VINTAGE HILL FARM

I don't know about you but I always loved the small

independent garden centers.  They seem to put a lot

of passion into their businesses and certainly more
creativity. I love INSPIRATION. 

I am sharing a great place for that today! This
is the nursery known as Vintage Hill Farm
located in the small community of
Franklin, Missouri.  This is just about
32 miles from our home - just west
and north of Columbia.

Several months back we went there

as I wanted to order a few more Campania

pieces for my garden to go near the Koi Pond.

They did a special order for me which I picked up yesterday
afternoon.  I will be showing my pieces for my
Friday "Tea In The Garden" blog party.

I am so sorry to say that I intended to show you
lots of pictures but a much needed rainstorm came
up just after I took these 2 pictures and my photo shoot came
to an abrupt stop!  You can see that it is a creative nursery.

COLUMBIA FARMER'S MARKET

Today we went to the Columbia Farmer's Market - well, at

least the one off Ash near the ARC:

Off course it was plenty hot in the 90's so one

must keep moving, sweating, making decisions and

getting home to air conditioning.

There was also a display of

tiny houses next door in the field:

This was of course my favorite vendor !

What did I buy?  9 plants, bib lettuce, onions and  cucumber and also a quart of bread and butter pickles and a 1 of pickled beets!

PROGRESS IN THE GARDEN for "Tea In The Garden"

After so much work in very hot weather

now is the perfect time to pause and

 be refreshed with a cup of tea.  This has
been a busy week for us.

Jeremy Fisher knows today is the "big" day!
He will supervise the work.

We have faced the "mountain of dirt" head

on this week and figure we have put in a good

24 hours moving it here and there and mostly

along the banks of the creek behind our house

filling in the low spots.  This was the huge

dirt mountain I created by digging out the yard.  
Glad it is officially g o n e!

 I was very excited to

see that the Queen Anne's Lace seeds I planted

along the creek bank back in May are showing up
as tiny little plants which is the
 way it works the first year.

That means next year those will shoot up and bloom.
The 5 plants I brought with me from Colorado and
planted in my front yard are blooming now.  The
truth is that there is Queen Anne's lace blooming
 everywhere here now - ever side of the road.

Notice a new color on the ladder birdhouses?

Another birdhouse on the side of the yard:

Please pour yourself a cup of tea: 

Yesterday we went to Jefferson City which is the
capitol of Missouri to visit

the Missouri Wildflower Nursery. 

I wanted to see what native plants
they had that would grow

in the shade back by the woods.

Today is a very big day for us as Josiah
 (the professional pond man) will be
coming to completely clean the pond, empty, refill,
 remove fish (not in that order of course) and put in
a pump and cleaning system so that there is
a water effect and clean water.  A little over a
week ago I realized the lily plant had floated
to the top.  It is a huge glob mess - help!
  Josiah will be here soon!

I have been enjoying all this garden

work.  My husband asked me this morning

what I will do when there is nothing left

to do.  There is always something to do - right?

This is a cup and saucer I got for my Grand Daughter "Lily":

And one late photo

of what is being done

right now:

I will be sharing at:

Tea Cup Tuesday

Let's Talk Vintage

Vintage Charm

An InLinkz Link-up

THE POTTING BENCH

I never had a potting bench before but the people who owned our 

home before us left a work bench in the basement.  We carried

it out the back and up to the garage for a potting bench.

It has been handy lately and I as you can see I had a bunch of

bird houses sitting on it that I wanted to paint. 

 These were

all cheapos!

As you can see my husband put up an

 old school blackboard over it.

Yesterday I decided to use some paint that I had Menards mix for me that was really not the right color. 

  This was a good way to use it up:

The tins are for collecting plant 

seeds and make 

a nice gift!

The birdhouses have a new look.

  Some already got hung in the tree.

I am calling this one "GREEN GABLES"!  
I think Anne would approve.

DO YOU LIVE WITH IT OR CHANGE IT?

A few weeks back we laid this arbor down
in our garage so I could paint it dark blue.
  It was going into our back yard.


 My husband saw the blue I was using and said "please use this other lighter blue paint" - so I did. I painted the whole thing like he requested.  So guess what? I didn't like it at all and he agreed.  After a week or so of staring at the arbor out the Living Room Window viewing it in the back yard, we realized that the light blue needed to go bye bye and now it is the dark blue again.  This is back in the right side of the yard just before the wooded strip and creek between us and neighbors. 
You are looking at the darker blue.

I love this old cedar in the center back:

 If you do something and don't like it do you live with it or change it?  I have moved some of the plants and hydrangeas several times in

the yard trying to find a spot where they will endure.  The high temps in Missouri require plants being in just the right spot.  

Here's some of what's blooming now:

And inside the house - do I change things?  

Sometimes I move pictures around and some times I put way too many holes in the walls.

  My husband measures everything - I eyeball it and guess at it.  I found a framed print at an antique mall recently.  I recognized it as one we used to sell back in the early 90's.  This is just a print of the painting "Eleanor" but I love it.  The artist was the Impressionist and Portrait painter Frank Weston Benson and the 1907 original is in the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. 

 Eleanor was his daughter.

A SUNSET TEA for "Tea In The Garden"

 There was a bit of a mad scramble last night as the sun was beginning to descend and I remembered I had not yet taken my blog pictures.  My husband grabbed me a table and I set up (rather quickly really) this little tea time out front by the sidewalk. I apologize for my scattered brain.

We have just enough time for a lovely cup of peppermint tea:

The name for this hydrangea 

below is called Pistachio:

It has been in the high 90's here this week and we need some rain.   Our neighbor says we normally
 don't have this
 type of weather until August.

The 2 chairs were a recent find for $20 each at a local flea market.  I am hoping to find the paint to finish painting the bottoms of the legs
 so I am looking for the color.....does anyone know?  It looks to me like spray paint.

  My neighbors all want to know when I plan my first tea as I have invited the ladies but we
 are waiting for our living room furniture and
 they already told us the fabric was "out of stock" so it will still be a while.

This is the vase I shared a few weeks ago from an estate sale.  I grabbed it, filled it with water and started cutting from the garden!

I hope you have a delightful weekend.