Spring Blooms and cleaning up my garden!

It is the time of year for Flowers and Trees  to start growing and the Native Plants are good and bad!

I have some trees flowering all over the roadsides and no one I asked knew what it was. It has beautiful tiny white flowers that hand down like wisteria.

I believe it is called "Yellowwood"!

These heart shaped leaves grow very close to the ground and if your pull the leaves away and peek inside you will see little brown jugs, look closely! 

The Mountain Laurel is absolutely fabulous  and growing all over our neighborhood forest and some trees I have been trying to learn to identify by the leaves. Also the rhododendron is starting to bloom but we have too much shade for ours in our yard to bloom.And, the are everywhere in our yard.
Here is some "Mountain Laurel"

I believe this is the most beautiful flower I have ever seen!

I found the rose I thought I had planted form the roadsides is really blackberries but they are just beautiful and are drying wonderfully.

One thing we DO have is" Carolina Allspice" and I adore it. IT is so fragrant and  has beautiful red flowers. Of course being me, I  have dried some for potpourri or something.

I am removing the leaves form my moss gardens and finding beautiful mos under them along with my stepping stones and pathways I had made. I had put a ring of stones around many plants I put there and many of the names have washed off before I started using acrylic paint for the markers. 

I suppose I will find out when they start flowering. 

I have found close to my house where I try to have only a flower garden I the native plants have really taken over. I took before photos and asked my question to help name the plants on Hometalk, I always get answers I am looking for there. 

I discovered it is Jewel-weed, or Touch Me Not! Wow, I have a lot of it, it also helps with poison Ivy using the juice from the stem, this will be a keeper in another location, but I have enough for  years to come...

This one is called "Hawkweed'

The pencil like stems do have a mum or dandelion looking base leaf on them.

I found they are very invasive plants I found and started pulling them up as soon as I found out about them.

Some I will  put elsewhere and there are so many still I am sure I will find and I start planting my gladiolas and flowers packets to seed plant.

Oh I better get busy, it is raining again today and has been for several days, they pull up very easy. 

Now, what to do with them? 

Thanks for all the information on Hometalk, they are fabulous! 

Smiles, Cyndi

Church Country Faire and Beautiful Roadsides!

I went to our neighbor's Church Country Faire over the weekend and found some lovely vintage books and 

a German Floral Calender! My husband had helped him take a few things during the week before and he saw a leather jacket he adored and spoke of repeatedly. You could no purchase anything until the sale started on Friday.

Well, come Friday I had absolutely no $$$ to go there but I did have some Etsy sales, ( thank goodness) on Saturday so I went by to see if they had it. Of course it had been purchased already but I did find these books and I got a grocery bag full of clothes for me for $1.00. My kind of sale. Church faires always had wonderful things donated and they were closing up Saturday and 2PM and would donate the rest of anything left to a charity organization.

Then yesterday our friend stopped by our house with a gift for my husband, guess what?, the leather jacket!

Here are my finds!

 The Jane Eyre book has no date in it but I is very old and the cover is worn but the inside is fabulous. I like the bright white paper and it feels so wonderful. I love to get read books rather than new, they fold open so much easier. I think I will read it and then put it in my "frstyfrolk" Etsy Vintage Shoppe.  Maybe the calendar also as  I have no room for it but the floral monthly graphics are fabulous for a mixed media project or framing!
I love reading Ernest Hemingway too and I have many of his books already but not some of these stories. I am fascinated by his life. His movies are fabulous also and his Paris Stories by his ex-wife I got at the library to read!  Just good reading. He was friends and partied with the Fitzgerald's
 of  "The Great Gatsby" and many artists. I can envision their life like hat Book and I can't wait to see the movie that was made this year!

With Halloween around the corner, the Edgar Allan Poe book will be a good read too. I have been going though my Halloween decor and put a collage box together for my Etsy "ByLightOfMoon" shop".

I have even been finding around the forest and abandoned sites my natural curiosities for Halloween Decor, grim and gruesome but, That's Nature sometimes! I love taking photos of old barns and buildings usually find huge wasp nests, I also got some from a tree hole in our forest last winter.

If fact, I found a couple this morning when I took some photos of an abandoned vine covered building and railroad tracks. Our countryside is just beautiful with all the fall blooming plants! I took many photos last Sunday on the way to and from our warehouse of the roadside flowers and plants, trees, and barns.
 I am  drying some goldenrod and hydrangea's and looking for more bittersweet like the wreaths, brooms,and baskets  made last year! The "Purple Iron weed"  is fabulous too. I just learned what it is and of course, "Joe Pye" Weed is awesome.

Joe Pye

Crab Apples fallen to the ground

Milkweed Thistle Bloom

Sumac Berries

Goldenrod

More Joe Pye

No Idea

Purple Iron weed

I am sharing in the Etsy Cottage Vintage Blog this week, check out the other wonderful Vintage Finds!

Smiles, Cyndi

Etsy Garden Party

I work twice a month with the preservation committee in the Georgia Ethnobotanic Gardens and Woodland Medicine Trail  in Blairesville, Georgia and I took a few photos yesterday in the main native ethnobotanic nature area. They try to keep only native plants here. We have visitors tour the gardens on Mondays and we work just weeding and what ever maintenance needs to be done.

I saw Soapwort, Tansy( insect repellant), feverfew( migraine relief) ST John's Wort, Bottlebrush Buckeye Tree, Red Bee Balm and New England Aster, Catnip, Meadowsweet, New Jersey Tea( which I later found growing on the roadside) Lyre Leaf Sage, Rattlesnake Master, Stinging Nettle, Cactus, Jack in the Pulpit, and Sundew.  The Fern Garden was beautiful, It is behind the cannery and where I found the blue dragonfly.

I ran out of time to walk the medicine trail but, next time.

Enjoy the photos I took:

aster and bee balm

bee balm

Bog area

Bottlebrush Buckeye Tree

Catnip

Common Milkweed

Jack in the Pulput

Meadowsweet

Common Milkweed

New England Aster

New Jersey Tea

Prickley Pear Cactus

Rattlesnake Master

Soapwort

St John's Wort

Stinging Nettles

Tansy

I had a good day I hope you did also, and enjoyed the photos I love to share!

I am linking the blog post to the Etsy Cottage Garden Party Team Blog. Go and enjoy all the other gardening blog posts too!
Smiles, Cyndi