Is it Really Waterproof???

Grabbed my permanent magic marker and took the time to label all my pots. What plant, what height, what color, just what's what. Along with having a perennial garden, I love planting seeds in the 30 large large pots I mingle in different areas of the garden. And it's alot cheaper than buying young plants.

First day. I feel like an organized person who has a firm grip on knowing what every seedling will be, what color, what height, and plainly~just what!  And then it rains. I guess permanent magic markers should have an expiration date. I am hoping that this plant is not a weed!

 

Also, playing russian roulette with weeds that disguise themselves as your seedlings (or your next door neighbor, or even your husband), I decided to wait until a recognizable flower was produced.

 

The accidental gardener.....

 

 

 

Feather Arrangements~Marbled Parrot Feathers with Others

These are in the shop~ feather arrangements that include natural parrot feathers, hand marbled parrot feathers and combination of domestic feathers. Check out all my hand marbled and natural parrot feathers at www.QuillnAros.etsy.com The hand marbled feathers are special and unique.

A pure white cockatoo feather marbled with colorfast paint

          The bottom feather is a macaw feather, two small domestic feathers and
a marbled cockatoo feather tops it off. They are fastened securely with glue and
wire around the quills.

Snowing Catalpa Blossoms in the Corner Garden

Childhood. Dirt road, country lanes, dead quiet in winter.  Summer, the Catalpa tree blossoms. Fall, the cigar shaped seed pods appear. My country road is lined on both sides with huge catalpa trees and they remain still. It was 30 years before I drove down that dirt lane again.



"It will never rain roses:  When we want to have more roses

we must plant more trees."

 

GEORGE ELIOT

    

 

And the Lavish Garden Just in the Last Two Weeks

After digging up every inch of soil, spreading Preen all over the place~moving plants around (which my husband was excused from this year due to back issues and kidney stone issues). I don't think he was bemoaning this fact and he was impressed that I did the 3/4 acre on my own! Thank god one of us had a back this year. So the garden is growing and now I have to move on to business! My thoughts are that I always need something beautiful and nature oriented to look at out of the back windows. Restful, theraputic.....

Bird Watching, Lavish Blooms, Lots of Rain

Obviously I am very amateur when it comes to photographing backyard bird babies, but I have been trying to capture mama woodpecker gathering orange pulp and feeding it to her baby.  I came up with a rather out of focus pic of the baby~the mama was supervising from a nearby tree. The baby doesn't even have his red headfeathers yet.

Another Plant Only a Mother Could Love!

Every fall I would bring this plant in for the winter and the only impressive part of it would be the bulbous trunk. I would then cut the top off and hope that it would grow an attractive leaf cluster.

Last year I transplanted it to a bigger pot and was surprised when it showed how happy it was by enthusiastically growing a few more leaves! Then this spring it started growing a sort of scarey looking blossum like "thing" at the top, so I decided to wait and see.  IT BLOOMED!

I collect pachypodium, bombax, and euphorbia (big bottomed weird looking plants and I discovered that this one is called the "shaving brush tree" and grows in arid climates, like Madagascar. It probably would have bloomed 15 years earlier if I would not have kept "trimming" it.

My hacking gene is directly associated with my mom's side of the family (yea, don't ask!). But here is a lovely picture of the tree which actually grows to tree size when it has boundless space around it.

One more adventure in my pursuit of ugly plants that are beautiful