GARDEN
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Romantic Flower Garden Design for a Rental House on Budget
Ladies, The gardener must have a plan. But the plan can be “I am craving violas”. Yes, let the flowers romance your decisions. As winter suddenly turned into spring this year as of March, I found myself longing for a long-lost friend, those first blooms of spring during my childhood up North. Violas would appear and then we knew: spring was here. Yet for many years I valued them little. I didn’t think they were worth my time or attention in a romantic garden full of more saucy flowers, showy and brazenly gorgeous. Especially since they are the first blooms of spring and do not last long. But it was…
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Winter to Spring Garden Prep: the Hard Work of Beauty
Ladies, Making things beautiful is hard work. I stood in my winter garden yesterday in the February air looking at how beauty can degrade. None of the outcomes we enjoy happen as quickly as a scroll to it, or a page turned, or a video clicked. The truth of beauty is that it is sometimes hard to create, that it comes after long seasons of dormancy and tending, it can be fleeting, and then we go back to work to bring it about again. The daily borage of insects and mildew threatened to destroy my flowers daily last spring and summer. I went out to water plants in warm mornings…
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Why Grow Hydrangeas: Longest Lasting Blooms in the Garden
Best Return on Investment in the Garden Ladies, This seasons best bloomers was between the double knockout roses and the hydrangeas. But the longest lasting blooms award definitely goes to my hydrangea friends. I’m swooning over their gorgeous blooms that lasted five months from March until August. After five months, the blooms started to look too tattered to keep. I gave them a major pruning once I saw new buds and blossoms and once the old blooms were off, all of that energy diverted to the new blooms and they matured faster for another round of gorgeous blossoms. Economical Landscaping When we moved into this rental house six months ago,…
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How to Design a Mediterranean Country Summer Home: Outdoor Dining, Flowers, & Fashion
Welcome to my summer home in the countryside Ladies, Summer always makes me think of the Mediterranean. So aside from never-ending laundry from sweating through our clothes in one day, I design a summer home reminiscent of this look and feeling of being among the rolling hills of the French and Italian countryside and those coastlines. My vision of this retreat has not yet been fully done but I continually pull from this idea to create the feel wherever it is I live at the moment. The Mediterranean feel, look, and lifestyle has been my favorite template to design my home for summer. Vacation Perspective One thing that stands out…
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What to Wear for Gardening in the Summer
Country women & gardeners have style essentials too Ladies, have you ever noticed how fashion magazines assume we all live in the city and work in offices? Their recommendations never seem to take into account the one who spends her days outdoors, among dirt, plants, animals, even children, working for her own family or a paid job that is grittier. What does a woman wear for her day working at home, working outdoors, surrounded by life, sticky hands, dirty paws, dough flinging off her beaters, flour in her hair, and insects buzzing all around her? I don’t think the fashion industry touted white button-down blouse fits anywhere into this kind…
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5 Things that Create Year-Round Beautiful Garden Design
Learning how to design a garden starts with observing the garden… Ladies, I could have titled this article “The beautiful spot amid a tattered rental property and what it taught me” but that is long winded. This has been our rental property for only four months which makes the dream of an established garden, that takes about ten years to become what it ought, seem like a distant goal. But there were certain features in this largely undeveloped property that speak to great garden design. Observe This may seem a bit slow and unimportant but number one to garden design is to become an observer of your surroundings. Become acquainted…
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In the Garden : Seasons of life depicted by the Rose
I walked through the warm misty morning air over the brick courtyard to see the roses glistening in the dew. I was instantly mesmerized by the shimmering water on the rose. A mere droplet of water on a petal captivated my soul in worship to my Creator of glory in such small things. The color was as satiating as a meal for hunger. Describing it as “coral” or “pink” hardly conveyed the nuanced ombré of the lavender tint on the outer most horizon of the petal’s curve. The delicate veins and furl of the petal shown in the iridescent dew making the color seem to glow. I stood immersed in…