I love gardening and would do it everyday if I could. Unfortunately, for about six or seven months out of the year, it's not possible. When my flowers are blooming, I am in heaven! :) I planted the perennials last year and am happy with the way everything is filling in.
This is the area along my driveway. There are coneflowers, daylilies, daisies, cosmos, lavender, lamb's ear, snapdragons and artemesia in here.
This area has cosmos, rose of sharon, coreopsis, and cranesbill.
The bees love the coneflowers and lavender.
We've had very hot weather and some very windy days, so I'm counting my blessings that everything is blooming as well as it is.
I am obsessed with the baby birds in my birdhouse. Every night when I go out to water, the mother is frantically flying back and forth with food. I took this one last night. I'm thinking that the baby is almost ready to spread her wings, as I think she's bigger than Mom!
When we moved into this house two years ago, my family teased me for putting up so many birdhouses. Well, this neighborhood obviously needed some birdhouse real estate as most of my houses have families! A neighbor even came by last night and said that they've noticed a marked increase in the number of birds in the neighborhood since we moved in. That makes me so happy!!
Thank you to everyone who entered my Rustic Box Giveaway. I appreciate all of you coming by and leaving sweet comments and for following me here and on Facebook. Using True Number Generator, at Random.org, the winner is: Lori @ Thrifty Decor Mom (sorry, I'm not smart enough to figure out how to show the results.)
I've been seeing two birds in one of my birdhouses for weeks and wondered how the babies were doing. I hadn't ever seen them, but I could see a lot of nesting material in the birdhouse. Today I was outside taking pictures of my front yard and I got to see the babies!
The mother (or maybe the father?) came back several times with food for them. Boy was there a lot of squawking every time the food was getting close!
***You can click on any of the pictures to enlarge them. Please excuse my very elementary photography skills! :)
What a fun surprise this morning! Good thing I had my trusty helper! :)
Isn't it fitting that I received this gift from my good blogging friend Martina @ Northern Nesting yesterday? I was the winner of her recent giveaway. I love her blog and love this gift! Thank you Martina!
I had such fun making a box using a new fence board that I aged with apple cider vinegar and steel wool, that I decided to try another one using a label from The Graphics Fairy. To see the directions for aging a board, click HERE.
I tried to darken the label a bit, so I soaked it in coffee. It came out a little bit darker...
I then Mod Podged it on the board.
I think it turned out pretty neat.
Here it is with four pint size canning jars set inside. They hold the flowers perfectly!
So on to the Giveaway! I will be giving this box (just the box, not the flowers or canning jars--too hard to mail!) to one lucky winner. I will be picking the winner on Friday, July 22, 2011 at 5pm Mountain Time.
To have a chance to win:
---Become a follower of this blog and leave a comment. If you're already a follower, please just mention that in your comment. If you don't have a blog, please put your email address in the comment so I can find you if you win. :)
Want more chances to win?
---"LIKE" Our Adventures in Home Improvement on Facebook. The link to my page is HERE or the LIKE button is on the right side of my page. Leave a comment here that you did.
---Leave a comment on the Our Adventures in Home Improvement page on Facebook. Leave a comment back here on this page that you did.
So that's it! Three chances to win. If you do all three, leave three comments.
After a long winter, my backyard plants are finally starting to show their stuff! :) I planted all of the perennials last summer so they are still filling in. Some things are working well where they are and some may have to be moved in the fall.
The daisies are just starting to bloom. The daylillies are too. A few coneflowers have started. There will be lots more! The lavender and salvia create a nice contract to the other plants.
The daisies by the pond have gone crazy! I do have other things back there, but you'd never know it! I will have to figure out what's hiding back there and move them somewhere else!
I haven't ever loved this tree because it sent shooters out all over my planting beds. Well, now it's dying (ok, it's dead!), but I don't want to remove it yet. I've been waiting for months for my perennials to bloom and removing it right now would tear up everything around it. We can take it out in the fall.
There are rose of sharon and hollyhocks toward the back of this bed that should be blooming like crazy in the next couple of weeks.
