and put in a trellis with evergreen vines...but those all take time to grow to really block the view. This winter, during the storm of all storms, our Little Gem magnolia (5 years old at this point) snapped in half from the weight of the snow. I was kicking myself for not brushing it off....hindsight.... So, last week I went shopping for the largest landscape evergreen magnolia I could find (a Timeless Beauty). In the pot it looked HUGE. It was a heavy sucker. Yesterday Brian dug a big hole and we got it in the ground. Once in the hole, it didn't look quite so big. In fact it's a little smaller than the other one, but it will grow. Once it does, it will be effective at blocking the view from their patio window into ours.