Garden Gone Wild

This is the section of the garden where we sit for afternoon tea. We used to have a table and chairs in the center of that open area but I haven't been able to do that since the wheelchair so we sit over on the driveway beside it. 

As you can see there's always enough shade and breeze to keep it comfortable.
There aren't any flowering plants here except for a wild rose we dug up in the woods on the family farm where we were married, some lilies that were at the back of this house when we moved here and a lot of hosta gifted to me by a neighbor who didn't like it in their yard.

Over the last 15 years we've been dividing and moving them around until I managed to get a bit of a border around the area. It's a messy but starting to look a bit more like the garden I had planned.

Speaking of plants that have been divided and moved. This is the view out the kitchen window and Yes, those ARE some of the tallest black raspberry bushes I've ever seen and the DO cover most of the backyard.

Some 0f these bushes are actually taller than our 1 story house! We've been picking black raspberries for a week and freezing some while making jam with some as well. I've tried to give away or sell extra berries in years past but for some reason have had no luck in my neighborhood. it surprises me that some people have never even heard of black raspberries let alone have tasted them so I even offered small containers to sample.

Oh well, at least we like them and are grateful for the savings on groceries while we find more and more ways to use them.

A New Birdhouse for the Garden

This birdhouse was designed and painted to coordinate with the posts on the wheelchair ramp.

 
I'm always excited to add another birdhouse to the garden. Especially since the other birdhouses on this side of the ramp are already full of baby birds peeping and cheeping as I roll by in the mornings.

This design is quite similar to one of the birdhouses on the arbor at the front of the house.

I try to repeat some of the colors and patterns to pull the eye through the garden and pull things together with a theme of some of the flowers that I grow here.

The nice thing about mounting birdhouses to the posts on the ramp is so that we can watch them all from both the house and from our tea table in the front garden.

Lots of Projects with Daisies

I'm still wanting to plant a lot of daisies but not able to afford it to I'm adding daisies to the garden everywhere that I can. This season I'm doing it with paints.

I still keep changing my mind about the types of leaves that I want to paint on these so I'm trying everything and then outlining them with a paint pen so that they will show up from the street,

I'm getting a LOT closer to finishing the painting of my wheelchair ramp. It's the centerpiece of my yard and garden and will be joined with and arbor and trellis to match.

I even painted daisies on some of the garden gnomes to add more fun and energy to the theme.

Yes, I'd rather be planting daisies than painting them but this makes everyone smile and will have to be good enough for now.

I also took as many photos of then as I could so that I will have them for reference as I try to draw and paint them in the future.

Anew patch of Daisies popped up in the front yard and was a very welcome surprise.

Daisies are appearing everywhere here. I put some in the butterfly habitat so they can enjoy them too.

I painted some into a design I'm working on for fabric and plan to add a few other wildflowers to it before designing products with them.

I also added a few daisies to this old painting.

Roses

What I find most amazing about this photo is that the tops of some of the rosebushes are nearly up to the rooflines of our house and the neighbors.

One year they told me they really liked my roses and I said "good, they're headed your way"...and they thought I was kidding.

I'm not sure if you can tell from this photo, but the roses wrap all the way around 3 sides of the garden and efforts are being made to transplant some of them to the 4th side of the garden.

The really amazing thing about this is that they all came from an old family farm. One near the house and the some wilder ones from out in the woods. Time and the bees have done the rest.

Sunchaser Garden, Recycle Project

 You wouldn't think an old, beat up wagon would be much use for anything but this one has solved a major problem around here.

All it really needed was a coat of white paint so that it would blend in with the mesh patio furniture here. It's pretty good sized which is what gave me the idea for putting all of my garden plants into it.

One of the biggest problems with a regular garden here is that there are lots of trees and too much shade for most plants.

Putting everything into the wagon allows us to pull it over to any sunny spot in the yard or garden and to move it whenever we want to.

 I call this my "Sun Chaser Garden"

So far we're growing chives, chamomile, celery, radishes, carrots, peas, tomatoes, strawberries and sedum.

The strawberries that I'm trying this year have pink flowers and small alpine berries. They're not hearty in this zone but I plan to overwinter it in the house. I can't wait to see what happens with it.

It seems to be doing well so far.

There are quite a few small green tomatoes on the plants by the 2nd week of July. As you can see the wagon is filling up nicely.