Pretties from the garden: Hydrangea, Daylilies and Oriental Lilies...

Greetings from The Perch! I hope that you had a great day. Today we were very busy packing the motor home for our trip to the mountains. As I was in and out of the house I noticed some new beauties blooming in the garden, and snapped a few photos since likely these will not be blooming by the time we get back. (The photos are not the best as I was in a rush. Ha!)

The one below is a hydrangea that we have had a few years.

It didn't do well where we originally planted it, so we moved it

to the side of the garden shed, where it now flourishes.

I love that the petals are both blue and white,

and totally different than any of our others.

I believe it was from the line Forever and Ever.

They start slow, but once established they are stunning...

These are Lake Carey Oriental Lilies.

I started them from cheap WalMart bulbs

just last year. They are the softest pink.

What a buy!

Below is a Mystical Rainbow Daylily, also purchased

last year from a mail order breeder.

You can't read the garden statue in back, but it says:

"I don't remember planting this".

The story of my life!

The one below is a Ruby Spider Daylily,

also purchased last year by a daylily breeder.

When you order from breeders, you get some

lovelies that you would never see in home and

garden stores...

Thanks for stopping by!

On my worktable today...

Hello there! I have a few minutes to spare, so I thought I would say hello. We still have family in town and are meeting them for lunch, so I will make this brief.

We are getting ready to leave for the NC mountains later this week, and I am trying to pull together some projects to work on while we are camping. Following is a glimpse of what I will bring to embellish, provided that I can get the machine work finished before we leave. As I complete these, I will share them with you in future posts.

This is a rather large project that I recently took on. While we were in an antique store last summer up in Concord, Massachusetts, I bought some pages from a beautifully-illustrated children's book. The dealer was selling the pages separately, so I picked out the ones that I liked the best. The wonderful surprise was that each page's reverse was also beautiful, but I didn't see them until I got them home because they were sealed in baggies with cardboard inserts hiding the backs. Wow! A bonus!

What have you been working on these days?

"The story of my father"

"The story of my father,

Is the one I tell and give.

It's the power and the glory,

Of the life I make and live."

                                    --ABBEY LINCOLN

A vintage photo to share with you...

Happy Father's Day! Not only to fathers, but to those who take the place of them. Father figures who are special and caring and loving. My own father fits all of these descriptions, and then some. He is 90 years old and a special, caring and loving member of our family. Even though he lives in Florida, and we live in North Carolina, not a day goes by that I don't think about him and offer thanks for the fact that he is healthy and still enjoying life to the fullest.

My dad, as a child, with his sister.

My aunt is no longer with us.

I guess he liked bird houses as much as I do!...

My dad is the oldest member of the family,

shown here with the youngest,

my grandson, Jason...

Thanks for stopping by on this special day!



"Live each Season" Fabric Collage

Hello! I hope that you're having a great weekend.

Today my hubby had an all-day class about something fun for him, so I decided that I would do a few chores this morning, and then spend a little time having some fun myself. Up to the studio I headed!

My studio also acts as a guest room if we

have a lot of company.

At the foot of this bed...

...is an old steamer trunk,

on which there sits these two boxes...

One box stores zip lock baggies that contain vintage photos

grouped in themes so that I can grab them quickly when I

have a particular project in mind...

...and the other box stores vintage lace, which I need to remove

from these little baggies that they came in and make them

easier to work with...

I have been longing to create some beach-themed art,

so this is one that I worked on today.

I love these ladies looking out to the sea with

their backs to the camera.

I wonder where they actually were

when this photo was taken, likely back

in the twenties ...

A shell found on the beach when we were at the shore

a few weeks ago,

along with lots of old lace, some bling, and

a piece of old brown velvet ribbon...

...and with a small piece of driftwood

purchased in a shop on our trip...

This time I opted for machine sewing and only the rhinestone button was sewn on by hand. The driftwood and shell were glued. An easy way to go!

Have a great evening.

Hydrangea Heaven...

Greetings from The Perch! I hope that you are well.

I am sure that I don't know what Heaven looks like, or if I will ever be lucky enough to see it. But in my mind's eye, if there are any flowers at all up there, they will be hydrangeas. And they will be blue, the color of the North Carolina sky on a clear summer day.

We have been getting a lot of rain this past week. The other night there was a tornado watch which fortunately did not amount to much. But it stopped raining for a little while as I was getting ready to cook dinner, and I noticed that the sun came out slightly and made my garden look kind of pretty. I couldn't resist snapping a few pictures.

Our blue hydrangeas are in full bloom now. (We have some others that will bloom a little bit later.) They are huge and gorgeous, and of various names. I do not even remember what some of them are as they have been moved some and added to over the past few years. All I know is that nothing is as beautiful. In about a month the heat will get to them. The blossoms will fade, and the leaves will get spotty and wilt during the hot afternoons. They will bloom again at the end of the summer, but the blossoms will be small and not as striking. So I have taken the following pictures, which will be the only memory of these early summer beauties.

The ones in these pictures grow behind

our screened back porch...

You can see how big some of the blossoms are next to my hand...

The taller ones between them are a different species,

and will bloom later...

Can you tell that these are my favorite? Do you have any favorites in your garden?