Fairy Garden

i love to work in my garden. that surprises people some times, but really i do! i'm not very good at it. i like to call myself the Spastic Gardener.  i'm all over the place. but last year i became enchanted by the trend in fairy gardens. yes, enchanted! a quick search in Pinterest & you can find tons of examples.  i stumbled upon Kathryn's blog earlier this year as well.  
but i really love cruising through one of my nurseries to check out their displays.  this first photo was taken last year. it's their main/largest setup.

it used to be a coy pond & they have completely transformed it.  and here is the same garden this year

gotta love the little frog on the right sunning herself!

i chatted up with the lady who creates these last year & that is her full-time job!  can you believe it? someone gets paid to pretty much do nothing but create these cute little "stories".
what i like most about them, besides feeling like a giant walking around these, is you can use pretty much anything & make them any size you want.
i fell in love with this galvanized tree bucket!  shhhh i will probably be back at end of season to buy one!

and just all the cute stuff you can dress them up with!

perhaps it's the fact that i never played with dolls & doll houses when i was a kid, but i just love these! and to that point, i decided to make one of my own this year. but i'm not a doll house kind of chick.

yeah, this is my strange twist on something otherwise sweet & innocent.  actually this was a blast to put together, but let me advise you.....not all succulents are sun loving? who knew? oh yeah, the nursery where i bought them! i guess i should have asked first. the stars of our little display are

Ty

and his baby brother

Rex

and the twins

Brach & Terry

and then finally

Spin

yeah, i couldn't get creative on that one!  but this was so much fun to "build".  i have also come to appreciate my littel exhibit in the heat wave we've had over the past couple+ weeks.  only 1 plant seems to be suffering, that light blue thing in front of Spin, but everything else is loving the heat & the sun despite some being listed as more shade loving.  i'm already working on next year's theme.....redneck trailer park or dragons.  not much difference there really!

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Going Rogue

see this tomato?

that's a cherry tomato plant.

and these two?

those are Roma Italia tomato plants.

know what they all have in common?  i planted them

see this?

that's a cherry tomato plant too!  the difference?  i didn't plant this!
yeah, i got about 8 tomato plants coming up down on the beach all on their own!  and they are bearing fruit while the ones i bought (well, not really cuz Stephanie at Picket Fence gave them to me), are just barely blooming.  

there is something to be said about growing your own produce.....DON'T!  just let the river do it for you!

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i got Pot ting Bench

haha! you were thinking something else weren't you?  shame on you!

after several weeks of a little weld here, a little weld there, Nacho finished my custom potting bench this past weekend.  unfortunately i don't have any 'before' pics boooo.  but the before was a combination of salvaged pallets sitting on top of salvaged landscape bricks. do you see the theme here?  as proud as i was of my salvaged goodness, i just was not confident in it's abilities to withstand a flood & that is something we have to plan for in anything we do here.  so beholdmy new potting bench!

i've got shelves for storage, a wire rack for hanging, & a wire grate (in the middle) for soil to fall through to a collection bin.  pretty nifty eh?
i still get to shout out some slavaged goodness because the boards that we used for all 3 shelves are leftover pieces of our deck build.  that stuff is pretty heavy on it's own, so this thing is unlikely to go anywhere & has already proven it can withstand a flood or two.  the wire backing is leftover cattle/hog confinement wire from the gabions.  i hate to waste anything.

so props to Nacho for a nice build & to moi for outstanding Management! now i'm free to get my garden on!

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Diversion

just call us 92%.  we get 92% of a project completed & move on to something else cuz, like so many people i know, you just get sick of dealing with it.  if someone opened a business & called it The Last 8%, they'd make a killing.  i will claim to be ADHD until that business opens.  i am an idea person & a demo person.  so i have had the idea for some time that my trusty garden fencing really needed to be replaced.  Korby & i had worked hard a number of years ago to cut a sh*t ton of willow branches & make a nice looking fence out of them.  and in tru Me fasion, this is the only pic i have of one section of it.

taken at night of course with absolutely no patience for lighting, adjustments, etc.  just the rush to get a before photo before i actually ripped it out.  although i did find this one in the Gabion Wall files

see it poking up in the foreground?  this was a pretty intense project at the time.  it has held up nicely through countless floods & has that rustic, organic feel to it. okay, nice & all, but time to move on.  not long after Nacho finished our cable railing system, i found railing system made out of hog confinement wire - the same stuff we made our Gabions out of.  he's lucky he got that cable railing done before i found it.  but since then, i have wanted some sort of railing system made our of metal & the wire panels.  tada!
tear the old out!

and put in the new

now believe me, it did actually hurt a little to tear all that willow out. a LOT of work went into putting it in place to begin with.  but i like the clean look of this so much better. we're still working on the rest of the panels, but 2 panels in & i couldn't be more please!

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Pallet Garden

i mean really? how cool is this?

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