Latest News from the Garden

We've just painted and added 2 new birdhouses

We're continuing to try to sell a lot of plants but after trying for a week only one person has stopped and he didn't even buy anything. I'm getting discouraged, I was kind of looking forward to meeting some new people. 

Here's another of the Iris blooming now and I ended up cutting and using the daisies from the yard before we managed to get pictures of them.

I was excited as I was potting up plants for the sale table. I found that 1/2 dozen of those micro tomato plants had actually survived and are looking great.
The amazing thing about these is the plant only gets 10 inches tall but it grows regular cherry tomatoes.

My recent goal with my garden is to find and grow micro and miniature  varieties  so that people in apartments, condo's and other places can grow a tiny garden on a windowsill.

I'm also looking for plants that will be nice to grow in the house over the winter. The more I learn about it the more interesting it becomes.





I can do indoors for the winter.

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.

Art Exhibit in the Garden. Putting the Birdhouse in place

 
Where else would this Birdhouse hang but on the arbor which is eventually becoming the major sculpture that anchors the Art Garden here. There's no more Hanging Space left on it so the new Blue and White  Birdhouse by Guest Artist Becca Latter will hang over with the bird feeders until we can make another place to hang it.

Here are some pictures of each side of the roof

Arbor Photos

The Front Garden

There are birds living in 2 of the birdhouses on the arbor and there seem to be babies in one of them so it's fun to watch all of the activity there and listen to them.

One of the things the birds seen to like is having a pool by the house and an assortment of feeders a few feet away.

I transplanted some of the violets from the backyard and love the fact that they came from a grandma over 30 years ago and have been taken along wherever we go ever since.

 Here are a few of my new favorite tulips.

Quite a contrast to the old ones which remain tangled in the rosebushes. That's been going on for 12 years now and I never quite get them all dug up and sorted out.

Why it's called paintersgarden

The wooden butterflies were cut out by a friend of mine and then i painted them.

I've even painted a lot of the purchased metal decorations so that there's plenty of fun and color in the garden while we wait for the flowers to grow and bloom.

Again you can see we're in a city and don't mind at all, in spite of the funny looks we get when people go by.

The lilac bush in the front yard is doing much better this year.

The arbor and all the lawn furniture used to be a lot of different colors but these days we're spray painting them "wildflower blue" and love the look.

I enjoyed painting the birdhouses and am painting a few flowers on the arbor as well.

Birds in the garden

A bit of gardening

The weather was beautiful here yesterday so I dug up and shared some lilies and Iris with a neighbor before putting in another section of wildflower border. This year I'm not taking any chances and mixed 2 types of store bought seed with the seed I'd gathered from my plants last season. It's got to come up full and pretty this year or I'm out of ideas and need a new plan.

I lost one of the strawberry plants I moved back in the cold weather but the rest of them seem to be doing well and I can report better than expected results with the climbing roses I put into the big planter box by the fence.

All in all I can say that the season is off to a good start. The radishes are up but not quite an inch tall. I munch on them while thinning the tiny shoots.

There are baby birds in at least one of the houses on the arbor out front and we enjoy the activity and noise of their little families so much that we barely notice the sounds of the traffic on our street. There are of course a lot of people that drive by to look and wave, it isn't often that you see a house in the city with a bird resort. After all they've got 8 houses, 4 feeders and 2 birdbaths here and many of the houses were built by my husband before I painted them with lots of bright and interesting designs...I guess we are quite a sight.

Getting Carried Away

 Those Dala horses are popping up just about everywhere these days.

Here's an assortment of some of the things I'm working on right now:

2 paintings

2 boxes

2 birdhouses

Everything seems to be coming in pairs this week. 

Improving weather

The daytime temperatures have been in the 60's and 70's the birds are singing and we've been able to open a few windows on the house so I've been distracted from the art (except for a while this afternoon when I cut up a garden catalog to decorate my mail with).
I've started cleaning up the garden and doing a bit of transplanting. It might be a bit early for that but there are so many plants here that I can gamble on loosing a few to get a jump on the season.
It's hard to tell but it looks like at least one of the birdhouses in the front yard is occupied already. It's fun to see them skip around between the houses, feeders and birdbaths.
I have yet to catch any of this with my camera but I will keep trying.

Outside Anyway

 Here are a few projects that I'm reworking. I brought everything outside (in spite of the bits of snow and ice here and there in the yard)

 We spot sanded the areas that I want to change and I started to prime some of it when I noticed that I couldn't quite tell whether it was just drying really fast or simply thickening from the cold.

 My only company out in the yard today were the birds and a passing squirrel. Some of the birds come over to the birch tree next to my work table and I always enjoy that. I guess they're kind of happy with that big lady that fills the feeders and the birdbaths, decorates their houses and keeps building them.

The important thing to remember about the painting is that the paint you remove is almost as important as the paint that you do apply and it all works together to add impact to your finished work.

Indoors and out

Well, I went as far as I could go with those bags and packed away the ones in progress when I ran out of straps and lining fabric. I'll pick up with them the next time I get supplies.

As you can see I've gone back to the portrait I've been painting and made myself another cotton pot holder.

It's been kind of a dull but peaceful week  I wish I had something a bit more interesting for you to be reading just now but on the other hand, perhaps the fact that things are quiet and peaceful here is just the thing to divert your attention from your busy day and have a bit of a vacation with me.

The warmer weather has had the birds back in the garden and a few have even seemed to take up residence in some of the brightly painted bird houses out on the arbor. Clearly, they think it's spring in spite of the date on my calendar.

There are lots of nice garden catalogs in my mailbox these days and I begin to dream about the new season.

Butterfly House, Birdhouses and yesterdays watercolors

I repainted the roof to the butterfly house, (Minnesota weather isn't kind to things like this and it's been out there for years.)

Yes, this arbor is a pretty busy place and I like to think that it brightens up the neighborhood a bit.

I was pretty surprised to see how well the new flowers I painted on it matched up when we put it back together.

I forgot to add this photo to yesterdays post. I had wet and salted watercolors EVERYWHERE !

Garden Photos

One way to save a little money on your flowers is to look around your yard for anything pretty and mix those in with a few inexpensive annuals for pops of color in your pots and planters.
Each year I paint a bird or butterfly house to add to things around here which of course adds a bit more color to the yard.
The weather here was a bit breezy but nice for spending the day outside. It looks like rain for tomorrow so I'm glad we were able to get as much done as we did today. The best things to pass through the yard were a cardinal and some butterflies.