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Showing posts with label gardening. Show all posts
Showing posts with label gardening. Show all posts

Friday, December 30, 2011

The Flower of Winter,My Very Own Rose Parade

Revelation 15:3b Great and marvelous are thy works, Lord God Almighty......
It may be winter but we Californians are truly blessed with the ever presence of flowers!Praise God! ...and all from my own yard.
angel trumpet
water lily
bog lily in my pond
bog hibiscus
don't know the name but very hardy
finally oranges on my potted tree after many years. The Santa Ana winds always blown the blossoms off!
Lantana I plant these all over and keep small as edging ,then I don't have to keep replanting annuals

Moses in the Boat
Petunia
ivy geranium
morning glory
periwinkle with sweet allysum
antique single rose,my favorite
antique single rose
Lily,not sure of exact name
Mandevilla vine
Blue Plumbago
tea rose

Friday, September 30, 2011

My Blue Plumbago

My one blue plumbago I am allowing to grow as it will. It is really lovely
you can see how it's growth chokes out my roses,hardly a dramatic display
well you can almost see this rose and the blue color isn't quite what I was looking for . It needs to be a little deeper blue.
Every Victorian had a special place reserved in their heart for flowers. In fact many times when one thinks Victorian,  flowers especially roses pop into your mind.
On a trip back to my former home in upstate N.Y. I saw the most fabulous display of plumbago neatly trimmed in a rounded cone shape and profusely blooming brilliant blue flowers. Between each plumbago bush was growing an equally beautiful magenta colored rose bush. The blue just made the roses pop. I t was a feast for the eyes.
I have made an attempt to produce that in my own garden. I've been waiting and waiting for this display to produce itself but ...not so easy. The plumbago doesn't seem to bloom in the cycle that the roses bloom and at first grew very slowly and then shazam! they were sprawling all over the place...not only that,  those little blue devils were crowding out my roses.

my meager attempt at pruning, oh well maybe I. can shape them as they grow
maybe I should have chosen these magenta lantana instead  of roses. They sure wouldn't let those bully plumbago get the best of them. 
Today I made an effort to trim my plumbago back to a more orderly appearance  though not in a perfect rounded cone shape.Alas now all the blue flowers are gone. I guess every gardener will interject here that you need extreme patience in gardening. In the meantime I'll enjoy the one plumbago that I am allowing to grow as it will.

Monday, September 26, 2011

Wouldn't You Just Love to See a Close up of My back yard Moon?

Praise ye him,sun and moon:praise him all ye stars of light.Psalm 148:3
In case you haven't read my earlier post I created this lunar spectacle for my back yard. Such fun!



Friday, September 23, 2011

A moon for my Garden

                                  When I consider the heavens,the work of thy fingers,the moon and the stars,which thou hast ordained.Psalm 8:3
there's my moon,hovering over my back fence
the 2 half circle sconces made of translucent marbleized material that makes it moon like
glued together forming a full moon, note permanent bars allowing a place to secure it to a pole and also secure the solar light
While watching a TV tour of ahome of a famous person ,I was entranced by the fact that the home had a light in the shape of a quarter moon that would turn on at night. I thought that would be really neat in my garden.All I had to do was figure out how to create it. Well while on vacation in a thrift store I found 2 .half circle sconces that were kind of marble looking...that might do the job.I could hardly wait to get home to get to work on them. I didn't even yell at my husband for driving too fast.
Once home ,armed with my zip ties and liquid nails I glued the 2 halves of my moon together and fastened them to a pole. That being done I positioned a couple of solar lights inside my moon(they each had a crossbar in them already, convenient for securing the lights with zip ties and also securing my moon to the pole.Zip ties again came in handy to secure the moon behind a bush on my back fence.I could hardly wait for darkness to see the fruition of my scheme and there she was hovering over my back fence.I could hardly take my eyes off her!