Monthly Archives: September 2018

It all comes down to Personality!

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Morning sunshine gives a warm hue to the hydrangea wreath

Everything we do, and how we choose to do what we do, comes down to our individual personalities. For me, my personality is such that I like to find second uses for things. I don’t like to waste, or get rid of something if it can possibly have a second life. What better way to give a second life to flowers than arranging them in a wreath or a floral arrangement? None, I say! 🙂

This is how I dry my flowers 🙂

Hydrangea are great for drying. It is best to use “mature” blooms, which have a more substantial (papery) feel to them. If they aren’t mature, then the leaves tend to curl. There isn’t anything wrong with curled leaves, I just don’t think they are quite as pretty (although my wreath has some of them, too!)

It all starts with a straw wreath frame and some floral “u” pins.

Wreaths are so easy to make!  In my book, it is essential to have a straw wreath frame, floral “u” pins, and some Spanish moss.  Anything goes for the rest! My hydrangea didn’t flourish this year, due to the drought this summer I presume. So I did get some lovely deep cherry colored blooms from a friend. I traded her zucchini bread for hydrangea blooms, that’s fair isn’t it?

These green colored blooms are hydrangea Incrediball.

I have all of my colors on the table, or hanging on my Flower Tree, and I just dive in.  The hydrangea paniculata ‘Vanille Fraise’ had very small, beautiful blooms this year, but their stems weren’t very strong and most of them broke while pinning them. That was a bummer, as they were really pretty!

Piece by piece the wreath comes together.

I made this one night after work this week. I felt the need to create something! Since I don’t have anything on my crochet hooks, it had to be with dried flowers. I still have loads of lavender around my house, too! (See what I did with that further down the post.) I really enjoy working with my hands, and I’m glad to have such beautiful materials around me to create with.

Ta-dah! This is where my wreath will reside in our kitchen.

Purple, cherry, green, blue, pink: it’s all in there.

Inside lighting doesn’t give the exact coloring.

Nothing beats natural lighting, but then of course there is morning sunshine and evening sunlight, both of which slightly change the coloring again!  You can see for yourself in the following photos.

Bright daylight, but no direct sunlight: This coloring is probably the closest to reality!

This picture has the tiny pink hydrangea paniculata Vanille Fraise.

The dried hyrdrangea is mostly hardy to work with. The green stems are actually doubled-up stems that I have smushed together after taking off brown markings on them. You can really do anything with them (as long as their stems are strong!).

My go-to photo place for wreaths is our playhouse door! This is just for photos as I wouldn’t leave this outside…

Morning sunshine gives a warm hue to the hydrangea wreath

Like I mentioned, I still have loads of lavender “drying” around the house (that I really need to put away!).  I decided to create a simple arrangement, using a magenta colored vase which happens to perfectly match some of my dried roses.  Yes, these little things just get me all excited! First of all, I was able to use a lot of lavender to fill this vase, and secondly, that magenta color is *gorgeous*!

Dried Lavender + Roses = beauty

magenta colored roses and vase

And here is where they will live:

Home sweet home for my vase of lavender + roses.

It’s the little things! I’m glad to give a second life to my flowers, and the lavender and roses really do have a beautiful fragrance.  This is me, this is who I am, and this is my personality.  🙂

What’s your personality like?

In peace,
Dana

Our playhouse in the morning sunlight.

September’s beauty is tempered only by the gardening to-do list…

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We are still enjoying warm weather, not quite ready for the chilly days of fall just yet …

September can be such a beautiful month. Although the temperatures tend to dip slightly in August, inevitably, when the kids head back to school in September, the weather turns warm again! We have been lucky to enjoy rather mild weather of late. The garden, having been quite patient all summer while I left it to its own devices, is now demanding that I pay her some attention. I love working in the garden, don’t get me wrong. We were just busy with life!  So little by little, we’ve managed to extend some time and effort to get (some) things done in the garden.

If I could draw your attention to the green leaves along the edge of the railroad ties, those are Bergenia, a deep pink flowering variety, which have spread a bit more than I’d like.

Bergenia flowering in May

These Incrediball hydrangea were a lovely white in August, but turned a rusty brown quite quickly, unfortunately. The Bergenia, on the other hand, have done really well! This was the clump (on the left) before we separated them.

One of the items on our “to-do” list was dividing up plants. I think it is pretty safe to say that Bergenia plants, also known as elephant’s ears due to the foliage, are extremely hardy! These guys are so happy in my garden, and they have just flourished (read: multiplied exponentially!). I wanted to remove a few to prevent them from clumping too much. But before I knew it, my husband had dug them all up! So we’ve spread them out, and moved them around the yard.

The Bergenia plants needed to be separated as they had clumped together.

A little more breathing room after we divided the Bergenia plants (my rusty looking Incrediball hydrangea plant in the background)

Staying in this same bed, my Iris ‘Benton Storrington’ are also quite happy here. My original purchase of two plants has yielded more than a few!

I originally bought two plants and now I have, well, LOTS!

I actually had to move them because they were spreading into one of my hydrangea plants. I’ve simply moved them to the other side of the same bed (hey, if they are happy here, I don’t want to rock the boat!). But first I untangled their roots to separate them. That worked with most of them, while a couple of them had to be cut apart. There was quite a clump!

quite a tangle of roots! This is why you have to separate them!

I forgot to remind my husband that the rhizomes, in order to get exposure to the sun, need to be at the surface, and not buried in the soil. So when I noticed his mistake after he’d planted a few, there was a teeny tiny moment where he just stopped and looked at me, shook his head, and then proceeded to re-plant them, correctly this time. Good thing he’d only done a few! 🙂

A row of freshly planted Iris, and in front of them are freshly planted Bergenia plants.

Iris Benton Storrington – which you can see is growing into the hydrangea!

Iris Benton Storrington

There was one more plant which we divided, another Iris actually, although this time not a bearded variety (so no rhizomes to keep at the surface!). I don’t have any pictures of what the area looks like now. But, here is a picture from before we moved any, when they were in bloom. The perspective is “higher” as I was actually leaning out of my bedroom window (being very careful though!). 🙂

non-bearded Iris

Lots of Iris and Lilacs!

They are very pretty, and apparently they, too, are very happy as they have spread like crazy! My idea was to separate them and spread them about the yard. But for now, we’ve taken one clump out of the mess and moved it further down the bed, and we moved another clump to the “Center Garden”.

our “Center Garden” is expanded again with the addition of Iris on the right

I am really happy with how our Center Garden is taking shape. I wasn’t sure if I should add anything else to it, but I think the Iris will be really pretty.

Pears, Apples and Sunflowers from our garden

My gardening takes lots of patience while I figure out how to get it just right, and watching as things mature and fill in spaces and provide structure. I LOVE this process! It is so neat to watch the garden throughout the entire year as it changes from one season to the next. I am constantly thinking of “what’s next” in the garden. I have a list in my head of all of the plants I want to add, and changes and additions to the garden. But right now, I am completely happy with exactly how it is, weeds and all! As for the gardening “to-do” list, let’s just say that I am happy that we are making progress!

In peace,
Dana

Good Enough

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My veggie / fruit section of the garden

I haven’t written about the garden in a while. I’ve been beating myself up that it isn’t good enough to photograph, or talk about, or inspire.  Not.Good.Enough.  What??? Over the past eight years I’ve created a garden that brings me right to my happy place. How can that not be good enough? Admittedly, five years ago, this same patch of garden looked somewhat different, and perhaps more inspiring:

Purple Brussels sprouts, pumpkins, and squash in my 2013 garden

In fact, when I visited that blog post recently, the garden blew me away! Seriously, have a look. That did NOT help my feelings of inadequacy for my current garden! But so much has changed since then. The biggest change was that four years ago I went back to work after being a stay-at-home mom for 16 years. 16 years! Wow! I was lucky. I loved it. And now I am glad to be back working (outside the home) too… except that means a lot less time for taking care of the garden. It means that my view of what is Good Enough has had to change. And today I am stopping myself from saying it isn’t good enough, to saying it most certainly is Good Enough!

a cluster of our pears – almost ready for picking

our pear tree with a few handfuls of pears

I will focus on the good stuff: Our fruit trees.  We have one pear tree, one “eating apple” tree, and one “cooking apple” tree (Arthur Turner), and they are all filled with fruit this year! I must give credit to my husband for tidying up the base of our trees.  Ideally, the clearing should match the width of the branches, so every year as the tree grows, the clearing should be widened. It had been a few years since this task was done, so it was a big job this year. After all of his digging, he then worked a lot of our compost into the soil.  I think the trees look neat and tidy, and rather pretty if I do say so myself! (although perhaps slightly tilted?!)

funny, my husband doesn’t think this tree is leaning ever so slightly …

Fabulous combination of pretty and delicious!

I don’t have a variety name for the eating apples. They are sweet, and delicious tasting.  The cooking apple variety, Arthur Turner, are not sweet, and definitely need sugar when used. They are usually a greenish yellow color, but this year they have a pink hue.

do you also see the slight tilt on this tree too???

a pink hue to our Arthur Turner cooking apples

This year I planted pumpkins, squash, and sunflowers. As surprising as it is to hear, Ireland experienced a drought this summer. So some things in the garden didn’t quite thrive.  My sunflowers bloomed very early and died very quickly!  I cut off a few large heads, and have dried them to use the seeds next year. The rest are still in the garden for the birds to enjoy.

My daughter was helping me take pictures of my lavender wreath (which is in her hand) when I took this picture of the sunflowers. Kitty also enjoys being in pictures, just not posing for them… Off to the right you can see my leaning gladiolus The Dark Knights. I sense a leaning theme.

A bird eating the seeds from a sunflower

It is worth leaving the dying flowers for the birds to feast on the seeds, even though the plants look unsightly!  I love seeing the birds in the garden. It is worth having the dead plants there just for them 🙂

a common Blue tit sitting on one of my sunflowers

this is what the flower head looks like when you leave it in the garden for the birds to eat – lots of seeds missing!

The pumpkins also had an unusual growing situation this summer. Similar to the sunflowers, they ripened much quicker than usual.  Honestly, it is usually around Thanksgiving time (November) when mine finally turn orange!  This year they turned orange in August…

Four pumpkins completely orange in August…

They have provided a lovely splash of color in the garden, along with the summer squash.  (I stopped picking the squash many weeks ago, but they still provide beautiful color!)

nearly ripe pumpkin … in August!

There are two more pumpkins in the garden, but they have chosen to grow and ripen at the normal rate for us albeit in an unusual place:

this pumpkin is growing in ornamental grass (this was not planted by me!) and will hopefully turn orange right around Halloween 🙂

I tend to be rather hard on myself. When I stop and pay attention, I do of course appreciate that I have worked quite hard to create my happy space of a garden.  “Good Enough” was never an expression I would have accepted years ago.  But now I know that it is much more important to appreciate what is in front of me.  I might need reminders of that every now and again, but I do now accept that Good Enough is Perfect!

I hope you have enjoyed the views in my Good Enough garden!

In peace,
Dana

There were only a few gladiolus stems this year (due to the drought) but they were still pretty!