A few years ago I made a post about scarecrows. People seem to have upped there game since then! Found these beauties on Pinterest recently and thought I'd share. Makes me wish I had a vegetable garden again to build one of these for it.
.jpg)
I've begun enhancing some of the eco prints made on a warm summer day with my favorite crafting friend Karen using plant life from right outside my home.
The first one using a black micron pen . . .
On a snowy April day, Pinterest is getting a workout on my computer! Looking for inspiration, I found these gorgeous paintings on wood panels
Love it ♥!
Rocks can be a brand new canvas for art and I've been dabbling with it quite a bit lately.
Simple stuff like small decorated hearts and messages on the back, but my most detailed is this frog ~
Today is my mother's birthday and it got me to thinking about her gardens. One of her favorite flowers was the gladiola. I remember her sending me to school with a bouquet of glads for my teacher while in grade school.
I have never attempted to grow that type of flower. Usually stick to the tried and true petunias, alysum, and other easy to grow annuals. But this year I expanded my horizons with three new and different perennials.
Several years ago, my mother~in~law gifted me what has become my favorite vase ~ a 1930s Tiffin Poppy Black Amethyst satin glass jewel! It is perfect for my little front porch with the brightly colored "new-for-me" variety of brown~eyed susans, Indian blankets and cone flowers that adorn my back yard today.
Turns out smoky overcast skies are great for photography!
Years ago my son gifted me with a cedar planter box. It has four legs, a deep bed and measures 3 ft x 4 ft. Allows me to plant flowers standing up. Last year ... nothing because of COVID. Couldn't even get to the nurseries.
But this year, OH MY, flowers galore! The heat we've been experiencing has been a good thing for flower~growing.
Kim and Ben purchased a claim in Idaho where they spent a lot of time this summer. With gold fever, and EPA/government permission slips, they are just beginning to dig in earnest.
Since they are near a river, I asked her if she could find some smooth river rocks for me to paint on. She found them 6 feet deep in the soil. Yesterday she brought me two rocks ~ one is a heart shape.
It is actually a solid piece of iron ore and will rub off forever.
Won't be painting on this one but the other has possibilities.
You have to be there to believe the gardens of Dawn. There are paths in and out of her flowers and she has pots overflowing with her beautiful arrangements both front and back. Too too many for me to show you here.
Just a few of the many roses that dot her gardens ~
one whole length of this part, leading up to her French Room, are floral plantings with a gorgeous Japanese maple spreading across the fence in the back
~
And when weeding and trimming get too hot, she has a shaded cabana and a big above ground pool
I know there is more to it than that ... a lot of work and love goes into it. She probably talks to each and every one of the flowers while she's weeding, don't you think?
We got to spend a morning at Derek and Dawn's home and gardens. Haven't photographed their amazing back yard for a long time. It just keeps getting better and better. Took 47 photos and tried to pare them down to a manageable few but it was almost impossible. I decided to split them into two categories ~ bushes, trees and pond first.
When we moved into our house just over three years ago, our little back yard had a huge space carved out of it that was the base of an above ground pool. Tamped down dirt! What to do with it. The first year not much happened, but the second year we had a plan!
With the help of our son, fresh dirt was mounded up as a Father's Day gift. Shaped in a circle, it was bordered off with ornamental bricks. And then the planting began with an evergreen tree at the top of the mount. Little by little it has been filling up with bushes, plants, birdbaths, whirligig and a walkway.
It's come a long way since spring of 2018!!
On a lazy winter morning, with nothing much to do, we spent a good deal of time bird-watching.
With the ground frozen and the temp in the 20s, they were voracious today. We always have finch, sparrows and juncos at our feeders, but today we have chickadees and I spotted a rare red breasted nuthatch. One little wren is with us all seasons of the year. Guess it pays to take the time (of which I have much of) in studying the birdlife in our area.
Sadly we don't have the colorful song birds like in the rest of the country. Finches, both house and gold, are the most color we get from the bird world.
We have a large laurel bush in our planting circle that the birds love to hide under and a small evergreen tree for them to perch on. I'm loving our small back yard.
