Friday after work, I stopped by Lowe’s garden center and picked up more cement pavers for the pathway to match the ones put in by previous owners. I also picked up more bricks to use around and under potted plants here in the back garden.
Simple beauty for your home
Friday after work, I stopped by Lowe’s garden center and picked up more cement pavers for the pathway to match the ones put in by previous owners. I also picked up more bricks to use around and under potted plants here in the back garden.
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Overblown lighting but still fun! Will have to pull into Lightroom and edit… 😉 |
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Gramma Gini’s roses bloom in the background and the old cherry tree stands to the left. |
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A favorite! |
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Last summer’s A Small Summer Home Tour. |
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Simple, clean, and French inspired! |
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My former rose garden parterres… |
I sat down with some of my favorite French style design books and looked at what makes authentic French style so appealing. I realized right away what I wanted…
Our benches needed to look like those gorgeous park benches one sees at large public parks in France and even here in the United States (think Central Park, NYC). They needed to be able to move effortlessly from porch to yard on a whim.
Enjoy the tour,
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The first plant stand ~ as seen as part of Our Spring Garden Pinterest Challenge. |
A few windy days and five cans of matte black spray paint later the rusty and worn benches were fixed up and look great with their French park look…
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Love, love the open look of the patio now! Less clutter and there is space for an umbrella when the sun gets hot later in summer (hence the umbrella stand in the corner). |
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Outdoor Dining Room ~ French Style Patio Design |
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See how the Spanish lavender in the white plastic bucket doesn’t fit… |
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A view out into the garden… |
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Like on our inspiration piece, a little butterfly has come to visit le jardin… A corner off our patio. |
Jane and Leo used a plastic insert kit to create this waterfall of four galvanized metal buckets, a galvanized tub, plus a variety of coral flowers ~ totally love their cheerfulness! I have a bunch of clay pots but I thought there’s no way I could recreate this look with them. Too fragile.
However…
I have had an idea for awhile to create a real water fountain from a galvanized horse trough, and you’ll see that in this next series of photographs.
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My inspiration piece… The owner of The Victorian Sample Florist created this water fountain from a large oval galvanized trough surrounded by stacked paving rocks and a hidden piping system going up into the building’s wall. |
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This is the Secret Garden in Corsicana, Texas that I wrote about last fall. |
*On a side note: While I was working on this post, I came across a company which sells galvanized chicken feeders and other poultry supplies ~ Premier 1 Supplies ~ in case you’d like some feeders for your brood. Chickens are also something I think about having in our garden. They are perfect bug removers!
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They have statuary and concrete bird baths, full-size trees and old roses set in garden rooms… It’s an ethereal place! |
For this fountain, part of me is thinking of using a medium-size watering trough or very large half round clay squat pot which will fit my space better as a recycling water fountain (like that in the Secret Garden).
After finishing doing some volunteer work for school last Friday I headed back to Meador’s to pick up this stand.
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This new rose bush is appropriately named “Iceberg.” |
“Gardening is cheaper than therapy and you get tomatoes.”Author Unknown
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Madame Sabine de Barra (Kate Winslet) and famed French garden designer André le Nôtre (Matthias Shoenaerts) |
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Madame de Barra experiencing a healing wish garden where people would come to remember loved ones. |
“In every gardener there is a child who believes in
The Seed Fairy.”
Our former fireplace with roses drying underneath the mantel ~
Simple Saturdays: Rain and Candlelight. |
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I never took the little thriftshop tag off of this little garden press! |
The Victorians enjoyed nature so much that pressing flowers to fill their scrapbooks and photo albums as they added-in tintype and daguerreotype photographs was de rigueur. They also created still-life vignettes inside picture frames and under glass cloches with pressed ferns, grasses and florals, often adding in taxidermy birds and animals to their scenes.
I almost hated to pick them but I knew that this was the only way to preserve their beauty. Pear trees flower for such a short time!
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Here is one of those mini pear bouquets freshly pressed! |
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Tiny roses dried from a small bouquet… |
Roses dry by far the best out of all blooms that I have tried though once in a great while I have been able to dry a pretty bouquet of hydrangeas. Most flowers you pick can be dried but a press is the way to go for most of them.
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Dried hydrangeas I saved from our former home in California which have lost most of their color… This was taken in our first trailer home. |
The humidity has to be fairly low for hydrangeas to dry well. Here in Texas, spring and late fall are the best times to dry flowers as the humidity is much lower than during the summertime. In California because our “high humidity” was a low 40% (our low was about 10% and really made your skin look like that of a mummy!), flowers could be dried all year long.
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This same bouquet-filled basket when it was a bit fresher! |
One of three hydrangea bushes we had in pots at the Big House (looking a bit ratty at the end of summer). This photograph was taken in late August or early September 2014.
*On another note, if you heard about the big gas explosion in Murrieta, California in July of 2019… That was up the street about four houses from our home! Kinda glad we sold that house now… Many of the houses around that corner house had their windows blown out from the explosion and a gas worker was killed, sadly.
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I tossed out some seed for the doves who are too big for the new bird feeders we picked up during Black Friday sales at Lowe’s and Walmart. |
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A view from the kitchen window. |
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Soup and cornbread, yum! |
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A couple of views from the front windows. |
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Gorgeous pieces all one of a kind… Very upper left pink necklace is made from pink coral. The two lowest necklaces on the table and to the right are made of tiger eye. |
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Our summer mantel with its peacock feathers. |
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This is just one photograph from the post I wrote called Tom’s Secret Garden in Corsicana. |
Brides-to-be would instantly be put at ease to choose from Victorian Sample Florist’s selection of faux or real blooms.
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Just look at this gorgeous tiger eye and wooden shell piece! |
I did find a pretty bauble to bring home with me… Mr. Adams calls his jewelry “lost treasures” and I’d have to agree. Chunky necklaces have been calling my name and I haven’t any before this piece… Plus you know I love pearls!
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Love love love the Renaissance and Steam Punk style of this chunky necklace which is why it came home with me. |