Year of Blooms - August

Okay a quick heads up - August was a big fail! 

Honestly I didn't make this project a priority in August and so there isn't a lot to report on this month.  We are now all settled into our home but thinking about my garden and starting new seedlings whilst making sure thing like, the electricity would be turned on at our new places, meant all things gardening took a back seat! It's taken me longer than I thought to find my feet again but hopefully this second half of September I can pick up my game again! 

Before we left our old place, I went around with the camera and took a few last snaps 

 That desert rose has been amazing this year - it's in full bloom again!

 I did plant a bunch of seeds at the start of the month but none sprouted *sad face*

 One thing that did pop up and do great in August was nasturtiums!

 Oh and that orchid I saved from my Dad's mums property finally bloomed! I only have the shot of it about to bloom (left above) but it did open up days before our move! We were able to transport them to our new place and they are still in bloom so I'll make sure to snap some photos for next month!

I got so desperate for photos I took a shot of my chives blooming :P

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Year of booms - March

Another month down and so much to share on my year of blooms project!

The roses kept on blooming throughout the month of March and I was able to save their petals again

Probably the most exciting happening, Ben and I were able to save a huge orchid! I cannot express how happy it made me to carry this thing around before finding a home for it, nestled against a tree in our yard.

Ben bought home a lovely bunch of flowers which made our house smell super lovely. 

Word of warning, you do have to be careful with these lillies around cats as their pollen can be deadly.

At the start of the month I planted, poppies, pansies and peony.

I'm a little worried those seeds may never sprout because I had to do a garden reset. All my little sprouts I spied in Feb popping up turned out to be mostly weeds. I did have some cosmos and sunflowers sprout (exciting!) but the sunflowers never grew to full size and died just as quickly as they bloomed. I asked Ben's mum to give her expertise and she suggested more fertiliser, more soil (or aerating what was there) and adding some bark. I explained how I had already planted lots of seeds so she suggested I could aerate just with a hand shovel. So I spent a day making the soil beautiful again and I'm really hoping for some successful months in the future :)

The plotted plants did great, the geranium were in full blooms.

(One of the pretty cosmos that did sprout in my garden bed!)

The award for best blooms goes to the desert rose, hands down!

We had some bromeliads bloom in our yard

Do garlic chive flowers count?

Poor sad sunflower!

I've been a little quiet on the blog front recently and that's because we traveled down to Port Macquarie the other week. You may remember how I mentioned that Ben's brother lives down there and how his wife gifted me sunflower seeds. When we visited her at Christmas her sunflowers looked amazing, she had planted them in September and was looking forward to planting more for her son's birthday in March (the reason we traveled down again). Well on her second planting her sunflowers didn't perform as well and she put it down to the wrong season. I chatted with her and she suggested I wait until September to replant and see how I go again :)

Another project occupying my time has been working on Spirit You :) The stool above is from that side project and I have a seperate instagram account too if you would like to follow along.

I'm excited for what blooms April brings :)
Fingers crossed my garden bed lives on!

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Year of Blooms - Feburary

I was reflecting on my year of blooms project and specifically what occurred during February and was surprised that lots of little things sprung to mind.

In January I made my flower bed and planted a packet of wild flowers, sunflower seeds, cosmos, and forget me knots. In February I then planted Gomphrena (to attract butterflies) and sweet pea to climb up among my already planted passionfruit :) The most amazing thing was to look back at January's photos of the garden bed and compare it against these recent photos. Although the bed is lacking blooms it's now full of little seedlings :) I did have one bloom in my bed, a little white flower I transplanted from Grandma's property (the Farm) :) I was getting ready to make my 'Feb' flower photo and noticed there weren't too many flowers around our yard so I ended up bringing a piece of white cardboard to the farm which in itself became a nice little reminiscent for myself. 

It's been raining a lot lately so you'll spy a few photos with rain drops on petals but I think they add a little bit of extra magic! The frangipani tree is still in bloom, the rose bushes flowered for the second time this year and I managed to save their petals to add to my paper making. The desert rose completely opened up and my geranium bloomed it's amazing red flowers. I also made my mosaic rose paver and my tally for my clay seed balls grew to 189, which makes me feel confident I can reach 1000 by the end of the year!!! eep! That would be amazing :)

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