Mockingbird Hill Cottage

Mockingbird Hill Cottage

You are here: Home / Archives for garden

Purple

at by

I am reminded every day of my love for shades of purple in the garden. It’s not something I plan. I don’t decide to go for a color scheme as some garden designers do. I just plant what I love. There’s purple phlox, purple coneflowers (lots and lots of them), purple hydrangea, purple catmint, and purple blooms on the crown vetch. There’s also a purple butterfly bush:

8-5 butterflybushpurple

Purple Liatris:

8-5 purpleliatris

And, much to my delight, there are purple flowers of the wildflower variety, that pop up here and there on the property.

8-5 purplewildflower

I’m not sure what this is called, but it’s on the property every year.

8-5 purplewildflower2

This is what it looks like when it opens. So pretty!

Then there’s the Purple Loosestrife that pops up down by the culvert – it likes water. Yes, I know it can be invasive but in my nearly 11 years here, it’s never become a problem.

8-5 purpleloosestrifebee1

I became fascinated by this bee. (I have a penchant for snapping pictures of bees.)

8-5 purpleloosestrifebee2

8-5 purpleloosestrifebee3

I stopped trying to count the variety of bees on this property, including the honey bees in the catalpa. There are a lot. And that is a good thing! We need them.

I putzed around the house yesterday, watered the plants that needed watering, ran a couple of errands, and worked on the new dollhouse project.

8-5 fairfieldfireplacebox

I put this together – the box for the fireplaces (one on each floor) plus the chimney. Lots of careful punching out of the pieces, trying to figure out the directions, sanding each piece, glueing and clamping. But it turned out well. Sigh of relief.

That was my dad’s screwdriver. I keep it up here in the studio with my tools.

Today? Mowing. Rain is due tomorrow, so we need to tackle the lawn today. And more work on this fiddly dollhouse project. I’m starting to enjoy it, though. The trick with this one will be making design decisions as I go, not my preferred way to work, but since this is half scale, it would be impossible to get my hands inside each room to wallpaper, for example. So I ordered some half scale wallpaper yesterday, after a futile attempt to find what I want in the scrapbook paper aisle. The prints were way too large in scale. I’ll need to paint as I go, as well. Yikes.

Don’t forget to stop by my post, Let’s Not Let Dryness Get in the Way. If you leave a comment, you’ll be in the running to win a $100 Visa Gift Card! #ad

Happy Friday.

ClaudiaSignature140X93

Perfectly Lovely

at by

After the heat wave, then three days of rain, yesterday dawned with blue skies and white fluffy clouds and temps in the mid-eighties. All in all, a perfect day for a visit with my best friend! Laural and her husband, Craig, took the train north from Manhattan. We picked them up at the station. First stop: our cottage. It was so important to me to be able to share it with Laural. The gardens looked beautiful (though now that I look closely, they need weeding!) and Laural loved the cottage, both inside and outside.

8-4 garden1

(Taken in the early morning light.)

Then we talked and talked and talked and went to lunch at a Thai restaurant and showed them around a neighboring town, with a quick drive up into the mountains for a view of the Hudson Valley.

And then we talked some more and it soon became time to take them back to the station.

Perfect day with beautiful friends. I’m very grateful.

8-4 bestfriends

Here we are. Friends of almost 52 years. Unbelievable.

8-4 butterflybush

The butterfly bush is right outside our den window, and as I sat on the sofa with Don late in the day, I could see at least two butterflies circling and landing on the blossoms. Beautiful.

8-4 limelight

Don’s in the city today, signing a contract with his commercial agent. I’m taking it easy. All that cleaning and mowing and weed chomping tired me out. It’s a slow morning here at the cottage.

I may not answer yesterday’s comments, if that’s okay with you? But I’ll definitely respond to today’s.

Happy Thursday.

ClaudiaSignature140X93

 

The Garden, Weed Chomping & Emoticons

at by

7-30 phloxandyarrow

A Saturday morning with some rainy days ahead means more mowing and weed chomping today. I’ve decided I’m going to use ‘Weed Chomping’ instead of constantly wondering whether it’s ‘whacking’ or ‘wacking.’ Henceforth: Weed Chomper, Weed Chomping.

Anyway, the weed chomper’s battery ran out of charge rather quickly yesterday, so I’ll finish the job today. We mowed the front yard yesterday in the midst of seemingly lower temps but actually very high humidity, which left us dripping. Dripping, I tell you.

7-30 butterflyinflowers

The garden is so pretty at the moment. The phlox is blooming, the bee balm is hanging in there, the rudbeckia is gorgeous, the coneflowers are in every garden bed, with a few that have self-seeded in interesting spots here and there.

7-30 butterflybush

In the bed on the side of the house, the butterfly bush is starting to bloom, along with the liatris, daylilies and coneflowers. All in all, a very pretty time that I hope will stay just as it is through my best friend’s visit on Wednesday.

By the way, I refuse to use BFF or any of that sort of thing. If I can’t use the entire word, I’m in trouble. And I’m an official Eschewer of Emoticons. Yes, I have weakened as to the use of  hashtags, but other than that? Words are important. Hopefully I can find a way to write here in this space and on Instagram that describes the way I feel at any given time, without resorting to a smiley face. I don’t mind others using emoticons at all. I just can’t do it. But you can use them here to your heart’s content!

Ask any of my longtime friends: I was on record as a Detester of Smiley Faces in the seventies. Oh, yes. I couldn’t stand them; indeed, so much so that my friends loved to send me anything with a smiley face on it just to see my reaction.

My beloved McCoy Pottery made a piece with a smiley face.

I don’t want it.

Claudia: Eschewer of Emoticons, Detester of Smiley Faces. Uses a Weed Chomper.

I have a neat giveaway coming up next week. Stay tuned.

Speaking of giveaways, the winner of a copy of The Branson Beauty  is ChrisK in Wisconsin! (I choose the winners of these giveaways through Random (dot) org, which generates a number, you guessed it, randomly. Chris, congratulations! Send me you address and I’ll forward to TLC Book Tours.

Happy Saturday.

ClaudiaSignature140X93

 

Lambs Like to Party

Lambs Like to Party

A Note

Thanks for visiting! Feel free to browse, read and enjoy. All content is my own; including photos and text. Please do not use anything on this site without permission.

Disclosure/Privacy Policy can be found in the Navigation Bar under ‘About MHC.’

Also, I love receiving comments! I do, however, reserve the right to delete any comment that is in poor taste, offensive or is verging on spam. It’s my blog. If you’re a bot or a troll you’ll be blocked. Thanks!

Archives