Pink Lilies Even in the Heat of Summer!

Beautiful Crinum Lilies are the LAST thing you expect to see in Central Texas when the temperatures hit triple digits in the afternoon, but that’s exactly what I’m sharing for Pink Saturday…My friend Nancy at My Crafty little Page gave me a start from old heirloom lilies given to her by a neighbor.

They have a delicate pink inside and they look like a Georgia O’Keeffe painting. Another very bright pink version came to me from my mother’s gardens…it had come from her brother who also had his start given to him by a neighbor.

I love that about gardening with shared plants…they remind us of people…I don’t know where the Purple Lantana  came from…Lowe’s or Home Depot…but ask about the sprawling Moon flower vine, and I can remember when Mother gave me my start…

One morning I was greeted by a dozen of the fragile white flowers…bees LOVE them…

These night bloomers will be wilted and wan by noon. So I cut a cluster and brought them inside where they will last until supper time.

It’s not an elegant arrangement…it’s not an arrangement at all. They can’t be handled much, just plopped into a vase of cool water. That sounds like a good summer plan for us all.   I hope your summer is enjoyable wherever your are. Here in Texas we enjoy our mornings and then seek the shade. Look at one of our does and her twins in the afternoon shade. I love how that one little fellow has his head flat out down in the grass…he spent the morning running little deer circles around the lawn and now he is out cold!

 

I’m off to check in with out Hostess of all things Pink, Beverly at How Sweet the Sound to check out her weekly contribution to our celebration of Pinkness. Have a Pink Week.

Pretty in Pink Recycled Dishes/Yard Art

I’m a sucker for Pink…all of us are…I’m also a sucker for pretty dishes…especially Pink dishes. Well, look what I found at the Master Gardeners Herb and Plant Fair…

Yard Art made of layered Pink dishes…looks like a luncheon plate, a shallow bowl, and a salt shaker!

If you look at the top of the pink rose, you can see that it’s actually a salt shaker! The craftsman who made it is from Austin. She had the most amazing combinations, but I knew this would be right at home with the Opal Basil and the Polka Dot plant.  I may let it spend some time in the side yard with the Purple Coneflower which isn’t purple at all, but a wonderful, bright Pink.

They were in full sun when I took this shot and the color is a bit washed out, but would you just look at all those buds! The flowers last forever and the center turns orange as it matures. Then the little finches come to eat the seeds. The deer love the flower buds, but leave the full open flowers alone. These are behind a little fence and I spray them with deer repellant to make them less attractive to the does and the fawns.

I’m heading out for a Margarita, some queso, and a fish taco in our favorite cantina on the banks of the Guadalupe River. But first I’ll link up with Beverly at How Sweet the Sound… I’ve noticed that my link is out of date, but my Blog guru, Nancy at My Crafty Little Page is not available to help me fix it…she just got a new knee last Friday and she is still working out the kinks…but, you know how to find your way back to Beverly’s Pink Saturday party.

Sweet Pink Eggs

A sure and certain sign of spring…nests and bird eggs! There are at least four in the nest now. It wasn’t easy to get this shot, and the color is not perfect because in reality  they are pale pink.

We have the sweetest little bird couple who construct their little nest on our front porch. This is the fourth nest to have been built on our hanging lanterns! They make a little round nest of mud and grass with a bowl shape in the center. On year they raised five little ones in less space than an average tea cup!

This year she decorated it with parts of flowers from a nearby St. John’s Wort shrub…

See the stringy parts? well, that’s what she used to line the top outside layer of her little mud nest…

Have you ever seen such a thing? I don’t know why she picked the yellow when two different Rose of Sharon shrubs have lovely shades of pink she could have used.

Wouldn’t this have made a perfectly pink nest? Or this blue-pink…

 

I think her nest would have been perfect in pink! Nearby is a mother dove nestled down in her nest…

She has only two young birds and her nest has no decoration at all! A few quick sticks in the crook of an oak and she was done. We love watching our spring bird  babies in the trees and our newborn fawns in the meadow.

Well, I’m off to search for today’s Pink. If you have a chance, visit Nancy at My Crafty Little Page…her post for today is sooooo funny. She may not have had a chance to link to Beverly at How Sweet the Sound but her humor is worth the visit!

Until next week, Have a Pink Week!

Happy Fifth Birthday Pink Saturday!

Congratulations to Beverly for hosting one of the loveliest, longest-running blog parties ever! How many lives have been enriched by the contacts we have made. How many friendships have developed through our Pink visits!

To celebrate this big anniversary, I’ll be sharing pictures taken in May a couple of years ago during a visit (my first and so far, my only) to New York City. These shots are from The Cloisters.  It houses the Medieval collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.  The grounds around it are delightful…totally pink in spirit even though the flowers come in many colors… Look at this lovely, tactful sign  to remind visitors not to liter…

 

The views back toward the city are beautiful…It’s a wonderful place for calm enjoyment of Mother Nature’s beauties. Sort of like the spirit of Pink Saturday…calm and restorative.

Enjoy these pink azaleas as you head over to Beverly’s How Sweet the Sound to join the Anniversary celebration…Central Texas gals are in an especially Pink mood this Memorial Day because we are getting a bit of much needed rain. Have a Pink Week. http://howsweetthesound.typepad.com/my_weblog/

Pink Saturday Mail out for Easter Egg Carton Swap

Today is the official mail out day for a group of Facebook friends who are swapping vintage egg cartons. Not really “vintage” in the true meaning of the word, but vintage because they’re  like the old cardboard cartons of yesteryear…first, I had to FIND the 3 X 4 row size I wanted…

ETSY to the rescue! Just what I wanted for my partner, Louisiana girl, Tonya. She is also an English teacher! She has had a pen-pal in France since she was in middle school and loves everything related to Paris and France! We decided to swap Easter in Paris…her favorite colors are reds and browns…mine are soft greens and blues.
First I covered the carton with a coat of gesso. Then I decopagued layers of a beautiful napkin in her chosen colors…


A bright red tassel and a gilded knob  tops the lid and another layer of designs highlight the bottom…

I started adding French language bits of paper and washi tapes to the eggs that would hold the Easter treats.

The inside lid has a vintage look map of Paris so Tonya can find her way around when she fulfills her dream to visit the City of Lights.

Each of the half dozen eggs holds an Easter surprise…

White doves…

Brown glitter doves…


a collection of tiny crosses for Tonya to use in her own Easter card making…

Three little wooden rabbits and vintage flowers…

and spools of fibers and washi tapes mingled with gilded eggs… and one of my very favorite additions, matchbox drawers covered with the map and filled with punched die cuts…


using vintage sheet music and dictionaries and beautiful papers I cut crowns and birds and butterflies and tea pots and tea cups…I would love to get a package like this.

I filled the egg carton and the rest of the contents spilled out into the box…rolls of ephemera…a 1900’s ledger sheet,  a French newspaper from the 1920’s, pages from an antique French grammar book. A few antique Easter cards, seam binding, some beautiful  Victorian Easter  scrap. And I tucked in a few containers of that beautiful Martha Stewart fine glitter in reds and golds and browns.
I love swaps…a little imagination, a few vintage finds, and someone else’s perspective on a common theme.The swap was organized by my Paper Cowgirl friend, Sarah. Talk about a talent; she and I have been swap partners before, and she knows how to fill a carton!  Next week will be super exciting as I wait for Tonya’s package to arrive. In the meantime, I’ll head over to Beverly’s How Sweet the Sound blog for Pink Saturday and all the lovely posts. And you have a Pink Week!