A MEMORIAL DAY SALUTE TO OUR MILITARY

 Thank you United States Military:

THANK YOU!

BLOGGER HAS MESSED UP OUR HEADERS

 The best advice I heard is don't change your header right now because blogger has fooled around with it and messed it up.  If you

change it - it will become really little

and if you follow the same instructions

I did after going to the help desk here - it will become blurry like mine above.

If you google this problem there are MANY

articles telling you how to fix your problem.

I was able to follow instructions and get

my header bigger (instead of really tiny and only to the

 left side of the page)

 but I could not understand the instructions

well enough about it being blurry 

and fix that.

Note from 11-2021  Suddenly

this problem was fixed by blogger!

ADORABLE VIDEOS

 Since we had to stay home so much

last year, I have become addicted to

so many wonderful garden videos.

I will share 3 but first a couple of photo

collages from flowers in the garden

today.  By the way, my husband mowed

our lawn with a coat on - it was cold!

You know I love Jeri Landers videos so

here is a new one of her gardens:

Jeri Landers at Hopalong Cottage

and

and I saw that Kirsten and Joerg

over in England did a new video

and lastly my friend Karen sent

me this link today as she buys

Irises from these people:

click here: Schreiner's

which is an Iris seller

and last but not least for

those who love FRENCH

STYLE AND FRANCE:

Escape to the Chateau is loved!

CELEBRATING QUEEN VICTORIA'S 202nd BIRTHDAY

 Monday, May 24 was Queen Victoria's birthday. (1819) 

I decided to invite some special ladies for an Afternoon Tea to celebrate.  I did some special sewing for the occasion and this

is the back of my large tea cozy:

 

I also made some napkins.   I will be posting some of these cozies to sell on my Etsy site this week. My tablecloth topper was a print copied from a tablecloth with the Queen's Diamond Jubilee celebration motif.

 I was being tight with my fabric so

I made a couple toppers as I really

wanted us to sit outside on the deck.

We have had cool weather but the

projected day was expected to be hot

so I wasn't so sure about being outside.

  I love the 

history of Queen Victoria. I am also

very interested in the character

and integrity of Prince Albert.

I am sure you probably watched the

PBS television series "Victoria".  I

purchased the CD music on ebay

to play for the

 ladies during

 our tea.

You may recognize these ladies who

I knew before I moved to Missouri as

I "met them" through blogging!

I love the little finger foods for

Afternoon Tea.  As you probably know

this is often mistakenly called "High 

Tea" but that is not the correct term.

I am sorry I didn't get a picture of my

food items.  We started with a salad of

mixed greens, peas, crunchy onion rings,

cheeses, mushrooms and nuts.

Then 3 savories were:  Ham biscuits with hot pepper peach preserves, little asparagus, mushroom, onion and parmesan quiches and cucumber sandwiches with cream cheese and dill.  My scones were lemon with cream.  For dessert we had a Queen Victoria Sponge Cake.

I have shared my 1851 Great Exhibition

souvenir pieces already on this site.

Karen has these pieces and after seeing

her's, I got interested in finding some myself.

Most of mine came from a gal in the 

Netherlands.

First we enjoyed iced tea and then 

with dessert we had hot tea.  The tea

was a gift from Donna Hardin at

Miss Spenser's Tea Room in New Virginia,

Iowa and it was a black tea with orange.

It was delicious!

When these friends come to my house or I go to their's, we always bring a little hostess gift which is so fun.  It just wanted you to see the bag Janice (Curtains In My Tree blog) made  with her gift:

And now available on Etsy:

Do you like learning about

Queen Victoria?

TIME MOVES ON IN MAY WITH FOXGLOVES

 

I have been enjoying the replacement

birdbath we ordered from a garden

center in St. Louis.  We moved the old 

one and I am going to see if I can repair

it with some cement.  It never hurts to try.

My husband moved this birdhouse

 decoration (below left) to the top of 

a post for me yesterday.  Wood rots

in Missouri so the wood decoration

our son had give us had to be removed.

It was getting old.  We were able to

save some of it.

 

So we shall see how long the

foxgloves last.  Many are from

plants that I pulled off the Mommy

plant last year and replanted with

good dirt so I am so happy to see

them mature this year.  I am learning

to do that.  I did buy a few new ones

too and plan to keep an eye on them

for little baby plants at the base.

On Monday I have invited 3 ladies

for Afternoon Tea to celebrate 

Queen Victoria's birthday. 

 I shall be sharing

that with you next week.

TEA COZIE DELIGHTS

A while back I began thinking of

a different way to make my

tea cozies that I sell on Etsy.

So, I redesigned my 4 patterns and created 

a new type of cozy

 with a flat round

bottom.

I call them "Drop In Snuggies"

 and in the  absence of the elastic,

 they sit nice and flat on the

bottom.

I hope you will come check them

out on my site:

Bernideen's Tea Time

on Etsy 

They have a nice thickness of

polyfill batting inside to keep

the tea hot.

CHATTER ABOUT ENGLISH GARDEN STYLE

Do you have any new garden

additions this year?  I have found

some of my bulbs multiplied so much

that I moved them on a rainy day.

This week we have had cooler weather

and now today rain.  Yesterday, we spent the whole day getting ready for a garage sale

but today it rained so we are waiting

another week.

We have a new

resident bunny

in the back yard.

I love to look at YouTube videos about

English Garden style.  Have you noticed

that some people love the style where

lots of plants grow together and it is rather

wild. Others like "cluster" gardening

where you just have one type of flower

in a group together.

 I think I prefer somewhere in between

 the two.  Last year toward the end 

of summer our garden grew together more

than I like so and in the fall I removed a lot

 of plants and just put them out on the drive.

  Over a period of a few days people

 just took them away which was nice.

I had too many irises in the same color 

so I decided to thin them out.  I frankly

think that everyone will be doing this once 

a garden grows. 

 

We all have our favorite plants and I

seem to adore foxgloves.  I have been

learning to watch for and move the "babies" that come up at the base of the mother plant.

Usually by the end of summer there are 

some babies than can be planted in

good soil for spring.

I also love Sweet William and have grown 

it from seed and moved it around the yard.

 I have moved a lot of plants this spring

 while it is still cool. Some of them are ones that have come up right next to

and inside another plant at the base.

 I have already shared four small boxes

 of coneflowers this spring and removed

some irises.  They disappeared from the

drive in no time.  I just purchased two

more types of irises as I had too many

of the same 3 colors.

We all sure have

our passions and opinions about

gardening! What type of garden

do you have?