The Generosity Of A Stranger

 It takes a long time to plant a squillion day lilies.

 A chance encounter with a perfect stranger at the beauty shop led to this gardening adventure. She recognized my love for gardening and invited me to her house for "some" day lilies. Miss Nola, at least in her seventies, hat on, hoe in hand, on her four acres of land is a gardening marvel. She probably has five hundred, maybe more, day lilies growing in pots under big shade trees. 

She has five different colors.

She has day lilies in big pots and small pots.

She gave me many of these in different colors, including red, and we dug day lilies from long rows in the side yard as well.

She had rows of iris blooming.

Various ferns in terracotta pots. 

Her indoor plants stay in the barn in the winter, including a five foot tall lime tree. 

She is a serious gardener to grow limes in central Georgia.

An enormous walking iris.

Delicate candy tuft and pink verbena.

She gave me three oak leaf hydrangeas, three ginger lilies, candy tuft, an enormous cactus, and more day lilies than I could count. It has taken Joe and I a day and a half to get them in the ground or in planters. I am bone tired and have been awake since 5:30 am.

I gave her a terracotta planter of ghost plants. 

Pitiful but she does not want more plants she says. 

She enjoys giving them away.

Never underestimate the generosity of a stranger. 

  .

Joy and Peace

Olive 

~Cat and Flowers~

Bliss in the Garden

Clovis

Ranunculus

This is my first time growing ranunculus and they are splendid. 

They make a lovely cut flower too.

Tomorrow, if all works out, I am visiting a sweet lady I recently met at the beauty shop and she is letting me dig up several kinds of day lilies. I remember a time when my mother traded plants or gave plants away. I offered this lady some of my ghost plants and she said she said she might take them.

joy and peace

Olive

Vintage Suitcase

We have been ever so slowly picking up a vintage suitcase here and there. 

So we can...

Stack them...yay boy.

Found the Samsonite one, on the bottom, last Saturday at an estate sale.

 The middle one, my favorite, is not flat sided and makes the stack tilt.

David is keeping a close watch on them for us.

Linking with:

Whats It Wednesday at Ivy and Elephants

Open House Party 

joy and peace

Olive

Herbs and More

I placed some herbs into some available pots on the deck.

Sweet Basil in the terracotta pot in the foreground and Rosemary and English Lavender in the purple pots (plastic but oh well they are purple). We will cook with these when they mature. I grew enormous amounts of Sweet Basil last year in that same pot and gave bunches of it away.  You can see we are inundated with pollen. 

We have three pink azaleas next to the back of the house that bloom three times a year. I forget the name of them but they are kind of crazy in the way they bloom. I am told they are expensive.

If only that rooster would pluck that weed.

My toad is overlooking the Lithodora. I have four more Lithodora's to plant this morning and grass to cut. I am waiting for the sun to warm up a bit.

 I am like Goldilocks. I want the temp just right.

Tell me what you are doing today?

Linking with:

Wow Us Wednesday's

joy and peace

Olive

Egg Basket and Bunnies

I have imprisoned some bunnies in a vintage egg basket.

The bunny planter on the left is made in Japan and possibly vintage while the one on the right is new and made to look crazed.

The basket was found at an estate sale and the man told me a story about where he bought it many years ago. It is from an old corner store in Augusta, Georgia and he dates it to the 1930's. He works for our local museum so I tend to believe him.

The bunnies are from thrift stores.

Linking with:

 Table Top Tuesday

Wow Us Wednesday's

The Bunny Hop @ On Sutton Place 

joy and peace

Olive 

When a Shrub Is More Than a Shrub

When is a plant, a shrub, more than a shrub? 

When it brings back memories of another life. 

A far away life.

  Every time you look at it you are are taken aback and slightly shocked by how fast it happens.

Is it a blessing it will not bloom for a long time?

Bridal Veil Spirea

Bringing back joy, sadness, and maudlin thoughts. 

There was one in my Aunt Vera's yard and I cannot look at ours without thinking of her.

joy and peace

Olive

Pottery and Life

March is nearly gone.

 Joe and I have had an eventful month. 

We are happy when the yellow house has guests and we have had guests.

We have one right now that has kept us vigilant all weekend.

I cannot really talk about this special guest but it has been fun. 

Nevertheless we still awoke at o'dark thirty and went garage salen.

 

 

This vintage hanging planter was Joe's mother's. 

It has been in one of our sheds covered in dirt. 

It needed to make it's way inside don't you think?

We picked up this Italian bowl this morning at a sale. 

It is signed by the artist and depicts a part of the Italian coast we have visited.

 Sweet hands in Pencil Sketch.

Now we are off to supper with friends who recently returned from a mission trip to Honduras for three weeks.

I fear I may never catch up in commenting, please forgive me.

joy and peace

Olive

~planting frenzy:succulents and sedum~

In my recent Planting The Petunias Frenzy {say that fast several times}

 I managed to relocated several pots of sedum and create a new pot of succulents.

This was a hanging basket I removed the chains from and lined with a new cocoa shell.

 I use half potting soil and half cactus potting mix because these need good drainage. 

Cactus potting mix drains well and fast.

I hope the succulents will be happy on our chippy 1960's patio set.

 More pink paint is peeking out through the black paint of the patio set. 

It must have originally been pink.

I transplanted two sedums into this planter from other planters and added three new succulents.

 I had creeping jenny here but it crept out and onto the patio rocks and seems to like it there better. 

All three of these can be left out during our mild winters in the Deep South.

We still have creeping jenny{money wart} in two large urns in the front of the house.

To see the Petunia hanging baskets I made inexpensively click here .

Tell me what you are planting or moving about in your garden?

joy and peace

Olive

Flagrant Self Promotion With Letters

Joe and I came across some letters in January. 

As is always the case with a 75% off sale you find some letters you want but many are gone. 

I am not terribly good at self promotion. 

 So here we go.

 

This little table which has been sporting the letters for a few months now.

Linking with:

Potpourri Friday

Home Sweet Home

joy and peace

Olive

Thrifty Hanging Baskets

Hanging baskets galore. 

These are purple petunias by the way and look blue via some camera trick.

I have complied four of these baskets for little money. 

The wire baskets were a mere one dollar each at a garage sale on Saturday and we buy petunias in flats.  Each hanging basket, with flowers, cost about three dollars to make.

Why petunias?

 They take our extreme heat {think 103 degrees} and once they become leggy in late summer I cut them back and they bloom again. 

I find them beautiful as well as economical. 

They are virtually the only annual purchase we make. 

We prefer to purchase perennials. 

Some annuals act as perennials here, begonias and dianthus are two of them.

We have started another section of flower garden here in the back yard.

 We will be able to see it out of the large kitchen window. 

We also divided our day lilies last fall and six of them are popping out here now.

We planted a Mini Penny hydrangea to the right of the tree too.

I am pleased as chocolate pie to say I have successfully layered and transplanted three Nikko Blue hydrangeas from our large old specimen. 

I am watering them and hovering over them rather like a mother hen.

Linking with:

joy and peace

Olive

Footed Silver Tray in The Master Bath

I bought the footed silver plated tray at a garage sale and put it between the sinks and gave it a whirl.

 It gets a bit tarnished when it gets wet but I do not mind. 

I use bees wax polish and it comes right off.

All my bits and baubles are in pretty dishes or cups that strike my fancy.

I had tried a bamboo tray, a brass tray and finally this is the one that fits perfectly.

Linking with:

Wow Us Wednesday 

joy and peace

Olive

Hold Everything Lightly #3 {Mama and Vera}

Mama is from Hangingdog, North Carolina.

 It is a community of houses, churches, and a couple of stores scattered across the mountains in the western part of the state. It is remote and not a lot different now than when mama was  a child, except for the cabins with the designer kitchens. My grandaddy was an old widower with ten grown children when he married my young grandmother. They were dirt poor, meaning all that they ate came from what they could grow out of the earth or they did not eat. After fathering three children {one died} grandaddy died leaving my grandmother alone with two small kids in a tiny mountain cabin. I have a photo of my grandmother and two small dirty children standing in the doorway of an unpainted shack. They farmed the land and managed the hardscrabble life until grandmother died on my mothers fourteenth birthday of deep vein thrombosis {a blood clot} in her leg. Today she would have survived but not then and not in those mountains.

Mother moved to South Carolina to live with her much older half brother Lester and his wife, Vera.

 Uncle Lester had moved south to work at the large nuclear plant being constructed in Aiken county.  Lester and Vera had no children but longed for them. Vera was from Alabama and was traveling on a train when her appendix burst. She survived that emergency but was rendered infertile. God did by many strange ways provide her with four children. I was the fourth. She and Lester raised two boys from Alabama prior to mama's arrival. She had her hands full with my adolescent mother who had been cooped up in those mountains and now was close to a large city. It made for trouble, boy trouble. My mother was devoted to Aunt Vera as was anyone who knew her. In later years we were hesitant to speak Vera's name for mother would burst into tears. Vera impacted our lives with so much good it is hard to measure.

The account blurs for me here.

 I know that mother graduated from high school. Some where she meets daddy, a divorced man with two children.  I cannot see Aunt Vera approving of that at all. Perhaps my Grandaddy formidable as he was smoothed it over. Soon after I was born into that instant family of a brother and a sister. How I loved my big brother. My big sister who was old enough to remember her biological mother was rebellious and daddy not knowing any better at the time sent her off to the state girls schools for troubled youth. Dear Lord who could blame my sweet troubled sister for having her mother torn from her? Sending my sis to the girls school was an error on daddy's part as she came back badly scarred. Mama did the best she could with her new family and given her youth and temperament it was astonishing it lasted as long as it did.

For # 1 in the series go here

and for #2 here

Olive

What's Blooming?

Blue Ground Covers

Speedwell

I have it greatly magnified here as it is quite delicate.

Lithodora

My shot is not doing this ground cover justice. This flowers are a true dark blue and it skims the ground like a proper ground cover should. This one quadrupled in size since last summer. I like it so much I planted two more today because they are on sale at Lowe's.

Our pink camellia has produced more blooms this years than ever before and still has buds.

Patio Peach

That is an enormous carpenter bee taking a drink. We planted several non-fruit bearing fruit trees last year to back up our native dogwoods which are diseased.

Southern Dogwood

We have four in the front pictured here and the largest one over our back patio. We hope they live a long time.

We have dogwoods in view from any front window of the yellow house.

We did not trim our crepe myrtles this year. That slipped by us. I do almost all the yard work including cutting the grass with a push mower and Joe trims trees. Sometimes we do not get to all the tasks in the correct time frame.

 

Spirea

I call it Bridal Veil Spirea. I rescued it from a big box store, unmarked, two years ago and this year I finally realized what it is. My beloved aunt had one and I am thrilled I have this one.

Amaryllis

I force them at Christmas then plant them in the garden. They will bloom in two summers this way but every year after that. This one will have three bloom in about two weeks.

♥♥♥

In other happenings here CC went back to college this morning after church. For many reasons her leaving today was terribly hard for both of us. I literally hugged  her to pieces during the last song in church. We enjoyed her spring break very much, not that we did anything that was special other than be together, pet Clovis, talk, and then talk some more.

joy and peace

Olive