This & that

Good afternoon Folks ~ Here it is Saturday morning. We’ve had beautiful weather this week, except for the ‘wind’ we had at the beginning, like three days of it. The weather channel even put out warnings for fire danger.

With this nicer weather, I have been working outside in the mornings. It has been great. I am getting plenty of exercise, am being refreshed and energized. I ripped out some old growth by the ‘wedding grotto’. (So called, because in a private ceremony of renewing our wedding vows, we did so, in this space. Notice our bare feet, and this was in Dec. A beautiful day and celebration. (2003))

Any who, that was then, below is how the area looked in March 2012. Totally overgrown with hamelia paten, a rose and something else. It all just kept getting taller and more sprawly.

Below is from January 2013. I couldn’t handle it the way it was, so cut it way back. I ‘grief vented’ with this cut back as it was just a month since losing my dear husband.

April 2013

May 2016

Pictures below taken yesterday, the 10th. The pile of debris is about 2’ high and I’m not sorry to see it laying there in a heap. It was time for a change. I took out old flowerpots also that had nothing growing in them and were not even visable, and one of them was an old Watt’s pot, which I’ll have to fill with something nice.

This whole secret garden is another work in progress. Things had become in a saddened state and with suffering from plantar fasciitis last summer for 5 months, I basically just hand watered things. No gardening work got done.

A week or so back, with gift $ I bought some plastic coated chicken wire in a 2’ x 25’ roll, cut it to size, wired it to iron awning support and the pvc piping on the other side as seen below. In the middle I used a heavy aluminum pipe, that I felt God gave me the idea to go look in area where it was stored. It was perfect, the right height and I pounded a galvanized pipe into the ground and slipped aluminum pipe over that. The alum. pipe had two holes at either end, so at the top end, I wired it to the pvc pipe than ran across the top. The chicken wire is also wired to the top pvc, and the aluminum pipe down the middle. I used 3 sections of the chicken wire to fill the space and for me it worked easily and I was thankful to God for the little project that made me feel happy and that I got it done.

I bought a Port St. Johns vine at HD. I had one over 20 years ago bought at Butterfly World, but it croaked sometime between then and maybe 10 years ago. This new one is in a huge pot in good potting soil and I’ve started wiring it to the chicken wire. The flowers smell like jelly beans to me. The vine is fast growing, so we’ll see how long it takes to fill in the space. This vine will be much easier to keep under control and be oh so pretty too. Here is a link to info about it. Pink Trumpet Vine.

As I said, this whole area is a work in progress right now. There are a couple other areas that I’ll be working on also and will show pictures later.

This morning I went to the grocery store early to get ingredients to make endless coleslaw for a surprise bday party I am going to tomorrow afternoon. 

I stopped at an automotive center that had several businesses there for different needs. I don’t need a front end alignment right away, so that was good news. The other news, repairing two holes and rusted places on the roof of my van, was a rather large ‘chunk of change’, but at least I know now how much it is going to cost and hope to do that in the near future. For now, my metal tape trick has been working to cover the holes and prevent leaking!  Both of these business owners seemed really nice and the place has been there for quite a few years now. I’m going to see if the body repair man can also fix my back door so that it will open. The plastic lock mechanism broke so that it won’t unlock from the outside. I have to crawl from the side to the back to open doors, so haven’t been doing that. It will all work out. My van is paid for and runs very good.

Be watching next week for another garden book review and give-away for this book, “Garden Design – A Book of Ideas”. It is beautiful.

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Well, that’s it from the Plum Cottage home front.

God is good, spring is right around the corner and I’ve much to be thankful for.

Have a lovely weekend ~ FlowerLady

P.S. New post over at my blog for widows.

The Lord is my Strength