A Garden Montage

I feel blog lazy today so I've decided to just take you on a ramble about the gardens. The gardens, mind you, are more a wild jungle of green. My intentions to wrestle them back into some sort of order this year never got beyond the idea stage. Travel, company, and procrastination got in the way but the final nails in the coffin of this plan was the nonstop weeks of smoke and heat. But fortunately hubby's favorite hobby is watering so even though most of it is weeds and overgrown invasion loving plants, it looks pretty and green and something new gifts us with blooms each day.

Some people can't get it to grow, we can't seem to get rid of it. Our perennial sweet peas are past most of their blooms and are happily growing seed pods. Don't let it fool you, you can't eat them. If you could, we'd be set for the year! I really need to pull out 80% of it, but in the meantime, it's pretty.


My sundial is being swallowed up by Yarrow, Fancy Milkweed, Russian Sage, and French Tarragon.


I've been on a no buying anything new kick this year. Well, not counting things like milk and laundry detergent and socks for the teen and so on. But this blue fellow seemed to need to come home with me from the hardware store. He's very pretty in the garden and I don't regret the impulse.


Here's some more garden creatures. You'll find them out here every day under our big shady maple - coolest spot on our little homestead and you can watch the world walk, drive, flutter, or run by.


I did manage some garden time in late spring and I made a little Halloween theme garden in this wine barrel. A black and orange garden ball (pssst, it's an old bowling ball), orange and black pansies, orange marigolds that will bloom later in the season, and a black heirloom tomato plant called Dark Prince. I can hardly wait to try one. Mwahahaha. And oh yeah, there's some morning glories twining in there I see. They'll have to go before they take over. Why can they grow by the hundreds in my vegetable garden but no matter how many seeds or plants I try to transplant to my arches, fences, or trellises, they just go phhhbbbt and won't grow on them!? Me and morning things, not the best of friends these days apparently. Maybe I'd have better luck if I tried growing Moonflowers again.... hmmmmm....

This is the compost pile. Obvious, right? No? It's been taken over by pumpkins (at least I think that's what they are) on the bottom and grapevine on the top. I'm curious what we'll get, we haven't had pumpkins in a few years and it's obviously way past the opportunity to move them, so I've instructed William to dump the compost NEXT to the compost pile on top of a grove of tall weeds between the compost pile and the dog kennel.


Hollyhocks have taken over the yard front, back, everywhere. Most of them are cream, white, and pale pinks. A few that hint at yellow. I like this one stand of dark magenta along the back fence.


Wait a minute, you say. This is a garden photo? Yes, in fact, it is. It's the chandelier at one of our local Chinese Restaurants called Happy Garden. Hah! Gotcha. I've always liked this light fixture, the tiny blue crystals on the edges are just such an unexpected twist on the traditional. This is just the bottom of it, it's very tall (long?) and hangs in the middle of the restaurant.


This matching fixture hangs near the cashier's counter. The large round center mimics the center of the chandelier and really get a chance to shine on this light which reminds me of a crystal sunflower.

And now, speaking of Happy Garden, I have ten minutes to change into something clean, brush my hair, grab my purse and cell phone, and drive there to meet my friend Shelly for a lovely, chatty, air-conditioned, delicious lunch date.

Oh, I have some faery photos up on Laume's Studio if you want to take a peek. Some are faeries in the garden, so that ties in nicely with this post, and the other pics are what I'm working on for faery garb for the fast approaching festival. Let me know what you think - do you like my outfit so far?