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All sorts of lovelies besides plants are residents of our gardens. Please share photos and stories of your treasures here!
Every garden needs a Wood Sprite or two!
Garden Objects #2
LOL, was posting on the old thread and you beat me by one minute!
Holly, Your blue planter with the succulents is almost the same as my green one. I've always planted begonias in mine. You are giving me good ideas for next year.
Here's the other wood sprite. He is a momento of a lovely day spent at a crafts fair while visiting a friend in Claremont California. The artist had nothing but wood sprites!
RCN, Somehow I just knew that by waking up in the middle of the night I would run into you! Happy New Year!
Hart, I am getting used to the RED table, at least it amuses me. Thanks for the comments on the planter.
Ok, now I'm keeping my eyes peeled for a blue & white porcelain ball stake for Holly and a multiple pot planter for RCN!
Home Goods! All of this talk of them inspired me to check out that new one in Radnor. Actually, I had to cross the river for an appointment at 5PM today and once across at that hour, it makes no sense to try to return until after 7. One big traffice jam, so off to HG I went. Alas, no treasures to be had today. I am looking for a small garden table to replace one where the tiles froze and shattered. I've been looking for two years. I may just end up replacing the tiles.
Oh, tragedy. A good friend of mine spent $3500 on a magnificent garden bench. The back and seat were tile renderings of a mountain town that she visited in Italy. The Italian Gallery assured her that it was year round weather proof. First winter, and the same thing happened to her bench. I don't think she's had any luck with a replacement from the gallery.
Hart, I wonder if the owners of that historic house picked out that roof paint themselves or was it another oooooops!
This guy is no wood sprite just a momento of a nice afternoon spent in a lovely botanical garden with friends in Chicago. I was there to see the Chilhuly glass in the gardens exhibit a few years back. Sorry, no Chilhuly items to display!
LOL, okay you keep showing us all these wonderful 'objects' and now I want MORE! Where did you find the Wood Sprite in your first photo? I've looked at them before but a lot of them look dorky - not yours, I love it! Once I find the "right" one then I need to find the "right" tree to hang it on :)
Now I'm getting even more excited about my upcoming trip to Maine! Not only will I be on the lookout for nature's 'objects' (driftwood, rocks, etc.) but there are so many yard sales I'm sure I'll find some treasure :)
Thought I would post my rusty pigs - acquired (quite cheaply) in Mexico......
Oops. too many windows open on my desktop. I meant to post this in the hosta forum. just ignore this post. I am cutting it from here and posting it in the right thread. sorry!
This message was edited May 29, 2009 5:38 AM
Beaux, I think they are the absolute best!! Bet they were fun to carry back on the plane.
RCN, That sprite was bought online. Can't remember the site now. It was not expensive. That photo may make it look larger than it is. It is about 8" across. I am quite fond of him.
Object challenged. I am still deciding what to do with my gourds. First step is get them scrubbed, and I could just stain them and set them around like balls. If we get around to re staining the deck- needed- I'll probably use that.
Mom got tired of this guy but he's cute and nicely aged
Love the doggie with the basket!
Sally, Your gourds would look wonderful as painted spheres. Might be a fun project to do with the kids.
The dog is so cute. And he will always be a nice reminder of your mother's garden. My holiday decorating mania has me envisioning him at the front walk with a basket full of brightly colored Easter Eggs, or on the deck full of pine cones.
Speaking of dogs, this one lives on my deck. He's usually always pointed looking into one of the windows. There's been lots of fun talk about him with guests who initially assume he is alive. He was a gift from a friend the first christmas I moved here. They felt that a dog was needed to compliment my new life style.
I'm not kidding, I think the red grows on you.
I know a guy who worked on their old chimney about the same time as the roof was painted and they picked that color on purpose.
There was another guy in town who replaced the posts on his old porch floor to roof with stacked concrete planters, painted in living color. That was, um, interesting. At least that was just an old house, not an historic home.
Love your doggy, Sally, and the pigs, Beaux. There's a place in Strasburg that has a bunch of really cool welded iron animals for sale. They had a set of lifesized goats for a while that were really neat and now they have a big rooster, which I'm crazy about. It's pretty tall - maybe 3 feet or more. It's dwarfed by the huge one, maybe 10 feet, the guy has in his yard in Manassas. This is the house on Sudley Road with the fence made out of old bicycles if anyone is out that way and wants to see it.
I drove by a house yesterday in a suburban development of small lots with modest homes. Under a tree right by the road someone had a magnificent metal wire sculpture of a life sized horse. His head was pointed up into and was almost touching the low hanging tree branch. It was wonderful and did not at all overwhelm the lot. It was a breezy day and the motion in the sculpture's pose made the horse seem alive.
Rcn, That blue pot came from Joanne Fabrics, I get a lot of cute garden things there. I will say that I find them a pain to water(as I do with all tilted pots) and this year I thought I would try putting in a small tube with a hole in the bottom to pour the water into.
Stormyla, I have looked at those wood sprites at several garden shows, just love them.
Sally, Love that dog! How cute. You should go over to the gourd forum for some cute ideas.
Holly, somewhere on DG i read a thread about how to plant and water the strawberry type of pots, but can't remember now which forum it was. It had something to do with putting a tube inside I think.
I use pvc pipe with holes drilled in it in my strawberry pot and the long, hanging grow bags too. You just water through the top of the pipe and water reaches the entire length.
Yes that was probably one of my posts, I posted some info on how I water my strawberry type coleus pot. I have a pvc pipe with holes drilled in it. But my smaller pots that sit with a tilt the water just leaks out over the lower pot lip and I was having a bit of trouble watering my boots. So one day I took a fresh flower water tube and cut the bottom tip off of it and pushed it down into one of my tilted pots along the top rim and used it just like I do my bigger pvc pipe. Worked very well if you use a small spout watering can.
Search the articles for "strawberry pot" -- I know there was a good one describing the method Holly mentioned.
Might be more than one place but I originally posted it when one of the writers wrote an article about a pot she made for Coleus cuttings. Where she drilled holes all around the pot. Here is a pic of my coleus pot where you can see the pipe. As the Coleus grow it's not near as obvious.
Holly, Your coleus looks really beautiful. It never occured to me to put them in a stawberry pot. Well, I don't have one anyway! My sister admired it right into ownership!!! That pipe is a really good idea. I'll have to tell her. Actually, we'll make one for her. Her DH is not a fixer.
OK, I got so desperate for some color over here that I potted up a Mandevilla in one of my favorite pots and put it on this very heavy plinth. The glads are poking through the ground, so maybe they'll be some color there soon.
The pot was bought many years ago in a hospital thrift shop. The plinth came from a garden shop that was going out of business about 7 years ago.
Garden stakes. Well we have this frog with the broken rain gage. I have never had Hosta flowers in May before. This Bressingham Blue hosta usually puts up about a dozen bloom stalks. The flowers are hugh and of course, WHITE!
And here we have a dragonfly stake. They were a birthday present from some friends. We have a funny thing going. We exchange presents for Christmas and Birthdays, but the rule is it has to be something from the dollar store, Ollie's or Big Lots. AND it can NOT be tacky!!!
We have a group of four women in this "club" and we get a lot of laughs out of it. They are my sailing buddies, ages 53, 70 and 82!
Well, they cheated!! They each gave me one!
Well, in my mind, these are bordering on Tacky, but what the heck!! They stopped by for a visit last week, bearing arm loads of Hosta and several hundred Muscari bulbs. My friend bought a house that came with the world's largest Muscari planting. I wouldn't be surprised if the count wasn't more than a million. You should have seen her surprise the first spring she was there!
Any plant that she brings comes with 10 or 15 muscari bulbs stuck in the roots.
This one my nieces bought for me when I took them to the Philadelphia Flower show about 10 years ago. It glows in the dark, but silly me never puts it anywhere where I can see it at night. Note to self, go out tomorrow and move it!!!
DSO bought me this silly thing the first year that I moved here. It was to cheer me up for having a home without 1 flower!! It moves around all of the time as I stick it anywhere there is a lot of bloomless green. It has left this spot since the photo was taken as the Viburnum and Rose Bush are in full bloom. It's getting pretty beat up. Guess I'll ask DSO to paint the petals. Hope there's none of that red paint left!!!
Here's a little bird feeder stake. This was a cheap flea market find, came complete with pulverized ancient bird seed in it!! This has given me so much enjoyment as it is in direct view of my potting bench and I've had great fun watching it's visitors.
These birds and fairy are momentos of a nice road trip that I took with a friend to Bar Harbor in Maine about 15 years ago. They are hand cut and glazed copper. They weather really well and break up this WHITE background nicely. I never could get anything to grow in this bed and had decided that this year I would turn it into a veggie bed. NOT, it is now completely full, including 6 magnificent oriental poppy plants.
And here we have a weathervane stake that actually works very well. I don't remember how I came to aquire this. It's amazing, this photo was taken about 12 days ago. Today I walked back there to cut down the spent Iris blooms. Everything had grown up so much that it was hard to get through that whole area. That viburnum on the left had been completely surrounded by a hugh clump of yarrow that I divided and potted for the swap. There are 2 more clumps of it on the other side of the shrub.
Here we have a Hummingbird feeder on a stake. It's been up for at least 3 weeks and so far, no Hummer. What gives??? It's within 3 feet of a Quince and there's a bunch of Milkweed just the other side of the quince.
My stormy, you were up until the wee hours of the morning :-) I'm heading outside to take pictures of some of my garden objects. I'll post in a bit... terri
Picked this up at at a craft fair about 15 years ago.
Another craft fair find.
And here is my absoloute favorite - this plaque was in my grandmother's rose garden as long as I can remember. When she passed away, my mother and my aunts gave it to me because they knew how much I loved it. One of these days I hope to have a rose garden like hers, but in the meantime I have it in a bit of cottage garden near the house, along with 'Mary Frances' iris (her name was Mary Frances).
Terri, Your Neptune plaque is very beautiful. I always admire gorgeous wall plaque renderings of him. Same goes for dolphin fountains!!