Garden Joys

Spring has finally come with the blooms of phlox, forsythia, roses, azaleas, money plant, lady bank roses, spider wart, iris, peonies, and spirea. I love, love, love cutting and arranging blooms from our yard to spruce up the dining room table. Don't you like the vase my sister let me pick out for my birthday about 10 years ago? I really like the scalloped edges and the color. It puts me in a spring kind of mind.


These past 2 weeks I've concentrated on putting in perennials and annuals in our flower beds between our home and garage. The house didn't have a garage when we purchased it, so my hubs built one, but the city would not let him attach it to the house. No problem, he just designed a lovely area that we've made into a flower garden in the spring and summer months. It also gives me a space to decorate the rest of the year with greenery and pots.

My color choices this summer range in the yellows and purples with a touch of lime! What fun it has been to put it all together. I've included some inground items and some potted plants as well. And new to the garden this year is a bicycle! I saw this done in a small flower bed in Hendersonville, NC near our mountain cabin and knew I had to do it too. My husband found an old bike on a farm he bought last year and brought it home for me.


At the base of the bike, I've got sweet potato vines that I hope I can eventually wind into the framework and wheels. I've also planted variegated ivy from my mother that I'm winding around the middle part of the frame. I didn't have a basket for the handlebars, but a couple of years ago my hubby and his brothers were looking around killing time at a church yard sale while my sisters-in-law and I were shopping in downtown Strasburg, PA and he found 3 wire, round baskets with handles. I had painted them silver at Christmas, so I just attached a basket to the handlebars and planted yellow and purple petunias and something akin to johnny jump-ups as well as lime coleus. Presto change-o!


I purchased impatiens this week for the shady part of the garden bed. Here they await like soldiers ready for duty. Due to a recent surgery on my knee, I've had to take it easy getting down to plant them. I'll try to work on them again tomorrow several times until I get everyone in his/her places.


I have put together a small, divided wire basket of Irish Moss and purple petunias.


In a container on the garage wall, is a sweet potato vine that trails. I got the idea for the garage wall from a shop in Beaufort, NC some years ago. I try to add a new item to the wall every now and then.

Here's a basket full of nasturtiums that I found at the Farmer's Market in Raleigh recently. I love the French blue on the chair. It makes me smile!


I also have a large pink geranium grouped with a pot of purple lobelia and another pot of lime coleus before you get to the entrance of the garden.


The garden gate has silver bells hung on it from our trip to Oregon a few years ago. We got the wrought iron for the gate from a salvage store in Raleigh, NC about 10 years ago and I asked the store owner where it had come from. It came from the hotel where we spent our wedding night! If we ever move, the gate has to go with us because it has such a special memory for us.


By the gate, is a potted fern to welcome friends and family. It has a dragon fly perched in it that I bought some years ago while visiting Cape Cod with my sister.

This morning our cat, Scruffy, and I sat on the steps looking over the garden while I enjoyed my coffee. I can hardly wait to see how it all looks again tomorrow!