August garden

I know better than to take pictures in bright sun but that's what I had. Here's how plants on the terrace are doing this hot, hot summer.

This cute Gambel's Quail pot (in honor of my brother-in-law in the desert) is holding a sempervivum that is starting to bloom. The bright orange moss rose is from a pot behind it.

Who knew that WalMart sold staghorn ferns? I'm very pleased with this one. It reminds me of my dad who grew these in San Diego. Of course, his didn't have to come inside for the winter. Where am I going to find room?

This carrot is the extent of my vegetable gardening. Nice, huh? Actually I did use the parsley below it in a some recipe I was following. Not much of a cook these days.

This Taro plant was decimated in the hail earlier this summer. Finally it sprouted a new leaf and there's another one coming. And for some reason, Chickadees would rather drink out of this small water garden than the many birdbaths on offer.

Hard to tell, but I guess you'd call these White-eyed Susans. They aren't yellow and they don't have any eye, but the grocery store had these hanging baskets 2/$10. I Bloom-Boosted them and they took off.

I'm surprised I get any bloom from these containers since my terrace doesn't get full sun. But they manage, sort of. More terrace below with my tiny pond and one of the birdbaths.

You have to look hard to see the tiny black orbs on this Ornamental Pepper. They look like shiny marbles in the sun. I'm surprised this plant is doing anything since I forgot to water it and it looked totally dead and withered. I watered it anyway and the next day it was feeling fine. Plants can be so surprising.

Garage sale garden

I like to troll garage sales for castoff household stuff that I can re-use in my garden, otherwise known as garden kitsch. It doesn't cost much, I can always find a spot for it, and if it breaks (squirrels are responsible for that) I can always find something else to fill in. Here are a few recent finds.

This giant egg is porcelain so putting it on this metal stand is iffy as far as jumping squirrels are concerned, but so far so good.

I love the design on this pot. I couldn't figure out if it should go with my Mexican stuff, my Buddha stuff, or what. I decided it might be Art Deco and that I don't have. It was $2.

Isn't this parrot lamp fabulous? It's all metal, came with a bulb, and it's a 2-way lamp. $5.  Looks fabulous on my Goodwill wicker table. As my 6-year-old grandson said, "Who would SELL that?"

This Mexican pot is huge and I knew I had to have it the second I spotted it. The guy wanted $2. Okay, I said.

Not real sure where these will end up, but for $1 apiece I'm sure I'll find a spot. All metal.

This huge pot came from the same sale as the Mexican pot. I would normally have bargained down the $5 price but I was so happy with the Mexican pot I gladly paid.

And this rattan footstool (also $5) works well on my back porch. I can kick it around to wherever it's needed. I'm glad I live in a cold climate so garage sales will come to an end in a month or so. My yard is big, but not THAT big.

Hot weather, hot fires

It's been hot, hot, hot in Colorado. Over 100 degrees every day for the past 6 days. We were complaining about not being able to keep our gardens watered enough but the magnitude of the fires that have exploded from high winds, hot temps, and no moisture has overshadowed mere garden troubles. Tonight, the fire west of Colorado Springs has jumped into the city and is burning homes within neighborhoods. The Air Force Academy has been evacuated; and 32,000 more people evacuated from their homes, some of which are burning now. These shots are from Fox 31 News in Denver.

Colorado Springs is about an hour south of my house. My nephew and his wife are on alert for evacuation.

To the north of us is Flagstaff Mountain. My son and his wife were married up there 12 years ago. It's on fire today too. Heavy winds and a thunder storm (no rain) flared up with many lightning strikes. This is the result of one of those strikes.

There are so many wildfires in Colorado it's hard to keep track of them all. Everyone knows someone affected and its hard to find an area where there isn't smoke or ash or flames. Hot weather, indeed.

Poppy sways

I'm a sucker for garden kitsch. And here is my latest - poppy sways. They're shallow metal cups on long thin stakes that sway in the breeze. I'm loving these. When the real poppies are long gone (soon) I'll still have "poppies" in this flower bed.

Fairy tale

Friday was trash pickup day in our neighborhood and I saw this big shallow wooden tray at my neighbor's curb. I thought it would be a great container for a fairy garden. I hauled it down to the lower patio and put it on top of my grandchildren's outgrown picnic table.

Then I filled it with potting soil. I didn't put any liner in though I might be sorry later. As for drainage, there's plenty of space for water to drain out where the boards were joined together.

Here's all the stuff I bought to start out landscaping for the fairies. This stuff isn't cheap. But I did steal a few things from another smaller fairy garden I'd put together for my oldest granddaughter a couple of years ago. She prefers to decorate hers with fresh flowers from the garden, sparkly costume jewelry and glitter, and possibly a photo of Justin Bieber.  This new fairy garden is more of a Rocky Mountains theme.

How charming is this?

You kind of have to forget about scale in a fairy garden. I have lots of actual birdhouses around my yard but none of them are bigger than my lawn chairs. The birdhouse below is actually a pen with a birdhouse topper. Works for me.

The grass is some kind of artificial mat they were selling in the Fairy Garden section (yes, there is such a department) at the local nursery.

The fairy house is really a resin birdhouse. Found it marked down at the grocery store.

Gotta have a wheelbarrow and a shovel.

I like the rocks next to the blue spruce. They're actually shards from a pot that broke last winter because I didn't bring it in. The settee and the birdhouse have been out in the weather for a couple of years. They rust rather nicely.

I'm loving this sweet fence. I could only buy two sections without freaking out at the price. As it is, I merely winced. The little "bush" is Turkish Veronica.

The fairies will need a bicycle to use while their wings dry (it's supposed to be rainy this evening).

My youngest granddaughter was my helper. She placed the fairies in the proper areas.

This is the view of the fairy garden from my upper patio. I can check to see if squirrels are making off with the furnishings.

 My neighbor tells me that wooden tray was originally the cover for his sprinkler system valves. That was back in the day before they used plastic. I'm glad he decided to upgrade and I'm pretty sure the fairies are pleased about it too.

Lost in leopard

I have 'reader' eyeglasses in every room in the house. They're fairly inexpensive and I tend to pick them up anywhere I see a frame I like. Today (a blustery day) I was curled up in an easy chair watching old movies on TV, snuggled in a leopard-print throw. I needed my glasses to change the channel and when I reached for them I couldn't find them at first. Can you?

Christmas tree as memorabilia cache?

It's a snowy evening. Christmas was two weeks ago. I should take down the Christmas decorations.

 

But like most of you, I hate doing this. Really, it was hard enough to get all the trimmings up. I think I spent the better part of two weeks to get this accomplished and I'm beginning to suspect it may take me that long to put it all away.

I like looking at all the "stuff" on the tree. I treat my tree just as much as a memory box as I do an ornament holder. I have lots of things on there that I like. Here's an old pair of baby stockings made in the late 1800's that a grandparent wore as an infant.

I found these in a box of old family stuff hidden away in a closet where no one ever saw them. So I put them on the tree each Christmas. I've attached a tag to them citing their provenance so my kids won't wonder "where those came from."

I also use keepsakes from important events as ornaments. These are from Sweet Son and Darling Daughter-in-law's wedding 11 years ago. The bird's nest with eggs were on each table, and the bubbles were in a tulle-wrapped bottle with an angel motif.

I also like to remember my awesome brother who died just before Christmas two years ago. I have his photo in a tiny Christmas frame and I like to look at it.  

There are lots of regular ornaments too, some whimsical, a lot shiny, and just plain pretty. The seashell reminds me of all the Mexican beach vacations we've taken over the years.

 I seem to have a thing for flamingos too. Here's a miniature of the big lighted one that lives on my back porch.

 

I also like to pick up these glass ornaments that are so breakable but so pretty. Here's one of them.

Okay, enough reminiscing. Time to put it all away and be surprised next year when I unpack it all over again! Oh, before it started snowing today I did take down the outdoor lights and reindeer and lighted willow twigs and the wreath and the rope light encircling the porch post...gosh I think I'm too tired and will postpone all this till tomorrow.

 

Flowering haystacks?

Try to imagine these blue flowers sticking out all over from this haystack. Wouldn't that be odd? I just watched Red Riding Hood which is a movie that got really bad reviews but the cinematography looked pretty so I watched it. One of the first scenes showed these funny conical haystacks jammed all together in a field. What I couldn't get past were all the blue flowers sticking out of the hay. Really? I've seen a lot of haystacks but granted mostly going by at 70 mph but I still think I might have noticed if they grew blue flowers.


I could hardly concentrate on the movie (good thing) worrying about this and I even watched the deleted scenes and got an even better view of the haystack flowers. Now that I think about it it would be nice if these were real and not part of a fairy tale movie. I'd slow down to at least 55 mph to look at those.


And imagine how Claude Monet's famous painting could be a lot more colorful.

Happy New Year

I'm not taking my Christmas decorations down yet. The Magi haven't arrived. The Stock Show hasn't even started. In Denver we get a free pass for leaving our lights up through the Stock Show but probably even I won't wait that long. Last year my daughter never got around to taking her tree down at all. Merry Maids dusted it occasionally. These trees will stay up all year and I'll just remove the golden magpie and his gold-dusted nest and call it Summer in the Rockies. Happy New Year!

First week of summer

After the initial flush of spring weeding and planting now suddenly it's summer when I sit back and enjoy the results. If weeds are popping up I'm ignoring them. Besides, I'm tired when I come home from work. I can manage to pop the top off a cold beer but that's about it.

I'm fond of Black and Blue salvia and managed to find several plants at Lowe's this year that weren't dead yet. I can achieve that myself as the summer wears on.

My tiny terrace is packed with lots of pots, bird baths and all sorts of junk. I enjoy it all. I don't have a theme with the colors or the plants, but I like a pop of bright orange here and there.

Oh, and peach and pink. That rose is Zepherine Drouhin. Hibiscus courtesy of the grocery store.

Back in the day I wouldn't have dreamed of putting orange flowers in my garden but I have no such qualms now. I guess if there's a color theme scattered M&M's would be it.


The lower yard is mostly green. I love the lawn, but I no longer love mowing it. A guy does it nowadays.

Another one of my adorable grandchildren sailing a boat in Grammy's miniscule pond while I sit back and enjoy the first week of summer.

Forgetfulness

I never can remember the name of this rose (I also can't remember to post to my blog). So I've renamed it Shell Pink. Shell Pink is just a regular rose which this year thinks its a tree rose. I rather like that. Any tree rose I've intentionally tried to grow has always died so now I'm pretending that this was on purpose. It smells heavenly.

In the back yard this is as good as it gets for the rambler rose, Paul's Himalayan Musk, which is growing up a pine tree. Not so magnificent but a pretty good show for a rose that's about as big as a half-dollar. I've managed to cram back into the pine branches the wayward canes that slap the lawn-mowing guy across the face. I know he'll appreciate it.

Here's one of my darling grandchildren. He's a month shy of being 4 years old. Of the five of them he was the only one who wanted to help Grammy pull weeds at the back of his house to plant a pumpkin patch. Though he really doesn't look too happy about it here. I was probably hogging the hoe.

His oldest brother (age 8) agreed to water the pumpkin hills every day. Hope he doesn't suffer from forgetfulness like Grammy does.

Amur may be "no more"

Remember how disappointed I was the last few years because my Amur Maple wouldn't turn red in the fall? Well, it did this year. Glorious, huh? I was certainly pleased over my late bloomer. And it only took four years.
Even the fallen leaves in the birdbath below the tree were beautiful.

We had 16 inches of snow fall over a couple of days in late October but the tree held up.

But last week we had another snowstorm, only 10 inches this time. But it was a much wetter snow and most of it came in the night while I was asleep and not out there knocking snow off the maple's branches.

Uh-oh. This can't be good. Not sure it will survive this but at least it finally turned red before it ends up dead.