Curbside Trash to Garden Box and Trellis

Here's how the assembly and painting looked like when it was finished. All that's left now is to install it. Now I'll walk you through the steps that got me to this point.

#1. I always start by looking around to see what I need and what I've got to fill that need with. This time of year my mind is always on the garden so I decided that I needed a trellis. These leaves were part of some broken wall art given to me by a friend who was cleaning her storage space out.

We built this planter several years ago from scrap lumber and salvaged siding. 

Here's a couple of old garden cages and the seat support from an old recliner.

A bit of spray paint and some pieces of an old sculpture should help with it's looks.

 I already consider this a vast improvement and am considering taking things a step further by adding some color to the leaves and flowers.

I wired the leaves, flowers and vines to the base piece before painting it.

Of course there was left over paint to use and as you can see I had a bit of fun with that too.

What I really liked about the whole thing is  the view. I can sit back and enjoy looking at my work from the living room no matter what the weather.

Yes, I'll continue adding flowers to the rails whenever I've got an extra bit of paint handy. It gets a bit more interesting all of the time.

Garden progress and planning a greenhouse window

There's a lot of planting and transplanting going on now from the large houseplant to a strawberry jar for the deck along with some chives and lettuce that will be part of the new greenhouse window project.

This went pretty well except that I got the power wheelchair stuck while trying to drive across the lawn between the ramp and my driveway. We're hoping to build some sort of solid walkway to avoid that. I'd forgotten my cell phone so i had to sit out there until my husband missed me and came looking for me. NOT my finest hour!

It went really well. I'm using a large patio pot as my potting station and it seems to be just the right height to keep everything handy.

One thing I hadn't counted on is how much of the dirt landed on the footrest of my chair. "It gives planting your feet somewhere" and "putting down roots" a whole new meaning and really made us laugh. I hope you're having fun with your gardens too...Even though some of us still have to be hauling things in and out of the house as we wait for warmer weather. I LOVE "playing in the dirt"!

Starting my Garden

It's sad to say but this is as far as my garden has gotten this season. We're still waiting for warmer weather and hoping for good things.

I'm experimenting with starting the sunflowers indoors hoping that putting plants out will work better than putting down seed that the birds  always seem to run off with.

Other plants I'm starting are flowers, purple bunching onions that are like a small green onion but purple and purple dragon and atomic red carrots. Just ignore the hosta in the foreground. It was a tiny baby leftover from the ones I was transplanting in the front yard. I'm trying to get some good growth on it before putting it in the new flower bed. I've also got some chives going and will probably keep at least one pot of those in the house for meals.




and some carrots

Adding Carnations to the Tulip Painting

There's still a lot of work to do but I kind of like my plan to paint all of the fresh flowers I get into this painting until it's a nice, full bouquet.

Laying the real flowers next to where I'm working helps me focus on the shapes and shading of the petals.

I can't wait to get back to my brushes!

Re-cutting and re-arranging carnations

Recycle and make new cards

The assortment of things I had to work with today was some white card and envelopes, bits of note cards and envelopes from this weeks incoming mail.

The card on the end was made from bits of a box that some note cards I had came in.

The pieces I used for this card came off of an old Birthday card and as you can see I drew a daisy on the envelope to match...or it would have matched if I'd had the right colors of pencils but you get the idea. 

Carnations in pencil and ink

Carnations to draw and paint

I still haven't gotten around to drawing and painting these so I re-cut and rearranged them about a week later and as you can see they were still looking pretty good. I only had to discard one spent flower.

Painting things for the garden

Transplanting lilies, hosta, violets and lily of the valley from a wheelchair

I can't do the digging anymore but my husband digs up the plants I want, I trim and divide them and decide where they're supposed to go before he does the planting.

It's going well and we just do a bit of it a day.

In the house I'm starting a lot of seed and each year I do more container gardening so that I can take care of things myself.

We also hung a few birdhouses. I hold them where I want them to go on the sides of the wheelchair ramp while my husband attaches them. It's nice to know that lots of bird nest at different heights so I can continue to enjoy watching them.

This time of year several types of birds flit back and forth between  the 7 different birdhouses in my front yard as they try to choose the right one for them. We really enjoy watching and listening to them and yes,
I've painted all of the houses myself so they seem to be art critics as well.

Stickers to the rescue

Sometimes it's just not convenient to touch up the paint in the room so I used wall decals from the dollar store to cover the boo boos in the wall and coordinate with the painting that hangs on that wall.

The solution was fast, cheap and easy as well as easy on the eyes. I like it a lot. 

Amazing Tiny Iris

What always amazes me about these is how tiny they are. Seeing them next to my pencils should give you a much better idea of their size.

First Flowers in the Front Yard