Good Things No.98: Roses, Hoses, Newsletter and Favorite Books

A monthly list of good things to do, buy, and read.

Some links in this article are affiliate links and if you click on them I will receive a small commission at no cost to you.

Welcome to the height of summertime – July! We’re planning to paddle on some of our wonderful Oregon lakes, spend time with our family, help with VBS, eat some meals that feature only produce from our garden (on our new side porch!), and generally enjoy the summertime vibe.

The biggest thing that happened in June was launching my new ad-free newsletter, Notes From The Farmhouse. I’m super excited to have a place to share all the things that go into making a simple homemade life, not just recipes. There’s more on this below, but just know that it’s a place I can fully share – and hopefully fully engage with you all – in a space that’s free of ads, an algorithm, or anything else that would get in our way.

Good Things List

Roses For Cutting

As you know, I live on a deer-munching property. We regularly have little herds of 5-6 deer and they visit every night, eating everything in site (except lavender, herbs, and salvia – which is why those are the main players in my sunken garden). This means no blooming hydrangeas or roses anywhere but inside a deer proof fence. And that means the vegetable garden where there is only so much room.

After planning the beds, I had space for one rose. Only one, so it had to be a good one. One that rebloomed, looked lush, and was big enough to provide flowers for cutting all summer long. I knew it would be a David Austen rose because I like the old-fashioned look and the modern disease resistance (our zone 8b is black-spot central). I had grow 3 or 4 in our cottage garden and appreciated the look and how they grew.

I settled on the James Galway Climbing Rose for it’s soft pink color, full shape with lots of petals, resistance to black spot, and the fact that as a small climber (10-12 feet) it would have more plant space to produce blooms than a smaller bush.

As you can see from the arrangement in the photo above, all the stages of the blooms are lovely, I especially like the buds as they’re just starting to fill out. And there is great freedom in cutting anything I want – and as much as I want – because it’s growing in the vegetable garden and not front and center.

And that’s been a great lesson. Plan a cutting garden where you can if you like flower bouquets inside – being able to cut ALL the flowers if you need to fill out the vase is wonderful! Plus, the flowers will just grow again and it won’t matter that it looks a little bare while you wait. JOY.

And while the James Galway rose has provided many, many blooms and is growing beautifully, I’ve found it doesn’t actually make for the best cut flowers. They droop within a day or two and never finish opening if in bud form. But I still enjoy them! (Note that the greenery filler is lilac leaves – my rose leaves are usually eaten by Japanese Beetles. If it’s not one thing, it’s another, ha!)

Easiest Hose to Use: Stainless Steel

I bought this hose last spring after going through yet another fabric expansion-type hose. I couldn’t go back to the cumbersome rubber hoses, so I invested a little more to get a stainless steel hose with good reviews and I LOVE it. So much so that I bought another this year for the vegetable garden.

It’s SO much easier to haul around, with less damage to plants if they get run over, plus it’s lightweight and doesn’t kink (Brian did discover that if you unhook it, pile it in a heap, and then try to pull it, it will kink, lol. Keep it curled and use it to water and you’ll be fine). It’s also MUCH easier to curl up to put away – no more fighting the rubber hose that’s decided to curl in the exact opposite direction that you need.

Oh, and notice the simple wood box I keep the hoses in? Brian first built me a hose box like this in our previous house and it was something I asked for right away for the farmhouse. It’s a lot easier to use – and WAY cheaper (we used scrap wood) – than those special hose pots, while still keeping things neat and tidy.

New Newsletter!

Like I mentioned, the new newsletter, Notes From The Farmhouse, is ad-free and algorithm-free which means there’s a small charge (less than a coffee a month) to keep it ad-free AND I can write whatever I want without Google penalizing me like it does on the blog.

I’m styling it (with the help of my graphic-designer daughter) as a journal-style notebook and so far I’ve been talking about cool things I’m using, creative goals for the summer, simple things bringing joy, my capsule carryon wardrobe for a 2-week vacation, and more.

The future will hold letters on past projects, all the books I’m reading reviewed, things that haven’t gone according to plan, deep dives into various topics around creativity and frugality, and so much more (my content calendar is planned into October!).

A subscription gets you two emails a week that you can read right in your email or click over to read online (on a dedicated, ad-free site). You will have access to all the past newsletters on an easy to navigate categories page, as well as the ability to reply to the email, ask questions and/or leave comments on the online post.

My goal is to be the positive, bright spot in you inbox and my driving quote is this:

”Plant the flowers. Paint the shutters. Find little ways to add beauty to your small slice of the world. These tiny acts of resistance work against a culture of depression and dismay.” -Claire Gibson

I hope you join me!

June Favorite Books Read

Note: I’m moving all my book reviews to the new Notes From The Farmhouse Newsletter where I can go into more detail and provide quarterly favorites. The Good Things List will now contain 1-2 of my favorites from the month.

The Watchmaker’s Daughter, Larry Loftis. This 2023 book is a more complete biography of Corrie ten Boom than The Hiding Place, where we get not only Corrie’s story, but also the story of her family, what was happening in Holland, in Germany, and other parts of the war that help bring to life the conditions and what she and other resistance workers were up against. It’s so moving and inspiring and it will definitely be on my year-end list of best books.

Raising Hare, Chloe Dalton. Who would’ve thought a memoir about finding a wild hare and raising it in England would be so interesting? The descriptions are delightful, the wonder in the author’s writing is contagious, and who knew there was such a difference between rabbits and hares? (I always thought they were just different names for the same animal – nope.) But the best part is in seeing how this little animal completely changes the author, who in fact changed where she lived, her job, and how she viewed herself during this experience. Delightful.

That’s it for another addition of the Good Things List!

If you’d like to see more of what I’m enjoying, you can check out all the Good Things Lists here. I’d love to know what you think – if you’ve tried any of these or what you’d recommend. Leave a comment below with your thoughts!

Disclosure: affiliate links in this article will earn commission based on sales, but it doesn’t change your price. Click here to read my full disclaimer and advertising disclosure.