Early Spring Garden

The flowers are blooming fast now. It appears we are having an early spring. Maybe the groundhog was right in predicting the weather this year. 

I scored a French wire planter at the thrift shop. I loved it in this green color.

I am doing a huge amount of maintenance in the garden this year, and one of the jobs I tackled was dividing the chives. They had no problem with the division, and I now have twice the chives.

Trying some new plants in the shady spot in the garden. 

This is tansy. Once you grow it, it will come back every year. I love the foilage it has. 

In Victory,

Sherry

April Showers

 

Do you remember April showers bring May flowers? Well, we are having the showers today, but flowers are already here. Everything seems to be blooming all at once.

In between rain showers, you can find me darting out the back door and gathering rain-soaked blossoms. The scent of these lilacs is glorious! 

On a dry day, the lilacs always scent the whole corner of the garden, and today they are scenting my cottage corner.

So I made a cup of seven blossom tea; it seemed appropriate, and I enjoyed these flowers. 

I wait all winter to see the yard blossom out, and it couldn't be any more delightful than today, even in the rain.

Cut your tulips and enjoy them; it will make them blossom better next year.

In Victory,

Sherry

Peter Rabbit Mantel

There is enormous comfort in removing the chaos from your life and surrounding your self with things you love.

I believe Beatrix Potter might have know a thing or two about this when she moved to Hilltop Farm and created her endearing watercolors and wrote her charming books.

I have found some Peter Rabbit dishes and I have relished having them out on the mantel to enjoy.

I have long been a fan of Miss Potter. Here is my set of her storybooks from when I was young. The cottage style has my heart and no one exemplifies this more than Beatrix Potter's in the Peter Rabbit book series.

In Victory,

Sherry

In the Garden

 
Today the weather is nice, and I am in the garden. This time of year, the chores feel overwhelming, but soon they will transform the garden into a wonderous outdoor space.

I checked on the winter sowing. Out of five milk jugs, only one has come up. It was the lavender. I will baby it and see how it does.

I have some old garden fencing I am going to do a project with today, so I have it ready.

One of the first chores I tackle each spring is washing the outdoor furniture. This is a black steel painted furniture set, and it gets dull and dirty from being in the sun each year. 

So I am going to get out the turtle wax and fix that with a nice clean-up.

I add one ounce of the solution to a clean bucket of water, soap up a rag, and scrub the furniture all over. 

When rinsing the furniture, you can already see it has worked; the water is beading up just like it should.

While the furniture is drying, I am making something out of this old garden fencing.

The furniture is now dry, and you can see a sheen on the surface that not only looks better but also protects the paint.

My last job will be to thin and pinch these snapdragons. I love snapdragons. This year, I am growing the rocket variety.

I have made a rustic garden cloche out of the garden fencing. I saw this on YouTube. I really like how it turned out.

Time for a tea break. Have you gotten into the garden yet?

In Victory,

Sherry

Pressed Herbs and Flowers

I have been known to press plants for keeping. Some of the plants and leaves I have pressed over the years are pictured here. I love the romance and nostalgia of pressing a certain flower and keeping it as a memento.
 

In keeping with my goal of finishing a project each month from The Herbal Yearbook, for March I am pressing an herb and flowers.

The book suggests pressing the gathered herbs and flowers and pressing them for notecards, but I will just frame mine.

I have for years pressed leaves and flowers in a book, and it works just fine, but today I have a homemade flower press. My husband made it. 

These were the specimens I pressed: pansies and yarrow. The flower press does a really great job at getting the plants very flat, better than I was expecting.

Here I am layering the yarrow leaves on the paper I am mounting them to. 

Next, I mount the pansy. I decided it didn't look quite finished, so I foraged in the yard for a few more plants.

I added a wild violet from the yard that had started blooming. I also remade the tag with some scrapbooking papers. The yarrow is really delicate and beautiful when pressed. It makes a lacy compliment to the flowers. 

Do you press any flowers or herbs? It would be great to make a journal of the pressed specimens to note when they bloom and what they are used for. 

In Victory,

Sherry

Plants for a Cottage Garden

So I have been trying to create a cottage garden for at least 12 years. It is a labor of love. When searching for what plants are considered cottage garden plants, much to my surprise, I found most of them now growing in my garden. Maybe not growing all at once in the same year, but most of them. 

What is the first plant you think of in a cottage garden? For me, it is the rose. I have tried roses with success. This rose in particular. It is an old garden rose called Zephirine Drouhin.

Peonies, this one is Sarah Bernhardt. 

Daylilies: this variety grows wild here and lines the roads in the country in late spring. I dug this up and brought it here from my grandmother's house. I don't know its name.

Shasta daisies, which also grow wild here in the summer and they line the highways in the country.

Salvia; this one is Victoria blue. The bumble bees love these! 

Catmint- some of the cats love this.

Violets, which grow wild here also, this clump was volunteer and wild, and I eventually pulled it, but it is beautiful.

Foxglove, I have not successfully kept these going in the yard. I will try again this year.

Hollyhock, I am not sure which one this is. I have completely different ones coming up this year. 

Bachelor's button: these are the classic romantic variety.

Feverfew, this is white wonder. It is an heirloom double feverfew, and it comes back every year.

Dianthus are also called cottage pinks.

 

Chamomile, I just love the herbs, and thankfully, they have been easy to grow. Borage is at the bottom right of this picture.

Lavender, I am not sure which one this is, but fern leaf lavender is really easy to grow from seed. 

Hydrangea, this is not from my yard. I have a small one, but I took this picture on vacation years ago at the Columbia restaurant in St. Augustine, FL. 

The bearded Iris. I have no idea what this is called, but my grandmother gave them to me, and I brought them here and planted them. They used to grow along a fence row in front of my house when I was little.

Calendula, this sort of looks like strawberry blonde, but I am not sure. It also might be flashback or zeolights; they are all similar.

Clematis; this one is Nelly Moser. It has never climbed, but it weaves through this small garden of daylilies and coreopsis.

 

Nasturtium, I believe this is cherry rose.

Ferns, if you have a shady spot, are wonderful. This is a cinnamon fern.

Yarrow, I love this one, it comes back every year, and the fernlike foliage is beautiful.

A geranium in a terra cotta pot. They have to be in the clay pot; it is just a classic! I buy these every year from our local Future Farmers of America greenhouse sale. They do a fantastic job growing these.

Cosmos, I think this is rubenza.

Black eyed susan, this is another plant that grows wild here in the summer and lines the country roads under the partial shade of a tree. This variety is Indian summer.

Zinnias, all of them! You can never have too many zinnias.

Marigolds, dwarf French marigolds are a classic. I also like strawberry blonde. This year, I am hoping to grow white ones.

I also have two lilac bushes, but they have never had their picture taken. I am not sure why.

So these plants are growing this year, and hopefully they will come up. The foxglove and hollyhock were new additions last year. I am also trying sweet peas and echinacea. I have the fondest memory of a sweet pea with a wonderful scent growing every year by an old Victorian home that was on the farm where I grew up, and it has me nostalgically trying to recreate that in my garden.

And be sure if you create your cottage garden to stop and smell the flowers and enjoy the wildlife.

Scenes from my cottage garden. I definitely have Beatrix Potter's eye behind the camera lens. These two little kittens have a story all their own.

In Victory, 
Sherry