A charming scene

As I had hoped, this morning started out nice and cloudy, perfect picture taking weather. So, I grabbed my camera and out the door I went. My first stop was a little village just west of us, Cold Spring Harbor. I did manage to find a few good plant subjects there and you can see some of them on my Melanie's Perennials blog.

These shots came from another little village, Northport, which is just east of us. If you have a small town near you, this is the time to go and check out all the annual planters.

Backing up, you can see the corner that inspired me. The shop is Hengstenberg's Florist and the brick planters along the sidewalk are delightful.

Here you can see the wonderful colors of the Tropical Hibiscus and the lavender Cleome.

I didn't push aside any foliage to look for plant tags. This is not the old fashioned Cleome I'm used to growing. It's much more compact and the blooms are smaller. I really liked the way it was used in this planting. It also dropped it's bloom petals all over which is a plus for me as they looked like lavender snow.

Here's a shot of the whole planter. Isn't it wonderful? I had hoped to come around the front and shoot more photos but the sun came out full force and the few shots I took after this point are washed out with terrible shadows.

I plan on being on the hunt all week in hopes of getting more late summer images. The weather forecast is delightful for humans with temperatures in the low 70's and lots of sun. Not necessarily the best photography weather but I will still try my best.

What's New?

What's new here at Old Country Gardens? Well, I've got BIG NEWS!

Not only are my Egyptian onions sprouting, I've been working like crazy the last few days on my very own website.

It's hard for me to believe, I can be such a techno-dummy but on Thursday I bought the rights to a website and by that same night I had it up and running.

It's truly a work in progress, if you want to see my beginning efforts, simply go to
www.melaniesperennials.com

There are hyperlinks on the first page of the site to both of my blogs. Lots of surprised planned for the near future too.

Tomorrow looks like a good day for photos, I can't wait!

See ya!
Melanie

The Vintage Lady

Welcome. I am so glad that you stopped by. I am going to visit my friend, Cathy, who owns The Vintage Lady in Old Town Tustin. Come along with me and Bentley and we will visit her charming vintage shop and garden to see what she has been up to. Summer in Southern California is winding down and I wanted to visit her adorable garden one last time before she plants for fall.

Looks like Bentley has been patiently waiting for us.
Put on your walking shoes and off we go.

Her blue door is open and waiting for us to enter.

As we enter the front door we are greeted by a joyful quote painted on the wall.

Let's take a peek at some of her wonderful vintage treasurers.

Her shop is located in a tiny historical cottage and each room is painted a different color.

Let's pour a cup of tea and visit Cathy's little garden in back of her cottage. She teaches " Make It & Take It " garden classes and her specialty - Mini Fairy Gardens and heirloom flowers.

Cathy designs all of her special garden signs and has a local artist paint them for her. She takes custom orders for them.










The Vintage Lady is located at 434 El Camino Real, Tustin, CA 92780

714 731-0422

You can visit Cathy at her new website http://thevintagelady.com/ and see more photos of her charming shop and garden on her flicker page. She also has a blog under construction.

I am so happy that you stopped by. I love to hear from you and sincerely appreciate that you have taken time to leave me a comment and follow my blog. If you have any questions or want to see me paint something special, please leave me a comment or send me an e-mail.

Now that fall is almost here, we will be painting lots of sunflowers, roosters, pumpkins and special FALL WELCOME signs with scare crows and fall flowers. We will bake pumpkin bread, plant fall flowers and visit shops decorated for fall and go on some fun road trips together.

Have a lovely week. Blessings, Erin

What's in bloom today?

So what's blooming in the garden today? Well, the biggest bloom by far is this one. What is it? It's a pumpkin and it's about to take over all of South Huntington!

Yellow is the predominant color in the late summer garden. The Ligularia 'Britt Marie Crawford' is just covered with bright yellow blooms today. If I have the time later, I will get tidy it up and remove one or two of the sunburned leaves.

People pooh-pooh the black eyed Susan (Rudbeckia fulgida) plants but nothing beats them at this time of year. They've been blooming for at least 5 or 6 weeks now and show no sign of slowing down.

The solid green Liriope has sent up it's lavender colored spikes. I really like this plant as an edge to the garden bed.

Finally, not a bloom but how can you not fall in love with the amazing colors on the Coleus. The annuals are really starting to shine, it makes me wish I had planted more of them.

Off to do some weeding and take more photos.

Melanie

Got tomatoes?

Late summer usually means a bumper crop of tomatoes. Here at Old Country Gardens I only have two tomato plants this year (shhh, don't tell everybody). I'm growing two heirloom varieties, one has yellow cherry tomatoes and the other are these red plum San Marzano Lampada tomatoes.

When the plum tomatoes first ripened I was a bit disappointed with their flavor. You see, I was cutting them up and putting them in my salads and they just didn't have the taste that I was looking for. Of course that means that they produced a gazillion tomatoes and now what was I supposed to do with them?

This weekend I decided to figure out a way to use my plum tomatoes. I know they're good for sauces because they're meaty with very little juice inside. Instead of sauce though I decided to use them in a tomato salad.

First I cut them into bite sized pieces. This is when you are happy they aren't juicy, they hardly make a mess when cutting them up.

Next I added basil that also came from the garden. When cutting my herbs, I simply stack a bunch of leaves and use a pair of kitchen scissors to cut small pieces.

Can you tell I like lots of basil? At this point you could also add some onions, or garlic if you would like.

Drizzle some good olive oil over the top, add salt and pepper to taste and stir all the ingredients. Let the tomatoes sit for a few hours for the best flavor. If I'm serving them outdoors I like them at room temperature but you can put them in the fridge to chill them too. Make them the day before a party to save yourself some work and don't forget to add a few basil leaves as garnish.

You could eat this with some plain italian bread. Or get a bit fancy, brush the bread slices with garlic flavored olive oil and grill them for a minutes.

Last night I made chicken salad, added these tomatoes to it and rolled them in soft tortilla shells for chicken & tomato wraps. Delicious!

Tickled Pink

A few weeks ago I bought a beautiful piece of artwork. I rarely buy anything that would be hung on the walls but saw a piece I just had to have!

Those of you who know me know that I love purple cone flowers. One of my rants though is that in my eye they are pink and the cone is orange, so where's the purple?

At the top here you can see the original water color I purchased from Kathleen McElwain. Kathleen is a wonderful artist who paints many of her watercolors while riding a bus in Austin Texas.

Now here's the kicker, Kathleen subscribes to my blogs and this lovely watercolor was based on one of my photos. How cool is that!!!


This is the actual photo that I had posted on one of my blogs, Kathleen subscribes to both of them so I don't know where it was originally.

By reading her blog, I see that you can also commission Kathleen to paint for you. What a great idea for holiday gifts.

You can see Kathleen's artwork at her Etsy site just by clicking "Buspaintings". I think I need to go through my photos and see if there's something else I'd like painted before I decide on a frame and location for the coneflower piece I already have.

Thanks Kathleen!
Melanie

Squash Bugs

The squash bugs are so pervasive in my garden that they're laying eggs on the vines as well as the leaves. In my last survey I counted between two to three egg clusters per leaf and multiple additional egg clusters per vine. Even with destroying the clusters I find there are some that get by.

This is a group of squash bug nymphs that hatched from a cluster of eggs on a vine that I missed. They don't get any more appealing as they grow up. At this stage they are difficult to dispatch manually as they move fairly quickly.

Here are the adult squash bugs working on making more eggs. Next year I plan to be more aggressive with taking out the adults as I find them. This year I found some and didn't kill them because I didn't know what they were. I thought they might be assassin beetles, but ya they weren't.