Tag Archives: gardening

Road Trip To Eureka Springs, Arkansas

Getting ready to leave on a girls’ getaway. Oh, those words have a sweet sound in my ears. The word getaway is like medicine right now and the phrase girls’ trip always puts a thrill in my heart. I can put the frustration of things not happening fast enough out of my mind and get a fresh perspective moving forward.

It’s a road trip and we’re headed south for three days in Eureka Springs, Arkansas. Blooms should be bursting forth even more there than they are here and when I return I anticipate the leafing of the trees to be in full swing. Love this time of year, don’t you? I’m taking my “good” camera and promise to share photos of my trip in a future blog post.

But for now there’s this.

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I’m happy I get to enjoy the blooms of this three year old magnolia before we move.

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I find it interesting that the younger the bud, the more saturated the color and as it grows and unfolds it becomes a paler shade.

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Next week I’m going to share what I’ve been working on for the past few months. I’m really excited about it and can’t wait to tell you.

I’ll be on Facebook while I’m gone and would love to connect with you there. Just click on the little “f” to come over and chat.
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Baby Boo Pumpkins ~ Grow Your Own

For the past five years at least, my husband has planted baby boo pumpkins for me. We plant a small variety of other food-bearing plants and also some flowers from seed. Some of them come and go but the three that remain regulars in our garden are baby boos, tomatoes and cockscomb. One year we didn’t plant them and summer and fall just weren’t the same.

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I adore pumpkins! I love all shapes and sizes, from Baby Boos, to Cinderella, to Blue Moon to Fairytale. I am obsessed with their form and love to use them in my fall displays, and the more the better. The cost to create a substantial vignette can add up really fast but a packet of seeds is only pennies. Even though my husband does the work of planting them, I have helped in the past and their really isn’t that much to it. If you have a small patch of ground that you aren’t using you can plant the seeds in the spring and just ninety days later you can harvest 60-100 baby boos from one packet of seeds.

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They take up a smaller plot of land than other varieties. That’s one of the things I love about them.

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We have close to fifty boos that are about ready to be picked. I’ll leave a lot of them on the vine for a couple more weeks but went ahead and picked a few now so I could get a start on my vignettes.

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They’re just so cute. It’s impossible to have too many. I’ll share more boo vignettes as we get further into fall.

Next week I’ll share part 2 of my Farmhouse Kitchen Reveal. I hope you have a wonderful weekend. I’ll be enjoying an outdoor concert by the band Boston. Woohoo!

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Phrase Art Phriday: Path of Life

Happy Friday (or should I say Phriday)! Welcome to the 18th installment of Phrase Art Phriday, where I share my own photography overlaid with an inspirational phrase or thought.

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The path of life will have weeds. Period. This photo was taken on the side of my house several years ago. I love the way previous owners of our home at some point in its 160 year history took broken chunks of marble and inlaid a mosaic path. Though I love the path, when I looked at the photo recently all I saw were the weeds. They became the focus and I cringed at the sight, feeling somehow guilty for not being a better caretaker. Then I reminded myself that I have many good qualities and gardening/landscaping just doesn’t happen to be one of them. But I digress. What you can’t see in the photo is what lies at the end of the path. It’s something that gives me great joy each and every spring. At the end of the path are four big healthy peony bushes. Pink peony bushes that yield lush beautiful blossoms every year. What is noteworthy is that those same four bushes sat in a dark wooded area on our property for years, never growing beyond a puny size and never producing flowers. When my husband showed them to me one year I suggested we move them. So he dug them up and planted them in a sunny place on the north side of our house. From that time forward the bushes thrived. The first year it blossomed it was exciting to see what color they would be. I was thrilled when it produced blooms in the perfect shade of pink. The peonies now reside at the end of that mosaic, weedy path and will remain there as long as we are here. It’s their right path.

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