As Time Passes By ~

 Time in the garden, on these lovely spring days seems to pass at a slower pace...

So many things are blooming that it is hard to keep up. The combined fragrance of roses and other flowers wafts through the air...

...adding another layer of pleasure to the soft spring day. Out here there are no ticking clocks, only this old sun dial to monitor the hours.

In this little area, roses, Santa Barbara Daises, and bright blue borage flowers compete for attention.

What a nice place to linger as time passes by.

I am going on a little vacation next week. I will be returning later in May, until then I wish you all well and thank you for visiting.

This post has been linked to: http://frenchcountrycottage.blogspot.com/, http://howsweetthesound.typepad.com/my_weblog/

Bee Mine...

Like a lot of other bloggers I have been having fun with some of the different editing programs. My real goal is to learn how to use Photoshop but along the way I seem to get easily side-tracked by some of the more 'user friendly' and just plain amazing effects offered by Picmonkey and Pixlar. This image however, I did with plain old Picasa. It is a photo of a iron bee I have sitting on a stone wall in my garden. I cropped it and used the invert colors effect. Interesting don't you think?

Thank you for visiting. Hope you are having a great day 'buzzing' around doing fun things...now I must get  back out to the garden and pull some more weeds!

The Gazebo Solution ~

In the far back of the garden sits the gazebo. It was originally built by my husband and our then future son-in-law for our daughter's wedding. It became a destination spot for him, his students, or colleagues, whenever they came to the house to confer, and a fun place to sit near the pond with the morning paper and a cup of coffee, or a glass of wine when friends came for dinner.

 Over the years it had began to slowly fall apart and I realized that  something needed to be done. But what?  Because of the wonderful memories attached to it, plus the very empty place it would leave in the garden I really didn't want to tear it down...and what ever I did I wanted to do it in a financially feasible way.

 ...thus, I was pondering the best solution when last winter a devastating windstorm came through and completely tore off the old lattice roof. Now I really had to make a decision and this is what I did.

~ A new tin roof ~

I had my wonderful handyman Juan replace the supporting beams, the damaged lattice, and put on the new tin roof. The weather vane is also a new addition. I love the results and now with a protective solid roof the structure should last for several more years.

Weeping Mulberry tree

Once the climbing roses grow back I think it is going to be lovely. Now both the gazebo and the memories are intact...I am so lucky.

This post has been linked to:   http://thebrambleberrycottage.blogspot.com/, http://thecharmofhome.blogspot.com/, http://frenchcountrycottage.blogspot.com/

Take a Chicken...

Take a chicken, courtesy of Martha Stewart, add an old tin florist container, some flowers, and a bit of lace...

put it all together on a shelf under your kitchen window...

and you have  something new to add to the pleasure of...

  eating breakfast on a glorious spring morning; made even more so when the early morning sun is shining through the windows.

Thank you for visiting. I hope that you are enjoying the wonders of Spring.

This post has been linked to: http://howsweetthesound.typepad.com/my_weblog/, http://houseinroses.blogspot.com/, http://knickoftimeinteriors.blogspot.com/

Flowers and Shoes

All of the Altroemerias are starting to bloom in the garden.  They seem to continue to pop up in the oddest places, in some cases far away from the original planting, but they are so pretty and make such wonderful flowers for cutting that I really don't care where they appear. Here I have paired them with  white camellias which I also have in abundance.

But...

...the real reason for this post is to show you these absolutely darling new shoes that I found at Marshall's. They are modeled here by my daughter, I found it impossible to wear them and photograph them at the same time! Thank you Heather.

I think these will be perfect for summer: red and white stripes, who could resist.

The little bird wanted to came back to wish you Adieu!

Thank you for visiting, I hope that you have a lovely Spring day!


This post has been linked to: http://blissfulrhythm.blogspot.com/, http://thebrambleberrycottage.blogspot.com/

Easter Greetings