Mockingbird Hill Cottage
My grandmother used to call the pictures she took with her Brownie camera ‘snaps.’ I find myself using that word lately. Snaps. Here are some snaps on this Sunday of life around the Cottage.
No, it’s not Fathers Day – Don still has the card (from Riley and Scout) in a place of honor on the coffee table. But it is Don’s birthday! Happy Birthday, sweetheart! Let’s have a wonderful day celebrating all that is you.
Happy Sunday.
Linking to Elaine’s Sunny Simple Sundays.
I ran across this photo yesterday, taken in the autumn of 2005, a few months after we moved into Mockingbird Hill Cottage:
When we moved in, the two bushes on each end of the area in front of the porch were the only bushes there. Since we moved in at the very end of August, we didn’t do any planting. We did buy those 4 teeny tiny boxwoods to fill in that yawning empty space in front of the porch. I dug out a bed and planted the boxwoods. Then winter came and once we hit the spring of 2006, I started planting in earnest.
Here’s the cottage now. I tried to get a view from the same angle:
I not only pruned those boxwoods this year because they were so big, I made an attempt to prune them into a pretty shape. Ignore the little picket fences leaning against the porch. They’re holding something up until the hydrangea I just planted (just to the left of them) fills in the space. And the rocks on the right are maybe going to be used in a rock garden. Not sure yet about that.
Anyway, what a difference almost 7 years makes! The roses have grown by leaps and bounds. I added two planting beds just around the corner from that rose bush, where there are more rose bushes, an Annabelle hydrangea, spirea, purple coneflowers, the New Dawn rose, liatris, white coneflowers, day lilies, and a butterfly bush.
I hope I can find a photo of the big planting bed in its forlorn 2005 state. I know we have one somewhere from the day we first saw the house. If I find it, I’ll show you a before and after. Of course all the before shots were from my pre-blogging days. If I had been blogging, you can be sure I would have documented everything!
The great thing about being home this spring, beside the obvious pleasure I get from seeing everything burst into bloom, is that I have time to plan, to add, to tweak. I’ve added plants here and there. I’ve planted some seeds in a little area by the dog corral. I’ve pruned. I’ve weeded. I’ve added plants to the patio. In previous years, I could only prep the beds, mulch and cross my fingers until I came back home in July.
How are you on this Monday? What are your plans? (Yesterday I mowed, did laundry and caulked the tub. Today, I’m mowing again – it’s endless. And cleaning. And eating Rhubarb Snacking Cake. )
Happy Monday.
