Hyacinth Oil

Hyacinths are a special Easter flower and smell very similar to a lilac. They also are grown from a bulb which can be replanted in your garden as a perennial.

Our local grocery store had them on clearance after Easter for $1.00 so of course I bought 10. The bulbs were planted today and now I am making some hyacinth oil to use in our homemade body scrubs (which I will use mainly for my hands and feet).

Place the cut flowers into a bowl with 1 cup of water and 1/8 cup of sunflower oil (or you can use olive oil) and let soak for a day or two.

Store the oil in a jar and use it to scent your body scrub!!

**Body Scrubs can be made many ways.  I will use this with organic cane sugar and a touch of glycerin**

Mother Nature

If you look closely you will see this strange situation happening.  This sunflower is growing out of a crack in a dead tree by our garden.  It’s amazing how mother nature works!!

We fill a few of our bird feeders with sunflower seeds so a bird must have had a nest in this tree at some point.  But how it started and found it’s way out of a crack into the sunlight is amazing to me.

Wildflowers waking up

I love the wildflower garden in the early morning when all of the flowers are getting a bit of sun, opening up and coming alive!

Rainy Day Gardens

We have had so much rain this season.  It’s not even fun to be outside as the bugs are overwhelming in the early morning and from dusk until late evening.

The gardens cheer me up with their happy little flowers.  This wildflower garden is a bit wild as I can’t get in there to thin it out even when raining as the mosquitoes attack!  I love the pink, orange, purple and yellow all blending together.

Along the garage the red and white impatiens compliment the red and white of our old farmhouse.

The entry way to the house is dotted with color.  However, there is one dark black thing that doesn’t belong.  She insists on cutting through this garden and hits a plant here and there!

In the mini rose garden I truly believe Mary is praying for some dry weather.

And while so many flowers are starting to bloom or in full bloom, others are losing their luster and filling their little sleeves with seeds to fly away in the wind when they are done and start little plants for next spring.

 

Can’t you just smell them???

So pretty, delicate and full of scent.  I wish they could bloom all summer

Gem Corn

I have been following a wonderful blog since I first started my own blog.  Jane’s blog:  My Food and Flowers  is full of beautiful pictures of every type of flower and plant that you can imagine.  Not only does she share her talent and love of landscaping, but she shares her advice and information on how to grow most of the plants she features. I can’t begin to tell you how much I have learned from her blog.

Recently she asked me if I would like to receive some of her Gem Corn to plant here.  I could barely type the word YES because it was such a generous offer that I almost felt not worthy of trying to grow these plants.  If you do not know the history of Gem Corn, you can find it here:  GEM CORN.

As you can see from the article, the offer to share her bit of heirloom seeds is truly a special gift.

The envelope arrived and inside was this beautiful handmade card containing the seeds.  True to form she included a bit of information about these special seeds.

They are colorful just by themselves and grow into the most beautiful ears of corn.

Tonight we planted them and they are settled in the indoor greenhouse to hopefully begin their sprouting process.  If I am lucky, these beautiful seeds will offer a new heirloom seed to my collection, and I can only hope to be able to share them with some of my special gardening friends.

Take the time to stop by Jane’s blog.  You will be hooked just as I am!

Thank you Jane (My Food and Flowers),  we will do our best to carry on the Gem Corn legacy you have started with your seeds!

Hibiscus

I planted a hibiscus plant in the corner of my garden.  When all the vegetables are starting to fizzle out, this beauty opens her huge blooms and shares a wonderful touch of red to the garden area.

I think what makes it even more special as it was given to us by the man of the house’s mother.  She has beautiful gardens which should be featured in a magazine.  However, she is getting older and gardening is harder and harder for her.  This plant reminds me of her beautiful gardens and I know she loves to look at it when visiting our home. 

It’s a touch of “Grandma Ruth” in the garden!!

 

Centerpieces

The tween loves flowers.  She would like to own a flower shop some day.  When everything is in bloom she loves to create centerpieces for our table.  Here are her latest creations.

They really do add a little brightness to the dreary days we have been having!

Japanese Lanterns

If you are a gardener and you do not have Japanese lanterns planted in your garden, think twice before adding them.  These plants produce beautiful green leaves and in time produce the most beautiful orange “lantern”.  However the roots are trailers and will take over any where you plant them.  I wish the person who had given me some had shared this tidbit with me as I planted them in my wildflower garden. 

The whole purpose of a wild flower garden was to plant all perennial plants so I did not have to weed and would only thin plants out as needed.  I weed the new Japanese lantern plants more than any other weeding in my yard.  I have tried digging them out.  I have tried spraying the new plants with weed killer.  We have even tilled the entire garden down to the clay base and restarted but these things must be in the clay and all the way through the earth to the other side as they always come back.

So while I do enjoy harvesting that beautiful stem with the lanterns, bunching and displaying them all over in vases with some other fall flowers, I do not enjoy having to weed them continuously.  Heed my warning if you dare to plant these 🙂

Happy Flowers

I always try to plant a few sunflowers around my garden.  There are a few types of flowers that remind me of “happy” flowers.  Sunflowers, Cone Flowers, Black Eyed Susan’s and Daisies just look so happy and I love to look at them.