Scenes From the Weekend

 Most of my weekend was spent outdoors working in the garden. We had a nice Father's Day lunch and I watched Mr. T build this amazing farmhouse table. It's almost complete and can't wait to get it onto the patio. Up until now, we've been dining al fresco on these cute, but tiny side tables. And because summers are so short here I want to be able to spend every possible minute outdoors. So our new dining table that's custom built for our small patio will no doubt be a popular summer gathering spot. 

Budget Blooms

 This large pitcher on my mantel calls for a big bundle of flowers, but what do you do when you're not in the mood to shell out twelve bucks for not-so-pretty flowers at the supermarket? 

Well, I'll tell ya what I did. This very large shrub in the front needed some trimming and it was blooming. So I thought, hey, why not fill up that big pitcher with a few branches? This shrub (I feel like I knew what it was at one time, but I've since forgotten) only blooms for a week or two, so I can't rely on it to give me a season's worth of flowers. But for the next few days, I think they'll do me just fine.

I wasn't sure if I should use water or not, but the answer came quickly. They definitely need to be placed in water. They went from sad and saggy to pretty and perky in a matter of minutes once I filled up the pitcher with water. 

There's still not a ton of stuff blooming in my garden. And it's official, the three petite white butterfly bushes are not coming back. Bummer. I was so looking forward to filling up tons of vases with those big, fluffy flowers. Word on the street is that last winter in Wisconsin was rough on a lot of butterfly bushes. 

I think my blooming branches will keep for a few more days. Then I'll have to come up with another plan for filling it on the cheap until the garden really kicks in. I actually tried gluing little pieces of cotton onto sticks I collected in the back. I was trying to make them look like pussy willow. I just ended up with a big mess that looked like cotton balls glued to sticks. Maybe I'll give it one more try.

Working on the Wall

I've been meaning to decorate this wall upstairs for ages. My idea of a lovely gallery wall is something like this or this. 

When Anri came home from her last day of school with the poster she made with our family handprints (and paws) I figured I'd better frame it ASAP before it got crinkled, ripped, chewed up and/or lost. I found some cheap frames at Walmart and decided to get this gallery wall started! 

The plan is to completely fill this upstairs hall wall with photographs (color and black & white), the kids' artwork, objects and other cute stuff. 

Since the frames were black, I went ahead and put them up on the wall to see how they looked. I saw this gorgeous gallery wall with all kinds of mixed frames and thought it looked great. Keeping them black and adding in some other colors later would save me the effort of painting them. 

The black frames were OK, but a half-full can of off-white spray paint in the basement kept calling my name. I don't know about you, but I think the lighter color frames look a lot better. 

I may work in some gold and black frames down the road, but for now the white is working for me. I've got a whole bunch of little projects in mind for loading up the wall: displaying the old-fashioned keys that came with our house (we've since updated the locks), putting up their first foot prints, maps, blown up post cards, wedding photos and more!

Outdoor Adventures

Just got back from our second annual Door County camping trip. 

This year I made a little list of some non-camping activities going on which included a trip to one of the gazillion wineries. I don't know how I missed this last year, but Door County is famous for its cherry orchards. There's cherry everything... cherry pies, cherry juice, cherry dip, cherry bagels. Somehow it didn't occur to me that we'd be sampling cherry wine until we pulled up to Orchard County Winery. While there were some grape vines growing, the orchard was mostly full of cherry trees. So my first thought was YUCK, I don't want to drink cherry wine. But it turns out it's not so bad. Really! Especially, when it's combined with grape wine. The stuff we liked best was 90% grape, 10% cherry wine. It's only a little sweet and has just a hint of cherry taste to it. 

Back at the campground... I'm getting pretty good and brewing coffee over a campfire. The key is to put the kettle on top of a skillet as opposed to putting it directly on the grill. That way the water heats up evenly and faster. 

I felt pretty clever when I figured that out, but then...

Our fried eggs were kind of a mess. I couldn't figure out why they were sticking so much this time and then I remembered that the last few times we cooked bacon first and the grease oiled up the pan. duh. 

Ginger came along with us, but this may be her last camping trip. Not only can she not sit still long enough for a family photo, but she barked at pretty much everything. And dogs aren't allowed on the beaches which makes it impossible for all four human family members to play at the beach together. One of us has to dog sit. 

Besides splashing around at the lake (it wasn't quite warm enough for a swim) we hiked some trails and admired all the wild blooms: mostly forget-me-nots, columbine, phlox, lilacs, lily of the valley and some shrubs I couldn't identify. 

Wow! Check out that lookout point in Peninsula State park. The views of Lake Michigan are amazing. 

This time last year it was much warmer and had been from very early on in the season. The gardens in town weren't as far a long this time, but still pretty. I think next year we'll wait until late June or July for our trip. 

I think Fish Creek is the cutest of some super cute towns in Door County. I love how the little shops are mostly set back away from the main street and surrounded by beautiful gardens. 

That last shop is an antique store called Bay Trading Co. in Egg Harbor. We stopped there last year too and they have a ton of cool stuff that we can fit in our car because it's packed with camping gear. 

And so you can get your bearings if you're not from around here, I made a little map. Did you know I majored in geography? I shouldn't brag about that though, because I've been known to get lost driving around Milwaukee. Anyway, this map is at least somewhat accurate. 

So that was our 3-day weekend. Hope yours was full of fun, too! 

Garden Surprise: Lily of the Valley

I'm always so surprised when I find plants in my garden that aren't weeds. Especially plants that I didn't plant. These tiny little lily of the valley popped up again way way back in the shadiest parts of the yard. A few are popping up underneath hostas. I don't even find weeds in the dense shade underneath hosts. They've also popped up underneath the arborvitae where there's nothing but a bunch of dead leaves. 

 These tiny little flowers are so delicate and beautiful. They smell great, too. So what's not to love?

 Well, just like striking foxglove, they're highly poisonous. Have you ever read a list of poisonous plants like this one or this one? Hydrangeas? Really? It makes you wonder why you don't hear of more deaths by plant. 

I've heard some parents say it's better to have your kids see this stuff up close so they know not to eat it instead of coming across it in someone else's garden. I'm not sure about that, but I haven't pulled up the lily of the valley or the foxglove just yet. I'll just keep repeating myself over and over again all spring and summer, "don't put anything in your mouth unless you ask me first!" I'll do that until I either relax a little or decide it's not worth the worry and pull up the plants. 

How do you feel about growing potentially harmful plants in your garden? Is it worth the risk or not? 

p.s. I've linked up to my first ever link party at Fishtail Cottage Garden Party! 

My Garden in Mid Spring

Images from Prairie Nursery

Today I'm going to start with some pretty pictures of plants I ordered.

These first two groupings of flowers are not pictures from my garden, they're product shots from Prairie Nursery where I made my order.

I think these native North American plants should do well in my garden and the butterflies and hummingbirds should like them. I already have some New England Asters that grew so well even in partial shade and some monarda that looks so pretty and smells like lemonade according to Anri. The blazingstar I planted last year is a different variety. This meadow blazingstar (liatris ligulistylis) I ordered is a little more wild looking, but look at those butterflies clinging to it!

Images from Prairie Nursery

Now I'm going to show you some very straightforward shots of my backyard as it looks today on May 30, 2013.

Usually I take pictures when things are blooming, at least for my blog. And I also like to take closeups and crop out anything that looks not-so-great. But I've decided I'd like to keep an online journal of the way things are progressing. That way, I can look back at how it filled in the previous year and maybe I won't feel so impatient. I think I keep shopping for plants because while nothing is flowering in my garden yet, the plants at the nursery or online product shots are already full of flowers.

While I wait for my plants to fill out I have a ton of work to do... set that brick edging in place and pull TONS of weeds. That dark stuff you see on the lawn is grass seed. I started some about a month ago and had success. I just wish I filled in all the bare spots at the same time, because it took about three weeks for the seed to sprout.

Lots of things are growing in pots and planters: strawberries that have already been eaten by the rabbits, bulbs, petunias and in the old galvanized tub (with holes in the bottom for drainage) I have a little herb garden with basil, curry plant, rosemary, parsley and nasturtiums.

The raised bed I planted last summer with sedum, yarrow, monarda, goldenrod, rudbeckia, butterfly weed and blazingstar is looking good, although the butterfly bush is taking forever to come back. Is it coming back? And now that I think of it, where's the blazing star?

In case you're joining me late in this post, that dark brown stuff is grass seed (surrounded by a ton of weeds that I'm slowly dealing with. Along that north wall of the garage there is bugbane, hostas and astilbe popping up.

 One of a few baskets with annuals.

 That's the first bed I planted when we moved in a couple of years ago. I had all this extra topsoil sitting around and had to do something with it. I'm so glad we didn't glue the bricks together because it turned out that I needed to shorten it a little. I kept tripping over the pavers every time I needed to get to the hose. I still have a little bit of repair work on those pavers in the back. And how do you like those weeds growing alongside the front edge? I just spent a few minutes pulling all of those up. 

So that's how things are looking at the end of May in zone 5b Wisconsin. Last year was extremely hot and dry and while things were really early to bloom, I lost several new plants. Looks like we're about a month behind last year's growth. I guess this is more of a typical spring here.

Sitting on my back patio and staring at the plants isn't going to make them grow any faster, so time to get back to weeding!