I love how this looks in my garden, but the making of the corked garden sphere was a pain in the neck! I harvested from my cork collection (how did it get so large?!) and glued the corks on to a cheap, round light fixture. Read the rest of this entry
Dan the Man and I recently took a week long trip to Key West to celebrate our 30th anniversary. (I love you, honey!). We were there during their annual Singer/Songwriter Festival. We enjoyed the good music, cold drinks, and the six-toed cats. We learned a little about American history at Truman’s Little White House and Ernest Hemingway’s house. One of my favorite activities was spending an hour or so in the Key West Butterfly and Nature Conservancy. Birds, butterflies, and lush foliage abounded, and I stayed busy oohing and aahing as I snapped pictures. I was especially taken with the fruit feeders placed throughout the Conservancy: Read the rest of this entry
It’s so damn hot here (110 degrees heat index), it’s hard to take pleasure from the outdoors. Even the pool is stifling, so indoors and air conditioning are the order of the day. But looking at this picture from last spring, I get a little reminder of when my garden looked fresh and new. This year, though, in an effort to save time and money, I didn’t re-do many of my backyard pots. Instead, I used a lot of mint and oregano to add greenery, and I resorted to this inexpensive boost of purple and gold (LSU!). I spray painted some thin dowels, topped them with plastic Christmas ornaments, and voila, instant beauty. Read the rest of this entry
Besides enjoying a bunch of blossoms in my backyard garden, I like to have some ornamentation. No grinning troll or pink flamingo for me, though. I prefer subtle touches, like this pot necklace. All I had to do was take a l-o-n-g piece of wire, string on some pretty beads, and wrap it around the pot. If you’d like to try this yourself, make sure you have a pot with a “neck” so the beads won’t slide down. You’ll like it as much as I do!
Five years ago, Dan the Man and I had a swimming pool installed in the then-barren backyard. Yes, our unstated intention was to entice the grandkids over to Grandma’s and Grandpa’s, but we’ve probably enjoyed it more than they have. Because of the expense of the pool, though, we were unprepared for the costs of landscaping. So I randomly installed pass-along plants and made good use of cheap seeds. It looked nice, but it still needed more structure and less haphazard-ness. So I went on a quest to learn about garden design.
crapsmanship 