The Sadness of Orange

I have had a good appreciation of a beautiful rusty autumnal orange for years, but last fall, orange made an unprecedented and unpredicted move up in my personal color ratings to second place. (First being maintained by my favorite of over 10 years: red.) That spring, orange started showing up all over the fashion-world and juicing its way into other facets of design. As I kept being drawn to it on the shelves and racks, I decided I wanted to feature orange as my accent color in my craft room, so the hunt began for the perfect shade.

Putting the Veggies to Bed

Spring Surprises & Working in the Yard

I have been enjoying the slow discovery process of what is already planted in our new space. Spring brought many a surprise, some identifiable and some unknowns. While I may not have been posting, I have been taking pictures and we've been busy when the weather allows it!

Plantas de Mayo

Happy Cinco de Mayo! Today was all about plants! We started off our morning going to the plant sale at Highline Seatac Botanical garden, specifically to see what was available from the Iris Society and then it was off to the annual Tilth Edible Plant sale at Meridian Park to do some damage to our pocket book.

Lemon Love

image source

Yesterday near the end of our outting to the Northwest Flower & Garden Show, it struck me while looking at a charming little garden built by a local high school in a grid pattern alternating grass with items of interest. I keep laughing about the fact that one reason we loved our house was the huge amount of yard space, and yet as I plan and dream of gardening, I keep wanting MORE land! The problem is I love so many styles of gardening and want to have a space for each, but that would mean absolutely no yard left to play in! I love a formal ornamental French garden with it's pretty geometric patterns edged with boxwood, the tumbled flowers and natural exuberance of the English cottage style, quiet romantic shady spots with the trickle of water over rocks, herb spirals, vegetable beds, the list continues. The challenge comes in finding a way to make little spots for each in our yard but still have it look cohesive. (Let's also ignore that all this gardening is in my head, I'm not exactly sure I will be that good at the actual physical labor all this requires.)

Garden: First plans

One major reason we wanted a house and were willing to move out of the city that we loved in order to obtain it, was because we wanted a large yard. We wanted space to do all the things: flowers, herbs, foods, and play. We know what we want to do and the approximate location for each, but now that winter is past its heyday, I find Spring approaching with fearsome rapidity. Actual conversation from last night went something like this:
Me: Ugh, I'm weird!
J: Why this time?
Me: I'm getting anxiety about going to the Flower & Garden Show!
J: Yeah, that's weird.