Hello! We're still here!

I'm having trouble finding time to make updates, but I promise it's due to a lack of hours in the day. Things are good! My continued dry spell in posting is solely due to being so busy, the whole having a full time job and trying to be a full time mom while managing a chronic illness is a lot. And it's just that time of year for crazy schedules. There's something going on almost every day between sports games, practices and training, weekly allergy shots, play dates... wait why did I agree to be on the PTA board again? Have a lots my mind? We are finally getting into a groove with full-day, full-week school for both kids (kindergarten and fourth grade!), mastering the art of quick dinners between soccer and taekwondo, of filling out reading logs, trumpet lessons, remembering library books and spirit day and to charge the chrome books nightly. 

The Halloween decorations went up, the garden is being cleaned up. I'm repotting things to go in the greenhouse (though the weather has been so unseasonably warm that even the citrus trees are still outside). I'm working on a September/October garden wrap up post. I need to take photos of our annual holiday decorations. I want to write about dahlias. 

In the meantime... instead of regaling you with tales of house cleaning and how I'm reorganizing the cabinets... here are a few happy things, snippets of joy in the little yellow house recently: 

I found pink mums for the porch. Not dark purple, not fuschia - pink! They were a lovely find and really freshened up the porch steps as the summer plants withered from mildew. Pink mums in aqua pots! 

Here's what they look like blooming pink.

There have been butterflies! Friendly butterflies migrating south that willingly crawl into my hands.

This one needed a bit of rescuing so I brought it into the greenhouse and gave it some sugar water. The butterfly spent an hour climbing all over me while I tidied. In the morning it was gone, I like to think it made it to its destination. 

In August we enjoyed our annual Cape Cod sunsets on the water. Hurricane Henri threatened our trip and we lost a couple of days due to an abundance of caution (no thanks to staying in a beachfront house during a hurricane), but it made us appreciate the days we were there all the more. 

The fig tree has been BOOMING with figs. Wrapping it in insulation in the winter was a game changer. We can't even keep up with it. I made a big batch of fig jam to use them up and there are more on the tree every single day. I've also discovered that if you miss a day and the birds get them, rotting figs are MESSY. 

While harvesting and drying herbs I started making some smudge sticks with my sage. These are my first attempt and I probably didn't wrap them tight enough, but we'll see how it goes once they dry out. I've been reading about the ecological impact of white sage, palo santo and resins - so it feels a lot greener to at least attempt my own, locally grown in my own yard. 

I'm still consistently harvesting buckets of flowers and will continue until the frost. The extra weeks of warm weather are much appreciated on the flower front. To consistently have fresh flowers around the house is just so cheerful. And since I mainly harvest from my cut flower beds in the raised bed garden, the backyard is still teeming with flowers all the time. I get the best of both worlds. 

The greenhouse has finally been cleaned, swept out and organized - ready for the plants to start coming in. Many of the tropical plants that have been in here all summer will go into the house when the cold weather hits, making more room for the things I am planning on overwintering. 

(Yes, at the base of that shovel is a snapdragon growing out of the floor cracks in the greenhouse.)

I was tidying/organizing a cabinet in the house and found this forgotten butterfly windchime. I hung it in the greenhouse, because... why not?

This year I'm planning taking more snapdragons and geraniums into the greenhouse for winter bouquets. I did a few last year and it was lovely. This year I'm doubling the number if I can squeeze them all in.  Cheers to extending the flower season, even if its just tiny bud vases. 

Little Happy Things: Colorful Rocks Are My Fave

So... I have a non-confession confession to make. I like crystals, rocks and minerals. Like a lot. It's not really a secret. They are all over my house, some hiding in plain sight in photos I've posted. I have a weakness for collecting pretty things, flowers, houseplants and the like. The amethyst fire pit is a good example of a practical use of crystals while also indulging in overload since 100lbs cost the same as 50lbs wholesale. I literally used the amethyst leftovers to mulch my houseplants... and I will admit nothing looks prettier.

My addiction hobby started in middle school, being drawn to those overpriced shiny bits in museum gift shops on field trips. An agate slice here, a couple of tumbles there, an azurite specimen that cost me all my babysitting money but practically glowed under the lights. But what really did it for me was going to Colorado with my mom and sister to visit my aunt and uncle who lived in the Rocky Mountains. We went hiking on all these mountain trails and while exploring their property, I found beautiful specimens including a huge chunk of rose quartz. It was like finding buried treasure, I was hooked. 

The hobby ebbed and flowed through the years, but in the past decade it's expanded quite a bit. I have mostly raw minerals, but also tumbles, spheres and towers, palm stones, etc. I still gravitate mostly towards the raw minerals, or slightly polished raw minerals that I polished myself to bring out their natural beauty. I've bought many pieces (because let's face it the best mines are not close by), but my favorites are the ones I've found - locally and on vacations through the years. 

A winter project for me was to pull out some of my collection and do flat lays. Originally I was going to do 1-2 but I quickly realized I had a lot more than would fit on a board, so I ended up organizing them by color instead. 

Rocks include: 

Pink: Rose Quartz from multiple locations around the world, Red Hematoid Quartz, Strawberry Calcite, Pink Nagano Calcite, Salmon Calcite, Pink Quartz, Pink Adventurine, Rhodocrosite, Pink Opal, Pink Petalite, Pink Danuburite, Pink Feldspar, Rhodochrosite, Rhodonite, Morganite, Pink Granite. 

Red/Orange/Yellow: Red Jasper, Red and Yellow Mookaite Jasper, Picture Jasper, Carnelian, Red Calcite, Orange Calcite, Orange Adventurine, Sunstone, Honey Calcite, Yellow Calcite, Citrine, Topaz, Satyaloka Quartz, Yellow/Golden Quartz, Yellow Opal, Amber, Septarian, Green Opal, Yellow-Green Onyx. 

Green: Green calcite, pistachio calcite, green adventurine, green jade, green onyx, ukanite, lizardite, green fluorite, kambaba jasper, green agate, ruby in zoisite, moldavite, prehenite, chlorite, moss agate, tree agate, malachite, chrysocolla, green apatite, green chalcedony/chrysoprase, polychrome jasper, amazonite, raw emerald, serephinite, Tsavorite garnet. 

Lapiz lazuli, azurite, blue chalcopyrite, labradorite, sodalite, blue kyanite, amazonite, caribbean calcite, celesite, turquoise, blue calcite, tanzanite, blue quartz, aquamarine, blue adventurine, blue agate, blue apatite, blue prehenite, blue onyx, shattuckite, apophylite, blue fluorite, larimar, angelite, indigo gabbro, blue lace agate.

Purple: Ocean jasper, purple fluorite, amethyst, chevron amethyst, veracruz amethyst, purple chalcopyrite, purple agate, tanzanite, purpurite. 

Multicolor: Rainbow fluorite, ocean jasper. 

My blacks, grays, whites and browns are missing from the flat lays. I will probably do those at some point too - I have some cool specimens. And I didn't even include all my pieces, just what was out and easily accessible. 

I've really enjoyed doing flat lays though - I'd like to try my hand at some floral flat lays this spring/summer with some of my flowers. 

 

Gardening Goals, Inspiration and Garden Borders with Stone

Before we embarked on our massive garden overhaul project, I spent a lot of time looking through my favorite inspiration photos. I took notes of what we liked about our yard so far (what worked well, what didn't work well, what I like the look of but wasn't practical). I broke my inspiration images down into short lists of what I liked (why yes, I DO have a type A personality with a side of OCD) and I quickly noticed that they all have a common theme.

I'm going to call it English country garden/New England country garden (Cape Cod), with a side of french country garden thrown in and a splash of California channeling country garden.

What do they all have in common?

Lots of flowers. Gray and white as a base with splashes of color. Shutters. Cottage charm. Window boxes. Informal "English country garden" feel. Dense beds of flowers and green lawns meeting. Lots of vertical structure - arbors, obelisks, pergolas and trellises. Climbing roses and vines. "Secret Garden" doorways and gates. Low, charming fences and rock walls. Casual stone borders. Slates. Pea gravel walkways. Wood and stone. White picket fences. Globe lights. Ceramic and terracotta flower pots mixed right into the garden. Breaking up larger spaces into little sections. Incorporating things like ugly sheds into the gardenscape with climbing vines, receding colors (green, gray) and adding charm to them. I also threw in my love of aqua because that's not going anywhere.

So all that inspiration is where we are headed.

While we can't paint the house, we are repainting the garage the same gray as the foundation I did last fall. With crisp white trim, it should look nice. Then we're adding trellises, arbors to the garage and raised bed garden. Maybe another obelisk. Pea gravel walkways with slates and pavers to make walking and gardening easier (pea gravel looks great but it's prone to weeds and it shifts a lot underfoot without more stabilization). I'm devising future plans to continue incorporate vertical structures for more climbers (probably roses if I can keep my David Austin's Lady of Shalot alive, which is also heavily incorporated into my inspiration above).

From my chaos post, all those stones we got from my moving neighbor (the slate chunks) - they have already been put to good use. Garden borders where the beds meet the driveway!

In the front yard, I layered them right on top of the pavers we already had in place to prevent mulch and soil erosion on the hill. These are a lot more charming and totally have that informal English country garden feel to them.

This one is the edge of the bed in front of the porch (ignore the debris and just admire the stones we had crazy storms yesterday... or maybe just notice there is NO MULCH in the debris, just dead grass - the rocks are doing their job!).

And the mailbox garden on the corner of the driveway and street.

I LOVE how this looks.

In the back the garden bed meets driveway border stretches all the way down the left side to where the forysthia bush and grass starts. I put the stones right at the edge of the dirt between the driveway and the low garden fence we put in to deter Morgan. They are made for stacking, so they layers came together easily. I love that the sweet peas are already cascading over them.

On the right side, these rocks will be super helpful at preventing erosion from this bed. I've been hesitant to put rocks here because it prevents us from opening the gate all the way... until Mike pointed out that we NEVER open the gate all the way and if we need to, it will be a big enough deal we can plan ahead and move the rocks. Good point.

It's not a huge change, but it makes the edges look clean and will help keep the mulch from eroding down the driveway in the rain. And honestly it's the little details that add up until our yard could be in the inspirational photo collage too.


(Inspiration image credits: @betterhomesandgardens, @shopterrain, @debbietenquist, @europeangardendesigns, @floretflower, @layeredvintage @capecodimages, @delmargarden, @derletztewolf, @clivenichols, @peppertreelanestudio, @ourlovelygarden, @bloomsandbounty, @yardbasics, @_thesuburbancottagegarden_, @gardens_and_architecture, @tradgardmedutsikt, @gardenista_sourcebook, @tuinsensatie, @artichokesandokra, @rootedflowers, @deannacat3, @gardensatfirstlight, @david_austin_roses, @bluelobsterflowerfarm, @blueridgeblooms, @joysgardens, @scarlettandjoy, @silviadekker, @antoniovalenteflowers, @oldsilvershed, @potagerblog, @rootedgarden, @ourfauxfarmhouse, @countrygardensmagazine, @mccormickcharlie, @hayman_design, @getgrowing.bgh, @clausdalby, @junesblooms, @cafedesignblog, @magspangeni, @lost_coast_succulents, @addytude, @cupofjo)