Some flower garden rearranging

I tend to use perennials in my deck containers, so that I can plant them in the ground in the fall and get more bang for my buck at the garden center!  This is what the stump pot looked like a few months ago…

This stump usually has a big pot of plants on it all summer long.  But truthfully it’s a haul from the deck to water and my hose doesn’t quite reach.  So, my pug willing, I planted all around it with perennials that hopefully will make it a low care flower bed.

I get a lot of my plants at Lowes…I do not buy them full price, I wait for them to clearance them.  I found this peach day lily for $1.  It has already bloomed this year, but the regular price was $15.97, since it was a giant pot. 

This guy it my supervisor.  He tells me what looks good where…

Here he’s telling me to trim the willow tree that hangs down over the stump.  I declined, he walked away!

I planted the whole pot of flowers that was on top of the stump around the stump.  I just pulled it out of the pot and dug a hole and dropped it in the ground.  It has two purple fountain grass, a bunch of creeping jenny and some dianthus, so all that will be back next spring!  The purple fountain grass was $1 each for a medium pot, on clearance at Lowes and the creeping jenny was reduced too.  Patience is the key to great buys at Lowes in the plant category.

Since someone I know likes to dig in the dirt, (who shall of course remain anonymous) I put all sorts of rocks and seashells on top of the good digging areas.  If an archeologist ever excavates my little chunk of land they will have to assume this was an ocean.  I have tons of seashells all over the place!  And someone (who shall of course remain anonymous) carries smaller seashells around in his mouth and scatters them all over the yard.

Now back to some tips for plant hunting at Lowes…you need to go routinely to get the good plants.  I go during lunch several times a week during peak season.  There are two things to know…they keep a clearance rack in both the inside plant area, so it is there year round inside.  And they keep a rack, usually at the back of the garden plant area outside.  I believe neither one is watered after the plants are placed on those racks.  I have seen some pretty dry sad plants there, ones that have been wasted, guess it makes good business sense to not spend man hours on things that don’t bring much profit anymore.

I added a few of my cement garden balls to the stump to keep any pug sitting at bay.  You can go here to see how I made them.  So go check out Lowes and see if you can find any cheap plants to plant for the rest of the summer and for next spring too!

After a week or so the creeping jenny has started to take over the stump! 

I might be linking up at these great parties!

Epic Fail…Mosaic Bird Bath

I make things that don’t go well all the time.  Usually they are little projects, but this one is really a good one.  And I have been working on it for months!

This is a bird bath, all concrete, weighing approximately 4000 pounds. I bought it for $10 at an auction.

It was a standard garden variety (pun intended) concrete bird bath with chippy white paint and some old mosaic squares falling off the bowl.

I scraped off all those mosaic tiles and all the loose paint, then used two colors spray paint and randomly painted the inside of the bowl.

I added some flat marbles to the center and then just started doing circles around the center area in a pattern of sorts.  I was determined I would only use marbles I had on hand but ended up buying one package of shades of blue marbles.

And the bonus is that I used up a big Ziploc bag full of marbles.

I used E6000 to attach the marbles. 

E6000 is a really strong glue that will hold almost anything…

Here’s the nearly finished product…

I thought about grouting the bowl, but decided to try my hand at a resin to keep it waterproof and to help it survive the winter freezes.

It was going to be wonderful…but when the resin was poured on, it hardened almost immediately.  So, I was left with this…

I guess I should have skipped the resin…bummer!

The resin is no longer clear because the bubbles and ridges let water underneath…Anyone have any ideas on how to make this better?  I am thinking a chisel and hours of work or offering it free on Craigslist!

I may be linking to these great parties!

Cement Candle Holders

Sounds very romantic huh?  Cement candle holders….hmmm.

It’s no secret that I have been making some of these this year…

The concrete garden balls, not the cat!  So, every time I make the garden globes I end up with a bit of leftover cement.  I hate to just throw toss it, so I found if I fill up disposable containers (usually my recycled yogurt and mandarin orange containers) with the leftover cement and push a smaller container down inside them I have a candle holder that is sturdy!

The round one I made from a cottage cheese container and the smaller one was a discarded storage container.

I made some today and just used a tea light tin to push down into the cement to make the spot where the candle sits.

What do you think?  Cute huh?

I am thinking that I will put some felt on the bottom of these and bring them inside!

I use citronella candles on the deck in the summer to keep the bugs away, so this is a perfect arrangement!

The dual candle holder in front I painted with some leftover chalk paint and wiped some of it off. LOVE the way it turned out!

I will be linking to these great parties!

Container planting and other flowers

Yup that’s an amaryllis sticking out of the top of my stacked pot planter. It used to be 3 pots stacked high…

Then this happened…an accident caused by a pug chasing a Great Dane.  It was quite a sight.  So now the stacked pot is only two pots high.

Around this time of year I stick flags in planters all over the deck.

I love bright flowers and easy to grow flowers.

Mom gave me this peacock décor for my porch planter. I love me some peacocks!

A hanging plant with three different kinds of bloomers.

I put a big shallow pot on a stump and put mulch around it (those same two dogs I referred to earlier keep digging it up) and it looks great by the willow tree.

I think every year the day lilies bloom earlier, this year they are really pretty and tall!

I found purple fountain grass at Lowes for $1 each so I planted four clumps of it in our “pet cemetery”.

Purple coneflowers come up in the yard like weeds.  Sometimes I just let them bloom before I cut them down.

Coreopsis blooms every where and the dusty miller has taken over as well. I need to clean out my perennial garden and start over next year. 

The house looks so cozy with the flowers and the grass cut!  Hope you are having a great week!