It mentioned yesterday that during the week, I hit up the garden centre’s clearance sale, and it’s a good thing I did, because a few days later, Mom and I made a pact to have a No Buy July (NBJ).

For the entire month of July, we agreed we are not going to buy anything that is not an absolute necessity. So basically only groceries/toiletries, food on the go when we are out and about and don’t have at home options, and stuff for the house that absolutely has to be fixed.

It means no fabric.

No yarn.

No clothes or shoes.

And no plants!

And NBJ got off to a really good start. On the 1st, I had no desire to go anywhere or buy anything. Admittedly, it was Canada Day, so not much was open, but still. Start as you mean to go on, I always say.

But then yesterday…

We had to take a trailer load of branches to the dump. While we were out, Dave wanted to hit the hardware store and get some more paint for a project he was in the middle of. No problem, that purchase could be considered essential. It was half done and for the maintenance of the house (He’s repainted the metal work on the front and side porches)

But then, on the way home… he saw a garage sale sign…

No big deal to stop, I thought. I didn’t have any cash on me anyway. I can’t spend if I have no money. If Dave saw something he wanted, he could get it – he’s not part of the NBJ pact.

But then I saw it… well several things actually, that had me getting back into Dory and to the nearest bank machine.

The first was these…

There’s a pair of them. The seller was asking $200 for them. Did I need them… no. Did I want them… 100%. He made them himself, and they are absolutely solid. $200 wouldn’t even cover the materials to have Dave make me something like this down the road. I’ve been looking at vinyl versions online, and they are much more than $200.

I’m still not 100% on where I will put them. I’m thinking the pair would make a great “entrance” to Willow Grove and help close off that space to make it feel more like a separate garden room. I won’t plant them this year, so I have lots of time to decide how best to use them. Right now I’m leaning towards using them for peas and beans.

He also had two of these smaller guys…

They aren’t the most gorgeous planter boxes, but once given a coat of paint (which Dave is doing as I type) and filled with flowers, they are going to be just lovely. They will likely flank each side of the front porch, which is pretty bare right now. He was asking $10 a piece, but threw the pair in with the big planters. Again – the wood for these is worth a fortune.

And last…

I have been on the look-out for an old wooden ladder for the garden for AGES! Unfortunately, they are quite a popular garden item, so when you do find them, they are usually upwards of $50. This one was a steal at just $10.

So yeah… I fell off the NBJ wagon hard…. and on just the SECOND day. But what finds!!!! And NBJ can always start AFTER the long weekend…. Right?

While I was away, it seemed like the gardens absolutely exploded.

The weeds did too.. but lets focus on the pretty stuff.

The foxglove out front is in full bloom, and I couldn’t be happier. Foxglove is an all time favourite of mine, even though I struggle to keep it growing. It’s a biennial (dies after the second year), but it’s supposed to reseed itself so prolifically you don’t notice. (Like Black-Eyed Susans). Sadly, that has not been my experience. I’m hoping the better soil here will make a difference. I originally bought two plants this year. They are both pink, though I was hoping for different colours. Foxglove is notorious for not growing true from seed though, so if I do get it to reseed, I may get different colours in the future. I did pick up a paler pink one on clearance this week too (the garden centre was closing for the season and had great deals) – and I have some seedlings I started myself… it will be fun to see what next year brings.

I brought cone flowers from the townhouse, but they haven’t bloomed yet. I definitely have the purple ones, and some bright magenta ones, and I’m hoping my Strawberry Mango Smoothie (yellow and pink) made it, but I have to wait a few more weeks to find out (they are just budding up). This year I did buy several more, because you can never have enough cone flowers. I got a white one, as well as a red one, which had two plants in the pot. And as you can see, they are slightly different shades, which is fabulous.

There I got this gorgeous orange one on clearance, and I also picked up two in different shades of pink, though neither is in bloom yet.

I have several small clumps of Tickseed. The one with the red centre is new this year. I also have a native version, but it hasn’t bloomed yet.

In Rose news.. the mini yellow is going gangbusters. I’m so glad I took it out of it’s pot. Out front, Chrysler Imperial is putting on a good show. It’s a little bug-eaten, but not too bad. It’s got great bold red blooms that should get better and better every year.

And Chicago Rose just bloomed yesterday! So happy to have this one in the garden again!

My pink bee balm is just starting to bloom. I love how it looks like firecrackers. I have a new red version (much taller), and a new native one in the yard, but they aren’t flowering quite yet.

This little campanula is not very big, but it’s got a wonderful wow factor with those little purple flowers and bright chartreuse leaves.

Also small but mighty – the Elfin Thyme is just starting to bloom. Soon these green clumps will be covered in pink flowers. This should spread too, helping to keep down the weeds in the driveway garden.

The pink Sage is blooming again. I love Sage for the fact it blooms from spring to summer. You really can’t go wrong with it. The clearance sale yielded up a few more sage plants too (all in different shades of blue/purple). I’ve got the room for them, so I thought why not.

And the Daylilies are just starting to do their thing. Only Stella D’Oro is blooming so far, but the others are soon to follow, and I’ll find out which ones made the trip from the townhouse. (Gardening really is a waiting game). I did buy a couple new ones too, so I have that to look forward to as well!

The pink yarrow I brought from the townhouse is doing spectacular. I’ll probably have to split it up soon. I did plant a yellow one this year, but it didn’t do well. Too bad, because I’d really love to have more colours of it. Still, the pink is so nice, it’s hard to be too upset.

There’s always something wonderful happening in the garden.

I got quite a scolding when I got home from Mom’s on Sunday.

He was not happy that I left him for the weekend. Luckily, he’s a rather forgiving fellow.

The second quilt I took to Mom’s for quilting was the motorcycle quilt for Sam’s husband, Michael.

It’s a very straight-forward quilt – just three fabrics, but twirled about by cutting and reassembling simple nine patches.

Sam had requested a motorcycle theme (but not a Harley one)

And I was able to find these cool classic style bikes for the front, and even some motorcyle flannel for the back.

It finished up at 59″ x 72″, so it’s the perfect size for an afternoon nap after a nice morning ride.

Samantha and Michael are coming by on Sunday (if the weather holds) so I’ll be able to gift this one to him right away!

Friday is Canada Day, so I thought I’d used this week’s Walkabout post to share what the town has done to mark the day. We just have a little downtown, but it’s still decorated.

All the light poles have a flag and a pretty basket of red petunias.

The Petunias went up well before the flags did, so it’s hard to say if the red was chosen specifically for Canada Day, but it looks nice either way. And they aren’t just on the poles.

Any planter box/garden space owned by the town is awash in red petunias.

Including the birdhouse planters on the bridge. They look so nice now with the flowers! Now I will be keeping tabs to see if they change it up every year.

Elsewhere, of course, private gardens are blooming all over town, but so are the wild flowers… or weeds, depending on your perspective.

One of my absolute favourites, is Field Bindweed. I know… gardeners everywhere are cringing in horror right now. And I understand. I’m constantly pulling it from my own gardens… but out in a field, away from my yard… oh it’s just heavenly. The flowers are small (about the size of a quarter), but when there are a lot of them…. they smell so good. It’s one of those scents that takes me right back to my childhood. My grandparents’ house to be exact.

That said, it is invasive, and troublesome. Which is a shame. Because I love walking through a field that looks like this…

That field had other treasures too.

Birdfoot Trefoil. I used to call this wild snapdragon, but now I know it’s proper name (there is a wild snap dragon, but it’s a little different).

And I used to call these Bachelor Buttons, but I know now they are Chicory. Both of the above flowers were a common sight in the fields I played in growing up.

As were these.

These grew all over the sides of the road, and Mom would stop the car and we would pick them to fill a vase at home. We called them Phlox, and they are similar, except Phlox have five petals and these have four. These are actually called Dames Rocket. They come in all shades of purple and pink and are part of the mustard family.

And these of course, a very common site along Ontario roadsides (and in gardens) are orange Day Lilies…

Lots of people also call them Tiger Lilies, though I call them Ditch Lilies. Because you ALWAYS see them growing in ditches. These ones were no exception.

it was hard to get a good pic, because they were growing well down the side of a steep ravine. I have had these at every house I’ve ever lived at. I dig bring a clump from the townhouse for this garden, but just one clump, because they will multiply no problem (and I can always rob a roadside ditch if I want more!)

And last we turn to the trees. Most of the trees in the downtown are nice purple Norway Maples. But a couple are Bass Woods. The tree at the front of the townhouse was a Bass Wood. While it was a very dirty tree that dropped hard, round seed pods that hurt your bare feet… it was so pretty when it was in bloom.

And it smelled soooooo good.

The two in town were absolutely alive with honey bee activity. There’s a large honey producer on the outskirts of town, so the honey bee population here is very high. And as you can see, it’s a good town in which to be a bee!

No Tiny Needle Tuesday today, as I was at Mom’s all weekend and I didn’t take the cross stitching with me. I don’t even have the second quilt to show you yet, because I’m still finishing the binding.

So… I have to make do, and give you…

Winnie!

As you know, she’s never happy when I show up for the weekend. It means she has a full weekend of staying on high alert, following me around, and making sure I’m not getting up to anything nefarious.

Because I was quilting, that meant she was down in the basement with me… closely observing every part of the process.

She is especially suspicious of the the sandwiching process, and has to make sure I’m not trying to hide anything in the fabric or batting…

During the actual quilting, she kept an eye on me from her perch in the window.

As you can see, she thought my presence was entirely suspect. She was not unhappy to see me pack up my stuff on Sunday and leave her to finally relax in a sunbeam.

With Dory patched up, I was finally able to make it to Mom’s an quilt away all weekend. I only had two tops to quilt, but they were both fairly big.

The first is the scrappy star quilt.

I did it as a leader/ender quilt and used up a l lot of my five inch square scraps in the process, which was exactly the point. The result is the kaleidoscope of colours and patterns you see above.

There are so many fabrics, it’s hard to show them all, but here’s a bit of a glimpse…

It finished up at about 72″ square, so it’s a good size – excellent as a nice, colourful bed topper.

And it’s in the shop now, so it could be yours!

Well, I managed not to let June get away from me completely before doing my rainbow scrap challenge block, but it was a near thing!

(May flew by, but I’m pretty sure June has been rocket-propelled!) This month was blue.

Most of my blue scraps were either sea or space themed, but the idea is to work with what you’ve got so I just went with it.

As you can see, Relic wasn’t exactly over-excited about my block. Though he did perk up a bit more when I laid it out with the other months.

And that’s the first six months of the year, done and dusted! It’s been a colourful year so far!

I’ve been meaning to share picture of the inside of the sun porch* now that all the house plants are moved out there for their summer vacation. It took this panorma after I finally got them moved (it was a surprisingly big job!)

Okay… technically it’s not all the house plants either. There’s still a few inside. I have some in my upstairs bathroom, sewing studio and office, as well as a few in the kitchen. They all get great light where they are so there’s no real need to move them. And there are a handful – something like 17, maybe – that are still in the living room because there is just no more room for them on the porch.

And like the garden, this little area sometimes blooms too.

For most of my life, I always found African violets so hard to keep. That’s until I had a space at work with a north-facing window, and I discovered that all they really want is a lot of indirect light. Here they go under the grow lights in the winter, and spend the summer on the porch and they just thrive. I have two right now – two different shades of pink, but I will get more.

Most of my orchids are done blooming, and I brought them all out onto the porch so they could enjoy the humidity of summer.

One still has flowers though…

And oddly enough, it’s the one that was on clearance because it was half dead. The ones I paid full-price for had gorgeous flowers, that barely lasted…. I can only hope they rebloom again eventually.

And before I go, I’d like to share another little project Dave finished recently. Several weeks ago, we were at the little used store in Strathroy. I’d seen a little table/storage unit that I thought was just so cute. But I didn’t really need it, so I left it there. When we went back a few weeks later, it was still there. They tend to turn things over pretty fast, so I decided it was a sign and I needed to buy it… it was only $35.

I thought it would be perfect for the porch. I could store my plant supplies in it, and put a couple plants on top. Now personally, I liked it’s “rustic” charm, but Dave was not having it. He insisted on redoing it. Giving in was easier than listening to him complain about it, so I got some pretty blue paint (so it would look nice with my gnome quilt).

Now it’s tucked in the corner, and as I suspected, it’s a great place to store my soil, spare pots and such. And there’s ample room on top for several happy plants.

I’ve considered hand painting a few daisies or something on it, to bring back that country feel… or I might just get out the sandpaper when Dave’s not looking, and rough up a few edges.

*you may notice that the inside of the sun porch is still red oxide… it will be painted, but not until the fall when I move all the plants back in. I’m not moving them twice!

Buy your cats a $200 outdoor pet cabana bed for the pure joy of watching them sleep in the dirt every day…