New bloomers and gardening

Good afternoon Friends ~ I have a dinner invitation. Mark’s sister’s eldest son is in town on business, and asked if I’d like to go to dinner this evening and I am looking forward to the visit.

Today makes one month since Mark left this earth. It doesn’t seem possible, but it’s true. Yesterday was better than my foggy Monday, and today was better and I am thankful. I had some errands to run today, and had a couple of gift cards that I decided to use to buy some plants for my ‘sanctuary’ gardens.  These were all under $5 each. I bought 4 yellow bulbines. They just looked so happy and I don’t have much yellow in my gardens. Oh yea, I forgot to take a picture of the two little pots of crossandra that I also got, these were all from Walmart’s garden dept.

I looked the bulbines up when I got home, and they can tolerate drought and poor soils. They can be divided and I’m going to do that with them, and they also reseed. Hurray for that.

If anyone can tell me what my two orchids are, I would greatly appreciate it.

You can see a pot of Persian Shield and an Impatiens in the back ground. These were all bought from that place that sells their 3 gal. pots for $5 each, these were less than that because they were smaller pots. Can anyone tell me what type of impatiens this is, with purple/green leaves and that wonderful fuchsia color of blooms.

Here’s the other orchid.

Now, here’s the project that I started on yesterday. It was one I wanted Mark and I to tackle when he got better. My hamelia patens bush got totally out of hand and took over our grotto area and my shed. Then recently it got some kind of black fungus that ended up being on some other things too, so it has to be severely pruned. There are rose canes up in the mix too, so I’m just going to work slowly and use the tree saw and my hand clippers and go for it. I’m not crazy about being on a ladder but do it when I have to, and I’ve been slowly and carefully going up and down the ladder.

This first picture is ‘after’ I cut away a whole bunch from the north end.

This view is inside the secret garden looking east into the morning sunlight. Look at that monster. It just kept spreading and spreading. I don’t mind the roses doing that, and I didn’t mind this one doing it either until it got that fungus. Butterflies and hummingbirds both love this. I will keep it cup back to a manageable size once I get it cut down. At least I hope I will.

Morning shots from this morning. I want to be thankful for the gift of each new day and these pictures were a blessing to me today.

Some still life scenes from inside our little cottage.

Some of our rock collection.

Outside the living room.  I put this stained glass window panel in this window to block off the driveway from inside and give me some light without having ‘buggies’ being able to look in if they happen to get into our property. The piece of aluminum on the wall is from an old screen door.

That’s it from Plum Cottage. It’s been a very warm and humid day today, in the low 80’s. I hope we get some cold weather before winter is over, it would be so refreshing.

Count your blessings every single day. Even if you don’t think you have any, stop and think, and I just bet you can come up with something.

FlowerLady Lorraine