One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish

Recently, I was the lucky winner of a giveaway that Erin at TesoriTrovati was doing. I won a wonderful book, called Your Eco-Friendly Yard, by her friend Tom Girolamo. And, she made me a beautiful wire wrapped ring! I absolutely love it! It is made from a vintage button and Vintaj wire. It fits perfectly and I couldn't be more pleased! I am modeling it above as I start to flip through this awesome book!

Building on the theme of this cool gardening book, I thought I'd share a tour of my own garden and some of the unusual recycled objects in it.

As you look at this picture of my front door, you can see where I came up with my Dr. Seuss title for this post. The steps are flanked on each side by a red fish planter and a blue fish planter. On the right hand side you can see a glimpse of an ornamental bonsai like tree and on the left, part of a Japanese maple that I love!
Of course I have peacocks in my garden, so I might as well show them off first! This one is in my rose garden, to the right side of our back door. Here, we've also used an old fence gate that we found when we moved in as a decorative interest. You can also see part of the walk out area of our old stone foundation basement.

Here is my other peacock that Jon got me for our 6th Anniversary. This is on the corner of our garage and you can see our pool in the background.

Since my second love is owls, I have a few of them too! This guy lives under a big old tree. We constructed a ring around the tree with found rocks so that we could plant flowers around it.

Here's my other little owl who stands guard at the front corner of the house and you can see him welcoming you everyday as you pull in the driveway.

On the other front corner of the house is my wine bottle tree. I think I did a post about this when I first set it up. Many of the bottles are from local Michigan vineyards that are delicious and reasonably priced. Perhaps I'll expand more on that in a future post, as you might be able to find some of these near you!

Around the back of that same corner the wine bottle tree is on, is what we consider a shade garden. We get lots of perennials from my Dad when he splits his and they are the best thriving plants in our garden. All of the plants shown here are from him (I love the ferns)! But, he lives in Wisconsin so it's hard to have access to them all the time. I am just thankful for what I do get.

Speaking of my Dad, he built this birdhouse! It has 4 "homes" in it and I am happy to report it is full this year! I mean really, with the economy the way it is, good shelter is hard to find! Hee. Hee. And it's all about location, location, location - look at how close their bath is! And a feeder is not too far away either! Seriously though, the ground cover in this section needs some work.

Here is another recycled element in our garden - a dog planter! He's now moved to another location, but we got him at the Art Fair in June from a gentleman who made all kinds of cool things out of old metal, tools, and parts.

Here's the entrance to our back door, and we usually plant several of my McCoy pots with annuals. Most of my McCoy collection is inside though. Here you can see the rose garden and basement walk out I talked about before.

Here, Mocha is walking the path from the back door into the yard. Repaving this path is on our wish list. It is river rock set into cement but is so old that all of the rocks are falling out and as you can see it is hard to contain mulch in the beds. Also on the wish list is to have a pergola covering the brick square at the end of this path. Someday, someday.....

And finally, here we are looking up the path from the backside, when my peonies were in bloom! The light in the upstairs window is my bead studio - what a lovely view I have for inspiration!

Being a young, busy couple, it can be hard to maintain the "perfect yard". Thank goodness we don't live in one of those ritzy neighborhoods! We have been here about 7 years now and each year we build more and more on what we have. We already had several mature trees, bushes and plants to work with as well as established landscaped areas. But we have also created our own, new gardens. We have found out what works and what doesn't work for us. Having a lawn that is almost 2 acres, we have made peace with the fact that it is not going to look like a golf course. These pictures were taken in June, when everything was lush and green. But trust me, when it doesn't rain for a few weeks it's not pretty. We just do what is necessary to keep the flowers alive, and don't water the grass. I am looking forward to some solutions in the book about different watering methods.

Many people know our home from growing up in the area and told us the door used to be red. So last year we decided to change the blue that it was back to red for some curb appeal and get red mulch to pull that color out.

I hope you enjoyed this little tour of my garden. I am really looking forward to "digging" into my new book to see what new ideas we can work with. As you can see, we already love recycling old things into our landscape (wine bottles, old fences, pots made out of repurposed things).

And my new ring..... I will cherish it and wear it forever! Thanks Erin!