Water Lilies for My Mother's Birthday

Happy Birthday Mom! 

Hope it is the greatest!

in the garden....

Words and Photos Property of In the Garden Blog Team, In the Garden

Christmas Memories and Best Wishes to You All

From In the Garden

Ever heard of the Velveteen Santa? No? Maybe the Velveteen Rabbit? A story by Margery Williams about a stuffed rabbit that through the love of its owner becomes real? Have you heard of that story? Well once I tell you of my Velveteen Santa I think you all will relate to him. There he is standing tall and proud in the picture above. He is discolored and missing the stand he once stood on that made music and made him spin, but oh how he is loved! 

As a child in the 60s, and the oldest of four girls I have some really great memories of Christmas. You see, my mother always went all out for Christmas and has continued to do so even to this day. She would put decorations on all the walls, in the bedrooms, on the kitchen counter, and even under the tree. My Velveteen Santa sat under our Christmas tree along with Mrs. Santa, and a most beautiful angel. I don't know where the plan started in my family but somehow the Santa became mine since I was the oldest and he of course had rank. Mrs. Santa belonged to my sister Dawn (the next oldest), and the angel belonged to the third girl in our family, Joanne. The youngest of us four girls did not get her own 'velveteen' Christmas character. Perhaps the stores stopped selling these characters in the late 1960s or perhaps my mother just couldn't find the perfect complement to the three characters we already had but my youngest sister was left out. I'm not really sure why we didn't have four but this I know, Santa, Mrs. Claus, and the Angel were the most loveliest things I ever saw on Christmas eve. They were a comforting presence and always happy and cheery. When I see my Santa I am taken back to the excitement of being a child and waking up to a bunch of presents and the love of my family.

A few years ago my mother went through her Christmas decorations and as a surprise she sent these characters to her three oldest girls (myself, Dawn, and Joanne). When I saw my Santa it was tears that came to me, along with happiness for the connection to my childhood and family. Today I share him with you and wonder if you all will recall your very own 'Velveteen Santa' for us during this Christmas week. 

From In the Garden

While I don't go all out for Christmas I do decorate. This has been a great year because while we had an excellent Christmas in the Smokies last year, we are excited to be home for Christmas this year. All of our decorations came out of storage. Whew! It is a big job. This year is the first year in over eight that all decorations have come out of storage for the big holiday. This particular decoration is a Christmas tree someone made (not me) from baby food jars and then filled with lights. It is such a retro thing and so colorful that it is right at home in my household. I just love it and wanted to share it. The lights really aren't pink. They just look that way through the magic of photography that sometimes doesn't get the color just right. The colors are actually jewel toned primary colored lights that really look neat when shining through glass. Do you remember all the things you could do with baby food jars when your kids were young? Those baby food jars sure take me back.  What is your favorite Christmas decoration in your home?

From In the Garden

I guess I am a bit sentimental this time of the year when I can reflect and remember my family, my childhood, and even my whole life as I look to a new and welcoming year that is peeking around the corner waiting to jump out with a splash. I'm not the only one though and I know many of you recall fond memories and special times of when you were young. Catherine posted a very similar post to this one yesterday so jump over to her blog and check out her sentimental memories. If you post on your memories let me know and I'll be happy to link to them in this post too. 

Additionally postings on Christmas decorations: 

Barbara from Gardening in Mannheim Germany 

I want to wish everyone a very happy holiday season spending time with family and enjoying those wonderful childhood traditions and memories that take you back....

in the garden....


I will see you all after the holidays sometime next year so in the meantime please do share your memories with us. 

Happy Holidays to all of you from all of us here at In the Garden. 

Words and Photos Property of In the Garden Blog Team,  

In the Garden

Name These Plants Game

By:Skeeter

Note: Tina normally posts her "Plant of the Month" choice on the 10th of the month, but it will be posted tomorrow instead...
This is not the beginning of the Name these Plants Game. First, I wanted to show you a plant which is thriving in my Georgia Garden. This is one of 5 peonies I planted a few years ago.

I planted these pink and white beauties as a root from a package from Wal-Mart. With each year, they grow stronger and larger then the year before. They give me some really large blooms and I can only dream that one day they will be as huge as the ones we had at the old house on Commerce Street while growing up in Clarksville, Tennessee...

Instead of staking my peony blooms this year, I decided to make all the Mothers of the Blogging world a Bouquet instead. I picked some of the pink and white peony blooms and added some purple verbena in the mix as well. Here is your bouquet through the wonders of cyber world!

Happy Mothers Day to all you blogging mothers of today, yesterday and tomorrow as well...

Now lets play a Game shall we....

1. The Plant above was spotted in a garden while in Fredericksburg, VA. Sorry I did not snap any close ups of the little white blooms but maybe you can see enough with this picture.

Can you name this plant?

2. Sorry about the sideways view of this bush but for some reason Blogger turned two of my pictures around today and I cannot get them corrected. Argggg. This bush was also spotted while in Fredericksburg, VA.

Here is a close up view of the blooms.

And also some old pods from last years growth.

Can you name this plant?

3. I peeked over a stone wall during our VA stroll to find these cute flowers. They resemble Blue Bells but are totally white blooms.

Tiny and cute white blooms at that.

Can you name this plant?

4. This bloom caught our eye as well while on the VA stroll.

Here is the bush the blooms were on and many bushes not just one.

Here are the cute blooms up close. Cute blooms aren't they?

Can you name this plant?

5. This tree (which I thought was a crepe myrtle) is located on the River Walk of downtown Augusta, GA.

Here is a close up of the interesting blooms of this tree.

Yet a closer view of the dainty white blooms.

Can you name this plant?
6. Here is the second sideways picture compliments of a blogger error. Arggg. This plant was spotted on the white sandy beach of Charleston, SC.

The yellow blooms glowed from the sun shining on them from above. This bush was thriving in the sand along the dunes.

Can you name this plant?

Here is a bonus question. Even though this looks like an alligator, it is not. This is a small lizard that I spotted on the tree stump in our GA woods. I zoom in on this critter as it would not allow me to get close. I had no idea how much it resembled an alligator until I loaded the pictures onto the computer! Isn't he an interesting looking lizard?

As a bonus question: Can you name this lizard?

The one who guesses the most questions will be the winner. If we have multiple winners (which I assume we will) all names will be placed into the Saints magic hat for one name to be drawn as the overall winner of the prize. Prize will be something to aide you in the garden this summer. I will keep the prize a secret until the winner is announced next Saturday on the blog. The winning name will be selected on Friday May 15, 2009, until then, keep on guessing. You may guess more then once as I want you all to have a name in the Magic Hat. Winner must have a United States address to receive this prize but all bloggers are welcome to play in the naming of the plants as the main thing is to identify the plants for me...

Have fun trying to NAME THESE PLANTS, In the Garden...

Mom's Vegetable Garden

Don't let the hydrangea fool you! This post is about a vegetable garden-with some ornamentals. My grandmother was an avid gardener who planted this hydrangea. This hydrangea is the mama of my hydrangea down here in Tennessee, and just happens to grow in my mother's vegetable garden so that is why I included it in this post. It is just now blooming in Maine.



My grandmother initially planted this hydrangea many years ago. At that time the now vegetable garden was strictly an ornamental garden. And this garden has an ideal spot on the east side of my mother's home over the septic field. It is in a bed surrounded by natural stone and somewhat raised. The raised elevation could have something to do with my mother hauling in 7 yards of loam; which went a long way to get the vegetable garden on its way.

My mother is handicapped and can barely walk, so you all know what a chore making this garden had to have been. When I arrived in Maine it was so tidy, neat and beautiful. Radishes are huge, watermelons are growing, the marigolds add lots of color, and those cool pea stakes also add some color and whimsy. While checking out the garden my sister-"I don't know why ANYONE would ever want to garden!" informed me they had all saved the front perennial garden for me to fix up. No problem! Fortunately the ground in Maine was soft and loamy, despite not having rain in several weeks. The weeds came up easily and the new perennials went into the ground quickly. I also added some old perennials and planted another hydrangea for my mother in her new perennial garden. The recent rains my mother has received in her neck of the woods in Maine has probably helped all the plants along their merry way.

I did help out a bit in this garden too though. Here is a longer view of the garden. Isn't that loam lovely looking? And look-no weeds! They worked hard to get rid of the weeds before we arrived in Maine. Did it have something to do with me coming Mom? I picked up some hay bales for my mother, laid the newspapers and mulched the whole garden. Actually, I must confess, the Jimster did it all with a bit of supervision from me. He was so happy to help out! And that is really what this garden has represented. My sister-"I don't know why ANYONE would ever want to garden!" , my daughter and her boyfriend and numerous other family members have all contributed to making this garden successful and beautiful. I hope it gives my mother many years of pleasure-and lots of good healthy food! It has sure served to give the family a common goal and purpose.

in the garden....

The Will to Live...and Thrive

This is a story which amazes me. Not only for the survival of the plant, but for the consideration and care shown to me by my mother.

Upon my arrival back home from Iraq in 2003, it was agreed upon I would travel to Maine for Christmas. Travel to Maine from Tennessee is pretty much a two day trip, and a difficult trip. It is not a one shot up I95 like when I lived in North Carolina. No, I have to travel all over the place to get to Maine from here. The travel and expense and time makes trips to Maine few and far between, but this trip was to be special. I was retiring from the Army, plus, my younger sister would be in Maine (visiting from Florida) during the same period as me. This was an extra special treat for my mother. It is not usual all four of her daughters are in Maine at the same time (the other two sisters live in Maine).

While visiting that cold and snowy December, I wanted a cutting of a huge hydrangea growing in my grandmother's garden, now my mother's garden. The garden had been neglected for a long time, but the hydrangea still grew. Of course it was dormant at the time.

The year 2003 was a big gardening year for me. I was finally able to really garden. Of course, I had tried to garden before retiring from the Army, but as any working gardener will tell you, the time is just not there to do all you want to do. I like hydrangeas and have always loved the mopheads for their romance and reliability. That fact this hydrangea grew in this garden made it vitally important to me.

I took three cuttings of what I thought looked like good prospects for growing new plants. The cuttings all had buds and were about 3" long. I wrapped them in damp paper towels and placed in my mother's refrigerator. I departed for Tennessee without my cuttings! I never even realized it until my mother told me I had forgotten my cuttings. She was kind enough to take the time to wrap them up in an envelope, and mail them to me in Tennessee. I think I got them around the end of January.

Once I received them I noticed one had rotted and promptly discarded it. The other two were dipped in rooting hormone and stuck in some good soil under fluorescent lights. One cutting survived and actually rooted, the other one petered out and had to be discarded.

This was the year 2004 now. I held that one cutting in the house until the spring of 2005 when I planted it out front in a prominent position. Do you know it bloomed that year? One little bloom, but a bloom nonetheless. None since, until now, 2008-three years later.

You can see the hydrangea is doing well in my garden. Each time I pass it I marvel at its will to live and the fact it came from my mother. Just a little cutting from a dormant plant in the winter; which was mailed to me and bounced all around the country. Not only is it living but blooming SO big and nice...and thriving.

Thanks Mom and know I will always treasure this hydrangea.

in the garden....

Learning from Mom

I may be an adult but I am never too old to learn a thing or two from my Mom.


Here she stands under the Crabapple tree that my dad planted many years ago.

I recently shared with you how to stabilize a Fern to a stump so it would not fall over during windy days. This is one of many things my mom has taught her baby girl over the years.

As children, we listen to our parents until we hit the age of about 13 then we no longer need their advice because we know it all, right? Even with a lot of "I told you so" from them, we still think we know it all.


What a beautiful Red bud tree! Yet, another tree that my dad planted many years ago.

I have always appreciated my Mom and her advice even as a child. I was what some would refer to as the good kid as I DID listen to my Mom and furthermore, valued her input. Now I might not always think she is right. I guess I am a bit too much like my daddy there Ha-ha. But I did listen and value the fact that she cared enough to share with me.

With time comes gray hair and the realization that even today being 45 years old, I am still learning things from my Mom! Something as simple as how to stabilize a Fern to a stump! But knowledge all the same.

I will never twist tie a Fern to a stump that I will not think of my Mother and her wisdom of telling me how to keep those Ferns secure.

Happy Mothers Day to all Mothers out there that continue to teach us older kids a thing or two!

Skeeter's day to post is Sunday. I appreciate she has allowed me to join in on her Mother's Day post. Her mother reads the blog and we all know Jean is my mother. She is a commenter and dedicated reader of this blog and several others. I must say I truly appreciate her coming on here and talking to not only me each day, but to my sister Dawn, and my daughter Christine. My mother loves talking to everyone and is a big part of this blog and its community. The blog has brought us so much closer because she can partake of my love for gardening (passion), and talk to me about it as well. My mother is not healthy enough to do much gardening on her own, but has a love for it handed down from her mother, my grandmother 'Nana'.

Skeeter titled this post "Learning from Mom", and to keep with the theme I was fortunate to find a picture taken at graduation from Austin Peay State University last summer. The picture is of my mother and I (thanks to the miracle of cropping). An ideal picture if I do say so myself to tie in with the theme "Learning from Mom". I am a lifelong learner and value learning each day. That is not to say I practice what I learn from the many the lessons of life and the school of hard knocks, but I surely learn each and every day!

My mother has always taught me to be unselfish and think of the other person first. A few of my sisters exemplify this lesson so much better than I do, but it is a lesson I do take to heart. She was always there for me and my children and never, ever gave a thought to herself. Without her help and support in my life; at times it has been at great sacrifice to her and her life; I never would've been able to successfully retire from the Army and partake in my passion of gardening. I so thank her each and every day and hope she knows this!

Like Skeeter, I want to send out my wishes for all mothers on this day, Mother's Day 2008, and especially for the mothers reading this blog post. Thanks Skeeter!