Garden goodies

My poor lil red wagon has a busted wheel and rusted through (sniffle), Never fear, I have an upcycle in mind for it.

Looky looky at my new toy! This is a wagon on steroids. (I seriously want to do the Tim the Tool Man grunt right now). This bad boy can haul 700 pounds. Oh yes! I have lots of projects swirling around in the scary-murky depths of my brain. The garden cart can be pulled or a simple flip of some cotter pins and it can connect to the back of the lawn mower. Which would be great except the hubbs doesn't like the way I mow and he hid the mower keys--I am NOT kidding!! gggrrrr...All the sides fold down and it makes a great for when you need to take a break too. I LUUURRRVVVEEE it!

Most of the pretties are in place. I can't wait for the flower boxes to fill in and steal the show. When doing florals in boxes and pot don't forget to use the thriller's, fillers, and spillers rule. Thrillers usually involve height, color and smell. Fillers are usually greenery. And spillers is all all the drapey stuff. 

Just wait until everything fills in!

This is a simple arrangement which used Dracena as my thriller (spikey height) I added petunias (pink petals with a yellow throat) which will also have a sweet light fragrance, yellow salvia for visual contrast, and I added 2 kinds of greenery for for the spillover effect. I would have prefered lantana but could not locate any at the 4 nurseries I visited. I had very slim pickin's to choose from, which  I assume everything had been picked over due to  the Mother's Day to Memorial Weekend span.

I didn't prune my roses and as a result they are taking over the garden shed and possibly part of the yard. Two of my roses came from a friend's yard after she pretty much hacked them to death. I wasn't sure if they would survive but did they ever!

This is a fuschia rose (sorry no idea what type) Here is July 2011 when I was on the rebound after I planted it  (Sorry for poor picture quality it a cell phone snap).

Here it is 2 years later. Holy Hulthemia x Rosa Batman!

I talked the hubbs into 3 more raised beds. He was kinda snarly about it grumbling he was not gonna have any yard left to mow. Um really?! There is still 335 feet left--he is such a crybaby sometimes, haha

I know the beds look kind of out of align but everything was levelled , plumbed and tamped before I finished. Blame this bad picture on my impatience and poor photography skills, haha

One thing we did differently with these raised beds are we marked the placement, the hubbs rototilled to a depth of 12 inches, I sifted rocks and debris, removed any weed/grass clumps, graded the soil, placed the frame, layered in news paper, mixed my soil (4 parts garden soil-sifted, 1/2 part composted moo-nure, 1/2 part mushroom compost, 1/2 part peat, 1/2 part sand), filled the beds (each bed is 4ft x 4ft x 7 inches) then I used the excess ground soils and grass clumps to pack around the exterior perimeter of the beds (to a height of 3 inches). I had some bowing and slight warping on a couple of my beds from last year. I was more careful in the placement of the cedar planks this year. If there was a warp to the board I turned it in so the weight of the soil bed would push against it. The idea is it will be enough to make it "straighten" out.

Well that is all I have for y'all now. What is gonna on in your little slice of paradise?