Gardening / Here Comes the Rain Again.

If you are of a certain age this song is now stuck in your head.

Here comes the rain again

Falling on my head like a memory .........

 It seems that here in Middle Tennessee we have been singing this song more often than not.  Again this weekend it is soggy with flash flood warnings so I won't be playing in the yard.  We have had the hardest time getting into Spring this year.  In fact, today, along with the rain we are frolicking in the 40's!   Mother Nature seems to be having some serious mood swings.

For the first time in many years, I don't have in "big" projects this Spring.  No big makeovers inside or out just tweaking existing things and enjoying.   Good thing, since the weather has not been cooperative.  In addition to the annuals I will plant I am adding a couple of new ideas that will hopefully be improvements to some of my landscaping.

Sorry the pic is askew....don't know why it won't flip.  A couple of weeks back Wonder Hubby was on vacation and he managed to stay off the lake long enough for us to take a day to junk.  We visited Springfield, TN and a couple of awesome antique malls.  Within 5 minutes I had spotted these garden Obelisk's.  I just couldn't concentrate on anything else. 

 

We left the mall without them because I am so cheap.  Wonder Hubby was a bit annoyed with me since I initially considered buying only the largest of three and was okay with the price, yet, when that price turned out to be for all three I hesitated!  Guess he was right.  We left and had lunch at The Depot (I would recommend lunch there if you find yourself in Springfield) and went on to mall two.  I just couldn't get these out of my mind so we toured mall two and then headed back for them. 

 

So glad Wonder Hubby insisted because I love them and can't wait to have them in the garden.

Last year I had many of my plants in by mid April and all by the end of April.  I finally managed to purchase my first plants for this year, last week.  We had nice temps and weather this week so I was able to get in the dirt and complete some other outdoor chores.

Although I clean up in the fall there is still a good amount of garden debris and leaves to clean up in the Spring.  Thankfully, I am done with this now and have already had a massive bon fire to get rid of the mess. 

I love "finding" what annuals made it through the winter that are beginning to make a debut.  Until last year, having an annual come back in this area almost never happened, but with the last two winters being relatively mild I have had several this year.  The photo above (shot this morning from a dry spot!) shows dracaena spikes that made it through the winter. 

Looks like weed but its not....it is a Gerbera Daisy making its way into Spring 2013.  I was very shocked to find this.  It is a bit like Christmas as I wait to see what color it will be!

Also making a reappearance, Calibrochoa also known as million bells.  I discovered this annual year before last and have fallen head over heels for it.   Feed it a bit and keep it watered and it just keeps on producing beautiful petunia like flowers.  I was over the moon to see some of my plants making an appearance.

I also used Calibrochoa in the pot Wonder Hubby gave me for Mother's Day last year and it has come back with a vengeance and is beautiful already.

There is my obelisk, perched in my pot waiting for a Joseph's coat rose to climb it.  I just can't believe how the Calibrochoa returned, full and pretty already.

 

For years I have had a flower bed in the front yard.   I actually hesitate to call it a flower bed because it has been a mish mash of things people gave me or plants I was rooting.  I had good intentions when I initially plowed it up but I always had another area I wanted to work on more.  This year I have finally decided to put some effort into this bed. 

Wonder Hubby brought in a truck load of garden mix for me and I have worked it in (in between floods) and have moved some existing plants around already.

 

 

First change/improvement, a Pinterest inspired planter atop an old bird feeder post.  Poor Wonder Hubby mounted the first planter I was going to try and naturally I found a better option (he should know that I am going to change my mind by now). 

 

 

 The better option is more proportionate....sometimes using what you have just doesn't work.

I can hardly wait to see this in a few weeks when everything fills out and begins to spill over! 

Two of my obelisk's will call this bed home.  I am planning to plant Moon flower on them as well as on the post.  Have you tried Moon flower?  It lights up a garden in the evening and smells incredible.  Next year I may try a climbing hydrangea on the large obelisk.

I am ready for the rain to end to plant my Moon flowers (I have them soaked and ready, I guess I could have skipped the whole soaking and planted them directly in the ground! lol).  My peony is on the verge of blooming and I have a few iris in bloom.

 

This pot is very special for me, it was my grandmother's.  For as long as I can remember a set of two of these sat on the corners of my grandmother's front porch and were always planted with red geraniums.  I brought these home after she passed away and planted them for the first time last year.  I had the set in my back landscaping but decided to rob one of them for the front bed.   The "foot" on this one is broken in half so I had so do a bit of burying to make it work, but that's okay I know what it is supposed to look like!   I didn't go with red geraniums but I think the red calibrochoa will be very pretty.

 Now I will be able to enjoy one when I am out back and the other when I am swilling iced tea on the front porch or when I am at the stove cooking, since this bed is in my direct sight line from the kitchen island.  Hopefully this week I will be able to get some annuals in this bed and bring in the mulch to finish it up.

 

 

Also blooming and growing....the old azalea's from our original front landscape.  They are dwarfing the plants we put in last year, which is a bit frustrating as I had expected much more growth of those by this year.  I guess I should just been thankful the new plants made it considering we planted and a few days later we went through almost two weeks of temps of 100 - 108.  They really didn't grow they just survived.

Thankfully we saved a couple of our old azalea's and at least one of them looks fabulous.  The other is still recovering from being crammed between VERY overgrown shrubs.  We added 6 Encore azaleas last spring that hopefully will start really growing and blooming soon.

I truly love Azaleas.  I have ever since we vacationed in Natchez Mississippi when I was a teenager and azaleas were in bloom everywhere.  While my son attended college in Memphis I looked forward to seeing all the azaleas there as well.   Strangely, azalea are not nearly as popular here in the Nashville area as other places in the South.  I am doing my part to change that in my little corner of the world.

We put up the hut and brought out the deck table yesterday.  It finally is beginning to feel like spring on the deck.  We have opened the fish pond and got it up and running.  I have a few things around the pond that are coming out little by little, a few elephant ears, iris and Asian lilies.   I looks a little bare right now, I still have to plant annuals in pots around the pond.  I cannot imagine our backyard without the pond.  Just listening to the water seems to lower the temperature even on the hottest of days.

 

This is my rear landscaping. Our lilac is in bloom, the hostas are almost fully up and there are a couple of things growing that I know I planted but I can't remember what they are.  Good thing surprise in the garden is a good thing!  Hopefully when this rainy weekend is over I will be able to purchase the annuals for this area and get those in. 

The lilac smells amazing.  Wish I could send it your way.

Oregano and basil are back as well....love having these to use with fresh tomatoes all summer long.

My phlox is looking good. 

I have blogged about my good friend and junk buddy Tammy many times but I thought I would share this little story and how she coined a term we use all the time.  When Tammy got married she and her husband moved to Memphis.  We talked on the phone fairly often (even back in the days of watching your long distance bill) and we were always lamenting about being newly married and broke!  We were always sharing shopping strategies. 

 

 The big thing you need to know about Tammy is, she is a  clearance shopping nut!  So when she discovered shopping meat that was in the mark down section of the grocery store it was a big deal.   She affectionately named this area The Rotten Meat bin and it stuck!  Boy did it stick.  It refers to clearance of any sort and we are constantly searching for "rotten meat."  Recently we hit Lowes to check out their "Rotten Meat bin".  We purchased quite a few plants at a steal.

  One of the items I purchased was phlox.  Great deal at $2 for a large pot of it.  Seeing this picture of phlox reminded me of how much I love shopping for plants in the Rotten Meat bin! lol  I have also landed several packages of annuals for fifty cents and these adorable drift roses.

 

They were looking pretty rough when I dropped them in place a few days ago but are already perking up.  At a full grown size of 3 ft. wide and 1 1/2 feet tall, they are perfectly proportioned for Mini's house.  I am so excited to see these fill out.

Lastly, I have been piddling with a bed in the back yard.  When I began to turn the front bed into an actual "feature" bed I started a bed in the back yard to be my feeder bed.  I tossed in iris that I was thinning those out as well as some lilies and vinca from a neighbor.

 

  I also have been fortunate the last couple of years that the mums from my fall decorating made it through the winter and were transplanted to this bed.  I think I have 10 mums in it now.  This fall it should really be pretty.  For now, I am weeding and added some Phlox straight from the Rotten Meat Bin and need to mulch. 

 

That concludes the tour of what I hope will be beautiful gardens in a month or so.  Seeing all the beautiful new growth brightened this soggy day for me I hope it brightened yours! 

Dimensional Doodling and Glass Goodies

I have been seeing all the beautiful painted glass bottles and jars on the web recently and I am just in love with them!  From mason jars that are tinted to old Avon bottles being chalk painted I am smitten.

 

As usual, I am late to the party, so by the time I started looking for glass to paint I was finding mostly old bud vases (boo!).  After some diligent searching I finally landed some vases and an old perfume bottle that I wanted to try and paint.

 

All the vases came from my old standby, Goodwill.  The two with yellow stickers vases were 1/2 off that day! Woo hoo.  After several attempts I finally managed to get them painted.  It was a little tougher than it looked to get the coverage I was looking for...and I did knock one off the table and break it (another trip to Goodwill required) but in the end I like how they turned out.

 

I love the sparkle of the paint on the perfume bottle.

 

The opalescent paint made the vine stand out on this vase. 

I planned to display these on a shelf Wonder Hubby and I whipped up back last fall that was sitting empty.  Of course the bottle were not enough to fill the shelf so I needed a little something else. 

 

 I had several canvases sitting around so I decided to play around with those.  First step, I made a copy of the fabric covered canvas I blogged about here.  I chose elements from the fabric and transferred those to the canvas by tracing them onto parchment paper (it was what I had laying around) then traced them onto the canvas.

At this point I decide I wanted a tone on tone canvas, so I dug out some dimensional paint (love this stuff!).  I first used it for dimensional Easter eggs here.

This step takes a bit of time and a steady hand........so I had to work when I wasn't wired up on Co-cola or Coffee!

 

While working on the canvas I decided to add some dimension to a paper mache letter as well.  Still not finished with it.....so where it will live is any one's guess.

 

After letting everything dry, I watered down some acrylic craft paint and "washed" the whole canvas.  Once that was dry, I sanded the design lightly to reveal bits of the dimensional design.

I love the way it looks aged.  My junk buddy saw it last week and commented that it looked like an old tin panel.  Hmmmm...okay I like that. 

I placed it on the shelf with the bottles I painted as well as an adorable lantern/candle from OTP.  I absolutely love how calming this feels every time I look at it.

 

 

Thanks for stopping by and reading about my doodling adventure!  Have a great week.

I am joining Kim at Savvy Southern Style for
 

Guest Post - Words of Hope

Another week another newspaper column for Mini.   Yesterday I didn't get a chance to go out and pick up the latest newspaper so I have just read this myself!  Hope you enjoy, take a little something away from the article and enjoy a blessed weekend!

 

As I’ve mentioned before, I am challenging myself to read through the whole bible in one year. Currently I am almost done with 2 Chronicles, so I’d say I’m making pretty good progress. If you’ve read around this area of the bible, you’ll notice that Israel has got a TON of kings. I mean, most of the stories from 1 Kings to where I am right now (and who knows, it may go beyond that! I’ll see soon!) are all about how Israel got this really awesome king who either had his heart set on God or was as far from God as one could get. When you read, you notice that there are probably 4 good, solid kings who are after God with all of their hearts and do as God moves them to do. The others either are completely opposed to the idea of Israel’s God or kind of try to get into Him but don’t feel like giving their whole heart away. A noticeable trend seen is “so-and-so had his heart right with God but did not remove the high places and Asherah poles and this was detestable in the eyes of the Lord” or something like that. The first couple of times I read that I thought nothing of it. But when all of these books of the bible CONSTANTLY repeat this and every single time the king who keeps these “high places and Asherah poles” fails at what he’s doing because his heart isn’t right with God according to the bible, I noticed a great lesson to be learned.

For those of you who maybe haven’t gotten into that part of the bible or need some brushing up, the “high places and Asherah poles” are these really strange locations to worship other gods. When I noticed this trend, I started thinking about why most of these kings didn’t get around to taking these places down. I mean, if it was that important to God and could all together improve the quality of their lives, wouldn’t you think that the removal of these places would be of the upmost importance?

The reason that these kings didn’t get rid of the high places is in the name itself. High places…. They weren’t necessarily the easiest things to get to. Out of sight, out of mind, right? They thought it would be too much of a hassle to tend to these worship centers so they just never got around to it. Now does that remind you of anyone? To me, we are these kings.

The way I see it, our “high places” are parts of our lives that don’t necessarily glorify God. They might not be particularly bad, but we aren’t giving God the control. We take certain aspects of our lives that we just don’t see as important or maybe that we don’t think we can give up and we hide them in the highest places in our hearts but we expect God to make something of us. The truth is, God will never be able to make anything extraordinary out of our lives until we give him those high places. We will never be the few great kings mentioned who triumph over all by God’s hand until we realize that God deserves EVERY part of us. It’s time to get rid of the high places, friends.  

She May Be a Crafter Yet (Maybe)

I don't think I have ever mentioned Mini's distaste for crafts.  I truly don't understand it.  The Nana always did crafts.  Back in the day it was decoupage, she also can sew anything and can crochet, knit and can and has done just about every craft you can think of.

 

I didn't come into my crafting self until I was in my early 20's.  I was into cross stitch, and twist paper crafts, a bit of sewing and then started to paint.  Since then I have at the least attempted whatever the "new" craft of the day was.  I love having a project going. Five going in different genres is better.

 

For a while I had a child that would craft but by the time The Big Dumb Jock was in about 3rd grade he wasn't much of a craft buddy anymore.   I was thrilled when Mini came along.  I just knew she was going to be my crafting buddy for life.  WRONG!  Mini has had no interest in crafts.  She would rather work for the money and buy something.  How in the world can this child have my DNA?

 

At times I have tried guilt.  "Please just spend some time with me and we will make XYZ," I would plead.  If I could actually apply enough guilt she might join me physically, but never mentally.  She would hurry through whatever we were doing to fulfill her time obligation and then she would be off.  She would rather us sit and read together (not that I am against that). 

 

Flash forward till present day.   Mini has a busy life.  Crafting would really be hard to fit in.  Afterall

It takes time to be a famous writer

 She has to squeeze in time for The Boyfriend (after all he sends beautiful roses)!

Mini also stays pretty busy receiving one award or another (she is annoying like that).

 

She is working hard on her casting technique for her high school Bass Fishing Club

 

and of course she has to rest occasionally

 

 I have noticed that in the last year she has quietly delved into crafting a bit.  She has made The Boyfriend cards and a scrapbook and she held a wreath for me to glue things to a while back so I was beginning to have a bit of hope. 

 

Then came a prom dilemma.  Mini wasn't planning to go to prom until she won a Driver's Safety essay contest (that is the award she is receiving from the Sheriff above) and grand prize was a limo for the night.  I will tell that story later but I probably should have never made the bet with her, it is costing a fortune and stressing me out!  Any who now we are racing about trying to get ready.  She has decided she wants me to do her hair but wanted "something" for her hair.  You know, a bow, feathers, a flower or something (something only known to her). 

We spend a good bit of time looking for whatever she had in her head but were coming up empty (and tired).  I suggested we could make something.  I figured this would put an end to a "hair thing" and we could move on.  WRONG but a good wrong.  She went willingly to Michael's and instead of whining about how long it takes there was diligently searching for just the right stuff to construct her vision (it was so fun......fingers crossed that she keeps an interest).

 

We ended up buying a flower, glitter spray and a costume jewelry ring to deconstruct and use part of.

 

First we removed the stem from the flower.  Then disassembled the flower from the plastic center and reassembled and sewed the layers back together. 

 

 All ready to paint.

Two coats of Glitter spray.

 

 Then we attached a barrette and took apart the stretch costume ring and attached it with glue as the flower center.  Mini was really into making this so we failed to take pictures of the ring before we disassembled it.

 

Ta Da

 

 

It turned out so well and it is a perfect match to her dress and no one was poked with a needle, maimed by pliers or burned with hot glue (winning!). I had so much fun shopping for the components and then putting it together with her.  It wasn't a huge craft but a very special one that we (at least I) will always remember making together.  I will post some pictures of the dress and the hair flower in a couple of weeks.  I think it will be perfect for her "look" for the night.  Now I am thinking of more crafts that might be of interest to her.....I wonder when she will have time again?

 

Thanks for stopping in and sharing a Mini and Mom craft event.