Christmas in May and then July, Sort of...

I can't remember where or when I stumbled across a blog post about making Christmas ornaments using dried flowers and leaves from the garden, but I saved it. It was time to give it a try. I like doing  projects, especially if it is tied to the garden. Giving credit due- here is the link to the post- 

 http://twigandtoadstool.blogspot.ca/2013/12/pressed-flower-ornaments-this-past.html  and the recipe for the dough was from here- http://theimaginationtree.com/2012/12/white-clay-ornaments-tutorial.html- Let the project begin---

The dough takes three ingredients
1 cup baking soda
1/2 cup corn starch
3/4 cup warm water

Simply mix the dry ingredients together in a saucepan, add water and bring to a boil over medium heat. Once the dough pulls away from the sides of the pan, it is time to take off the heat. After it cools a little bit gently knead the dough to get it to its doughy consistency.

Roll it out and use a cookie cutter to make your shaped ornament.  Use a pencil or straw to make a hole for your ribbon hanger. Bake at 200 F for about an hour, until dry or leave to dry overnight (high humidity areas would be better to oven bake)

Sounds easy doesn't it? Okay, time for a few lessons learned:

• Sprinkle corn starch on the counter top before kneading
• Roll it out to quite thin. How thin? About 1/8th of an inch thick.
• Use a sharp edged cookie cutter- I used a drinking glass, didn't give a real clean cut.
• Don't bake on parchment paper, it seems to hold moisture.

In May I went into the garden looking for items to use to make the ornaments. Newly emerged leaves on my Japanese maples were great! I especially like the red ones. I also had some small violets blooming then, so I plucked some blooms and leaves from them. I knew the leaves and flowers had to be small enough to fit on the ornament, so small was best. Bringing my harvest in, I carefully set them between two sheets of parchment paper. Weighing them down with a number of hardbound books, they sat on our dining room table for a few days. After a few days I checked on them, nice and dry! I moved the dried pressed leaves and blooms upstairs, where they could remain until it was time to make the dough and apply them. One of my daughters and son in laws come to stay for the majority of July, so I waited to do the rest with her.

Fast forward to July- we made the dough, rolled out the dough, cut the dough into ornament shape and dried them. It was time to gather the pressed leaves and Modge Podge, some brushes (sponge or bristle) and begin. Well, I knew I had brushes, SOMEWHERE. After looking in every spot they might have been, we let necessity be the Mother of Invention. I had some leftover foam from covering some chairs. That and a pair of scissors, voila, we had our 'brushes'. 

Directions tell you to paint a layer of Modge Podge on the ornament, arrange the pressed leaves/blooms on the ornament, then paint more Modge Podge over the surface, covering the leaf/bloom well.  Make sure not to cover your hole for the string/ribbon. Various flowers and leaves make a nice assortment. Like I said, the red Japanese maple leaves look great, they held their color well. I used some Hydrangea blooms, their color faded a bit but they are really nice too. I had a pair of tweezers to use to move the fragile dried leaves.  **On a side note- don't leave pressed/dried items on the table overnight....a roving kitten in the middle of the night will play havoc with your project.**

Red Japanese maple 

Viola walterii 'Silver Edge'

Green Japanese maple 

Here they all are, drying. It is milky looking when the Modge Podge is first applied, it does dry clear.  I bought the matte finish. You can experiment with whatever finishes you like. One of the sources I used also sprinkled silver glitter on the white dough. The world is your oyster, do what you think looks great.

Drying on the dryer overnight

The nice part of this project is you can collect and dry items from the garden all year long. Once dried they keep well. I think I will buy some metallic cord to use instead of the ribbon, but this is what I had on hand today. This was a fun quick project to do and like I said above, there are some lessons learned. The biggest is in the rolling thickness. If you have guide bands that slip on your rolling pin for rolling thickness, use them. I might try using a couple thick rubber bands on the rolling pin. Some of the ornaments cracked while drying- the Modge Podge and leaves hid those flaws a bit.
Would I do this with kids? I don't think so, there is a need for fine motor skills and an easy hand in painting the Modge Podge over the dried items. If you do this project, let me know how it worked for you. You can share photos on The Queen of Seaford Facebook page. Have fun!

©Copyright 2019 Janet. All rights reserved. Content created by Janet for The Queen of Seaford. words and photos by Janet,The Queen of Seaford.

Another River Running Through My Yard

We all know that gardens are always in flux. Some plants survive, some thrive to the point of taking over and sometimes you just want to change things up. Last year we looked at our front yard and decided that buying sod every year was expensive and labor intensive to install on a regular basis. What's a gardener to do? (we all know---you make a new garden bed!) The wet winters and dogs running over wet grass made the lawn thin and excessively needy.

I had big plans, make a giant mulch bed in the front yard. I haven't measured the size of the area we were looking at making a new garden....let's just say it is a large area. Maybe I will go and measure it one of these days. 

We left a mower sized width of grass along the driveway and between the gardens. In the center of this new, massive garden is a Little Gem Magnolia with daylilies around it. Once the plan was hatched, mulch was needed. Lots of mulch. We had ten yards of mulch delivered.

Because we had some grass and a lot of weeds the plan was put cardboard or newspaper under the mulch as a weed block. Before you jump all over me, I have since read information from the Garden Professors about not using anything under mulch. Their recommendation is to just have a good layer of mulch (inches deep) and it will smother/block the weeds. Good information, just after the fact. 

Moving forward we used tons of cardboard, mountains of newspaper and still ran out. We had help with the mulch from our kids who came to visit last July. With their help the mountain of mulch was spread. Hallelujah!

Liebling was a great help

 Fast forward to this year. I planted three Japanese maples last fall-one Red Dragon, a Butterfly, and Green Viridis. Also added three Hydrangea quercifolia 'Little Honey' and a Cryptomeria globosa 'Nana'. Found a few abelia in the garden that needed moved- think they might be Abelia grandiflora 'Rose Creek'- so what better place to move them than this huge new space?

I brought a birdbath home from my Mom's house. In front of the birdbath I planted some Agastache 'Blue Boa', Coreopsis 'Mercury Rising', Stokesia laevis (Stokes Aster) and other plants for pollinators. The maples were doing well, the flowers were thriving but there was a problem with the garden...........WASHOUT. Some Liriope and an Amaryllis were added to try and slow the water flow. They didn't. 

With every rain we had a trail of mulch running downhill through the grass. Not happy. I had scooped/raked up mulch multiple times. Something needed to be done. You see some rocks in the photo above. I didn't grab a before photo but the mulch was still in the grass so it is a good example. The rocks that I have had leftover from other projects are all in the lower part of the yard. Our property is on a good slope. Moving enough rocks was going to be a lot of work just hauling them up the last part of the hill.

My great plan was that my lovely assistant (daughter Rachel) and I would load up the rocks into the cart that attaches to the lawn tractor. My husband just needed to drive the tractor to the bottom of the yard, wait for us to fill the cart, then drive the tractor back up to the front yard. 

Me mud splattered

Rachel muddy from rock hauling

 Well, the yard was wet, the lower the yard, the wetter the yard. We pushed and pushed the tractor to get it moving and got sprayed with lots and lots of mud. Yay. Plan B was to take the tractor through the woods in our wooded lot where we had a path cut. Well, that only worked part way. We got my garden wagon and the wheelbarrow and moved three or four loads each out of the cart until the lawn tractor could make it up the rest of the way. Spreading the rocks went pretty well. Making the new dry creek bed curve gently through the garden, following the washout area, was not as hard as bringing the rocks uphill!

View from the top of the hill

We are due to get more rain sometime in the next few days. Cross your fingers!  I want the "river" to be slowed and the water diverted as to not move the mulch. 

View from the bottom of the hill

 Speaking of mulch, that's the next project...more mulch. We are battling nut sedge and Bermuda grass popping up in the garden, especially where the mulch had gotten washed out or thinned. Weed control is an ongoing challenge.

©Copyright 2019 Janet. All rights reserved. Content created by Janet for The Queen of Seaford. words and photos by Janet,The Queen of Seaford.

Eight Years -Showing Warts and All

It has been a couple years since I did a yearly review of the gardens. Some garden areas have been successful and others have gotten quite overgrown.  Last year was not the year for tending to the garden and it is obvious to my eye. Below are comparison photos from 2017 and 2018. If you would like to see earlier years you can see 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, and 2016.

In the photo below it is great to see how much the Japanese maple, Acer palmatum 'Glowing Embers' has grown. It is in the left side of the garden. 

2017

This past spring I added a garden along the wall, post on it later. The wall and the new garden seem to point to the 'Glowing Embers'.
It is funny how much the white Caladiums stand out along the pathway in the woods. I need to put more in next year.

2018

A little more of the center of the garden. The burgundy tree in the center is a Japanese maple- Acer palmatum dissectum 'Garnet'. The shape is finally coming back, a November 1 snowfall a few years ago took a third of the crown.

2018

Along side the house is always in a state of 'maybe it will be better next year'. The deer had found the hydrangeas last year and ate them to a nub. Around the propane tank is a very healthy stand of  Sweet Flag grass, Acorus gramineus 'Ogon'...home to many of my snakes and a favorite place for our little Liebling to "hide". In between the hose spigot and the propane tank is the A/C condensation pipe outlet. During the summer it is a constantly moist area. I like to use the downhill side of it to have my plant nursery. Any time I am pruning I will stick a few branches in the soil in that nursery area. I have had some success with a few Hydrangeas and Camellias and boxwood.

2017

This year you can see more growth on the Hydrangea macrophylla 'Madam Emile Mouillere', a white blooming mophead. Downhill from this hydrangea is a variegated one- it was also in the photo above, barely. Apparently variegated hydrangea are especially tasty to those pesky deer. Last year the hosta in front of the variegated hydrangea looked like celery stalks sticking up through the Sweet flag grass. Uphill from the Sweet Flag grass is a substantial stand of Deutzia gracilis 'Nikko', a deer resistant low growing shrub. In the spring it is very attractive if a late frost doesn't kill the blooms. The rest of the year it is a space filler.
You can see we have had to patch the turf again this spring. Slowly but surely it is filling in. We have eliminated more of the turf in the front yard.

2018

From the front door you see more Sweet Flag grass on the right side of the walkway. To the left there is a Cercis canadensis 'Ruby Falls', one side is always "pruned" by the deer and the other creeps across the walkway. A Loropetalum chinense var. rubrum 'Daruma' is in front of the front window. In some of the next photos you can see how much it has grown.

2017

This year's view shows some of the mulched front. With the dogs running out front, the trees creating more and more shade, and winter moisture killing the grass, we finally figured out that we needed to take a different tack.  So far I have added two more Japanese maples, 'Red Dragon' and 'Butterfly', a Camellia sasanqua 'Leslie Ann', and a small Cryptomeria. There is a lot more room to plant. Oh. the possibilities!

2018

Magnolia grandiflora 'Little Gem' has grown!  A few winters ago we had a pine tree hit it during an ice storm, spurring it to fill out and grow taller!

2018

Another view of the front yard, here in 2017, I have help from Liebling, our German Shepherd puppy. She will be 2 this August. See the large Loropetalum by the front by window? It was only supposed to get four to six feet tall. Each year it is cut back to the bottom of the window.

2017

Similar view this year, you can see the edge of the mulched area. See how much the Loropetalum is now? Yikes.  At the corner of the house is a Coral Bark Maple, Acer palmatum 'Sango Kaku'. It really has been a show stopper in the fall and winter with its leaf color and the coral bark.

2018

This spot is the uphill part of the front yard next to the driveway, planted with a few roses, lavender, irises, and a flowering apricot, Prunus mume 'Hokkai Bungo'. I enjoy the fragrance of the cinnamon scented blooms in the winter.

2017

This year you can see some of the lavender is missing. A peony or two have been added and a Calla lily, Zanteschia aethiopia. Some of the iris were uprooted by the marauding Armadillo. We have deer, rabbits, Armadillo, chipmunks, and voles to battle.

2018

A bright spot in the woods as you continue to walk up the driveway is an anise shrub, Illicium parviflorum 'Florida Sunshine'. I liked how it glowed in the woods so much that I bought three more, working my way up the driveway, three on the left and one on the right.

2018

A semi-new garden up at the street is shaping up. I do not have irrigation there, so the plants need to be drought tolerant and resistant to the deer that graze through. A few of the plants include Yucca filamentosa 'Color Guard', Hesperaloe parviflora, Lagerstroemia -a Red variety of the Black Diamond Crape Myrtle series, Amsonia x 'Seaford Skies', and lots of Nassella tenuissima - Ponytail Grass.

2018

Walking to the backyard from the bottom of the front hill. Viburnum tinus 'Spring Bouquet' on the left and Morella cerifera, Wax Myrtle, on the right. Not pleased with the Viburnum, going to cut them back a good bit and see if they shape up any better.

2018

In the lower part of the yard, last year's photo shows the dry creek bed we put in the year before. What a good asset to the landscape! It channels the rain water through the gardens and empties into the grassy flat land before going into the lake. The flat land has River Oats and other grasses that filter the water and slows it down....works like a charm!

2017

A little bit of a different angle in this year's photo. The elephant ears aren't making the showing they have in past years. I know I should have dug them up and divided them a few years ago. Oops.

2018

Here are the warts- last year's photo from the boat dock....lots of weeds on the right side. Almost no visible planted material to be seen.

2017

This year, even worse. Will be tackling it in the near future.  I just hate to get into that mess in the heat....and remember, there are snakes.

2018

Finally another view of the large mulched area in the front yard. My pitcher plant needs to be transplanted into a larger container, thinking it might become part of the garden. See my chicken? He is a water feature- trying to find the best place for it.

2018

Thanks for joining me on the yearly update, hard to believe we have been in South Carolina for eight years! I am glad I have been taking photos at the same time of year, year after year, to see the changes.



©Copyright 2018 Janet. All rights reserved. Content created by Janet for The Queen of Seaford. words and photos by Janet,The Queen of Seaford.

My, How You've Changed- Annual Review 2015

Five years ago this week we moved from Seaford to our present location in South Carolina. For those who are new here, we built our home on a lake in Upstate SC. We started from a blank slate, each year offered its own challenges--deer, voles, rabbits, dry conditions, wet conditions and my own fickleness, changing things up just because. Some of the changes will be addressed in later posts. Each year I take photos of the various parts of the gardens. You can see previous years' posts here- 2014, 2013, 2012, 2011, and when we were building in 2010.
So from the very beginning we looked like this--

We had some big changes this winter with the ice storm and an early snowfall-- November 1st! The ice storm will be talked about in my next post.  Last year's photos are posted to compare with this year. Follow the links above to see yearly progress. 

View from the front door...notice the size of the Magnolia grandiflora 'Little Gem' in the middle of the yard.

2014

 And the Magnolia now...ice storm damage.

2015

The driveway garden has had more added to it. I do like having a container near the Crape Myrtle to add some color.

2014

2015

 The front gardens are filling in, in most spots. 

2014

 The winter was hard on the Gardenia 'Frostproof'.  I was going to cut it back, but never got around to it. Now that it has bloomed, perhaps I will get out there and cut it back a good bit.  The Japanese Maple is certainly happy. Acer palmatum 'Sango-kaku'

2015

The backyard is ever evolving.  Left side as you look from the deck.

2014

2015

Right side as you look from the deck.

2014

 The Japanese Maple near the white container in the photo above had severe damage from snowfall, a third of its crown broke off.

2015

The backyard, looking back to the house from the lower right corner. 

2014

 Same shot, this year. Included the patio on the right and the slope to the lake. 

2015

 Out on the dock, looking back at the house, far enough away to not see all the weeds.

2014

 One of the major changes this year - we bought the lot next door to us on the left. Too many folks were looking at it with plans to build...soon. Since it was a bargain price, we swooped it up. The only plans right now for us it to have it bush-hogged. There are a lot of blackberry brambles, honeysuckle vines, and scrubby trees that need to be thinned. After bush-hogging I am not sure what we will do with this lot, though my husband says he sees a Sourwood, Oxydendrum arboreum, in its future.

2015

We got solar panels this past year and are really loving it! Also planted some Rudbeckia varieties near our well. It adds a nice punch of color.

There is also a new blank spot in the front yard. Grass was thin, so we added some mulch on top of a lot of cardboard. It is now waiting for me to choose some plant material. 

2015

The shed got a new plant-- for Mother's Day I received a Schizophragma hydrangeoides 'Rosea', a climbing Japanese hydrangea vine. It will climb on the old iron railing on the right of the door. The blue cypress to the left of the shed along the prior property line really took a hit from the February ice storm. My pruning skills came into practice to keep them shaped nicely. 

2015

More of the Fling posts will be coming. I wanted to get this post done as our anniversary as South Carolinians is this week. If you haven't done this, think about taking a photo each year on a given date. It is amazing to see tree growth and foliage filling in. Some changes are subtle and others are significant.

©Copyright 2015 Janet. All rights reserved. Content created by Janet for The Queen of Seaford. words and photos by Janet,The Queen of Seaford.