July slides by

,,, and I shall miss it!  So quickly come…and gone.

We found this gorgeous creature in our backyard.  She has an amazingly perfect web and sat and posed for her photograph.

Golden orb weaver…right next to the screen porch.  So beautiful.

More planting of flowers today.  Pentas, Mexican sage (which is a kind of salvia), found the most gorgeous phlox in a pale pale pinky lavender with white, and added more portulaca.  The raised vegetable planter is now a butterfly garden and they were already visiting it before I could even get the final plants in the soil.

Whacking….weeds and words

It was a good day at work.  Whacked weeds, edged flowerbeds.  Lots of outdoor work to burn off energy and frustration.  Potted a couple of baby crepe myrtles I hope will do well and grow into nice new trees.  Purple.  I think purple crepe myrtles are sooo pretty.

Then at home I whacked more azaleas…so many more to trim.  And now I am whacking words in my edits.

It has been a good day.

Frantic Friday

Things have gotten even crazier as our week of house-sitting winds to an end.  They will be home today!  Reesie and I had to RACE through our morning to try to make everything as perfect for their return as we could. It is an act of love, and we enjoyed every minute of it.

Electrician was to arrive at 7am…so we were up early.  My car is in the shop needing brake repairs (head cylinder?  All I know is…expensive!  ouch!) and we still needed more topsoil to complete the flower bed we have been working on all week. So we had to go to Lowe’s and buy it just a bag at a time, load it into her teeeny Miata and bring it home.  Took three trips, but the bed was completed.  It is a long curve that begins at the patio, goes straight, forming a path between the rose bed along the back of the house, and this new perennial bed and then curving to invite the visitor to stroll into the yard itself where other plantings and settings await.

I lined the bed along the walkway with daylilies…. yellow, black, red, oranges, bicolors… so many different and beautiful plants.  In the center is a tall tower covered in clematis in burgundy and pale lavender.  The edge closest to the patio is lined with identical pale gold daylilies, then a stone paved pathway to the nook under the birch tree, and the bed resumes with a grouping of various perennials in lots of colors including carnations, dianthus, balloon flowers, and blanket flowers.  When we are finished planting it, this will be a gorgeous display of color.

We also tended Merrill’s vegetable garden, potted his white onion sets (they couldn’t wait any longer to go into the ground), and treated the roses.  A bright candy striped rose opened today…a fitting finale to our week.

At home, there is plenty of work to be done.  Some very long, busy days ahead of us getting the house cleaned and fixed up and our gardens in.  First up… a lawn mower!!!  And removing a lot of ‘stuff’ from the screen porch.

And to finish off this gorgeous, busy, frenetic and fun Friday… our weekly Fantasy photo…

finally Friday!

…. and so much to do!  We worked, of course.  Stripped pine mulch back so budding plants can enjoy the Spring sunshine.  Emptied pots to make way for new plants.  Sorted new plants by color for filling those pots in the next few days.  Enjoyed the company of sunning anoles, birds, squirrels, and…. yes the weirdness continues… yet more crows.  Crows and/or ravens seem to be everywhere I go of late.  Rather odd.

Tonight we did some quick shopping for Easter.  Tomorrow we lay in groceries and get some house work done around here.

Spring fever has me fully in its grasp as I jot notes on all the household repairs I dream of making in the next few months, the plants I want for yard and garden, two or three things to make the coming spring/summer more fun for the kids (a new trampoline, a fun swing of some kind to replace the aged and worn out hammock swing under the live oak tree, a basketball hoop for my teenager)  Among the plants I want to add to the yard in a beautiful weeping tree for daughter, Reesie.  She has wanted one for years…but just the ‘right’ one… a tree not only beautiful but popular with birds, and loved by bees and butterflies.  We have one chosen at last…now I just have to find one at the local nursery and it will be our ‘spring treat’.

A ‘weeping’ version of the Golden Rain Tree….

  gorgeous isn’t it?

The dogs are also reveling in the return of long days and warm sunshine…laying for hours stretched in their favorite sandy spot near the gate.

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And as today is Friday… time for our Fantasy Friday photo.

We needed something….springish 🙂  Hope it enchants.

What fun

It has been a couple of crazy busy days….but such fun.

Yesterday was DeeDee picking murals for the toddler bedroom….this lovely tree branchs with leaves and birds that stretched 2/3 the length of the wall!  Then another tree that came up from the floor and ended in all these gorgeous pink cherry blossom style flowers,  I loved making them and they bring such a fantasy, friendly forest feeling to the room.  The other side, appropriately enough, is Winnie the Pooh…so here we have created a little girl’s 100 Acre Woods 😀

Meriill got a new cabinet for his electronics…such an improvement over the very modern glass shelves previously used. They didn’t fit the ‘feel’ of his Man Cave… or the decor.  Plus they left all those ugly cords out in plain sight.  Downside to the new set up? taking everything apart, squeezing my butt back under the table and behind the cabinet, and thinking by any stretch of the imagination I could help figure out what went where!  LOL!  Still, he was very patient… no I said MSI2 not USB… and eventually… VOILA!  all things connected and … gasp! working!

Today was spagetti pizza (a lovely way to slide that spagetti squash right on past ’em) at our house.  And I brewed a big pitcher of sweet tea…which will last till tomorrow.  Big tea drinkers in this family.  No idea what tomorrow holds, but sure to be different.

I hope to finish taking the last of the pine mulch out to the back bed I am working on, so that, come the first of the month, I will be ready to plant it.  Also wandered over to Hyams and checked out the new plants.  Spring fever is fast upon me, fellow gardners.  So many plants.  So little time.

Wednesday in the garden

Bright, sunny, mid 70s, gorgeous January day in the Lowcountry.  I took advantage of it to get my baby lemon tree outside for some hours of sunshine, watered the planters on the front porch, and carried bucket upon bucket of pine mulch across the yard to form the beginnings of my new raised bed.  It will form a swoosh pattern between the back driveway (unused), the corner of the yard, and the road.  Once I get the pattern established I will add some good topsoil and plug in the first couple of plants.  The area is rather shaded by some large pines in the neighbors yard and a dogwood on the other side of the driveway in mine.  I am hoping to add at least one Needle Palm as they are very hardy and tough and don’t mind shade at all.

And trying to decide on other decorative and colorful plantings to join it.  Considering Lantana (which here is almost impossble not to do well 😀  And possibly Turkscap, also a native, which can handle the shade, the climate, and will give me some pretty flowers as a bonus.

Pretty don’t you think?