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One Word Wednesday
Posted in Gardening, Home, Photography, tagged Gardening, Home, hostas, Knockout Roses, Landscaping, Wordless Wednesday on June 5, 2013| 2 Comments »
Thoughtful Thursday- Flower Power Take 2
Posted in Fun, Gardening, Kentucky Proud, My Thoughts, Travel, tagged Buy Local, Kentucky, Kentucky Proud, Springhouse Gardens, Thoughtful Thursday on May 30, 2013| 3 Comments »
One day, while watching a Lexington, Kentucky news broadcast, I saw a commercial that really caught my eye. It was for Springhouse Gardens which, come to find out, was a nursery in Nicholasville, a nearby town to Lexington.
I mentioned seeing this ad to my aunt and Nanny so we decided to take a little road trip to visit and it was well worth it! Nicholasville is about 2 hours from where we live so we started out early one morning just a couple of weeks ago. It is so worth it to take the scenic route up Highway 68 through Lebanon, Perryville and Harrodsburg. The view up the Kentucky River when you cross is breathtaking! I wish there was a place to stop for photos at that location, but there really isn’t. The huge limestone walls and forests along the banks of the flowing river is absolutely beautiful!
We arrived at the nursery after passing some manicured horse farms and we weren’t disappointed. Since they are located in a more upscale area, the prices reflected that a bit, but they weren’t too bad. I bought an “American Hero “ hosta and Nanny purchased something I had never seen before…a non-vining Clematis which will make a shrub instead.
If you are looking for some specimen trees or shrubs to add to your landscape, then I highly recommend going to Springhouse Gardens. They had things I had never seen before, including a weeping redwood that was out of this world. I didn’t even know you could grow redwoods in Kentucky.
Would you like to see a few photographs from that day? I thought so…I’ll be quiet now and just let you bask in the beauty of Springhouse Gardens. Oh, one last thing…the owners were there that day and they are just delightful. Let them know if you are from out of town and they will have you sign a guestbook.
Yes, we are in horse country.
Beautiful Japanese Maple trees:
I loved the tree they trimmed to look like a flower:
One Word Wednesday
Posted in Gardening, Green/Sustainable Living, Home, Photography, tagged Gardening, Home, Photography, Wordless Wednesday on May 29, 2013|
Thoughtful Thursday-Flower Power
Posted in Gardening, My Thoughts, tagged Buy Local, Gardening, Greenleaf Nursery, Mammoth Cave Transplants, Thoughtful Thursday on May 16, 2013|
For today’s Thoughtful Thursday post, I would like to tell you about two garden centers in my area that I love to visit. When my mom was living, she ran a small garden center with my aunt and grandmother and, on my days off, I would go with her to pick up wholesale flowers. I loved these trips and enjoyed seeing all of the beautiful things offered by these businesses. Thankfully, they also sold retail and now I return every year to purchase my flowers from them. Please excuse the phone pics…I didn’t have my big camera with me.
Mammoth Cave Transplants is located in Edmonson County, Kentucky, just a short distance from Brownsville. The owners are retired school teachers who have this wonderful business right beside their home. If you are near, please stop in and have a look around. There are many greenhouses packed tight with blooming beauties along with trees, shrubs, garden art and vegetable seeds.
While you are there, take a second and pet the resident nursery cat, Smoke, who has been there for YEARS!
The second business is Greenleaf Nursery in Glasgow, Kentucky which is only about 30 minutes from where I live. This was the main place we bought flowers when I was a child and I remember going here with my mom every year. I have loved gardening from an early age and always enjoyed looking at all of the pretty plants and wanting to try them all! C & I stopped in a couple of weekends ago to pick up a hanging basket so I grabbed a few phone photos while we were there. It was a nasty wet day but the bright cheery flowers made it worth the stop in the rain.
Greenleaf had some beautiful displays set up to give people ideas of how to decorate with their flowers. If it had not been so rainy, I could have spend hours just wandering around looking at everything!
I hope you enjoyed this short virtual tour of two of my favorite places to shop. If you are in the area, please stop by and support these two long standing Kentucky businesses.
Almost Wordless Wednesday
Posted in Gardening, Home, Photography, tagged bridal wreath, forsythia, Gardening, pear trees, violets, Wordless Wednesday on April 17, 2013|
Spring is finally here…
Forsythia from a start from my Nanny’s garden:
Bridal Wreath from a start from my great-grandmother’s garden:
Wild violets
Bartlett & Bradford pear trees in full bloom:
It all makes my heart glad!
Almost Wordless Wednesday
Posted in Entertainment, Fun, Gardening, Green/Sustainable Living, Photography, Travel, tagged Barn At Red Gate, Kentucky Green Living Fair, Photography, Somerset on April 10, 2013| 1 Comment »
Thoughtful Thursday-Gardening Edition
Posted in Gardening, Home, My Thoughts, tagged Gardening, Raised Bed Gardening, Thoughtful Thursday on August 30, 2012|
Looking back at my Thoughtful Thursday posts, I realized that it had been quite a while since I wrote about our garden. It has done surprisingly well considering the extreme heat and dry weather we had for most of June and July. Thankfully, since we have just the two raised beds and one strawberry bed, I was able to water them enough to keep everything alive.
Once the rain started back, I started harvesting more and more. My cucumbers have done great and the peppers and tomatoes have really made a comeback. This is what I picked Saturday before last…
There was also a handful of very small strawberries that I made strawberry lemonade slushies with and I still have several carrots left, too. That same day, I sowed a fall crop of lettuce and a few more cucumber seeds. There is just enough time before our usual frost to get a few cucumbers from new plants. Say a little prayer that our frost is a little late.
Our new grapevines are growing well, but it will still be a year or two before we actually get fruit from them. It is the same with the fruit trees. I am trying to be patient and let them grow more before bearing much fruit so they will be nice and strong.
The wood that we made our raised bed from is starting to deteriorate so C & I are trying to come up with an inexpensive alternative to replace the boards. We have a few ideas, but no concrete plans yet. We are thinking of using artificial deck boards, but they are so expensive. I might have to start stalking Craig’s List to see if we can find them on the cheap.
Considering the weather that we have had, I have been thrilled at the garden output and hopefully it will continue for a few more weeks!
Thoughtful Thursday-How To Edition
Posted in Gardening, Home, My Thoughts, tagged Block Wall, Gardening, Landscaping, Thoughtful Thursday on July 19, 2012|
We have finally gotten around to cleaning up the area where we built a new raised flower bed this spring so I wanted to show you how we did it. Using the stacking wall blocks was a new experience for us, but it turned out to be pretty simple. Our wall is just two blocks high so we didn’t have to worry about drainage pipe and gluing the blocks together. It was a great project to cut our teeth on.
We purchased the wall blocks, leveling sand and rock at our local Lowe’s Home Improvement store and we were lucky enough to score free delivery, because these babies were heavy. You would need a pretty heavy duty pick-up truck to haul these around. Anyway, the Lowe’s delivery guy, who we have known for a long time and went to school with, put the pallets exactly where we wanted them with a small fork-lift. So easy!
This is what we started off with:
Not real attractive, is it? We had the sidewalk poured last year and left the big empty space on purpose, but the weather was so hot that we didn’t get it done then. We proceeded to dig out the weeds and level the dirt as much as possible. It looked so much better just doing that.
C dug a small trench along the sidewalk and started pouring in the gravel and we leveled that as we went.
Next, a thin layer of leveling sand was poured on top of the gravel and we leveled as we went again.
Now for the fun part…the blocks!
We put two rows of blocks, but we had bought enough for three layers. Two was deep enough for what we wanted so we can use the others somewhere else. C’s dad was nice enough to bring us a load of dirt with his front end loader and then I went to planting. C & I had moved two Knock-out roses from my grandparent’s front yard that they didn’t want anymore so I planted those in there along with some perennial salvias and Shasta daisies. I love the dark blue, white and bright pink color combo. Since perennials are kind of expensive, I filled in the other areas with bright pink Vincas. Next spring, I want to add a couple of bright pink coneflowers. The roses have finally came out of shock and are blooming their hearts out. We are so pleased with how it turned out and how relatively simple it was.
We still have a little work to do on the other side of the sidewalk, but that will have to wait until cooler weather so we can seed a little grass.
Almost Wordless Wednesday
Posted in Gardening, Home, tagged Venus Flytrap, Wordless Wednesday on July 11, 2012|
Thoughtful Thursday: Gardening Edition
Posted in Gardening, Home, My Thoughts, tagged Gardening, Thoughtful Thursday on June 7, 2012|
It has been a few weeks since my last gardening update and, my goodness, how things have changed! C & I have been munching on lettuce for a couple of weeks now and it is so so good. The cucumbers have tiny little cucumbers growing so I seeded the second generation this past weekend.
The green peppers are doing great with one plant already having a little pepper on it. My sauce tomatoes and watermelons are also growing like gangbusters. The plants just love the warm and rainy weather we have had.
Here is a overview of the two raised beds:
My flowers are doing just as well as the veggies…
C & I moved these two Knock-out roses from my grandparents’ yard to ours and we were so afraid that they wouldn’t make it, but they did!
I just love this time of year! Every color seems intensified and all of the plants are so lush.
Picture Perfect Cooking 