Fairy Gardens for Everyone!

Re-visiting some of my fairy garden posts recently, I was inspired to bring a mini one
to a friend's young daughter.

How adorable did this turn out?!!

They are so delightfully simple to make with a cleaned out sauce jar, some plants propagated from my currently-so-overgrown-you-can't-see-through-the-glass large fairy garden, some moss and pebbles from my yard, and a little section of fence!

So cute and simple, there is absolutely no reason not to have...

Fairy Gardens Everywhere!!

😆😆😆

Fairy Garden Update

As the "active" gardening season is wrapping up, it's time to slip in some of my older posts I never finished...

I  previously  told the story of a coworker who was over-loving (i.e. drowning) her first fairy garden.

Well, that didn't get her down!

She collected more jars, bought more plants and enlisted her two pre-teen boys to help!

The result?

In a long-overdue post I've had drafted for almost a year, I'm happy to share her thriving, beautiful, super fun little gardens!

She went all out!

She kept them at home where they get enough light (compared to her sadly north-facing work window).

A month after she first made them and they still looked wonderful! And the boys had made them their own! 😁

Hehe, love the Lego guy!

They thrived for months, but the last update was that they had been neglected and died away.
Sadness.

Still, they were adorable while they lasted!


Re-visiting these photos, I'm inspired - I need more fairy gardens! And they need little critters!!

Fairy Gardens Everywhere!!!

If I Had to Garden for Sustenance...

                      ...we'd have survived for a rather hungry single day.

This year's produce totaled:


A nice crop of sugar snap peas.
A respectable bowl of green beans.
Several salads' worth of various lettuces.
Two whole zucchini!
A fairly reasonable amount of herbs (though after several years, the thyme and rosemary finally bit the dust).
And quite the abundance of accidental (and largely unneeded) jalepeños.

                                                          

And of course the jungle of cilantro (I apparently didn't take a picture of it when it was a jungle - waist high "weeds" filling the edible bed!) which irks me immensely when it takes months to go to seed, re-seed itself, take root and start producing more edible cilantro...right through the good avocado season 😑

New crop of cilantro finally coming back up after months of the seeding process

I'm now on my fall planting of peas which are looking excellent...

First time trying this, so we shall see what the harvest yields!

And found a use for all my jalepeños:

Spicy-food-loving husband is very happy!

So yeah, probably ridiculously obvious to say that I have such respect for the mad skills and endurance of people like those exampled below; and how not having a grocery store to run to when your crops fail (or not having the funds to do so) adds immense anxiety and hardship.

Gardening for fun instead of sustenance and/or livelihood is definitely a luxury I am blessed with.

Summer Wildflowers

A final look back at summer before diving into fall...

As mentioned several times, all gardens were terribly neglected, but the wildflower garden especially performed beautifully - albeit jungle-like - with a lovely display of late summer flowering.

The hibiscus, once again, in spite of being continually mauled by insects, put out beautiful blooms...

An especially lovely picture when the Black-eyed Susans join them!

Black-eyed Susans and Daylilies playing nicely together...

And then this crazy guy shot up out of nowhere! Must have been 4 feet tall! A little out of place, but lovely nonetheless! 

Probably would be lovelier without all the weeds, but then it clearly wouldn't be my accidental-and-also-too-busy-renovating-to-touch-it garden!

And remember that when I do weed, I discriminate terribly based on appearance: these cute little daisy-like flowering weeds are allowed to stay (I do yank out quite a few, but leave ones that are nicely accenting other flowering).

And my deck pots provided nice color with a mixture of seedlings I'd started (the gorgeous pink four 'o clocks and the tall, white zinnia), herbs, weeds I left in place, and a few annuals I grabbed from the nursery. 
(Obviously I missed my spring railing cleaning 😬)

As usual, I did a terrible job keeping them watered, especially here at the end where we haven't had rain for 3 weeks.

So I'm telling you, my new favorite plant is begonias! I always thought of them as shade, and I have gotten them for my shade garden, but they must have bred a new variety that does full sun because these things are beasts!

Plants on the hot, 2nd story deck get scorched; especially the midget pot I put on the table that's too small to hold much water and so looks real sad each year no matter how much I water it.

Not this year with begonias!

Other much larger pots I've neglected to water:

Begonias I've neglected to water:

And they've stayed blooming like that since I bought them in May!

Like I have a little begonia fairy who secretly waters them!

So there we are. The end of another season.

Time for a little fall clean-up (though  this  notified me not to do too much so I help the critters!)
and we call it a wrap!

More Accidentals

There are plants that I have tried getting to grow since I started gardening......and then there are the ones that just grow themselves......and don't stop!!!


One such hardy fellow is the little  mini mums  that came from my Mom-in-law's garden several years ago.

The single plant spread itself into several in the shade garden last year, but this year, they were everywhere!

I found little sprigs of these all over - spread far and wide throughout the shade garden, in the wildflower border, even all the way in a pot up on the 2nd story deck and another in the front of the house! 



Little creatures must have been quite busy moving seeds to and fro last year!

Taking over the shade garden (naturally I forgot to take pictures when they were all in bloom; they are simply lovely!) The crazy thing is that they came up everywhere BUT the original place I planted them in front of the post!!

 They are the cutest little flowers! And since I had to pull entire plants of them out of the unwanted places (one of the very rare times this year that I went outside to tame a tiny portion of the chaos), I ended up with a very ample bouquet to put in a vase and bring cheer to the kitchen for days!

My other useful accidental is jalapeños! 

Pretty sure I planted a regular green pepper and a hot pepper from seedlings I'd grown ... pretty sure.

Which means at least two of these growing in the foreground (and definitely the large one in the pot) are accidentals! 
I'll have to figure out a good use for all of the ripe peppers!

Oh, compost, you silly supplier, you!

Freshly weeded...trust me, it did NOT look like this before yesterday when I finally did some weeding for like the 4th time this year! 

This year more than any other I have neglected my gardens because of our house renovations and so it continues to amaze me that they just keep chugging along and even do above and beyond (and sometimes TOO beyond!) surprises for me!

The Shade Garden

Thiiiiis one might bring a bit of a shudder with it - no offense to the poor little garden just doing its thing while I completely neglect it, but yeah.

Because of the never-ending renovations that started in September and then continued into - well, now, I not only didn't do an early spring (February/March) clean-up......I hadn't even done a fall one either!
😱

So imagine my groans when I finally decided to take a few hours that I kind of couldn't afford off of the renos, but felt like I needed to give my yard, and discovered that grass had taken over my shade garden.

Grass.

The plant with the strongest root to size ratio of I believe anything in the plant world.

[so many facepalms]


As it was starting to go to seed, I realized the situation was dire and out I went with every digging tool I have.
It was rough. I had to pull out huge chunks of the soil that were so mangled in roots.
I still haven't gone back to fill in some of the holes. 😑    Nor did I even get out all the clumps!

Cue "Home home on the range, where the deer and the antelope play...."  

The thing about this sweet little garden, though, is that even in its wild jungle state, it still has such life.

I mean look! It's completely taken over by weeds and has an old pot I just threw out there - I'll figure out something to do with it some time! .......

And yet this photo is lovely!


Accidental Prince William coming back to say hello.

Stretching up in the background is some kind of weed, but hey - so long as you bloom adorable little pink daisy looking flowers you can stay.

The groundcover in its perfect purple bloom.

Moss picturesquely covering the noble tree root.

And sunlight speckling through the trees above.


This garden seems to emit the virtue of patience - "No worries, get to us when you can! We'll just sit here and do our thing in the meantime!"



 I mentioned  that my friend had nabbed some colorful-leafed annuals before the winter and that I proceeded to kill them.

Except one hardy coleus!

This trooper not only survived, but went on to produce many children and grandchildren throughout the winter!

So you can't say I haven't done anything for my garden this year! 😆

I finally put those out in the garden and boy did they take off!

And then there's all this (originally destined for a specific project I never got to)...
                                               

From this tiny bit of dirt! It tipped over and kept on growing! (And looks like took root as well! 😳)

Overgrown and a total disaster, but from a distance, it's lovely! 😁

Late spring / early summer:

Mid-summer when the Rose of Sharon are in bloom as well:

And end of summer where it's wrapping up (and brown and wilty because it hasn't rained in weeks and I finally just watered it!): 

Very attractive large pile of sticks I haven't picked up all summer 😒

I hope to actually get to a thorough fall cleaning to set myself up for a great spring....heeeere's hoping!

Summer Flowers

Exuberant exclamations of delight when coming back from our trips, I discovered that I hadn't missed some of my favorite flowers in bloom!

The clematis was still blooming, the knockout roses were spectacular, and the peonies, though on their way out with the usual thunderstorm pummeling, made for a pretty in pink perfection!

Soon followed by the lilies, delphinium and gardenia...just lovely!

Most shocking of all was finding a foxglove in the midst of the wildflower border!!  
This biannual going strong!  Even after this many years of gardening, the surprises are so fun!





And speaking of unexpected flowers - I was super bummed that I hadn't gotten pansies in the ground in the fall, buuuuuut - happy of happies, they seeded themselves!

Yay, accidental pansies!!!!













            In a variety of colors!!

I'm also very happy that the honeysuckle came back! I wasn't entirely sure how well it would flourish ... or even survive! ... since it's in a pot and underneath the overhang above (meaning it gets little rain in the winter like the watering I give it - or am supposed to give it 😁 - in the summer). But bursting forth in all its fullness it is!

                



        More glorious color...

                 

Those knockout roses!!!



Unfortunately, when you don't deadhead them (and the leafhoppers yet again have the munchies, so I need to get out my Captain Jack's Deadbug again 😑), the blooms die off and take awhile to return and often not in the original splendor.

Still, a lovely showing for a largely neglected little yard! 

(I finally got out a couple of days in between renovation musts and it took me an hour and a half just to weed what you see here! Above is the before and this is the after. Another day was another nearly 2 hours to clean-up the other side of the stairs and into the north side bed a ways in order to eradicate the villainous prickles that had been left untouched for I care not to think how long!)

Certainly is a hodge-podge of this and that, which I hope to streamline into something a bit more cohesive someday. [sigh] "Someday".

Awww, I really love our little house!