Something for the Deck

One of the things that I worked on today was something I should have done last year when it was still warm in August or September.

Last year I bought two identical larger plastic planters that were on clearance at Lowes. I can't remember what I paid for them, but they were pretty cheap, even at the regular price.


Here is one of them before.

I really like the way they look just the way they are, but they blend in with the deck too much and you can hardly notice them. Why get such pretty planters if you can't appreciate them? So I decided they should be a lighter color, but I still wanted to keep the dark brown band and handles.


With just a few spritzes of ivory spray paint (after taping off the dark brown areas) giving it only one light coat, you get this.

The sun all of a sudden decided to come out when I was taking these pictures, so they kind of look washed out, but in person you can actually see some of the old finish peaking through because I only did one light, yet splotchy coat.

They're all ready for planting and they've been filled with Canna tubers waiting to give the deck a tropical feel. I planted some the first year we had the deck and the cannas really gave the deck a tropical feel. Even my husband told me he really liked them and he could really care less about plants or flowers. Trust me.


I wish I could show you how they look with the flowers blooming, but I started with bare root tubers, so it's gonna be a while...provided I don't kill them first.


So remember, if you see a planter or pot that you really like, but it's just not the right color....paint it! This took me all of 30 minutes to do both pots, including all the taping off, and since it was such a light coat of paint, there was no time waiting for it to dry.


Have a creative day!

  
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It's Spring, and then it's not....

And then it's spring again!

It's starting to warm up again around here. We finally got some decent rain that was really needed too. We had some rain a couple of times, but the next day would be so windy, that it dried everything up so fast, it was as if it never happened. 

It's going to be in the 70's and 80's (21-27 C) here this week. And, it's supposed to maybe rain most of the week too. I hope that means there will be mushrooms! We have them in our woods when it's a decent year or when the trespassers don't get to them first.


My flowers are doing SUPER so far, although I have a peony that I can't get to bloom after 3 years. Not sure what I need to do. It had a tiny bud on it last year that didn't do anything, but I got nothing but a lush and bushy plant this year.  I know it can take some time for them to do something, but I had one that I started from a root that bloomed the next year. I don't believe it's planted too deep either and it gets the same amount of sun as the other 3 that are near it.


Oh well, other flowers are doing nicely! I have a huge area across from my garden shed that is full of Lily of the Valley's and boy, do they ever smell amazing!

Isn't that little green vase the cutest? I just picked that up at a garage sale last week for 50 cents. Of course, the sign to the sale sent me a on a hunt that was 20 minutes away. I hate when people do that. 

 A friend of mine and I had stopped in at the Christmas Tree Shoppe last year and each of us picked up a bag of these Anemones for $2! I planted mine outside, even though it said they were for zones 7-10, we're a 5 here. I was willing to take a gamble. They get covered in oak leaves every fall and sometimes snow, so they were pretty well insulated over the winter.

Aren't they stunning?!


And here is the only Clematis that's in bloom right now. I LOVE this one, because in the early dusk hours it looks like it's glowing! I wish I knew what it was called, but it just had a general tag for clematis and that was it. A pet peeve of mine when it comes to buying plants. I like to be able to tell people what variety a plant is when they ask and I don't like NOT knowing either.

Close-up

These are my Forget-Me-Nots, but they're not the typical blue ones, they're pink.

Funny thing is, I didn't plant pink ones. I planted the blue Chinese variety (which I don't really recommend IMO). They were blue the first year and I thought they died out from disease, but then they came up pink the next year & have for the past 5 years. I didn't even know there were pink ones!

I have a love-hate relationship with these flowers! I like the flowers, but wish they could have been in a more controlled environment. They were here when we moved here and they had already spread everywhere and you can't get rid of them. The flowers keep blooming even when you pick them and leave them lay on the ground for days. They won't wilt, I swear. The tiny little bulbs go deep, so they're hard to dig up or I'd be plucking these suckers up. I'd love to have them in a pot or something. They're called Star of Bethlehem and ARE considered invasive. I can see why!


And then there's these little cuties that are starting to pop up everywhere too! But I don't mind them. They're called Jack In The Pulpit, in case you hadn't seen them before. I never had seen one until we moved into our current home.

This is a tiny one that must be new this year. There is a couple though that are like the grandaddies of the woods because they look like a small banana tree! Those haven't even broke through the ground yet...they get at least 3 feet tall.

And finally, there's these things. They are everywhere, even worse than the white star flowers. They have a somewhat strawberry plant characteristic, but they have 5 leaves instead of 3. I've never noticed berries on them, but that doesn't mean that there weren't some & I just never noticed them.

We had a good rain overnight, so things are really going to start to bloom now! YAY!!

Have a creative day!

At My Garden Gate

I know the weather has been in a crazy role reversal around the country for the most part. It's hard to imagine that it's warmer here in northern Indiana than in California or Arizona! At one point yesterday, my thermometer read 90F (32C) degrees!! I'm just glad I didn't pay for a vacation to someplace "warm" when I don't have to leave my own back yard. We just can't swim yet. We aren't about to get the pool ready this early either. We're supposed to get back down to normal next week though, but we've have record breaking temps for 8 days and today could be too.

It's been so warm here that my flowers are not able to take the heat and they're withering quickly. I try to keep them watered, but I can't keep up with my sandy soil. And I'm not usually putting out my yard decor this early in the season, but I thought I needed to start doing something so I dug out my metal flowers and butterflies. The wagon wheel stays out all year long.

At least this is doable for starters and I think it looks pretty with the daffodils & Hyacinths blooming together. Some of the dafs and one Hyacinth are drooping from the heat already. I just planted them last year.

I acquired this spare bottom half of a barn door from a multiple door purchase a few years ago. I was buying the door to the front of my garden shed and a full set of barn doors for the side of the shed as well from a place that was changing ownership to the son, who was changing the business format, when the guy told me that I would HAVE to take this one too for free. OK OK mister, if you're gonna twist my arm like that. hee hee!

Can you see the Home Interior butterfly resting on the large flower? Isn't it sweet? And he just fits on one of the petals perfectly. The other butterfly on the turquoise flower is a laser cut iron butterfly that I've let get all rusty. My husband thinks I'm weird & nuts for letting it go rusty. He acts like it's going to rust away in just a couple of years, but it's already been 5 years and it's still doing just fine because it is pretty thick.

I changed out the photo on here from the one that was on here earlier today. I wanted to add my vintage Radiator coolant filler can (aka watering can) in the shot and the rusty metal sphere that I got at a flea market last fall for $1!! I tell ya, I can sniff that stuff out sometimes. LOL!

I noticed also that my Hyacinths are trying to droop from the near 90 degree weather we've been having, so I did a flower friendly way of propping them back up - at least if you have daffodils growing behind them, this works. 

I took 2 leaves from the daffodil that's growing behind the Hyacinth and carefully tied it around the bloom stem of the flower. It works like a charm unless you get a good rain or strong enough winds. I've heard that you can run a coat hanger wire directly in the middle of the flower stem all the way into the ground and it won't hurt them, but this is less work and I wouldn't be so lucky for them not to get damaged from the wire. ;^)

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Spring Fever?

Has it been crazy warm in your area lately? It sure has been here. We've been in the 80's this week, which has been breaking temperature records from 1995 that had us in the mid 70's then.

I have quite a few flowers in bloom here this week. That's highly unusual for my northern Indiana location.

 

 This is my Hellebore flower and I noticed that it has reseeded!

 I forgot the name of this cute little flower, but it's a woodland wildflower that I discovered.

 This is some kind of Iris, but it's not Siberian (I don't think) I can't find the tag to them for some reason.

These are something called Pink Giant. I just planted them last fall.

 This is one of my favorites! I think it's called Scilla or Squill? It's not open just yet, but it might be at the time of this writing. They're so pretty planted in front of yellow Daffodils.

One of the few basic yellow Daffodils I have. Everything else is pretty much a special variety. Dafs are one of my favorite flowers and I can't seem to have enough of them. They smell wonderful when you get a whole big bouquet of them in a vase.

So, enough of my early spring show for now...

Now, let's get on with a super easy project I conjured up on a cold day, just waiting for the springtime. I only needed a pair of needle nose pliers!

We'll start with a somewhat old crackled glass vase I purchase back when I was married to my first husband (we've been divorced since 1996). It used to have a bunch of teal blue colored glass flat marbles in it. I don't recall how I managed to break it. Luckily, I was able to glue it back together, since it's crackled already, you couldn't see the break lines very well. Over the years, the glue has yellowed and I've grown bored with the piece. I've saved the teal blue marbles for some project later on down the road and this just sat in my craft room, waiting for it's own repurposing event to happen.

Then, last year I came across this box of acrylic pendants at a little shop I like to check out once in a while for unique and inexpensive items. I know these pendants were quite a bit cloudy, but I didn't care because I knew they'd be used for something outside and that would happen anyway. I didn't want glass ones either. My glass stuff outside always seems to get broken. I couldn't believe I could get 6 of them for less than $2? Hello!! I bought 2 boxes of them, but I only need ONE for this little project.

Next we move onto some crackled glass ornaments that are a tad on the larger-than-normal size. I had other intentions for them for  Christmas decor outside, but they were so heavy that I was afraid to use them for fear of them hitting the brickwork on the side of the house and breaking. I bought them half off way back when (before gas prices went nuts...) I have nothing that comes to mind to compare the size of these to, but they are larger than a softball & the tag says it's 5 inches. Even at full price, they were reasonable in price compared to today's standards!

I had a hard time getting a decent photo of this, so you may have to stare at it to notice the dangling pendant below the ball. It's hanging from the ring on the ornament. The ring needed to be a little smaller and so did the rings on the pendant. I took the small round piece off from the teardrop shape so I could put it inside the ornament ring. This made it shorter, otherwise, the pendant sits inside that round part of the brass base and you don't see it. They still don't fit quite right, but nobody's gonna be up close enough to probably even notice them hanging from it in the first place. Just me. All I needed the needle nose pliers for was to get the metal hanger off of the pendant because it was pretty durable!

So now I have this pretty & petite gazing ball that I didn't really have to do anything to in order to make it. My favorite kind of projects!



In case anyone is wondering, the variegated green crocheted doily that you see is out for St. Patty's Day and it was made by my husband's late grandmother from Germany. It wasn't my first choice from her collection, but I DID mention to my husband's aunt that I liked the color green, but I was referring to the "emerald" green stemmed goblets she had. That'll learn me! I just need to find a more suitable vignette to display it.
...BTW, I did get the goblets too.

  
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