Dirty hands, Beautiful life: 09/01/2013

Savoring Summer

Today was a delicious day of celebrating what summer dishes up. Peaches frozen, apples sliced, and tomatoes canned as delicious salsa and spaghetti sauce. I’m making plans for readying my planters for fall, but then I realized I didn’t share their summer style (keep in mind we had flooding rains followed by a drought).

I usually don’t use petunias other than waves in planters, but these double petunias from the school’s plant sale were a fun surprise popping our of the sweet potato vine.

My calibrachoa struggled as the summer went on, but was beautiful to start spring.

The lantern and buckets were all free treasures found from the 1800’s house we renovated. I really should share more before and after photos of that soon.

This is a little blurry, but the bucket of Creeping Jenny was one of my favorites. The bluebird is my friendship bird that reminds me of my dear friend Mrs. McIntosh who taught me so much about gardening.

I always L-O-ve ornamental grass with sweet potato vine as a no-fuss combo and it looks great in the fall!

Obviously I have a small obsession with sweet potato vine, but I think it gives such a flare to the pots, and I think using it repetitively gives cohesion to pots that look completely different! The blue fescue grass was a new touch, but it worked well in pots. Now I can put it in the ground to enjoy next year!

Something new I did this year was to add colorful crotons to my outdoor pots. These I will pull out for fall and use as plants indoors. The little nest was courtesy of my little cowboy’s adventures. He was very clear that it was already on the ground…

For the next pot, please ignore the ground cover (aka – weeds)

This gorgeous copper tub of blooms was a gift from Mother’s Day.

I hope you have enjoyed a little container gardening this summer and that taking a peek at mine has made summer last just a little bit longer.

Linking to

Vintage Thingy Thursday

A Stroll Through Life

Joyful HomeMaker

Coastal Charm

Make It Pretty Monday

Beyond the Picket Fence

Farmhouse Porch

Outside the box

When you L-O-ve to thrift and decorate, you tend to recycle them quickly. Over the summer, I couldn’t find a great weekend to have a garage sale. The weekend I had free was rodeo weekend, and I knew that would detract from the little bit of traffic that one finds attending your garage sale in the middle of a corn field anyway.Then I had my ‘aha’ moment. Why not take my garage sale to the flea market! I don’t enjoy refolding clothes at a garage sale anyway, so I dropped those off at Goodwill and took only my decorative items. It was S-O much FUN to see people find what was once a found treasure to me, plus…all my profits made my new treasures FREE! (well – sort of)

One of the pieces I found was a grain box. I knew I wanted it the moment I saw it. The multi-colored, chippy wood melts my heart like Tiffany blue. And there’s a hint of that blue in the box too!

I tried for towels in the bathroom…for books in the sitting room, but it was meant to be when we carried it to the dining room and cowboy and I both said “what if we hang it?”

I’m not totally satisfied with it right now, but I’ve spent a little too much time doing this

I had the picture long before we had Penny, but it’s a pretty close resemblance…

For now it’s a “ahem…” beverage station, but I can’t wait to put it to better use as a breakfast bar, coffee and tea nook, or hor’doeurve station (yes it’s spelled correctly. I “googled” it.Sisters – mark it down. I had to look it up).

I had a different table under it, but I didn’t L-o-ve it. Last weekend at the horse sale I stole this table for $9 from some dear old man looking for a bargain work bench --- what a shame to hide this thing in a garage. I saved it’s life.

I L-O-ve the table with it, and it’s almost time to play for FALL!

DSCN5185 You can tell how well prepped I am for pictures by the votive still laying there, but our candle-lit supper was calling – it’s a fun family tradition I don’t want to miss!