Garden Shed Unvailing!!

Well here it is......

the garden shed finished.

Just in time. John and I are so proud of our Deer Trail Horseshoe Shack Makeover. It turned out so cute we want to sleep out there some night. Now wasn't it worth the wait?? If you forgot how it looked check down the blog to see the before picture. And I know it doesn't look anything like my photo shop coloring... good thing huh Jesse?

Ta-dah

This picture was just neat with the plant in front and the shed blurred out.

And here I am enjoying a drink at the bar. The sun was going down so I had to wait until it was behind the shed to get pictures from this side so the true colors are the first picture. These two pictures look muted.

I have so much stuff in the shed now John is worried we won't fit all the pots and stuff for winter storage in there now. I had so much fun with the project and I love it. If you ask John he'll grump about it being too much for a shed but I think he kinda likes it too. He'll like it even more on Saturday when we serve drinks out of it after the tour. I'm thinking it looks like Margarita's or umbrella drinks need to be served with chips and salsa, come on over!

Now I'm ready for the tour, after today everything is done, weeds are pulled, iris's are cut, mulch is down, chairs are painted. Now all I need is a nice summer day. I'll take pictures that day and update you on how the tour goes.

Mother Nature

Mother Nature decided I didn't have enough stress yet so she sent a hail storm on Wednesday. The wind was blowing, the rain was coming down in sheets and then the hail started. John and I were caught in the garage and the kids were in the house. I was motioning through the windows for the kids to get ready to go in the basement while I tried to find a place in the garage to hide. I didn't want to stand by a window because the hail hitting against the windows and steel building was so loud and scary. Well after the storm was done I walked around the yard to see the damages..... Oh my, it shredded so many hostas, daylilys, delphiniums and trampled most of my poppies I just blogged about... and the kiss me over the garden gate is all broken off. We had so much hail we needed a snow shovel to scrape it off the porch.

Looks like winter!

Here are my poppies that are crushed and broken. If you want to see the before just scroll down to look at the last post.

I could have cried walking around looking at this. The garden tour is only a week away.... Mother Nature heals herself..... yeah right!

Well I had Thursday, Friday and Monday off work to do the last minute weeding and decorating before the tour. Now I did a lot of pulling up poppies, cutting off broken flowers and cleaning up branches from the trees. The driveway was covered in green from the trees losing all their leaves.

I'll show you some pretty pictures now. The garden still looks great and I'm very excited for this coming weekend. New flowers are starting to bloom everyday.

This lily opened this weekend, it's the color of sunshine, makes me smile every time I look at it.

This is the flower bed in front of the house. The poppies are starting to open, they should be showing their true colors by Saturday.

One last sneak peek of the garden shed before the final unveiling. John is going to mulch around it today so I'll post the final project either tonight or tomorrow. Make sure you check back it's worth the wait. John says I'm making it to cute, I'll want to move out there. Jesse might even like his new home!!

I painted the garden shed sign on Saturday, I love the things I paint it's just taking the time to do those type of projects and remembering that I can paint and I just need to do it.

Until the garden shed reveal - Happy Digging

Poppy infection

This is my poppy infection. I have a problem with poppies re-seeding themselves everywhere. They are bright red and pink and beautiful but every year there are more and more plants that come up. I have pulled three 5 gallon buckets out of here already and you can't even tell. I was ready to pull them all out till I was standing in the grocery store line one day and someone says to me... "your in the garden tour this year right??" " I can't wait to come over and see all those poppies you grow" Okay now how can I pull them all up after that?? So they are still growing, bugging me everyday and I try to thin them out so they don't bury everything in their path, including the birdbath... someday I'll come home from work and the poppies will have swallowed the birdbath, chair and fence all in one day.

Here is a picture of the peony I got from Starla last year. There is a long story that goes with this flower and I'll try to type it out for you before bed.

So when John and I first moved here I hated gardening, flowers and anything about them. I had a million peony plants here so John would just mow them over to get rid of them. My mom had a fit that we were trying to kill them so she came over to dig them all up. She had a car full of plants and was grinning from ear to ear and so was I.

Well 24 years later I decide.... I would like a peony plant in my garden and I think I finally like them. So I buy a red peony on our annual sisters garden shopping trip. I week later Starla brings me two of her peony plants and we laugh about the story and hope Mom isn't turning over in her grave (Starla cracked me up when she said Mom liked exercise so it was okay).

That week I'm at work telling a couple of girls during lunch the story of how Mom came to rescue them and then 24 years later the same plants are back in my yard (since Starla got them from Mom...). That night I have to go out for dinner with customers so I don't leave work till late and there is a peony on my windshield of the truck. I find it odd that we just talked about this during lunch so I think one of the girls from break has left me a reminder of my story. I call John and ask if he left me a flower.... he is a little upset that someone is leaving me flowers and it was not him. I bring the flower home with me and put it on my dining room table, like a trophy, kinda like a sign from heaven that Mom says it's okay Connie. The next day I ask the girls at work who left the flower.... no-one! I come home from work and John says (he's still upset) a guy called for you tonight, it's probably the same guy who's leaving you flowers!! He can't keep a straight face so I ask... what is that all about? He says a guy he works with (we're going to call him John, since that's his name) asked my John if I got my flower? John says.... why do you know about the flower on Connie's truck? He says I'm not sure why but I was cleaning up the flowers by my house and taking them to the compost at the city shop and seen Connie's truck in the parking lot at work and decided to swing in and give her a flower. He says he has no idea why he did that but something was just telling him that is what he should do. Now I know this was a sign from mom since she was always persistent and had a way of making people listen to her. I love my peony plants now even more than before.

With that story I hope someday you will all have a messenger boy like John, he has no idea what his mission was but it meant a lot to me.

Garden Update

Well here is a garden tour update........ WHAT THE HELL DID I GET MYSELF INTO??

Okay I'm better now. John and I are working our tails off getting ready for this tour. We really didn't have that much to do but it feels like everything we are doing around the yard is because of the tour. Even if we weren't in the tour I'm sure we would have been doing it anyway. I have updated some pictures of some of the flowers that I'm sure will be done by the tour day. This is Snow in the Summer, it is the prettiest I have ever seen it.

Here is Crocodile Lake Garden with the new fence that we put up on Saturday. John went through town and at the Farmers Market he seen this fence and knew it was just what I was looking for. There are 3 pieces and the guy said he has 3 more at home. I better just keep the 3. The lupines and Columbines are blooming to keep some color over there.

This is the back garden with the Iris's blooming. They didn't get as tall this year as before but they are still spectacular when they are at their peak.

Here's my rusty ole' chair that I bought this way. It looks right at home in it's secluded spot by the gate.

Here is a sneak peek of the almost finished garden shed. I can't show too much since I'm adding the accent color to the doors and windows and WOW it's a shocker. John picked it out and we all know he's color blind. Hopefully by next week I'll have full pictures since I know you all can't wait for the unveiling.... LOL

Here is the inside

And as promised the sneak peek of the outside.

I didn't say it was very helpful. I hope this holds you over until the next post.

Happy Gardening

Raining still....

Rain, rain go away.... remember my last post? The rain we finally needed will not quit. I had to take pictures from inside the house. This is the porch as it looks from the door, along with Adam's car sitting in the puddle. As they always say if the rain leaves rings in the puddles it will rain all day.... guess what? It's been raining all day, check out the puddle.

This is a picture from the patio door, the chairs still around the fire pit, sure wish we could have used them this weekend.

The pathway has a little bit of color. The garden tour ladies were over Tuesday afternoon and they were very impressed with everything. They reassured me that my gardens were worth touring. They told me on a scale of 1-10 my gardens are a 20. If they lied or not just to make me feel better at least I'm not as worried about it anymore. Their favorite part was the garage with the porch. They said it was the picture of country summer. It was funny they said that because to us summer is all about working around the yard during the day. Taking a 3:00 chips and salsa break on the porch with country music playing out of every window. This is summer!

This picture was taken Memorial Day 2006. This is what we wait for all winter.

Okay so now this is Elly with her Mom's dolly. Yes I'm sure many of you recognize Quimby. Shan gave Elly the dolly to look at while she was packing up some of her stuff. Elly wanted to keep her out and play with her so badly but Mom wouldn't let her, hence' the pouty face on the last picture. Yes the dolly is that dirty, she was very loved about 19 years ago, wherever Shannon was Quimby was right with her.