View from the front door

These plants are much too crowded and will be transplanted elsewhere soon. It was a nice surprise to see flowers on the strawberries this morning.

View from the arbor

I took this photo from the sidewalk next to the arbor. What you're seeing now is the old flower bed and the new border a few feet away. The plan is to make this into a wide perennial garden and eliminate the need to mow a patch of the yard that's about 15 feet long and 5 or 6 feet wide.

As you can see we've got a lot of roses started on this side of the yard as well.

These are at the back of the front yard and the others I showed you are up in the front border just a few feet from the street.

The Sunday Gardener

One of the things I love about a garden is that it changes everyday. I had a few ripe strawberries to munch on while transplanting a few things.

Before I tell you about that, here are a couple pf pictures of my flowers.

And here's a picture of my road to happiness. To most people it's just a brown patch in the lawn but to me it's the path that gets me from the wheelchair ramp into my garden and as you can see it's well worn.

As you can see the lettuce and Chinese cabbage were pretty crowded by all the peas running up the Art Sculpture Trellis so I transplanted quite a lot of it to several other planters around the garden.

This long planter used to be home to 4 strawberry plants but is now being used for my salad garden. only 2 of the strawberry plants are setting fruit so they're in separate pots on another table.

My day in the garden

This is my idea of a garden. You can relax and take your time so that it hardly seems like work at all. It's pleasant, comfortable and everything is handy.

This stacking planter is on the deck for easy picking when the lettuce, strawberries,pea pods, lettuce and radishes are ready. They've grown quite a bit in the last week or so.

I was unsure of some of the flower seeds and bulbs that I had so I started them in a pot so they'd be easier to keep track of. Now that they'd outgrown that I had them put in the flower boeder at the front of the yard.

I've got nice cushions for this furniture whenever I have company and when I've got time I'll repaint the furniture itself.

You can barely see the trellis I built anymore. It's a full and busy place...good eating too. We've been cutting lettuce for about a week.

I still have a shaded area for all of the baby plants and they're doing well too.

This hanging basket is an experiment to see if pea pods will grow hanging down instead of climbing up on things.

The onions seem to be doing well too.

Ramblin' Roses

 We especially liked this photo because you can just barely see the roof of the house in the background and it gives you an idea of just how much of the yard has been taken over by the roses.

The main area that they cover is about 12 foot wide, 5 foot deep and 6 foot tall and that's just the half that sicks out in the front yard, it goes through the fence and covers even more of the back yard.

Watercolor Garden and Greenhouse Plans

 I'm tempted to just let the pictures tell the story but that would deprive me the opportunity to write about the fun I had with some of my garden photos and the drawings and watercolors that they inspired. I'm sure you've already guessed that these were done on mixed media cards that went out in the mail today.

It was overcast out today and looked like rain so I didn't want to go outside today which explains me working with photos today instead of live or fresh flowers.

In addition to working on these I installed a stained glass window cling in the dining room. We're trading the view of the neighbors house, grill and trash cans for a built in greenhouse window. I've drawn up plans for the frame and shelving that we plan to build soon.

Having the cling on the window will divert the light a bit and keep plants from burning.

Red Birds

Becca Painting Watercolors, Guest Artist in the Studio

Columbine and Wintergreen

The columbine I grow because it's a good plant for woodland areas and I've got 3 large trees in the front yard. My hope is that it will reseed and spread to fill the border with flowers.

The wintergreen can be used in many ways so I'm researching all of the different things that I'll be able to make from it.

The place that I got it said "eat, drink and grow berries...fruit can be eaten fresh...the leaves make tea." I'm looking forward to trying it.