Welcome, Dearest Friends of The Tearoom!
It was such a long and cold winter, here in The Land of The Tearoom, but the weather has finally warmed and once again, we find ourselves on our porch, our own small portion of paradise. I spent so many gloomy and snowy days this winter, dreaming and planning. My work there is not finished yet, but I think you will find a good start has been made. We look forward to having tea with friends, lunches with each other, here in the company of our dear friends, The Pansies!
(Please ignore the state of the porch in need of painting!)
As always, please click the images in order to see them larger.
All of the shades of purple just make me happy!
I used some pots I had had for a while, but the yellow & grey pots
and the chartreuse ones are new.
I love the mixed designs they came in!
In one pot, I planted an ornamental thyme and pansies to make
a Pansy Jungle, like the one that Victorienne was peddling
through on her tricycle
here! I plan to create a few different
tableaux on The Thyme Lawn this summer, including other
possible visits from Victorienne!
But today, two new friends who have come to live with us
here at The Tearoom are enjoying the The Thyme Lawn!
This is Wuzzy and Tiddley, the Jackabunnies and they are
the creations of my new Twitter friend Kit Lane! I had
admired her dear little needle-felted creatures for such a
long time and decided that now was the time to adopt a
couple of them! When they aren't enjoying some time
outside, they live on top of the small bookcase in our
room. If you find yourself in need of some happiness in
your life, I must highly recommend to you a visit to Kit's
Etsy
shop. She is always working so hard to make them, but you
may find the shop empty. Please don't let this discourage
you, but instead, take a peek at her "Sold"section and then
contact her to make a special friend for you too!
As you can see, our small patch of lawn is covered in
dandelions, violets and clover. We like it that way, in spite of
the disapproving looks of others. After reading a recent
article on how many birds, butterflies and bees benefit from
not chopping it all down, we are even more devoted to the idea
of our technicolor lawn!!
More of the lovely pansies, including that lovely bright yellow
trailing variety that smells like some intense version of honey!
The hummingbirds and furry, fat bees love them and so do I!
This planter has seen its better days, but it was here in the time
of my Great-Aunt Edith living here, before my parents did.
My mother loved planting pansies and petunias here and I think
I can get a few more seasons of doing the same from it, the
lovely, shabby old thing!
I usually plant morning glories in this planter and let them trail up
the lilac branch in the corner and then up the corner post of the
porch. But I bought a few too many pansies and needed to
plant them here instead...
...but in spite of the fact that I didn't plant morning glories here
last year and turned over the soil in the pot, adding new potting
soil and fertilizer, these are little morning glory shoots, peeking
up between the pansies!! And, they are growing up right next
to the old lilac branch, so when they get bigger, I can train them
to go up the branch and the hummingbirds will have morning
glories on the favorite perch in the garden after all!!! Mr. V says
that nature is an amazing thing and I would have to agree!
These are the rest of the pots, filled with soil and fertilizer and
waiting to be planted. I am growing seedlings of heirloom
tomato varieties and herbs in the sunny East and South windows
of the diningroom and soon, they will be ready for planting.
After some careful research, the herbs will be planted together in
the smaller pots and the tomatoes will be planted in the larger
pots. We actually had quite good success with tomatoes
in this spot two years ago, and I'm so looking forward to
dinners of fried green tomatoes! Yum!
The East end of the porch.
In the corner, I keep my gardening equipment (vintage small
hand-rake, trowel and well-loved Queen Bess serving spoon),
old tin watering can, dead branches from the white lilacs in the
back for staking tomatoes and training morning glories, bits of
broken pots to put in the bottom of other pots to provide irrigation.
I like to find new uses for old and discarded things I find around
the house and the yard. Admittedly, many of the things left
here by Aunt Edith and Mommy still come in handy to me!
But once in a while, one deserves to indulge and have some
new things too! These new periwinkle Adirondack chairs
have been in my sights for a while and so, this year, they
join our household!
If you look carefully, you can see two of our three hummingbird
feeders! It's a non-stop job making nectar and cleaning and filling
feeders to feed those brightly-colored little cuties!
My work here is not quite finished, but I'm happy with the
progress to make it lighter and brighter so far. I will blog about
the porch again later in the summer.
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