Long have I admired the blog of an old friend from the Ottawa Valley. Her place is called Twig and Toadstool. What a magical place it is!

If you love nature and being creative, have little ones to entertain or just need something to do with your hands, look no further. Maureen and Shanti are creative geniuses, and they’ll dazzle you day after day, just when you think they had to have exhausted their idea bank.

I am the kind of mom that can be very hands-on with my children but then I need some major quiet time. Since I just finished reading Cutting for Stone and had that right amount of solitude, today was a day for busy hands and feet. The perfect day to make this vase that I saw on Twig and Toadstool and wanted to make ever since!

We took a walk on the nearby hiking trails, climbed a big hill with several dead trees, debated the right and wrong qualities of a stick and tried not to be too grumpy. A thunderstorm is on it’s way and the humidity is out of control today, hence the grumpiness.

Once we got back home, the deck was the best place to work as dirt and stick fragments were flying pretty fast. In the instructions, Shanti suggests holding the sticks on with three rubber bands, but we actually used more and then removed them. It kept the sticks a bit more stable for the kids, especially as they were starting. We did leave three rubber bands on in the final product, just doubled the bottom one up, so our end product only has two rows of raffia instead of three.

There are not really a ton of flowers blooming in our garden right now, but thankfully we had a few obliging echinachea. The white tall phlox is just about to burst, so next week we’ll have a gorgeous white display. Anywho, we are so pleased with the results, and a good time was had by all, despite the humility. What say you?!

My son wasn’t too into the butterflies and instead has dubbed his a Pokemon candle holder and that’s just fine with me.

Thanks for the inspiration, Twig and Toadstool!

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maybe you’re thinking i’ve flipped and become a photo blogger. not really.

i’m just a little crazy when it comes to taking pictures of my flowers. and this year instead of snapping the blooms, I decided to capture them unopened.

you can’t tell in the photos, but these irises were in pots ready for transplanting to our new home. i was thrilled that they were blooming at all and yet there were more elegant blooms than ever.

they now have a happy home under my weeping mulberry tree, awaiting the quiet winter to bloom again another year.

ps. you can see the photos better on Picasa’s site. just click any of them and you’ll be there in two shakes.

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I’ve suspected it but simply didn’t want to admit the truth. The massive 3 feet around plant taking up a prominent space in my front garden is a wildflower. Albeit a pretty and prolific one as it makes this purplish blue bells on tall stalks. But immediately upon finishing to bloom, the entire plant – stalks and all – go brown and die. Not a green leaf in sight.

I am tired of the tease. Such a hopeful growing spring of green that ends in dry brittle crackling brown. I want things that last in my garden and decided to yank it.

As soon as my shovel starts to get under the roots, I begin to doubt. The internal conversation I have goes like this…

This is going to turn my garden into a living representation of Sunnydale, CA after Buffy was done fighting evil.

Yes it will. But it needs to come out. It looks horrible and the entire garden is being planned around a lie.

But what will go into its place?

I don’t know. Something.

What?!

I don’t know. Whenever something comes, it will go there.

Well, how can you make this massive change without a plan?!!!

I just know that this is the right thing to do. Shut up and dig.

From there it was fun getting my fingernails all brown and noting how shallow the roots actually were and then having to hack the very flat, very wide root ball in half in order to get it out of the ground.

But on top of all that, I had an unmistakable feeling of connection – that the physical action was the mirror of an internal weeding – that I’ll probably have a big hole in my heart for awhile – but that if I waited and listened and imagined and watered enough, something amazing would get planted there too.

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How in the world did I manage to kill mint? Only thing I can imagine is that the soil was too acidic from the cedar bush that was the soil’s last occupant.

The oregano made the air smell absolutely delicious when I clipped all of the brown dead flowers off.

I’ll admit it… my watering can is annoying. Built more for aesthetics and less for actually getting things wet, holding a tad over a liter with the tiniest holes I’ve ever seen in the spout.

Don’t think I’ll put petunias in the garden itself again. Beautiful in containers, but in the bed itself, they make my front porch look like the entrance to a second-rate mall. I think they definitely for mass plantings only. Go big or invest in perennials. lol

Nasturtiums are super easy to grow from seed, the Thunbergia not so much.

Be careful when you weed. I almost pulled up what turned out to be a Shasta Daisy that I had forgotten about. I adored those four little white blooms while I had them.

And lastly, water water and don’t forget the water.

ps. sorry for the lack of white space in my post. wordpress decided to screw with my template

without my express written permission and we’ve yet to figure out what and/or how they did it.

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