martha stewart craft paints in the garden

Summer breeze so softly blowing,

In my garden pinks are growing;

If you'll go and send the showers,

You may come and smell my flowers.

                      

                    - Old Garden Poem

A few weeks ago I was doing some potting of some flowers and I was distressed by how faded a lot of my old containers were. Some were plastic, some were that biodegradable stuff. Either way, there need some color enhancement.

Luckily, a few weeks earlier I had been to Michael's Craft Store and bought a whole bunch of the new Martha Stewart Craft Paints.  These paints are supposed to be good for glass, metal, ceramic, plastic, wood, paper and probably more. They say on the bottle they can be used for outdoor stuff. So, I grabbed some colors and began painting all my old faded pots and added some color to my terra cotta pots.

It was instant better color and it made me happy. The above pot was a taupe color. I covered it with a light pink. Here are some more that I painted. It's a bit hard to tell with the hydrandgea taking over everything, but it looks way better than it did.

Then I painted my little table that had gotten so worn out in the sun. I happened to buy the exact color. Here's what it looked like last summer:

And here is what it looks like now. Even with the pretty Geranium covering it you can see how much better it is. It basically looked brand new. It did scratch when I put something on it though. But, that is to be expected. It wasn't sealed in anyway.

Since I painted these we've had some hot days and a number of rainy days. The pots still look really good. I'm excited to use these paints for other things. There are lots of great colors. 

Hope you have a wonderful Memorial Day Weekend. I'm gonna finally plant some veggies this weekend. Here are a few more pics of the potted plants.

march

March is here. The above illustration is from A Child's Book of Poem's. 

Today was very spring like. The sun was out and I went to check out what's been popping up in the garden. My hydrangea bush still had some old dried flowers on it from late last summer, but among them many new buds.

Here is the contrast of dried up winter next to baby fresh spring. No judgement here. I like them both!

I pruned all the old dried flowers off the bush and now it's ready to grow into a big beautiful pile of hydrangeas. I love them. This bush started as a potted plant from Trader Joes.

The neighbor's dog, Clover, came by for a visit. She is super sweet and so well behaved.

Some other stirrings. 

And some cheery narcissus that are intent on keeping their heads down and facing away from the door. I snuck up on them.

I guess spring is coming. I do like it, I just feel like winter never got a real good showing. I am looking forward to flowers and California strawberries and sitting in the sun. 

little things

My life is not very exciting. But, I like it. I find beauty and comfort in everyday things, domestic pursuits, good tv shows, music, the way the bare tree branches look against the blue sky and making things.

I have not been doing too much of the latter, but like I have said before, I am percolating lots of ideas. I hope that I can do a few of them. I have a really hard time focusing lately. I blame the internet and the concept of multi-tasking, which I know is often not beneficial, but I do anyway, because there is only so much time in the day.

I am heading out to the coast for a few days. I will be in a house with a couple of friends and there will be now internet access and no TV. I am a little nervous about having some sort of internet withdrawals, but I am mostly looking forward to it. I need some time to unplug and read and watch the ocean.

Before I leave I wanted to leave a couple images for you. Just a little document of the last week:


Above is a Valentine I made for the best guy ever. I used vintage wallpaper, did a simple stitch on it to bind it and hand wrote the entries. This is the closest to a craft I have done in a while. I borrowed the idea from someone on Etsy who was selling them. I am sorry, but I can't recall where I saw it.


It is that weird time of between winter and spring around here. It is even stranger because it is pretty early this year. Our winter, unlike most of the country has been mild.

This unflattering picture of my garden box shows that in between state. Most of the box is winter, including the hanging pots down because of the high winds we had for a few weeks. But, then there are pretty little bulbs coming up and my strawberry plant is starting to come back to life.


Right now I'm listening to a British pop rock group from 1970 that I have never heard of before. The name is Barclay James Harvest and it's that mystical Brit style music from that time. I heard them on the UK show Life on Mars. Here is a nice song to sum up this entry. The refrain is: "When we are sitting on the banks of the sunshine". It will be soon.

Hope you all have a great week!

Brother Thrush - Barclay James...

fun and games

Today I spent a very pleasant day with part of the family for Father's Day. My 28 year old nephew is in town and he and I went out to my parents for the afternoon. Last weekend they taught us this new game called Sequence. It is pretty fun. You play in teams. My nephew and I were winning so amazingly, it was puzzling. Every time it seemed so easy to win. My mother didn't want to stop because she wanted to win a game. We must have played 20 games. They won once. We just had some crazy luck on our side or something.


Friday night after work I took a lovely drive out to Sauvie Island which is about a 15 minute drive from where I work. I love the farmland island landscape. It was so beautiful. I got a bunch of strawberries. Strawberry season is ending soon, so I wanted to get a lot. Not, sure what to do with them all now. Think I will freeze some. Any favorite strawberry recipes you want to pass on?


My hydrangea plant is doing great this year. It is so pretty. I got it from Trade Joes a couple years ago and replanted it. This is the first year it has blossomed. I think there must be a lot of lime in our soil, because the flowere were not such a dark pink before. Did you know you can change the color of your hydrangea flowers by putting different things in the soil to change the soil pH?



Hope you all had a nice weekend!

bolting

My kale plant bolted, as they say, a while ago. Although I cannot eat the lovely kale anymore, I can still marvel at how fast it grew - a month ago it was a fifth this size, and I can appreciate the pretty yellow flowers. I am going to cut some off this weekend though, it is so tall it is leaning over the box.


Here is my lettuce. I tried growing lettuce before and it didn't work. This was taken after I had already picked one head of lettuce for my salad Thursday night.

Things have been very busy for me since my vacation last week, actually, my vacation was kind of busy, too. Work has been crazy and I have worked late every night this week. I hear it is going to be sunny in Portland this weekend. I want to do some work in the garden, but mostly I think I will be inside, cleaning and getting caught up.

Hope you all have a wonderful weekend.

note to self:

remember to plant more bulbs next fall.

This amazing tulip brought to you by Jane Brocket's garden. I love this one, especially!