Elegantly Said Card & Weekend Gardening

Hi Friends! I hope you had a nice weekend! I had initially planned on creating a new video, as I do every week, but I ended up spending the entire weekend working out in our yard.

My sweetheart and I had been planning on adding a new porch/veranda to our home for a couple of years now, and this was going to be the summer to do it. Alas, with the current high prices for lumber, we’ve decided to switch gears and go with a cement patio instead. This meant it was time for me to move all my plants from the flower bed along the front of the house to a new one we just made down on our lawn.

If you’ve ever moved plants, you’ll know what a BIG job this is, especially with well-rooted plants that give you a dang-good workout trying to dig them out.

When Brian and I first got together and I sold my house to move in with him, he had NO landscaping at his place, except for a beautiful lawn. I, of course, brought a bunch of plants with me from my home, such as lavender (grown from seeds saved from branches I picked from my mom’s plant, the day of her funeral ), a rhododendron (which was a gift from a friend), hostas that were given to me from a dear customer in NB, rhubarb plants (which are at least 40 years old) that I had transported with me when I moved to Nova Scotia from New Brunswick, Black Currant plants I discovered at my last home, etc, etc.

As you can probably tell, some of my plants are very sentimental to me and some have special stories!

There used to be three huge pine trees where the new flower bed is now, and a few years ago we cut them down, as all the trees were dead and diseased. Not sure what to replace the pines with, we finally settled on two beautiful Variegated Maple trees. The new trees were planted a couple of years ago, close to where the old pine trees were, and put some shrubs in the centre, creating three small flower beds. This spring we decided to incorporate the three beds into one long one, as you can see in the photos.

Yesterday I FINALLY finished moving all my plants to the new flower bed. I also added some geraniums, snapdragons, marigolds and portulacas. All we have left to do is add rock along the border of the beds and top with some bark mulch.

We also expanded an existing flower bed I made a couple of years ago (above photo) and cut and removed trees near the bottom (right) of our lawn. There’s a little creek that runs across the bottom of our property so we wanted to clear another area to enjoy the shady coolness and sound of trickling water.

I will take more photos to share with you over the summer, as this flower bed will be completely transformed as everything grows and fills in. There are hollyhocks, gladiolus and dahlias which will add lots of nice height and colour, as well as flowering shrubs and plants that I don’t know the names of LOL

This past weekend I also planted more veggies in the garden and will share its progress with you as it grows. See that twig structure? That was made by yours truly last year and it withstood all of our winter storms!

I always create some sort of ‘art’ in my veg garden, using branches and twigs from our property. Brian calls it my “BC Hippie Art” because I’m (a) from Vancouver Island; (b) always barefoot (not in the garden, mind you); (c) I’m always recycling things that I find during my walks in the woods. Anywho, I have beans and peas planted along the base of my wooden masterpiece (haha), which will support the plants as they grow. I also have corn, tomatoes, carrots, beets, swiss chard, kale, radishes, cukes, zucchini, and two types of melons (which I’ve never grown before). All that’s left to plant are the potatoes. I have lots of pickles, relishes, chutneys, and salsa leftover from last year, so I don’t think I’ll be making any of those from my garden veggies this fall, Instead, I plan on pressure canning and dehydrating vegetables to keep in jars over winter (instead of freezing them).

So there you go – a little update on my garden and flower beds. I just love this time of year and spent as much of it outside as possible!

Moving onto today’s card...this is one I made a few weeks ago, using leftover pieces from my Stampin’ Blends Vellum (which you can see here). For this card I used the new “Elegantly Said” stamp set:

The beautiful border die is from the Ornate Layers collection. The stamped images on the “Polished Pink” card base were embossed with clear powder. The sentiment and flower were stamped with black ink and, using my stamparatus, I stamped on top of them again, using Versamark. This way I was able to also emboss the images in clear powder, adding fun texture and glossy shine to the card.

Well, friends, that’s it for me today. I’ve got a full day of work ahead of me and as it’s supposed to hit 36′ (which is over 96 F and SUPER HOT), I want to get Rosey and Cooper out for a walk this morning, while it’s still a bit cool out.

Have a fabulous day, stay well and HAPPY STAMPING!