A Cardinal's Song in the Garden

Hello everyone, I wish you could hear the above cardinal singing today in and around the garden. She, and it is a female, is flitting everywhere and singing constantly. She goes from the bougainvillea bush to the car and admires herself in the mirror, then to the top of the car, then to the bush. Which brings me to the question; where is the male? Do you suppose he is sitting on the nest? Is this normal? The nest is in the bougainvillea, so he must be there. She hasn't the time! She is too busy admiring herself in the car mirror and chirping. Well, on to the blooms in the garden!

The Zinnias are really pretty, especially these tiny ones above.

I love the sweet potato vine planted with petunias. You can see some Caladium bulbs sprouting in the background. I planted a few more this year.

Love all the colors of Spring!

The front pot contains Basil and Oregano, so I run out and pick some frequently for Italian dishes.

Here are Caladiums from bulbs I planted last year and they have been up quite some time.

The roses are full of bloom. However I do need to treat them for black spot and you can see yellow leaves that need picking off. Lots of work to do in the garden, but it is so rewarding to have beautiful blooms all around!

What to do with a Studio full of flowers?!

Hi Everyone, It is a nice rainy day in Florida and do we ever need some rain! I am cleaning in my studio after having to take out all the flowers from last week that have wilted. Friends brought beautiful blooms to me to use in paintings. The blooms don't last as long as I would like, but I enjoyed them every minute I could!

There were beautiful Hydrangea blooms that I am going to try to root. Keep your fingers crossed for success! There were unique Gloriosa Lilies which have such a pretty orange red color.

The Fringed Hibiscus above was so charming. The bloom only lasts one day, but on this branch there were several buds, so every day I had a new bloom! That gave me more time to paint it.

  

The Passion Vine blooms are the most complex things you can imagine and difficult to paint, especially since they only last one day. The first day I drew them and painted on the background. After that, I had to paint them from memory.

The first day's work. I was working on the background and masking out some of the leaves, stems and the Fringed Hibiscus.

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A little further along. Next comes the vases, the cloth at the bottom and the flowers and leaves.

Finished painting. Love the shadows on the striped cloth. O.K. friends, I'm ready for more blooms. Keep them coming!

Thursday Quiet Garden Walk

Hi Everyone, We are just going to walk through the garden today, quietly. In other words, I have no comments, since I am in a hurry today! But I did see so many gorgeous blooms and plants to share with you, so just enjoy the photos.

So long for now. Join us again on this blog soon and have a great day!!

Container Gardening with Flowers

Hi Everyone, I have heard that a lot of you are finally getting Springlike weather. Well, today in South Florida, it is more like mid Summer. It was 90 degrees and, although not too humid, it felt pretty warm! I did manage to get outside a plant up the cutest flower container you have ever seen! It looks like a vintage tub with a water spigot, but it actually has a solar light in it. So I let it sit in the sun eight hours and then planted it up with some gorgeous annuals. I thought the tall blue delphinium even resembles water pouring from the spigot! How cute is that! Margaret, my good neighbor brought the container to me, and she got herself one, too. I will show you later how she plants hers. I can say that she has a greener thumb than me!!

But I love mine and wasn't that so thoughtful of her! Can't wait to turn on the light at night and illuminate it!

I am into galvanized containers! They are so "country" yet sort of sophisticated in some ways. I used a tall one for this peace lily.

Just a low plastic pot becomes a nice container for a mixed garden of blooms and plants. I love the apple green sweet potato plant.

An old crockery planter that is long and narrow makes a pretty container for running plants mixed with a bit of color on each side.

Do you remember my grandsons' little pond they built me from a plastic tote box?

I still am enjoying it as the plants grow around it and now it sports a beautiful water lily. I could not find a real water lily, but never mind, I found an artificial one that really looks real and my little painted rock turtle likes it just fine!

Happy container gardening to you!

My own Saturday Garden Show at Ten Gables

Hello Everyone and I hope you enjoy the following "garden show" here at Ten Gables. Things are blooming and I have been out taking photos. Enjoy the show! Happy Week end.

Beautiful Spring Day in Florida

Hello Everyone. Here it is a beautiful Spring day in Florida and Gary, Margaret and John's cat, thinks he will just sleep in on his little window bed. Usually he is looking out onto the window boxes full of herbs and watching for birds and butterflies and the occasional lizard, but today he is just snoozing!

I took a little walk around the yard and as you can see by the shadow under this pot of Petunias and Snap Dragons, it is a sunny and bright day. We are having temperatures in the 70's .

The sky is so pretty and lots of things are now blooming. I wish you could hear all the birds singing. Right now I am listening to a Cardinal outside my window!

Here is a closer view of that yellow blooming tree in the front of the house. It blooms and then gets leaves. Sorry, I can't find the name of this tree right now and I can never remember it. Perhaps some of you know it and can tell us the name.

I have planted several new rose bushes this Spring and this pink one has huge blossoms. This one is almost ready to fall, but it has hung on for days!

The petunias are so pretty now, but it won't be long until it gets too hot for them. Behind the Petunia is a Heather and a pot of Basil and Oregano.

Have a great day and visit my blog again soon!

Beautiful Easter Day

Hi Everyone, Yesterday was a gorgeous Easter Day in South Florida. My grandchildren were visiting and even though they are growing up, we had an Easter egg hunt for them in the afternoon. The plastic eggs contained a little money, so they had incentive to run all over the place hunting their eggs.

Here they are, Andrew who is 14 this month and Austin who is 11. They made dessert, as you can see, which was a fruit pizza. They pressed sugar cookie dough into a pizza pan and after it was baked and cool, they put a topping of cream cheese, powdered sugar and vanilla flavoring on top of the baked pie. Then they added sliced strawberries, blueberries, sliced kiwi and mandarin orange slices. It was very delicious. The plain piece you see on the pie was deliberately left that way for their mother who didn't want the cheese mixture and fruit on hers. 

Flowers are blooming. At church, each person who wants, brings a few flowers from their garden and puts them on a cross form. When everyone is finished. it is truly beautiful. This is done every Easter at the sunrise service. It is amazing the variety of flowers on the cross.

My grandchildren also made me a "pond". Austin asked for a clear plastic tote, saying he wanted to make me a pond. His older brother helped him and they dug a hole just the size of the rectangular box and inserted the clear tote box. I was not allowed to see it until completed, so I painted a rock turtle for the pond while they worked. Here is how it turned out. Too cute!

Andrew is following in his grandma's footsteps doing artwork and taking art in school. He brought several pastels and colored pencil drawing for me to put on my art blog, http://egrettawells.blogspot.com/ and I did put them on there for him, so take a peek at them. Here he is holding two of the paintings. There I am making a shadow in front of the girl painting, but you can see the art. I really liked his girl portrait.

Well, I am a proud granny with two special, cute, and smart grandchildren! We had a fun day and I hope you did, as well.