Arizona Flower Fairies

It is that time of the year here in Arizona, when we hit in the neighborhood of 115 degrees or higher during the day. Which creates a real hardship on our “Flower Fairies”. 

In Arizona we can pretty much garden year round...except July, August, and most of September, then it gets a bit rough for any thing to grow, except weeds. During the rest of the year our flower fairies reside in among the flower and vegetable gardens.

In the winter while the rest of the country is freezing cold and up to their knees in snow...Arizona has beautiful gardens and the flower fairies are doing their happy dance.

 

Are you wondering where the Arizona Flower Fairies go to in the Summer...
 they hide out at the mall or the movies where they can use someone else Air Conditioning to keep cool, just like everyone else!

There is a dragon in my garden!

Do not meddle in the affairs of dragons...
for you are crunchy and taste good with ketchup!

Back Porch

From the back porch of the house you can see the beautiful English garden. We can take a stroll through the day lilies, lupin and prim roses out to the gazebo...you can't see the garden? Close your eyes and use your imagination...now can see it?

At Scrapbook Barn we have sold out of this Kaisercraft Beyond the Page house book. BUT... we are getting some more in soon. This book would be great made up with the Graphic 45 Alice in Wonderland Halloween paper...a haunted Alice house...with Alice, the white rabbit and the Mad Hatter looking out the front windows...now I've got you using your imagination!

Botanical Garden

Thanks to all the rain we had this pass winter and spring, the flower garden has done quite well this year. The lilies are beautiful...

Amaryllis

Calla Lily

Rain Lily

BUSY...BUSY...BUSY

I'm sure I have annoyed many friends and family members lately...they say they check my blog every day to see if I have posted something new and wonderful..only to find the same thing as the day before. I'm not trying to disappoint them...but I just don't have that exciting of a life to blog about!For the most part, when I blog about the garden, flowers or the cat...it is a sure bet I can't come up with anything more interesting. Please refer back to the posts about how busy I have been...you think I make this stuff up?!?! I haven't had time for exciting or interesting. This past weekend I taught back to back classes at Scrapbook Barn...the Heritage Workshop and a new class, Beginning Scrapbooking...these classes don't just plan themselves! These I want to make interesting and exciting. To make it more of an adventure...my wonderful Canon printer stopped printing the color "BLACK"...I didn't know printers did that! As far as making Mother's Day cards...I don't have a glimmer of an idea...I may have to go buy some. And speaking of Mother's Day...and we were...I've been asked to design at a Flower shop for the holiday. Like I said...BUSY!

Oh by the way...When you order flowers for your mom for Mother's Day...don't order them on the internet...please call a local florist !

First of the Season...

Spring comes early to the Valley of the Sun and the garden is loving all this rain we have been getting lately. This is the first Iris of the season...hopefully there will be many more for us to enjoy.
These Violas, planted in the Fall, are spreading out and filling the flower pot...

I call it my Phoenix Suns garden...get it...purple and orange... the "Suns"...

Winter Garden

Even in the central desert of Arizona gardens tend to freeze in the winter. Some plants will make it through with no problem...but if you want a winter vegetable garden...you have to protect it from the frost. This winter my DH put together a "green house".
He selected an area of the backyard that would get the most direct sun during the day. DH fashioned a frame made out of PVC pipe, taped together (not glued, this way it can be taken apart) 2 large pieces of heavy gage plastic are clamped in place.

When the sun is out, and it is nice and warm...we open the green house to let the sunshine, rain and the bees into the garden...hey bees are a good thing...how do you think all the vegetables and flowers get pollinated?!? On the nights the weather forecast is close to freezing...we pull the plastic back over the greenhouse and clamp it down.

The whole project worked out great! This was our first attempt at broccoli... it taste wonderful!

There is no comparison to the tomatoes you get at the grocery store and the ones you grown in a garden...these are full of flavor!

This little guy zipps around the back year "beeping" at us...he sat still long enough for me to get a picture.

Another Oh By the Way...

If you are looking for some excitement this Friday the 29th of January, I will be teaching my Heritage Scrapbook Workshop 4:30 to 6:30 at Mystic Paper...give them a call to sign up!

Visitor to the Garden

We had a visitor in our garden. It wasn't the neighbor cat that naps under the orange tree.
It wasn't the birds, that get fed daily...and are great entertainment for our house cat.

Our visitor was a little brown bunny...

He (or she...we didn't check) stayed long enought for a photo op... and a snack.

Then left...the same way he/she came in.

Hot Hot Hot Garden

Not everything in the garden is brown this time of year. With temperatures over 100 (last week over 110!) your would expect every flower in the backyard to be a burnt to a crispy brown. These beautiful Rain Lilies have been blooming despite the heat.
On the other side of the yard we have hot pink Lantana. Now this is a flower that does well in the Arizona heat...as long as it gets watered!

When it gets this hot in the Valley of the Sun we stay inside during the day with the Air Conditioning and admire the flowers in the early morning.

OBTW-

I'm gathering all my "toys" together for my Heritage Scrapbook Class this Saturday August the 15th at Mystic Paper. If you have been waiting for "someday" to get all those old family photos in a scrapbook, but aren't quite sure where to start, this is the class for you. We will talk about how get organized, copy photos, what kind of patterned paper to choose... all this and much more. You will leave with a note book full of information to get you started.

It's not too late to call Mystic Paper and sign up.

Gardening in The Valley of the Sun

I have a had a request by Kim to see the Hope Garden. Which is now the"HOT" Garden. I think we got up to 109f today. The garden is hanging on for dear life in all this heat.

The cantaloupe are just now getting ripe and ready to pick

There are still tomatoes...WONDERFUL TOMATOES on the vines

A few Zucchini...

And some summer squash are still left...

This tomato plant has been nicknamed... Godzilla...it's huge!

The fruits of our labors...really all this is the fruits of my husbands labors. He has nurtured and babied the garden along , all his hard work paid off ...we have had a great harvest!

Bee Charming

In the past I have posted photos of the birds in the bird bath in our back yard. They hang out in the mornings waiting for breakfast, but now they have competition for the water. It's BEE time at the bird bath. They show up at first light and continue all day long.
It is comical to watch them line up for a drink (I didn't know bees drank...did you know bees drank?) They will fight over the same spot, and some end up in the water doing the backstroke.

The longer I took pictures the braver and closer I got...

We have a symbiotic relationship going on here...

the bees pollinate the "Hope Garden" and we provide a watering hole...

Kids don't try this at home!

the other side of the garden

As a floral designer I work with sunflowers often. They are a nice enough flower, but I wouldn't say they were one of my favorites.

Now having said that, this sunflower is growing in our garden. Not the west side where the "Hope Garden" is located, but way over on the east side. What is special about this particular sunflower is we didn't plant it. A little sprout showed up in a pot a few months ago and because I didn't recognize it as a weed sprout, it didn't get pulled out. I'm going to take a guess that the seed was blown over from the bird feeder or a bird it self dropped it. Which every way it happened, we are now enjoying the flower...just thought I would share.

You noticed when I don't have something exciting to blog about, we go back to the garden...

Back to the Garden

With hopes of a bountiful crop, we have put in a garden. The tiny lettuce seeds have sprouted and almost look like lettuce...but not yet ready to be a salad.

There are little bitty squash, with the blossom just getting ready to open.

The tomato plants have small yellow blooms with a promise of bushels of red ripe tomatoes.

I'm trying to remember if I still have canning jars in the attic to process our harvest.

The melon seeds...watermelon and cantaloupe, at this point they look a like, are just now getting started.

We're not calling it a recession garden...

it's a "Hope Garden"

Fancy Colorful Birds

Speaking of Gardens...and we were. For Father's Day this past June, our daughter gave her dad a bird feeder. He set it up in the back yard under the Jacaranda tree. Talk about cheap ( get it- "cheep", sad I know, I couldn't resist) entertainment. From the sunroon window we (grand kids and cat too) spent the summer watching the birds. Not your fancy colorful birds, mostly sparrows and 3 types of gray and brown dove. Until a almost white dove showed up for it's share of the bird seed. Of course that called for a picture. I took this one with the zoom, through the window. I have promised the cat that she'll have a the fancy colorful bird to watch this winter.

Welcome to my Garden Party

The Mystic Paper DT has turned in their first projects. I saw Sheri's at the shop. She was the first to finish, and oh so creative. Lindsey has a picture of her project on her blog. I took a quick peek at Yasu's blog, she will be posting her design soon. I was assigned "1-2 page layout and maybe cards with scraps" Once I added Color Box Chalk Ink pad in Lime Pastel and Prussian Blue to the treasures I got in my sack it all came together. The pictures of the flowers are from my garden. I took them this spring. Not because the garden was all that great, but I wanted see how well the Macro button on my camera worked. Not bad hun. So welcome to my garden party.