This Is Why She is the Queen.....

.....and I am the Princess! I went and visited my parents on Sunday. Most of you know my Mom (Dirt Queen) loves to garden. They moved into this house a little over a year ago.....and look at her yard!!!!!!! They just built their fence a month or so ago! I have lived in my house 4 years, and my yard will NEVER look this good!

This was one of the first beds that she started, and it looks great!

There were bees all over the flowers, they were cold and not very active.

This is one of her mystery plants that appeared in that same bed. We have no idea what it is! The plant is similar to a Tibouchina. It has fuzzy leaves, but the stems are red, and this is some type of bud that is forming. Any ideas?

This is the area next to the garage. The area behind the arbor is being transformed into a vegetable garden. I am sure it will be spectacular!

She has created all of these beds this Summer! Ridiculous...I know. They look like they have been there 10 years.

Here a shot of the veggie garden under construction. I am only showing you this, because I know the after will be amazing! She has already started herbs (around the trellis).

She called this Datura, and I absolutely love it. I got some seed pods off of it, and I also received seeds from the Seed Swap from Lona @ A Hocking Hills Garden

Angelonia

Peppermint Stick Zinnia

I was amazed by this Zinnia. It is a Peppermint Stick Zinnia, and there were 5 blooms on the plant. This was one, the others were solid red, light pink, dark pink, and then one striped bloom! I got seeds from these.

I left with a lot of goodies! Several different seeds, Pineapple Sage, Variegated Hydrangea, and a few others that the Dirt Queen had rooted.

So that is the latest and greatest at the Dirt Queen's place.....I have a looooong way to go!

Sorry I haven't been around to visit much this week. I have been a little behind. I will be working on catching up tonight! See ya'll soon!

Daffodils by the Dozen

One of my other favorite past times besides gardening is hunting. I have been hunting for a very long time. I always see the most amazing things while out hunting. One of those amazing moments occurred this past January.

We have a small piece of land that we hunt that was The Hunter's Great Grandmothers house. We have hunted here for a long time. In January, I pulled up to go hunting, and it was raining, and the sun had not yet come up. I decided to sit in the car for a while and let the rain stop. As the sun was barely coming up, I noticed a white mass laying out in front of me. I couldn't quite make out what it was. The sun was getting up higher, and the rain had stopped, so I got out of the car to see what the white mass was.


I was absolutely floored! It was daffodils. Not just one....but millions. I looked around me in TOTAL shock and amazement! There were daffodils everywhere I looked. In the sun, in the shade, in the woods, growing on stumps. They had naturalized everywhere. I was flabbergasted!You can see the clumps of green spread throughout the dead grass. I have no idea why I have never seen them before. I have never hunted here much during January, and maybe that was the reason.

These daffodils had naturalized on this tree stump!

Everywhere I looked, there were daffodils!

I left them alone for a few weeks....and trust me...it was hard! I didn't want to dig them up while they were blooming. At the end of January I went back, shovel in hand, and got to work. This was not an easy task! These daffodils were in such massive clumps, that they were extremely hard to dig up....but I was bound and determined to take them home with me. Some of them were up to 24" deep!

I carried the heavy duty lawn garbage bags with me. I dug up enough daffodils to fill 5 of those bags!

I planted all that I could, and what I couldn't plant I gave away!

I soon realized that there were 5 different types of daffodils!

The white one shown is a Minor Monarque

This one is Rijnveld's Early Sensation.

It will be the first one to bloom...thus the name!

Others included Butter & Eggs

Lent Lily

Sorry, I was not able to find my photos of the last two. I do have one more daffodil that I was not able to identify, nor could anyone else that I emailed it to. I used Old House Gardens, and Jason from Petals From the Past to help me identify those four. It was not an easy task since there are 6000+ daffodils! I would have been happy with a name or not. I think it was an AMAZING find.

The daffodils are already sprouting up, and come January they will be blooming. I tried to mark where I had planted them...but it will be a surprise all over again when they bloom! I can't wait to see their pretty little faces again!

Seed Swappin' Sunday - 11/15/09

Welcome to the Seed Swap! If you are have seeds to swap, please do a post showing us what you have to share for the week. Please link your post through Mr. Linky below. If you would like seeds, please leave a comment on that persons post.

Today I will be sharing Prairie Coneflower. I received this plant from a fellow gardener. I only have a few seeds to share, so it is first come first serve. You can read more about the Prairie Coneflower here : http://www.wildflowerinformation.org/Wildflower.asp?ID=63

I also have Bee Balm (Monarda), that I will be sharing. I have this in red, and purple. The seeds are mixed, so you may get both colors. I didn't think about that when I was separating seeds. Sorry! Read more about Monarda Here: http://www.floridata.com/ref/M/mona_did.cfm

If you would like the seeds I have shown here today, please leave me a comment. I have I already have your address, just leave me a comment letting me know what you would like. If I do not have your address, please leave me a comment about what seeds you would like, and email me through Kontactr.

Thanks! I can't wait to see what everyone else has to share today!

Fertilizer Friday - November 13, 2009

So far I have survived Friday the 13th without any "bad luck", and I hope you all have as well! It is Friday, so that means its time to Flaunt Those Flowers for Fertilizer Friday! You can head on over to Tootsie's place by clicking on the photo above. She graciously keeps hosting for us, even though she isn't gardening right now. Atleast outside she isn't, she is sharing all of her greenhouse goodies throughout the winter.

I caught a few shots this morning, heading out the door to go to work.

Black Eyed Susans with the morning dew

Vinca still continues to thrive, although it won't last much longer.

Zinnias, slowly fading away...

Phlox just beginning to bloom.

Mexican Petunia is still blooming and shooting up new growths!

I hope you all have a wonderful weekend! I am going to try to go to some yardsales in the morning and see if I can get a good deal on some plates so I can finish my project!

Picking up the Pieces

...of broken plates that is. So what are all those plates you might ask. Well, I had a bright idea, well ...Mrs. Brown (my 80 year old garden buddy) had an idea and I just copied her! I didn't actually break the plate on the bottom row, to the far left....I actually kept it. It was pretty cool, so I spared it!Mrs. Brown uses old plates to create a border for some of her flowers beds! I thought it was just great, but didn't see how it could work for me. I couldn't use them on the exterior edges of the flower beds because the weed eater/mower would break them.
Last night I had an epiphany..LOL!!! I could use plates to line the walkway within one of my larger beds!

So I went to my favorite place...Sage Consignment, and got to digging around for plates! Don't look at the prices on them...there was no way I would have paid that much for each plate...I got a deal ;-).

Maybe I should have consulted with Mrs. Brown prior to me beating on plates with a hammer. Now that I am looking at her pictures...I don't think she broke hers. I broke mine.

I placed each plate in a towel and lightly tapped each one. I completely broke 3 before I figured out the best way to do this. This plate above, as you can see, did not want to break! It was by accident that I discovered the best way to break them in two. If you hammer lightly on the bottom rim....it will crack right down the middle. Well almost all of them will, some went into 3 or 4 pieces. Some are much thicker than others.

In the end....most of them broke really well, and exactly like I wanted!

and then you can tell the ones they didn't break like I wanted them to!

I then loaded them back into the box, and toted them over to the area I wanted to line. The ground is really soft from all of the rain yesterday. This made it really easy to push the plates in the soil. I only had enough plates to get about a quarter of the walkway lined.

I just think it is too cute...now I can PROMISE you The Hunter will HATE it, and ask me what I was thinking. But...who cares! The next thing I am going to do is mulch the entire bed, then put pebbles down the walkway to fill it in. The mulch that was in the bed, washed away each time it rained. Hopefully by creating an edge with the plates, it will keep everything in place. I will also be getting some rocks sometimes soon to use as a border on the outside edge of all the beds in the back yard. This is something I have always battled with. I like a border, but have yet to find one I like. I finally found someone who would deliver stone fairly inexpensive. Most people around here will only deliver a dump truck load (which is 27 tons!). I need roughly 2 tons of rocks to line my beds.

I swapped trellises around today. The clematis was getting to large for its old trellis, so it got upgraded to a larger one. I HOPE I didn't stunt its growth by moving it. I removed each tendril so carefully. It took me about 30 minutes to get it un-tangled off of the old trellis.

Here is a shot of the large bed, with its new plates. I think the rocks will help it pop, and give it good definition. You can see my garden helper...Peaches to the right!

It will look a million times better once I fill the walkway, and mulch the bed.

Have any of you ever used plates as a border, or know someone who has? I have also seen bottles used. I visited a garden during the summer that had well over 100 bottles used as a border. She stuck them neck down. Her neighbor apparently like to have a sip or two, or by the looks of it...MORE, of wine every night.She gives her a bottle a day! Apparently I need to find a wine/beer drinker and steal some bottles.

I will be pulling up spent flowers soon. The vinca is about to retire for the year. It will be pulled up, and replaced with pansies and snapdragons. Daffodils are popping up already and will be blooming in January. I am excited about them blooming since I planted over 100 of them last year. Free flowers are the best!!! The daffodils were all free, I found them at the hunting camp. Hunting definitely has its perks!

Deary Day with Ida

Tropical Storm Ida has been visiting us for the past 24 hours. So far, everything has been okay. Just a constant steady rain, today has been fairly windy. We haven't gotten any hard rains...just a constant rain.

I have begun to notice the flowers are slowing down, and beginning to die back. I will have to clean out the beds soon. The zinnias have reached their peak, and are on their last leg.

The Jacobean plant is still blooming, and doing well. It doesn't seem to be getting any larger, but its blooming so I am happy.

This is the new kitty....Peaches. She has peach spots on her, so I thought Peaches was appropriate. She loves her new home and is as happy as can be!

Cardinal Spheres has been blooming. It also isn't very big. Last year it was very large, this year it is about half the size it was last year. I think the drought we had earlier in the summer may have affected it.

Remember when I made the pumpkin topiary with the real pumpkins, and they rotted 7 days later? I dumped them into a bag, because I didn't want pumpkin seeds in my flower beds. Well guess what.......a few of them made it into the flower bed and look what has popped up!

Zinnias slowly fading away.

Black Eyed Susans are thriving right now.

I was going through some things in the guest bedroom and pulled some tissue paper out of an old gift bag. Kiki managed to find it, and decided it was a comfortable place to take a nap!

I am very shocked and saddened today by the sudden passing of a co-worker. I received a call this morning that he had passed in his sleep. He wasn't even 60 years old. But when its your time, there isn't much you can do. He had gone to have a stress test yesterday, and I am just shocked that he died last night. Death is never easy, and no one is ever prepared. I feel blessed to have known him. He had a gift with kids. I dread seeing the kids Thursday and letting them know that he is gone. He was a big part of some of those kids lives, and I hope that those kids well keep up what he has instilled in them, and better their lives on behalf of him.

Where It All Began

When I graduated High School, I received an art scholarship to a local college. I went there for a year and HATED every minute of it. I decided to change my major and transfer. I transferred to The University of Southern Mississippi in Hattiesburg, MS. It was an hour and a half from my house. I didn't know a soul there. My brother suggested that I join a sorority so I could meet people. It wasn't something I had ever considered doing, but I decided that I would. What did I have to lose? So I went through Rush and all of that stuff, and it wasn't really all of that great to me. I ended up joining a sorority.....and I hated it. I moved into the sorority dorm, Panhelenic. It was an 8 story, split level building. 16 floors total, every sorority had a floor.

My first semester I lived on my chapters floor. I hated EVERY second of it. They drove me nuts! They wanted me to keep my door open all of the time, do everything with them, blah blah blah. I had nothing in common with them at all. The second semester I got the chance to move to the 1st floor which was the "community" floor, meaning various girls from various sororities. Our sorority had just gotten some new members, and one of them lived on the community floor. She was a tall, thin re head....a ball of fire. Her name was Allison, and she would turn out to be one of my best friends.

Allison was from Bay Minette, AL. Which was about 30 minutes from me. She hated the sorority as much as I did. We never did anything with them, and got fined all of the time for not doing what we were supposed to do. Everyday we would go back to our dorm room, make some Toaster Strudels and watch Golden Girls...this was our routine! After that first year we moved out of the dorms and into an apartment, I had mine and Allison had hers.

When I wasn't watching Golden Girls...I was at the Kate Hubbard house, also known as the Interior Design Studio. Which would be my second home for the next 4 years.

Our Interior Design class was fairly small. They could only take so many students per class. I think that there were around 25 or so in my class. I spent every day, all day long, every week of four years with these people. It was inevitable that some of us would become life long friends. Today, seven years after graduating from Southern Miss, two of those girls are still me best friends...Katherine and Tara. I still talk to most of my class, but these two are very near and dear to me.

Allison had a different major, but through me....we all became very good friends. We hung out at night, on the weekend, went on trips together and shared a lot of good times as well as bad times. We all went to England one summer to study abroad, and it was the best 8 weeks of my life. We had such a blast. We still laugh about things that happened there. Allison was with me when I fell down the Eiffel Tower.

After graduation I came back to Mobile, Katherine moved back home to Jackson, Mississippi. Allison lived a few places before settling down in Jackson, Mississippi. She married a guy from there, and that's where they stayed. Tara moved back home to Tupelo, MS.

I think about them all the time. I miss them so much. They live around 3+ hours from me, well Tara lives about 5+ hours from me. I hardly ever get to see them, but I do talk to them. They all 3 have children, and it is the craziest thing to me. Sometimes I feel like they are just baby sitting when I am around them....and they are....but permanently!

This past weekend I was fortunate enough to get to spend time with Allison and Katherine. Katherine got married. I stayed with Katherine Friday night, and then with Allison Saturday night.

Friday we had a bridal luncheon to go to. Here is a pic of me and Katherine. Is she not the most gorgeous thing (she is on the left)! She is just gorgeous!

Here are a few of the bridesmaids before the wedding. They are all so sweet! The short haired blonde was Katherine's roommate in college. I loved our dresses!

The reception was wonderful. The food was great! There was a potato bar that had mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes...and all the "fixin's" for them.

Here is the beautiful bride and her groom cutting the cake

I took pictures of both of their cakes because I know most of you had never heard of the bride having her cake, and the groom having his own. I guess it is a Southern thing...because everyone here does it. I have never known other wise.

This is the grooms cake and it was beyond words...AMAZING! It was butterfinger flavored. It was sooooo good!

After the wedding, I went to stay the night with Allison. Allison had two children, 4 yrs old, and 18 months old. I had never met her little girl...so I was very excited!

This is Allison and Cara! Look at those cheeks! She was a doll! She just laughed and cut up the entire time I was there. Allison still looks the same and acts the same, well almost acts the same! We are a little older now. She is still Allison though...she is just married with 2 kids. She hasn't changed at all. We have always joked that we had to pay A LOT of money to meet each other. Since we met through our sorority. As I said, she grew up 30 minutes from me, and I used to hangout in Bay Minette all of the time during high school. I had another friend who lived in Bay Minette. All of that time, Allison and I never met...but let our parents shuck out a few thousand dollars for a sorority and whalah...there's Allison! LOL! So we often tell people we paid each other to be our friend! It worked!

I HATED to come home yesterday. I wanted to stay a few more days!

This morning I learned that I don't have to go back to work until Thursday! School are closed due to Tropical Storm Ida, and Wednesday is Veterans Day. It sure would have been nice to know this Sunday morning....because I would still be at Allison's right now!

Everyone has friends, I have a lot of friends. You have friends that you may not see or talk to everyday, but when you do its like you pick up where you left off. You have friends that you can tell ANYTHING to...and they are my friends, and I love and miss them dearly.

Since Tropical Storm Ida is currently making her way up Mobile Bay....it is rainy. A lot of rain! I have been piddling around inside all day. I have my seeds ready to go out for the mail tomorrow. I separated zinnia seeds today...I am sure I have plucked a million petals off of zinnias today! I have two, two gallon bags full of zinnia seeds! Can you believe that! I guess I went a little overboard with dead heading and saving them! So I will have plenty of them to mail out!