As the Garden Grows

What's blooming today?


Pink Balloon

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A lovely pink Balloon flower.

I believe my pink balloon flowers have stopped blooming, but my blue Balloons are still pushing out a few blooms each day. Soon, now that it finally seems to be cooling down a bit, they will stop blooming all together.

I’ve found these flowers to be very easy to grow once they get started. I’ve only had one transplant fail and that was a clump of white Balloon flowers that I took from my parents home after my mother passed away. I just couldn’t get that clump to grow. I believe that Balloon flowers have long tap roots and most plants with similar root structures do not transplant well.

Hey, I had to try.

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Trying to make plans for our bathroom reno project

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Once my husband and I complete our living room dining room renovation project it will be time to move on to the next project. We won’t be taking a break in between projects since the living room dinning room reno has taken forever and has been more break than work lately.

I’ve love to work on our upstairs bathroom. It’s so small! At this point I haven’t decided whether we’ll work with the very small space that we have or if we’ll knock down a wall and expand the bathroom. Obviously knocking down a wall and expanding would be what I’d prefer to do as we’d be able to have a very nice upstairs bathroom if we did that.

Still … it’s a much bigger project in every way from expenses to the amount of work that would have to be done. We’d have to move the pipes and drains and so on. I’m not sure we’re up for that right now. Not on our own anyway.

So, if I were to stick with just renovating the small space that we currently have I think that it might be best to take out the bathtub altogether and install a very nice shower. Ideally I think something like this shower would work well in our small space. I think it would take a little less room than a bathtub so we’d be able to put a upright cabinet in the bathroom as well.

Right now we’ve just got a toilet, bathtub with makeshift shower and a very small sink with an under sink storage cabinet.

Speaking of sinks I’d love to get a new sink. One that looks like a beautiful bowl sitting on a table or counter with wall mount taps above the bowl. That would look beautiful.

I’ve actually been looking at the selection of bathroom tubs, showers, taps, furnishings and accessories at www.Taps4Less.com to get some ideas for our bathroom renovation project.

As you can tell I don’t have any definite plans for this upcoming project. It’s going to be a difficult project whether we keep the bathroom as is or expand.

Any ideas?

Datura is smelly in a few ways

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Grab the Photo Hunt code.
Photo Theme. Visit participants.

This weeks theme is Smelly

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So the photo hunter theme this week is smelly.

With gardening as a hobby I know both good smelly and bad smelly.

Those of you who read this site or any of my others probably came here expecting a photo of something that smells good. I certainly have plenty of photos of lovely scented plants and flowers.

As one of my internet friends says “If only the internet had scratch and sniff capabilities”. You know I’d apply that technology to some of my photos.

The picture that I posted above is of a Datura plant seed pod. The seed pod doesn’t smell, but the leaves of the datura plant sure do when you touch or rub them between your fingers. The smell is a mix of skunk and coffee grounds. At least that’s the way it smells to me. It’s very repugnant.

It’s flowers on the other hand have quite a pleasant strong fragrance. As you can see it’s large seed pod is also quite ornamental.

All round it’s a very interesting smelly plant.

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