Saving Garden Seeds, Planting Allium Bulbs, Fairy Cross and FALL

As I have mentioned before I have been saving seeds from my garden flowers and I found a wonderful use for junk mail return envelopes and even the envelope it was mailed in to us. Well, I also use regular mail envelopes.

I was reading a library magazine that linked to a wonderful web site on seeds, collecting, harvesting, and most importantly what they look like! The Junior page which is about  my speed has fabulous photos of the flower in bloom, the seed and/or pods and then the seedlings when sprouting.

I have several boxes of stored envelopes upstairs in my crafting room attic. I used storage bag original boxes and have filled them with envelopes of seeds, some with names I knew and some just have question (?) marks on them and it will be a surprise if they come back up next spring when re-planted in my gardens.  I have no idea was has been growing in some places as I am a big collector of awesome roadside native blooming weeds to most folks. Heck, if they bloom on the roadsides, they should be OK for this environment.

It has been to low 30's the last few mornings and I am done ( I say) for the year! I furiously collected spent blossoms and many dried on my screens before making it to the envelopes.  Some, just went directly.

The magazine is "Carolina Gardening, September 2010 but I find the site to be for any location.

Here is the site and be sure to also visit the Junior page 
The main home page of "The Seed Site" has many links to follow and is full of great information.

I even find the wicker plate holders are fabulous for holding my item to dry, even mushrooms. These are not to re-seed, just for my nature makings and sharing in my moss forest variety boxes.

I even found this cute little critter one day while in the garden, I searched Google  for the

 "saddleback  caterpillar" image and found him. He is toxic too!

I also found some buckeyes and they are in an old glass lampshade being up-cycled into a beautiful bowl! 

I also found this lying on  porch one day and it had fallen out of our bamboo wind chimes! 

And, it is the carpenter bees that invaded us this spring, they were always buzzing around and drilling holes in the banisters. 

I don't know their intended fate but I made sure they got into the fire pit burn pile instead of the side yard sinkhole I fill with all nature items.

We also got our well cover replaced finally! It was an old foam ice chest that had seen better days. It was here when we moved into this house a year ago and was up-cycled too! 

 Now we, really have a fake rock like most other folks have in the bottom photo! 

 It is lightweight and foam filled but much sturdier than the previous

When we were at the library last week also, we passed the" The Garden Shoppe"  by the side road to the square that had this most fabulous hydrangea plant on the roadside with pink blooms and I fell in love with it. I ask my husband to let me go inside and ask permission for a few cuttings!  I have visited this shop in Hayesville, NC before as she carries the most fabulous fairy furniture and has fairy gardens inside that I swoon over! 

While I was getting my cuttings my husband was admiring this beautiful purple mum so I ask him to turn around and let me treat him to it as I had sold some of my Forest Moss on Etsy and had an extra $6.00 for it. It is now sitting in a beautiful Blue Stone planter I have and it is an eye-appealer when passing by.

I got some Kale plants and Allium Bulbs that we had been admiring up here last spring.  The Allium Bulbs grow like a globe several inches across and several feet tall. Digging the hole was more than I expected as I hit rock and I wanted to roots to be sure and have plenty of space to go.  I started digging in a site I had previously dug in and I thought it would be easy to just add to it. a Canna  and St. John's Wort  and is planted at the other end of this garden area. I brought the Canna from Alabama and the St. John's Wort was given to me at the GA Research Preservation Site in Blairesville, GA where I volunteer.

My hole of dug up dirt started to be one tub to take to the new front yard sinkhole, but ended up being three large buckets of clay and rocks. I even use a recycled metal refrigerator bin that I purchased at the Alabama thrift store I frequented. They carried the neatest items and anything could be found there. 

Here is the finished planted area and the alliums are marked with the pink shade slat pieces I got at the recycled landfill when we were taking our re-recyclables. Sometimes I leave a few and take a few items for recycling!

   

Here are the dried ones I have from several years ago in our home, with some dried hydrangea; also by the plates in the photos are hand-painted china gifts from my Mother" Rosemary" who used to paint on china so beautifully and she also makes the "Rosemary's Handbags"  for my Etsy shared "ByLightOfMoon"  hand- made and supplies shoppe!

  

The black and white photograph with the pink water lily was taken by our friend, " Dr. Barry Isenberg" who we pet- sit for and actually meeting him and his wife was the reason we moved to North Carolina. We just loved pet-sitting here and fell in love with the area over a ten year period. He is a fabulous photographer and has much of his work displayed around the Murphy, NC area restaurants and cute Consignment Shoppes that are so numerous here. There are so many wonderful artists living in Western North Carolina.  

Here also is the new front yard sinkhole, I had the very large stones on it as it just started as a slippery hillside we went down when going to the side yard and I put the stones there to not step on that part of the slope. Well, they all collapsed. 

I am also very proud of my husband and the mixed media owl he made with an old vintage tin. We ordered an owl with blinking eyes and it makes a noise when it detects movement so we ordered one to put on the back porch when the bear was coming and getting in our trash and birdseed. It arrived all broken and smashed in the box so we ordered another replacement one.  Here is the one he made with the battery movement inside the tin, and below is the replacement one.

He did pretty good! I think! It hoots at night when turned on and the eye lights are supposed to scare anything away. We don't turn it on in the daytime as it might scare all the feeding birds away from our feeders. we now keep the birdseed inside the house! Well, no bear has been scrounging around lately!

One more thing before I go finish my Button Garden Tin for the "Button Floozie" exchange I need to mail by tomorrow.  I have been collecting fairy crosses from a site I found from the John C. Campbell Folk School class I attended. I found it easier to just bring a bucket of dirt and crossed to be found home and go through it easier than looking for them at the site.

Many of the stones are trying very hard to be fairy crosses but the two on the far right are very good selections I just found. I will be soon selling them on my Etsy supplies shop for fairy garden accessories.
There is quite a legend about them!


As always I end up writing a book when I post and I hope you have enjoyed our daily doings.
I love your comments and love posting! I have met so many fun friends and colleagues when browsing bloggers!

Smiles, Cyndi