Beautiful Iris: What's In a Name Anyway?

Hello friends!

If you follow this blog, you know that I am pretty diligent about keeping up with tags that identify each plant in my gardens, particularly my daylilies and iris plants. However, every once in a while, I purchase a pretty addition to my garden that is a cutting from someone else's garden, sold to our local garden center, and was not identified. I can't resist buying these any more than one would refuse to adopt a cute puppy just because she didn't know his heritage. And sometimes the tags just disappear altogether.

This one was blooming at The Nest while we

were up there last week.

It wasn't doing well in our garden at home

last year,

so I divided it, left half home,

and moved a section to The Nest in

the fall.

How beautiful it turned out to be,

a pretty shade of yellow...

...with such pretty markings that are a

brownish plum...

I took this photo up close just because

the inside was so beautiful...

I bought the one below yesterday at the garden

center. It only had one bloom one it,

with a couple of buds,

but is just beautiful and very mature

with several fans on it...

...so I will likely divide it before putting it

in the ground this week,

and give a section to my sister-in-law

for her garden...

It is similar to the one below which

is already growing in the garden...

And, since I am partial to the blues,

I must share the one below,

also blooming in the garden here.

The identifier stake is somewhere

underneath it.

Iris tend to send their new growth outward

so often the markers tend to disappear,

and then resurface when I dig them out

to divide every three years or so...

With this kind of beauty,

unless you plan on hybridizing iris

it doesn't really matter what their names are,

now does it?!!

Have a beautiful day.

Assemblage Art: "A Little Bird Told Me"

Good morning friends and happy Sunday!

We returned home earlier this week after 10 days at The Wren's Nest, and it has taken me this long to catch up on laundry and garden work, so here I am at last. Doesn't it seem like there are never enough hours in the day?

We finally hung up an assemblage piece that I started a while ago, and finished over the winter.

Here is the piece, which has been hung

next to the window in the living room.

We actually managed to get in the last

two new windows this trip.

More on that saga later this week!

You may recall that we had completed

16 of the 18 but work came to a

standstill last June when the issues

started with the Mister's foot.

We even put up our first curtains,

which are a little more "printy" than

what I would used here at home,

but "cottagey" enough for this place

without being too cute!...

This was a generic Michael's wood shadow

box that I originally purchased for I-don't-know-

what and painted with Waverly Chalk paint

from the craft section of Walmart.

The color is "plaster".

The inside of the box as purchased

was lined with beige fabric.

Of course, its so hard for me to create

something without using an old photo...

The feathers were found in our yard some

time ago. As I always do with found feathers,

I placed them in a zip lock baggie with

bug spray, sealed it shut, and let them

sit in there for a while, ensuring that any

mites on the feathers would be dead.

The nest was a vacated real one found up at

The Wren's Nest when we cut down some

old bushes up there, and was also treated

the same as the feathers.

Because it was crumbly,

I sealed it with spray acrylic

and carefully glued it to a background

of wax paper to make sure that it

didn't crumble further once placed in the box.

The eggs are little paper eggs that I

think were part of a home decor set once

purchased at Target.

You can read more about the actual nest here...

A copy of some vintage sheet music,

and some paper flowers fastened with

brads,

along with some twigs,

seed pods from daylilies here at home,

and game letters...

But my favorite part is the old rusted doorbell

that I bought a long time ago and was

waiting for the perfect place to reside.

It's all about home!...

What have you been up to lately?

Thanks so much for coming by!

The Patience of a Dove

Hello!


For what amounted to almost two weeks up at The Nest this past trip, we did a bit of bird-watching, and it was all done right from our little screened porch.


Early on, we noticed that a mamma dove was sitting on a nest that she built on top of the outside of our neighbor's air conditioner. Smart little lady that she was, she had the carport roof over her head and was up high enough that no one could easily spot her. For the whole time that we were up there, she sat on those eggs morning, noon and night, getting a reprieve once in a while when papa came to relieve her. She would then fly off for a short while and he would sit on the eggs.

I think that these were mourning doves, which I have read are also referred to as turtle doves. I hear that they tend to mate for life and remain monogamous. Able to raise up to six broods a year, both parents work together to incubate their young.

After spending two weeks watching the patience shown by these beautiful creatures, I could not help but admire them and feel a little sad when we had to leave without seeing the babies hatch. I hope that they are still in the nest when we return.

Do you see the mama bird?

This was the best photo that I could take

without getting close enough to disturb her...

And speaking of mama birds,

today this old bird

effectively becomes the mother of a forty-year-old daughter.

Birds fly.

So does time.

Happy Birthday Kym!

Have a beautiful day!

Windows in the porch and OOPS!...a slip of the drill...

Hello dear friends, and happy Wednesday!


When we were up at the Nest, our last order of windows came in before we expected them to, so Hubby decided to put in three of them, this time inside the porch. Our porch was once a long screened in job, but at some point a previous owner decided to make half of it into a sunroom. He enclosed the back portion and put vinyl siding on it, inside and out (I keep pretending its shiplap, but I don't think I can fool anyone) adding five windows to the outside and a decent door to the front. Its nice because it stays warm in cool weather, but its not so nice because he did a terrible job with the windows (a future project for us will be to fix or replace them) and decided to put the dividing wall and rear wall right over the frames of four of the old house windows that we are trying to replace. I guess his assumption was that those 30 year old aluminum awning windows would last forever.

Mr. Perch simply thrived on the excitement of 

having to remove the siding before he could get

to the old window...

 Well, at least there was insulation under the 

wallboard!...

 

Window out, at last!...

And, the new one is in!

We did also get the siding back up, 

along with the grey wood trim,

but I forgot to take a photo...

And then, we decided to tempt fate and move

to the window inside the sunroom,

on the other side of the wall shown above. 

And... after putting in 15 of the 18

windows with no mishaps,

what should happen but 

OOPS!

a slip of the drill!

 

Oh, well, at least it was on the old window!

PS...By the way we did get the new window in

without further mishap,

but decided to call it quits for that trip!

Have a great evening.

New Windows for The Wren's Nest

Hello there!

Well, we are finally putting new windows in this little old mobile home. We opted for ones with grids. They were only slightly more expensive but we thought they were well worth the money as they gave this place more of a "cottage" look. We have ordered them six at a time, because the folks at the nice mobile home place that we go to give us 10% off if we do.

When this place was built 40 years ago, it had the old-type aluminum awning windows, which you cranked open. The good part was that you could leave them opened when it rained, and usually no rain would come in. The bad part was that aluminum pits after time and gets nasty looking. Also, the windows  have so many working parts that some of them become dysfunctional. These are no longer air tight, so water came in and rotted the window sills in areas...

You have to manually swap out the screens and storm windows each spring and fall. And these are fastened on inside with little clips held on with screws, which doesn't make for nice looking window trim.

After all the windows are in, we will be re-framing the insides and installing new trim, which will be painted by moi...

The cranks used to open them is inserted through a hole in the trim, again, not air tight and ugly to look at...

Though installing the windows is not hard in itself, the prep work is time consuming. First, all of the old aluminum awnings had to come down. As with much else in this place, the screws holding them up were old and rusted, some were broken, and a pain it the butt to remove...

Here is the bank of old rear windows in the master bedroom, replete with red tail lights above. Gee, how can you tell that this is a mobile home? You can see how the windows are flanged and screwed onto the structure, a look which we are not fond of, to say the least...

In this picture, actually taken of the old living room windows, Bob is removing the old caulking from under the flanges. New caulking was then put on all of the new ones...

Here we are back at the bedroom windows when one new one was in. What a difference!...

And here all three are in, with the lovely grey wood trim that you previously saw me painting. The trim covers up the screws in the flanges, and looks so much nicer...

Whittling away at this task has kept us rather busy, but it's well worth the extra effort. We've been getting a lot of compliments on the look. At this writing, we've replaced 13 widows, with five more to go. Hip hip hooray! 

Looking Out

Good morning!

Now can you guess what we've been working on at The Nest? ;~)

More to come...

A Touch of Sweden at The Wren's Nest

What? Sweden in the mountains of western North Carolina? No, not really!

We bought a bunch of 1 by 4 pine boards at Home Depot...

...which I painted a lovely shade of grey...

These will be used for our project that is now underway. Stay tuned!

A New Roof for The Wren's Nest

Hello to all! In my last post I shared some photos of stains on the ceiling of our master bathroom. Since we weren't sure whether or not they were the result of new leaks that occurred during the winter when we were away, or if they were bleed-through from old leaks, we decided not to take any chances and had this place re-roofed. Well, actually, on a mobile home it is called a roofover, which is when a new roof is installed right over the old original one. It turned out that one had already been done here, but it was old, so the roofers removed it and put on the new one in its place. We are very happy with it and it looks really nice. It is called "white", but actually has just the slightest tint of grey to it, so this will work in our favor on our design plan for the exterior painting whenever we get around to it! 

Here are some photos. The roof was put up the last time we were up here. Here comes the load of materials, which included the insulation and steel roof material. Actually, they had enough on this truck to do a couple of other jobs after ours.

Two young men did all of the work. I don't think that I've ever seen anyone work as hard as these fellows. They started at 8 a.m. And worked until the job was finished at 5 p.m., taking no breaks. We suggested that they take a few as it was hot up there, but they said that they would rather work until they were done. Here they are removing the old roofover, pieces of which you see on the lawn. These were later hauled off of the lot by the folks here at the park, and sold as salvage...

In this photo they are getting ready to install the insulation...

...and in this one, the roof is on, and they are installing the trim...

We took,the next two photos from the pool area, which is right across from our lot...

I will soon paint the old black trim (seen on the porch) to match that on the new roof, and this week we are making some other changes to the front. But more on that later!...

In a few of the photos above, if you're very observant, you may notice the biggest change that we are in the process of completing. Something started right before the roof went on, and still being worked on this week.

Have a great day!

Unwelcome ceiling stains...

Good morning friends.

We have been so busy hopping back and forth between home and this place that I haven't had a lot of time to post about some of what is really going up here. You may recall that we pretty much completed work on the master bathroom last year. This was the only room that I actually painted the ceiling in. (The other rooms will have to wait until I have more time.) So imagine how we felt when we came up for the first time in April and found this...

A ceiling stain just outside the shower and tub...

...and a very large one inside...

By the second time we got here, they hadn't gotten any bigger, and we didn't know if they were from a new leaks, or bleed-through from old ones, but we didn't want to take any chances. So guess what unexpected expense we had? More to come...

Thanks for coming by!

The Mums at The Wren's Nest

Hello to all!

Last fall I planted two little mums in the little garden in front of our little mountain getaway. When we got up here on Saturday, we happily discovered that they were in full bloom, and actually bigger than the bushes. Who can figure!

In April I had put in a couple of white petunias, one of which you can see in the photo below, along with one of the daylilies that is just starting to bloom...

I must say, "gardening" here is a lot easier than back home. Not only because it is such a small space, but also because the soil is so much better.

Have a great day!

Sue