Running With Scissors…

If only I could make a card this beautiful…

Perfection!  Have a wonderful day!

Flora

Fauna

Flora

Fauna

The flora is Oriental lilies in my garden.  The fauna is, of course, Wally.  He’s been in our family for a week now and it’s as though we’ve always been together.  I don’t think he misses his siblings at all.  Today he had his second play date with his 11 week old yellow lab friend, Magnum.  They get along famously.  Magnum, being especially sweet natured, brought Wally a stick to play with on their first visit.  Today, he brought a bigger stick.

I can’t tell you how happy I am to have Wally in my life.  Have a great day!

As has been the case for the last couple of years, the weekends are often followed by a garden post.  Why break with tradition?  When the weather is so gloriously beautiful, and we aren’t off enjoying the great outdoors elsewhere, I’ll be in the garden.

I spent a good part of Saturday shopping for flowers.  Oh my!  I haven’t indulged myself so deliciously in ages, as my mature, closely planted garden has little room for newcomers.  I always plant several pots of annuals, which allows variety from year to year but, for the most part, the perennial beds remain unchanged.  This year, however, I decided to completely redo one of the beds, hoping to plant something the deer find distasteful.  Frankly, at the moment I’m exhausted but, before I plant myself on the couch for the evening, I thought I’d share a few photos I took this weekend.

I don’t know how many times I’ve photographed this azalea and maple tree, but they truly are some of my garden favorites.  And to think, the maple tree will blaze on like this until it drops its leaves with autumn’s chill.  Aren’t those colors beautiful?  This is a view from my Adirondack chair where I like to sit (and sometimes nap) in the afternoons. 

Before I headed out on my shopping spree I wandered through the garden, enjoying the spring blooms.  It’s a favorite time of day…everything fresh with dew…so quiet in the neighborhood, with the birdsong true and sweet, almost echoing through the trees.

Johnny Jump Ups:

Deciduous azalea:

And these are a few of the annuals that came home with me, starting with Osteospermum (pardon the fly):

Gazania:

And, finally, these petunias.  They’re mixed with red verbena and the color combination is so pretty:

There are a lot more, but that’s probably enough flower photos for one day.  I’ll be back soon with something stamped.  I hope you had a wonderful weekend, too.  Thanks for visiting my garden!

Hello!  I just wanted to share this photo with you:

I can’t believe how blue these hydrangeas are this year!  The flowers on this bush have always been a beautiful dark purple.  The soil pH is what determines the color and I’ve done nothing different to bring about this change.  Their blue is so intense it’s almost neon.  It’s even reflected in the leaves.  Isn’t nature something?

It has occurred to me there’s much to be learned in a garden…

How to stand out in a crowd:

Seeing things in their best possible light:

And from more than one angle:

We’re reminded to embrace our differences:

Support our friends when they fall:

Tolerate the occasional flaw:

And always look for the inner beauty:

I’m wishing you a beautiful day.

Begin with a solid white image.  Mask and stamp with a leafy background.  Paint flower center chartreuse, then feather burgundy toward petal edges.  Apply rust colored Fun Flock to the stamen ends.

Okay…I’ll admit it…I didn’t have time to do a coloring tutorial this weekend.  I spent the weekend stamping for Flourishes’ new releases which will be happening this Wednesday (pretty exciting!) and making a gift bag for a friend to go with the 22 cards he just bought from me for his mom.  All the while the weather was beautiful and I still had the gardening, housework, laundry and other weekend chores to do.  Add to that my husband came home Sunday after a four day absence and…well…you get the picture.

I’d say I wish I was a superwoman, but I don’t think I’d like that.  I’d rather be my pokey-slow Type B personality, plodding through my day, easily distracted by a butterfly, a shimmer of light, or a wildflower growing on the other side of the fence.  It’s not easy being me in the fast-paced environment in which I work.  I sometimes feel I’ve split myself into two personalities — the one that’s “on” (at work) and the one that’s on cruise control (at home).  Perhaps I over compensate when I’m home but I guess each of us has our own way of moderating the stress in our lives.  Home is a stress-free oasis for me unless I choose to make it otherwise and I’m fortunate to be able to make that choice.  Some are not so lucky.

So here, at least, is a photo of the gift bag I made.  It’s a design by Angela Sylvester that was shared as a Stampin’ Up! OnStage online project.  The instructions were shared with me by my friend, Nancy Littrell.  I searched online to see if Angela has a blog where she might have posted a tutorial but the best I could come up with was this PDF file which appears to be incomplete — there’s no Page Two with a diagram for the score lines.

EDT:  Monica found a tutorial!  See it here.  Thank you, Monica!

It’s made from two 12″ x 12″ sheets of double sided designer paper which are taped together with Sticky Strip at one of the corners.  I folded the top 2 1/4″ down to the outside to make a border.  The finished bag is 8″ x 3 1/2″ and my bag is 7″ tall, but it could be taller without the top folded down.  There’s a sheet of white cardboard in the bottom to firm up the base.  It’s really an ingenious design and could be fixed up super cute but I don’t have time to do more with it today.  Maybe next time.

I sure hope you all had a nice weekend.  I’ll be back by Wednesday with brand new stamps from Flourishes.  I had a great time stamping my little heart out with them this weekend.  Take care!

This is the pretty yellow flower that’s in my new blog header.  It’s an Evening Primrose.  Most Evening Primrose blooms stay cupped during the day and only open fully in the late afternoon and evening, but this variety stays open all day.  I thought it was about time I changed my header from spring to summer.  I hope you enjoy it!

Have a wonderful day!

Hello!  I’m just checking in for a minute to say Coloring Today has been postponed due to lack of time.  I had a  busy weekend and I knew I wouldn’t have time to do a tutorial, but I had a card to share… well… then along came one of those bad headaches I get occasionally.  All things considered, I decided to take a sick day and didn’t even photograph the card.  I’m feeling better now — just in time to go to work. 

So… I’ll just share photo I took the other day in the garden — another busy bee.  Looks like she’s just resting for a minute.  Maybe she had a headache, too.

Tomorrow I’ll be back with that card and next Monday there will be a Coloring Today post.  Be well and I’ll see you again soon!

I don’t have a card for you today, but there’s been some mighty pretty things going on in the garden this month.  I wondered if you might like to step into that world for a moment.  I won’t keep you long.

I have a stamp that says “Flowers are the poetry of nature.”  How true that is.  They’re the writer’s pen, the artist’s brush, the weaver’s loom.  They’re a reason to get up early on a dewy morning.  They draw me out for one last stroll as the sun slants low in the evening.  They’re ruffled petticoats and draping jewels, delicate, decadent, romantic, shy.  They work magic on my soul but the awe is so compelling it hurts a little bit.  It’s too big.  Or I’m too small.  I hope you enjoy the photos.

Above:  Penstemon backlit by the late afternoon sun.

Below:  Fuschias dripping from the weekend watering.

Baptisia in amethyst and sage.

Impatien, sweet and pure to its very heart.

Thank goodness for the garden.  Have a wonderful day!

At least they leave the foxgloves alone.  Digitalis — they’re poison.  Aren’t they pretty, though?  They’re scattered all over the garden, growing prolifically from the seed they spread.  Most of my foxgloves are transplanted from the wild but the pale pink on the left is from White Flower Farms. The color is called Salmon so I was a little disappointed when it turned out pink – but it’s such a pretty pink.

The pot behind it rests in a bird bath.  I love the idea of having bird baths in the garden.  Unfortunately, so do the racoons.  They were forever climbing up to get at the water and knocking the bowl from its pedestal.  The concrete bowl would crash heavily into the surrounding flower bed, crushing everything beneath it.  Once I replaced the water with a flower pot the racoons left it alone.  The blue and white lobelia in the pot will soon cascade over the bowl, providing an elevated spot of color in the bed.

Most foxgloves are biennial — they spend one year growing, the next year producing flowers and seed and that’s usually the last you’ll see of that particular plant.  The yellow foxglove, above, is a true perennial.  It’s small and the color is subtle – not as magnificant as the biennials but it has its own charm.

I’ll have something stamped to share tomorrow.  I’m on vacation this week and you’d think I’d find time to stamp, but everyday I wake up with a list in my head…today I found a little time for the garden.  See you again soon!  Have a great day!