As the Garden Grows

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My garden’s beautiful this month

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At the beginning of this month I wasn’t sure how well my garden was going to do this summer.

You see, we had my neighbors putting in a new fence on one side, and the neighbors on the other side don’t take care of their yard at all so there’s always weeds creeping into our yard from their side, so the month started out in battle mode and it didn’t look good.

I’m quite happy to report that after several weeks of giving our garden some tender loving care – ie lots of compost, mulch, planting new plants in the bare spots, making up my special alfalfa tea to fertilize the garden beds and so on … the plants are looking quite happy.

I’ve actually been out in the garden taking quite a few pictures in the last week, maybe an extra 200 pictures! You see we just got a new cellphone. It’s a Nokia N8 and it has a 12 mpg camera inside it and it takes fabulous pictures and video! I was going to post an HD video that I took with the phone in this post but for some reason I’m having trouble posting it to Youtube. Youtube keeps saying it’s going to take about five hours to upload a 7 minute video. Crazy! So for now … I’ll just post a few pictures and I’ll try to find a way to get my garden tour video in another post soon.

Here are some lovely White Petunias. I always put a few Petunias in hanging baskets near my bird feeders. They help attract more birds, even hummingbirds if I plant red or pink ones.

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Another flower that’s blooming like crazy right now is this Octavia Hill Rose, isn’t it pretty?

Octavia Hill Rose

My Lavender plants are just beginning to bloom. I believe I have 7 or 8 Lavender plants scattered throughout my garden beds. The ones in the sunniest spots are flowering the most right now, but the others will catch up quickly I’m sure.

Lavender

I also have several Clematis vines in both my front and back yard garden beds. This lovely pink/red clematis flower is one that grows on a trellis at the front of my house. The plant climbs along the trellis about 12 feet up the wall. It’s beautiful when it’s in bloom.

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What’s blooming in your garden this month? Is your garden just gorgeous right now? I know I’m loving mine at this time because I have so many roses in bloom that whenever I walk outside all I smell is lovely old rose fragrance. It’s beautiful.






Save money – learn how to do that home project yourself

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As many of you who read this blog already know, my husband and I are true Do it Yourself people. We’ve yet to hire anyone to do any of the renovations in our home. Instead we’ve done all the work ourselves.

We’ve torn down walls, sanded and refinished floors, painted every room in the house, venetian plastered the living room dining room and our master bedroom, installed a skylight on the roof of our enclosed front porch and we’re currently working on adding a tin ceiling to our living room dining room.

I forgot the biggest and possibly the most satisfying project of all – we landscaped our garden and put in raised beds using interlocking easy stones.

Now I know that not everyone is a do it yourself kind of person, but I also realize that some don’t do things on their own that they could simply because they don’t know how.

Well, I’ve come across a site for those of you who like Do it yourself projects or for people who want to explore and see if they can do a project on their own. It’s the doityourself.com website.

There are thousands of articles on the site with do it yourself projects ranging from learning how to hang wallpaper to restoring a vintage car! You should be able to find just about any kind of Do it yourself project on the site. There are categories for interior and exterior home improvement projects, decorating, painting, electrical, gardening, plumbing, vehicles, crafts and more.

Many of the project articles come complete with photos and even video clips. In fact, if you are more of a visual person you might do well by buying one of the Do it yourself knowledge is power DVDs as they show you how to do each project in an easy to understand step by step way.

There are also over 100 do it yourself forums on the site that cover a range of topics. You can talk to other DIYer’s as your project progresses, compare ideas and possibly get some help if you get stuck in some way.

I really like this site. I’m pretty sure it will come in handy when we begin to renovate both our kitchen and basement! Check it out for yourself.

Free blog community at Thoughts.com

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I was asked to do a write up of Thoughts.com blogs – a 100% free online blog community.

Thoughts.com was given an appropriate name since it was created as a place for people to share their thoughts. It has since developed into a community of bloggers from all over the world.

As free blog communities go there are a few features that you’ll find on Thoughts.com that you won’t find elsewhere.

Unlike other blogging communities members of Thoughts.com can share videos, photos, music files and podcasts. Registered members can even rate other members videos, podcasts, blog posts and photos. In fact, if a member wanted to be able to make posts in the community blog sections of the site they would need to have been rated by other members and have attained a rating of 4 in order to post. So participation and interaction with other members is obviously encouraged.

I realize that many of the people that read my gardening blog have websites or blogs of their own, but not all of you do. Perhaps Thoughts.com might be a site to explore since you can upload your own photos and videos for others to see. If you were to sign up for a free membership you could use your blog as a journal and make entries about your plants or gardening methods.

The best feature of the site is of course that you can upload so many different types of multimedia all in one site. Other blog related communities or for that matter even personal blogs often need to host their photos, videos and podcasts on a variety of sites and then embed code into their blogs or posts in order to show others what they’ve created. Since you can store all your multimedia files right on thoughts.com I’m sure it’s easier to use photos and videos in your posts or point others to these files without having to leave the site.

Another great feature of Thoughts.com is the fact that they reward their top members with a free trip each year. This year they’ll be taking five of their most active members to Las Vegas. It’s an all expenses paid retreat. You can read all about it on the site but the winners will stay in a 4 star Las Vegas resort, have three free dinners and two free shows awarded to them, as well as having round trip airfare from anywhere in the continental United States.

Now that sounds like a pretty sweet deal. I can’t think of any other blog community that does anything like that. The best part is that all you have to do to win is be one of the most active on the site which is easy enough to do if you are uploading photos and videos, having them rating by members and rating other members items as well.

Check out Thoughts.com if you’d like to start your own free blog and socialize with others. Don’t forget to visit the community forums while you are there.

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