rose hip : summer brights...

July 19, 2015

summer brights...

...are you ready for a bit of colour?!... Well, my garden at the lake has been surrounding me with very bright summer colours lately...

...and, as you can see below, I have brought some of these colours indoors and have been inspired by them...

But first, let us go back outside for a minute, to my colourful jumble of a garden... Our smoky and hazy skies caused by forest fires and abnormal winds I spoke about in my last post are all gone and less troubling bright blue skies are back; in fact we've had rainfall since my last post which, let me tell you, was a very welcome sight around here!

Despite the recent rain which certainly helped in containing a local forest fire, it still is an unusually dry summer out on the coast and very hard to keep a garden well watered. Blooms are not even fully opened up before they start drying up and fading due to the drought; my lupin blooms are a great example of this as the top of the spires are just opening while the bottom is drying out!

Because blooms have been so ephemeral this year, fading it seems in a blink of an eye, I've already trimmed a lot of my flowers (especially lupins and daisies) down to their bases to encourage a second flush which I'm sure will happen this year... Despite all this trimming, my garden still has a lot zing to it, in great part to all the black-eyed Susans which have popped up all over the place; happily for me, this cheery flower is a favourite of mine!...

One of the many reasons I do so love having so many flowers growing on our property is because I can so easily adorn the rooms in our house with freshly-picked bouquets from the garden... What a treat!

I made such a bouquet and set in on a little table by the bed in one of the bedrooms and felt very pleased with myself! The bed is covered with the pretty flip side of this thrifted tied quilt and a couple of crochet-trimmed pillowcases I just put together. Mmmm, can't you just almost smell those roses in the bouquet...

...and the lemon-scented tuft-like lavender bloom of lemon bergamot (Monarda citriodora)!...

I only discovered this long-flowering bergamot a few years ago and, because I found it so very lovely with its lemony fragrance and so very easy to grow, I have sprinkled my garden with its seeds every spring since then; I also love the fact that it is absolutely irresistible to bees, butterflies and hummingbirds! Now, if you're interested in a better look at the pillowcase fabric, I zoomed into the turquoise one here...

I have more photos of both pillowcases (turquoise and red backgrounds) which I will share with you in my next post, hopefully this coming week; I will also be listing a few of the turquoise ones very shortly in my Etsy shop.

However, now it's high time for me to turn off my computer and go out and bask in the lovely sunshine -- after all, summer, just like my garden blooms, is so very fleeting in our neck of the woods!... Hope you are enjoying some lovely lazy (not too hazy!) summer days and thank you so much for visiting!...

Comments

Oh so dreamy! Patch finishes school on Wednesday for the summer, so hoping for those lazy sunny days...

Posted by: mrs robinson | July 20, 2015 at 06:18 AM

How perfectly beautiful! You also gave me some idea of what to plant next year. As always, your pillow cases are amazing. I'm out to enjoy the first summer day in a while where the temperature and humidity are bearable.

Posted by: Laurie | July 20, 2015 at 06:32 AM