Category Archives: Gardening

Here are some colorful mushrooms to decorate a fairy garden.

Rustic outdoor architectural pieces.

Decorations for a birdhouse themed garden

Colorful hanging glass balls.

An assortment of garden statuary

A lady statue to be used as a focal point.

Decorations for a swan garden

During our Florida vacation, my friend took me shopping to one of her favorite spots.  It was called The Barn and was a shopping enclave which included a restaurant along with antiques, interiors and gardening shops.  The garden shop was my favorite. It overflowed with a variety of gardening statues, plaques, wind chimes, flags, garden gnomes and fairy garden decorations. A path wound in and out of a quaint open-air building where different garden themes were featured.

During our Florida vacation, I took pictures of some tropical plants and flowers. Some I am familiar with and some I am not.

Here is a prickly pear cactus that was growing in my friends’ back yard. They gave me a piece to bring home. You can stick it in the ground and it should grow just about anywhere in the south.

These are bromeliads or air plants that do not need soil to grow. They were suspended on wire and made a great display at the Bok Tower Gardens museum.

Here is an unusual purplish colored orchid growing in a pot among some mondo grass.

This lovely blue flowering plant is called Lily of the Nile. I tried to grow one once and was unsucessful.  I think it prefers Florida’s climate.

In Florida, palms grow everywhere. There are many different varieties. Here is one growing beside a rather large elephant ear. I have tried these also but they can not survive frost.

Here is a mystery plant. It is some kind of vine, perhaps a variety of bougainvillea. Does anyone know what it is? It was very beautiful and I had never seen one before. You can see a yucca plant in the background.

Miniature Red Roses

Yellow Knock Out Roses behind Mardi Gras abelia bushes

Purple ice plants

Double coreopsis

Spanish lavender

Red Knock Out Roses. I know they look pink.

The best part is getting to bring beautiful flowers in the house!

Well, it is officially HOT in South Carolina!  The temperatures have reached 86 degrees and the humidity level must be near that same number in percentage levels. I knew that it would happen sooner or later. That is the reason I scramble about planting like a crazy lady from the end of March until early May.

Now, the watering chore begins….but I really don’t mind it a bit.  It is fun to water the plants, inspecting them for flowers and new growth.

My roses are beginning to take off.  I have both yellow and red Knock Outs. I have coreopsis, scabiosa and  Spanish lavender blooming now.  The Stella D’oro daylilies have buds and are about to bloom.  I started some ice plants but it will take a season or so for them to spread out.  Soon the crepe myrtles will join in with their spectacular frilly blossoms of pink and red.

Along with my garden, I am a work in progress.  I am learning to be patient with the work that God is doing in me.  Gardening is teaching me spiritual lessons. For example, it takes a long time and a lot of effort to remove ugly weeds or thorns then nurture the plants that make a garden lovely. So it is with our lives. We must yield to God’s pulling and tugging to help us to grow stronger and eventually become fruitful.

Our first project was replacing the old mailbox and making a bed around it. We had some existing azaleas which we saved but removed a lot of old plants and had to remove an old tree that was rotting. This picture shows the top of the bed with new shrubs and perennials. We used some evergreen cryptomeria shrubs, some variegated euyonomous shrubs and some perennial flowers. It is especially challenging since the yard is on slope.

Here is the front bed as viewed from the driveway. There is still a stump where the tree was removed but we planted a crepe myrtle to replace it. We have planted a mix of shrubs and plants. We have some yellow Knock Out roses on the far side. There are some trailing yews and dwarf forsythias in the lower portion of the bed. We chose shorter plants at the bottom so that the larger ones could be seen from below . On the steepest area next to the driveway, I placed some sedum and Ice plants to spread out and cover bare spots.  Hopefully they will help prevent the soil from washing away.

Here is one touch of color right now. This blue clematis trails and climbs up a garden globe near our front steps.

Here is a trouble spot. We have no grass under the front left side of our house under the trees. The slope forces water to flow this way. So far we are having difficulty getting anything to grow here.

Here are some plants along our front walkway. We replaced most of the old plants in this section. We have a mix of arborvitae, gardenias and japanese pieris. These plants are better suited for this area that gets almost no direct sun all day. There is a Confederate Jasmine vine growing along a trellis that should reach the newly constructed arbor in a year or so.

I will begin posting pictures of my garden this year as it progresses.  You can see that we have been hard at work but still have a long way to go.  My yard has some challenges.  I welcome suggestions for these problem areas.  Hopefully, we will inspire others by our ideas as well.

I did not come up with that expression on my own but borrowed it from a garden plaque that my father gave to me years ago.  I was reminded of the saying especially this week.

These azaleas were especially spectacular.

I love this little hosta garden.

This garden had some beautiful yellow bearded irises and blue spiderwort.

What a picturesque spot to sit and sip morning coffee!

This garden arbor was canopied with a yellow rose that was about to bloom.

This garden had a wonderful water fountain along a brick wall.

Here is an old birdbath turned into a lovely planter.

I loved how these evergreen shrubs were trimmed into perfect conical shapes. The whole garden was designed with evergreens both large and small.

This garden was well-designed with native plants for our area. The palm trees blended especially well among lilies and hostas of varying shades of green.

I got the pleasure of touring some beautiful gardens during our town’s spring festival. It is amazing the varieties of plants that God has made.  Some grow well in the shade while others only do well in the sunshine. Flowering plants come in nearly every color of the rainbow. I saw yellow and purple irises, azaleas in varied shades of white and pink, and spectacular magenta tinted rhododendron blossoms. We missed the tulips which had already bloomed and faded. Yet other flowers were in bud and were just about to bloom.

One can not visit a garden without being reminded of how wonderful is the One who can create such beauty.

I attended a very interesting seminar during my hometown Spring Festival this week.  It was all about Monarch butterflies and how to attract them to flower gardens. For display purposes, several Painted Lady butterflies were contained in netted butterfly cages.   A  few Monarchs were in a box that had been shipped in for the seminar. We were told that it costs over $100 to order a box of a dozen Monarch butterflies in the mail. Painted Ladies are less expensive so she had more of them on hand.

The speaker told us that to attract Monarch butterflies to our gardens, we must plant milkweed plants.They can easily be planted by seed. She had both seeds and seedlings to give away. I brought home three tiny seedlings of milkweed plants to try to grow in my garden.

The butterflies were released at the end of the seminar.  Unfortunately, the weather was damp and cold so the butterflies were slow to move.  They didn’t want to fly away but lingered a long time which made it easier to photograph them.

OK, it’s official. The gardening bug has bitten me.  It always happens to me in the early spring as soon as the weather gets warm.  My housework starts to get neglected. I want to be outdoors. I start moving plant pots around and make plans for new ways to create outdoor rooms off the back of our house.

I find myself making frequent visits to the local home store’s gardening department to search for new plants for my yard. So far I have planted three new Knockout Rose bushes and four forsythia bushes.

I love getting my hands in the dirt!