Thank You for Your Service to Our Country

Today is the day we thank all veterans for their service to our country.  So many young men and women gave their lives so we could enjoy the freedom we have today. 

I want to extend a special thank you to my husband, who served in the Vietnam War and to my father who is a Korean war veteran. As young teens who knew nothing about Washington and politics,  they both enlisted to serve their country in whatever capacity they were asked to serve.

These are my husband's combat boots from Vietnam:

He was lucky. He came home.  So many others did not. 

Today we remember those who gave their young lives so we could be free. 

Saying "thank you" is hardly enough.

Update 4:49PM: 
I want to add these two pics of my Mom & Dad, who attended memorial ceremonies today and  put a wreath on the Korean war memorial.  Do you see all those white crosses? My Dad and two or three others painted all of them about two weeks ago.

I, as always, was at work. But my sister was off and went to the service and took these pictures.

Cordyline Container Recipe

I finally found out how I can reply to comments during this Blogger meltdown...after I hit post comment three times, then I get my sign in/password box. If I DO NOT check the box to keep signed in, it seems to work. Someone on Deb's blog commented about that little trick and it works for me! A big thank you to Deb's commenter!



I decided to use the Cordyline plant as the "thriller" in this container.  (My original thought was to use it as a filler with some Tropicana's, but it's too big), so it will be the star.

Here is the recipe:

1 large Cordyline - $7.99--the Thriller
1 Proven Winners Colorblaze 'Sedona' - $5.00 -- filler
3 purple kale - roughly .40 each - $1.20 total - spillers - unconventional, I know
1 Purple Heart - $1.88 - spiller
1 Gerbera Daisy (will have orange/red flowers) - free from one of my clients at work - roughly $5 to buy - filler
2 Feathery Coleus - $1.88 each - total $3.76 - fillers
3 blue Salvia - .40 each - total of $1.20

Here is some Kale and one of the feathery coleus:

 The purple plant in the front is the 'Purple Heart'. I am hoping this and the kale will grow slightly over the side to act as  spillers.  I did not want something that would cover the entire container...just something with a little spill effect.  We shall see if this works....

I added a few blue Salvia near the  orangey/purpley coleus 'Sedona'

I put my gifted Gerbera daisy right in the front, which completed this container:

 
I am excited about this one. Don't I always say that?  LOL.  But I do love the color of the container, it's embossed ferns (which is why I don't want spillers covering it), and the subdued colors of the plants.  I am thinking this guy may be the one I choose to sit on my new front porch.  Although, tomorrow's container recipe is another one I am all giddy over!   As I said, I love them all! :)

Arbor Wall Planters

Just in case my morning glory vine does not grow up the big arbor, I decided to plant my wall pocket containers. I doubled them up on the big arbor.

 Before long these inside walls will be completely covered in orange/purple/chartreuse.  I put orange petunias and a dark sweet potato vine (ipomoea) on both top sections.

The lower sections have purple petunias and chartreuse ipomoea.

If the blue Morning Glories decide to grow this year, I think they will look fine with this color combo.  If not, I can just unwire the baskets and move them to the deck.

The smaller arbor is planted with blue salvia and a yellow/green vinca vine.  I left space on the side to add something else if I see anything interesting.  This spot is pretty shady, so perhaps a nice coleus...

At least this year the arbors will not be totally bare if the vines decide not to grow (as they usually do)

Big French Urn Planting Recipe

We bought these two urns earlier this week.

I planted them exactly the same using these plants:

and one Tropicana that I removed from one of the 49 planters we brought out yesterday. Yes, I stored 49 planters over the winter. Here are three of the larger ones--I removed the Trops from the round one.

They all have either dahlias, cannas or calla lilies.  Just imagine all the money I saved by  not having to rebuy these plants!

 Here is the free Tropicana that I used to begain this combination planter.

Here's my Thriller, Filler, Spiller recipe:

1 Tropicanna - Free (would cost about $20 to buy one Tropicana from a place like Home Depot) - Thriller- you have to use your imagination as there is no thrill yet...Give it a few weeks and the big striped leaves will begin to fill the area.
1 Purple Fountain Grass - $5-filler (also a mini thriller in my humble opinion)
1 Asparagus Fern $1.88-spiller
1 feather-leaf coleus $1.88-filler
1 Purple Heart  $1.88-filler
1 Sweet Potato Vine - 'Bright Ideas Rusty Red' - $5.00-spiller - (I splurged on this because I have never seen this variety. I could have used 'Blackie' for $1.88, but I like the rusty red of this one)
1 Trebbiano Dahlia Tuber - $7.50-filler
1/2 bag of Miracle Grow Potting Soil - $5.00

This is the feathery coleus which had no name on the container:

I really like it intertwined with the asparagus fern. 

I hope it survives. I have a lot of plants in these containers. It will be survival of the fittest!

Here is a close up of one planter, which looks nothing like what I envision them to be.
See the big bare spot in the back?  That's where the "thriller" plant is.

Very soon that little shoot will look a lot like this:

The dahlia is in front of the Trop and its starbrust flowers are nearly black:

The dark dahlias should be wonderful against the bright orange Tropicana blooms. 

 This is the container (from a few years ago) that I removed the Tropicana from.  I had Purple Fountain Grass next to it that year, too. Yes, that little clump of ugliness in the new planter should blossom into these big sprays of squirrel tails swaying in the wind (that is what those soft fuzzy blooms remind me of)


Yeah, it really does take a ton of faith to be a container gardener on the cheap!

Ye of little faith--just wait until you see these in late July. I am pretty sure they are going to have at least four feet of gorgeous foliage/flowers reaching toward the sky.  At least that's my plan............

I had a few Bells of Ireland seeds left over, so I stuck some in both planters.

Grape Hyacinth Bouquet

I have decided to take a few days to spend some quality family time with  my Mom & Dad and Aunt & Uncle.  Mr. Z will stay home to man the fort.  I hope he does not forget to water my seeds which I put in an area where the rain won't hit them.  I won't be available to check my email for three or four days....how will I survive??? 

I have set up a few days of posts, so you won't even notice that I am gone.  I apologize for not being able to comment on your blogs, but for the past two days Blogger has not been cooperating.  On to today's post...which was really done a couple days ago.

I came across an old Carnival glass candy jar while cleaning the storage cupboards.  I immediately thought that grape hyacinths would look nice in it.  Grape hyacinths are not easy to use in a floral arrangement because the stems would have to be wired to make them stand.  I remembered reading of a way to make them stand tall without wiring.

I went out and dug up a big clump--bulbs and all.  You need the bulbs for weight.  Hose off most of the soil, then wrap a rubber band around the bottom section.

 Then just plop it down in your container.  The weight of the bulbs keep them standing tall.
 I stuck in  a bit of that purple kale in the background, added some water, then covered the bulbs with this fiber.

 I thought some light purple creeping phlox would look nice so I went and cut a few handfuls and tucked them in.

Don't those colors play nicely against the Carnival glass?

I have enjoyed the arrangement for two days and today I am going to remove the grape hyacinths and replant them! They have not been harmed and will rebloom just as lovely next spring.

Remember that Lamb's Ear I planted last May:

 Here they are one year later completely filled in.

Now I bet they become a pest to keep in their boundary line. :)

The new color I painted the potting bench is:
Rapture Blue to be exact.

Johnny Appleseed, I am NOT, but I Keep Trying

Nonetheless I planted a bunch of seeds yesterday.  Maybe this will be the year that I can finally grow a few seeds planted directly in the ground.  But just in case it's not, I also planted some in pots. I seem to be more successful when I use pots.  I picked a few that I really really want to live --like these gorgeous Cherries Jubilee mounding nasturtiums that  Dianne sent me.

 I really want some Bells of Ireland for bouquets, so they went in this egg carton.

I love the colors of Jewel Mix Nasturtium. I planted some of them in pots and the rest went all along this walkway which is full of red pixie lilies, golden yellow daylilies and blue salvia.

Look at these very unusual Four O'Clocks Kaleidoscope. I really like streaky paintbrush stroke flowers.  I planted these all along the front of this garden.


The Vanilla Berry Mounding Nasturtiums (also from Dianne) were planted throughout this garden.

They will be a nice replacement for the primroses.  Fingers crossed that they will grow! 



I also planted blue morning glories at the base of both sides of the main arbor. 

I have tried them many times before, but have always planted them on the back side. Maybe this time they will take.
Did you notice that grape hyacinth flower arrangement sitting on the newly painted flower-arranging bench?  I will show you how I did that in my  next post.

I must now run outside and uncover two big French urns I planted yesterday. We had frost warnings last night. It's in the mid 30's right now.  At least the mosquitoes went away! We had one day in the high 70's and they suddenly appeared. Yesterday's high was only in the 50's, and they were gone. I would rather work in cooler weather than have those pesky insects all over me.

7:08 PM -I have tried four times today to answer comments and I can't it to work. Yet I see 3 of you commented.  What's the secret?

I am Getting Tired

It is just impossible to get all the work done that needs doing while off work for one week.  I have done a good deal of garden work. There is still tons more to do, but it keeps raining, so I work outside a few hours each day, but mainly I have been occupied with indoor tasks.  I posted about it here, so just click if you want to know the price I pay for being a semi-hoarder.

And what the heck is going on with Blogger? I am getting fed up. This morning I was able to post a comment on one blog and then everything stopped working.  I just tried to add a picture here and I got this...

what the heck is this??

I don't want to get a pic from Google. I JUST WANT TO GET TO MY DESKTOP!   OK, I am already frustrated, so I am just stopping here.  Hopefully, Blogger will be back to normal tomorrow.

I hope so!

Blooming Tuesday

It has been raining quite a bit for the past two days, so I have not been able to show you my blue paint project.  We stained the deck flooring two days ago, but with all the rain, we have not been able to get my project back where it  belongs.  For those of you dying to know ( :) ) , at the end of my Blooming Tuesday post, you will get a clue as to what I painted.  I will show you more later.

I am having ambivalent feeling about these linky parties.  I really don't understand how they work. I have been to a lot of  blogs where the authors have a separate page for the dozens of linky parties they participate in.  There was no link to the current party as there should be; just a link to the main blog of the host.    Is this acceptable?  I can  sure see that it would be a lot of time to link to 12 different parties in one post -- so much easier if you just make one page  to list the linkies, but that is not the way I understood it should be. I thought each post had to link to the current week's party so if I wander on to the post three months from now I can just click and find the whole list of participants.  However, I have not seen any linky author delete anybody who uses a separate page.  With multiple parties, it would  be quite a pain to wait for all the hosts to post their linky so you can link up.   Jean, please let me know how this works! You are about the only linky party I do here right now. 
I have some creeping phlox that just began to bloom.  I removed most of it from the Arbor Gardens last year, but I did leave a couple of small areas, like this one:

I also bought a flat of orange impatiens and planted it along the walkway.  I wonder how it is going to look when the short pink lilies begin to bloom!  I was planning to buy white impatiens, but decided that was way too boring.

Back in the rockwall garden I have some tulips blooming. I have decided to use this area as a cutting garden for flower bouquets.  I have not even started to clean up this garden. It is full of fallen branches, etc.

I noticed a nice group of purple peony tulips and some very small Princess Irene orange tulips in bloom. I cut them all down and decided to make a centerpiece bouquet from them.

I added a few other bloomers, like this ajuga...

I ended up with this purple/orange bouquet:

I just love it!

You can see what I used that bouquet for if you click here.

Happy Blooming Tuesday! Click here to visit the other participants.

Why is it that the grass will spread so aggressively in my garden, but leave bare patches on my lawn?

That is the question that Michael just asked on my grass-in-the-ajuga post.

Well, Michael, I have been asking myself the same question.

We garden bloggers like to show the pretty stuff in our yards. That is why you see so many close up flower pictures.  I am not a closeup flower picture fan... I learn much more from the big sweeping views of the entire landscape.  Most of the time I don't get to see that....probably because it is not so pretty.  Like the pic of my yard I am going to show you below which is the lawn just a few feet from the ajuga...

I heard you all gasp!  Isn't this awful?

Here is a pic of the same area last fall when we began noticing that something was wrong:

We had never seen this happen before.  After much research Mr. Z (I am sick of using DH, so for now I shall refer to hubby as Mr. Z, as in Mr. Zoey)  :)  decided it's grub damage. The grubs ate all the grass roots last fall, thus killing all the grass.  He has applied grub killer stuff and has reseeded the area. Today I noticed a few tiny grass hairs beginning to come up.  Hopefully it will fill in soon. Mr. Z will be putting more grub stuff on in June to kill the next batch of the despicable insects before they hatch.

Gardening is not always pretty..............

But this is, don't you think?


We left home at 7:15 a.m. today with an air conditioner from 1970 and a console television in the truck bed. We were headed to the Resource Recovery Station. Ever hear of a "Resource Recovery Station"? I just shook my head when I saw that sign on the road to our local dump! Yes, it is no longer called "the dumps" as it was for all of my childhood years. The name was probably changed decades ago, but I have not had the occasion to go there until now. It was the one day per year when people in our township could dump off big junk--furniture, TV, air conditioners, tires, etc. at no charge.

What a popular spot it was this morning! I guess a lot of people were just as excited as I was to get rid of two big pieces taking up valuable basement space. We had to wait in line for over an hour just to dump off our junk. I found the whole experience rather interesting and I wish I had my camera with me. A picture would have added so much to this post!

Anyway back to the blue paint...we stopped at the paint store on the way home from the dumps adventure and I bought a whole gallon of that lovely shade of blue. I spent the rest of the morning painting.

You're wondering what I painted, aren't you? Well, you will just have to wait for my next post and I will show you.   Here's a clue....it's exterior paint.

Did you know that some nutty minister has proclaimed today--May 21st, 2011--to be the day the earth ends?  I sure hope I have not worked so hard the past two days only to have it all end by midnight!  It would be just my luck...