Beautiful Bouquets

I know I have posted about my zinnias before, but I can never have too many of them.  I have a continuous bouquet (or two, or three) on my kitchen counter or around the house.  The stems are starting to look a little rough (they are growing ridiculously tall, and with the amount of rain we are getting, they just fall over), but the blooms are still beautiful.

Fresh Eggs

 

I took a visit to my mother's garden last weekend. It was long overdue and I enjoyed the time.  She acquired some chickens and roosters a couple of months ago and I wasn't quite sure what she was thinking. But, after seeing how pretty the hens and rooster were, and the neat little coop that my mom and dad built for them, I have to say they started to grow on me.

The eggs are quite colorful gorgeous as well.

They fashioned together this neat little coop.

One of the bright red hens.

 The handsome rooster.  He liked posing for the camera.

 When the hens weren't clucking about, they made this funny humming chorus that was sweet and quite peaceful.

Jimmie the Turtle Returns!

 This is our neighborhood turtle, Jimmie.  He is a little camera shy.  He first came around We first discovered him last summer.  When we were working in our front yard, he crawled out of the middle "jungle" around the pine trees.  He stuck around for a couple of days and then we didn't see him again.  We were pretty sure he was still close by, because we have noticed several nibbles on our plants throughout the year.  The pictures below were taken last summer/fall.

If you compare the markings in these two photos with the first photo, you can tell it is the same turtle.  Good ole' Jimmie.  Some people say that you can mark them with fingernail polish to make sure it is the same turtle.  I am pretty sure that would wear off in a year's time, however.

Blueberry Tree Project

Summer around here means lots of craft time and yard projects.  We recently took on our blueberry trees and prettied them up a little.

 These are our beloved blueberry trees.   They bring us much joy...

...in the form of blueberry and mixed berry cobblers!

This is a "before" picture of our blueberry trees.  Notice that we added a border of stones and some fresh mulch.  They thanked us by producing so many berries that we literally thought they were growing back by the time we picked all the way around.  Shortly after, tropical storm Debbie blessed us with a lot of rain.  The grass loved it; the fruit trees not-so-much.  We haven't had any berries since the storms.  The trees still look great and are producing new growth like crazy, but no fruit.  Our lovely friends at Home Depot said that the fruit trees in the area went into shock from the large amount of rain at one time.

I also painted these concrete blocks and used them as planters for some backyard blooms.
"Go forth into the day and make it good."  "Bless these Blooms." 

 "Home -- where the flowers grow a little taller!"

A Potting Bench: My New Obsession

My husband recently decided that he had outgrown his garage workbench and needed a larger space. We spent the weekend building him a new bench, and I am recycling his old one into a potting bench of my own.  Letmetellya, I am super excited about having my own space in the garage, too!  My potting bench will live in the garage since the wood is not pressure treated or weather resistant, but I am still happy about it. I have been working on organizing it this week and adding my own touches.  I will share pictures with you soon.  Meanwhile, these are potting benches I have been drooling over long before.  The process of organizing mine has also led me to find lots of pictures.  Here is my idea file:

This picture caught my eye in a Country Living issue not too long ago.  Then it appeared on Pinterest.  I pinned it to my "Garden and Yard" board so I could drool over it whenever I wanted.  The lady who built this potting bench bought the materials for it and built it in a section of her garage.  I love everything about it...the cabinets, the drawers, the farm style sink, the arrangement of pots, the color pallet.  This is a gardener's dream. 

As the summer went along, I started thinking more and more about how I could create a potting bench of my own.  I searched Pinterest and Google images.  I found lots of variations and lovely ideas.  I love the pale green color of this bench.  I like the open shelf underneath and I love that it is outdoors under a sheltered area.  I don't really have a sheltered area outside, but that would be nice.  I also adore that the gardener has the word "LOVE" attached to her bench.  Gardening is truly a passion and a work of heart.

This potting bench sits outside in the garden.  The blog it came from said it actually came when the house when they purchased it and they just inherited it.  You can tell that it is weathered with time and has been loved by its gardener.  I might have bought the house just for the charming potting area! :)

Another idea.

 I like the pegboard on this one for organization purposes.  I also love the birdhouses that accompany the clay pots.

This potting cart is from Pottery Barn.  Lovely style, prestigious price.  I really love the hooks across the front and the towel bar on the side.  I also like the baskets for storage underneath.  I love stylish baskets.

The collection of pots here is beautiful.

There is so much to love in this picture.  This potting corner is too cute.

What this little potting bench sacrifices on style, it makes up for on efficiency.  The sunken area for potting soil is smart!

 This potting area reminds me a lot of my mom for some reason.  It is beautifully rustic!

Another outdoor option.  I like the board at the top with the water "spickets" (spigot or faucet, whichever word you prefer).  FYI - Urban dictionary says the spelling "spicket" is only used in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania to refer to an outside faucet.  The collection of watering cans also adds visual interest as well as usefulness.

<3

The galvanized buckets with chalkboard labels are calling my name.

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After sorting through pictures of many different potting benches and potting areas, I have come to the conclusion that I like a bench that looks like it gets lots of lovin', i.e., slightly weathered looking and used often.  Must haves:  fairly organized, fairly large, filled with garden essentials, and a collection of clay pots. 

Growing a Garden of my Own

In search of my mother's garden, I found my own....

This is the story of my garden...and how it has grown.

One of the garden signs I painted on a piece of tin.  I love this one and thought it would serve as the perfect title picture! :)

My husband and I rented a cute little house during our first two years of marriage.  The inside of the house was great, but the landscaping left something to be desired.  We didn't want to put a lot of time or money into a garden that we could not keep when we decided to move.  We moved into the house in July 2009, and I got my flower fix with a couple of planted pots by the front door.  In April 2010, my parents came to the rescue!  They came down for the weekend with plants in hand (actually...in the back of the vehicle).  We picked up some landscape edging, plastic weed lining, potting soil, and mulch.  I can't find a 'before' picture...but it was pretty much four little meatball shaped shrubs (you can see them in the picture above) and nothing else.  No mulch...no border...just grass.  And weeds.  My daddy loosened the ground and my mom and I arranged the plants and gave them their new home in the earth.  We put together this flower bed that was just perfect.

This picture was taken about a month later after the plants starting filling in.  We planted a combination of annuals and perennials.  I love when everything fills in together and is in bloom.

The right end of the flowerbed was used as a veggie garden with a couple of tomato and pepper plants.  The marigolds help to keep the pests away from the vegetable plants.

These bright zinnias were grown from seeds in a pot on our back deck.

 The zinnias above as they were starting to come up...plant seeds; grow joy!

 I have grown to love bright yellow lantana... a love that was rooted in my mother's garden.  She always planted yellow lantana and purple wave petunias in the same bed.  They mingled together and the color combination was absolutely amazing.

 My bright hibiscus was a colorful welcome by the front door.

Fast forward 2 years...

We were ready and able to buy a place that we could truly call our own.

We found this great house with the help of our real estate agent. 

We fell in love with the house and saw lots of potential both inside and out.  We closed on the house at the end of April 2011 and began stripping wallpaper that same night. 

Not the best pictures of me, but it is me in action. 

We were so excited to make our new house our home!

But you aren't here to see the inside renovations...you are ready to see the yard, right?

You can see the front yard in the picture above where we are standing in front of the house.  It is a decent size, but was just overgrown and needed some TLC.  Established shrubs, overcrowded azaleas, and lots of weeds filled the beds against the front of the house and circled the pine trees in the middle of the yard.  We tackled projects inside the house before we started on the yard.  We really wanted most of the walls painted before we starting moving furniture in.  Here are the 'before' pictures of the yard.  If you haven't discovered this yet, I am sure you are coming to the quick realization that this post is filled with lots of pictures.

The right side of our house...behind the garage.

These Easter lillies are growing in random places throughout the flowerbeds.

Around the corner from the bay window area.

Around the corner to the back of the house...this is the back yard.

Backyard patio area.

Directly across from the patio.  These are blueberry trees and a grapevine.

The running grapevine.  The daughter of the previous owners gave us a lot of history behind the house and shared sweet stories with us.  This grapevine was planted when they first moved here, and the Mrs. would make stuffed grape leaves.  I will have to attempt to make them one day.

The left corner of the backyard.

This is the left side of the house.  This fig tree is humongous and produces LOTS of figs.

Figs were just starting to produce when we purchased the house.

So were the blueberries.

One of the first things we did in the backyard was to clean out around the back fence where the blueberry trees were located.

Then we moved to the front yard and started in the flower beds around the front of the house.  It was quite a chore to dig out 20 years of growth.

There were no tall shrubs in this area.  There was a low-growing groundcover type shrub and lots of briars.

We discovered that we had a turtle sharing our yard with us.  We named him Jimmie.

We planted this beautiful pale yellow Michelangelo rose in the flowerbed closest to the front door.  We also planted knock-out roses, pentas, dianthus, marigolds, and vinca.

Our Michelangelo rose in full bloom. 

 Once we had a good start on the front beds, we moved around to the right side of the house. 

Yellow trailing lantana and black-eyed susans, transplanted from our old house.

 The lyropy was already here, we just cleaned it up a bit and planted some zinnias and marigolds in for color.  We also added a few hostas and a couple of squash plants.  The squash plants were beautiful, but they never produced vegetables.  Oh well...

I love when we have garden visitors!

Okay...here's the dramatic change you've been waiting for.  This area of the yard was the most labor intensive, but in return was the most rewarding.

 Cleaning out the center flower bed in the front yard.  This was after Day 1.

 The pile of yard waste after Day 1.

 I can't remember how many days it took us to do this...

it seemed like forever!  But we took everything out except the azaleas. 

 More yard waste.  The city workers loved us I'm sure!

Much better!

If you don't feel like scrolling back up, here is a before and after:

Browning loves his new yard. 

He even found an old baseball hidden in the center flowerbed while we were working.

I hope you have enjoyed watching my garden unfold in this post.  We have made more changes, but I will share them with you in later posts.  The beauty of a garden and of nature in general is that it is always changing.  I look forward to sharing many more stories with you from my garden.