garden. – Page 4 – q is for quandie

a visit to winterthur.

Published on June 4, 2025June 1, 2025 by Quandie4 Comments

Remember that time I went to Charleston in April to see the azaleas in bloom? And then there was a huge storm the night we arrived that knocked the blooms off most of them?

Well, who would have expected that a trip to Delaware in May would make up for it?

I have to admit, it never even occurred to me that Delaware would be full of azaleas, but welcome to Winterthur.

Winterthur is the creation of Henry Francis du Pont. It includes a massive 175 room house that he built to house his ginormous collection of American decorative arts (over 90,000 items). There’s no way this guy could pretend to be a non-collector 😉

Not only did he collect American decorative arts, he also collected plants including azaleas.

And as you can see, they were in their full glory while we were there.

The ticket for Winterthur includes a 30 minute tram tour of the gardens, so we took advantage of that to get the lay of the land. Afterwards we headed back to explore a few of the areas that I wanted to see up close starting with the Azalea Woods.

They were beautiful and definitely made up for the lack of blooms in Charleston.

The Peony Garden was our next stop. The flowers were just beginning to open, but this single variety was in full glory.

The Quarry Garden was filled with blooming primroses.

It makes me want to add more of these to my own garden, currently I have just one small plant.

Unfortunately they were doing some restoration work in this garden while we were there so we couldn’t get any closer. We had to settle for looking down on it from above.

The Enchanted Woods were a later addition to Winterthur.

This area was added about 20 years ago to encourage more families with children to visit.

I think I preferred the authenticity of the reflecting pool.

Next up was exploring the rest of the area around the house, if you can call a 175-room building ‘a house’.

I was fascinated by this rain water tank, at least I’m guessing that’s what this is.

As you can see, the downspout goes directly into that box so I assume it’s meant for storing rain water. And just check out the concrete lions that are holding up the box. No decorative detail was spared on this functional item.

We also took a self-guided tour inside the house where you can see just a handful of the 175 rooms.

Several of the rooms were decorated with hand-painted wallpaper.

And there were lots of spaces that were simply designed to display collections (because let’s face it, we can’t really call these non-collections can we?).

This room was just for candlesticks.

To be fair, I guess one could say that my own pantry is also mainly just a space for displaying collections 😉

As if the house and gardens weren’t enough, there is also a museum at Winterthur. It’s a small museum, but by the time we got there we were getting pretty worn out so it was lucky there weren’t too many exhibits to see.

I really enjoyed the one called “On Tour: Lafayette, America’s Revolutionary Rock Star“.

I have to admit that I didn’t really know much about Lafayette prior to this trip. Of course, I’d heard the name, and I knew he fought in the Revolutionary War, but that was about it. Check out the link above to learn just a little bit about him and his ‘farewell tour’.

There were also a couple of exhibits in the museum that I found very relatable such as the exhibit about the Dominy’s, a family of skilled woodworkers that made furniture among other things.

This display pointed out all of the details that went into creating this piece of furniture.

There was also an interesting exhibit about furniture restoration. This 17th century cupboard had been significantly altered over time.

The bottom section had been removed to reduce its height so that it would fit in a smaller room. It has now been restored to its original design.

This next piece was once thought to be two separate pieces that had been ‘married’ together, so the two pieces had been separated.

It was only later that the conservators determined that no, these two pieces did belong together.

Another exhibit explored the use of toxic pigments in decorative items such as books, wallpaper and fabrics.

Arsenic was used to create the vibrant green on the items shown above.

In case you haven’t already figured it out, I will warn you that it takes the better part of an entire day to visit Winterthur and see everything there is to see. We never did find the collection of soup tureens that I wanted to see, but in the end we were too worn out to look for them. Luckily there is a cafe with grab-and-go sandwiches and salads, so we were able to get some sustenance before tackling the museum exhibits.

I highly recommend a visit though, I think Winterthur gives Longwood Gardens a run for their money as my favorite place we visited during our recent trip. If you ever are in the Brandywine Valley area be sure to visit both of these!

rolling with the punches.

Published on June 1, 2025May 31, 2025 by Quandie8 Comments

Good morning from the garden!

Are you ever plagued by indecision? Afraid of making the wrong choice, or just unable to make up your mind?

Well, I’ve gone almost 6 years without being able to decide what tree to put in our front yard, or really even whether or not I wanted to plant a tree again.

Let’s recap.

When we moved into our house 35 years ago or so, there were two trees in the front yard. A maple to the right, and a black walnut to the left. My sister was visiting the summer that the maple came down. We were sitting on the front enclosed porch watching a storm roll in when it came crashing down. Lesson learned; when the warning sirens go off, take shelter in the basement or at least an interior room.

The tree missed our house, but it was a close one.

Back then we ended up also removing the black walnut (it was not a great tree, dropping those huge walnuts all over the yard) when we had the fallen maple cleaned up.

I replaced that maple with a 2nd maple, and the walnut with a flowering pear tree. Here is a photo taken in autumn when the maple had its fall color.

I loved that tree.

Flash forward to 2019. The maple was looking really good and finally serving its purpose of providing some shelter from both street noise and from the street light directly across from our bedroom windows.

Then another storm took out maple no. 2.

Ugh!

Once again, I chose to have the pear tree taken down when the maple got cleaned up. It had gotten rather misshapen next to the maple and it didn’t look good on its own. You can sort of see that it was mostly bare on the right side of it in the photo above.

Then came five years of being unable to decide what to do next. I really wanted to plant a Princeton Gold Maple.

I love that bright lime green color.

But did I really want to put yet another maple in that spot?

I thought about doing a Honey Locust instead. It has a similar golden color, plus the added benefit of tiny leaves that don’t really need to be raked up in the fall. But I just couldn’t pull the trigger on it.

I finally decided that I would just take a chance on another maple, so I started looking around for the Princeton Gold. I found one at Abrahamson’s Nursery two years ago, but the price tag was $250. Yikes! That seemed a bit much for a tree.

So once again, I put off making a decision.

However, the other day I headed over to Fleet Farm to see what they had in their plant section and lo and behold, there was my Princeton Gold Maple … and only $149. I bought it on the spot, even though that meant putting the top down on my VW Bug convertible and very carefully driving home with a tree sticking up out of my car.

Will it be three time’s the charm, or three strikes and you’re out? I guess time will tell. But at least I’ve made a choice!

In other garden news, I’ve started filling in the some of the bare spots in my garden that were the result of winter kill.

I lost three brunnera next to the potting shed, and I’ve replaced them with Heucherella ‘Pink Revolution’.

I lost my ‘Rozanne’ perennial geranium, or Cranesbill, under the ‘Limelight’ hydrangeas, and I liked those so much that I replaced them with more of the same. Last year these bloomed all summer and up until the first freeze for me.

Then I addressed the large dead spot next to the front porch. I started by replacing the ‘Sun King’ Japanese Spikenard.

Then I added three ‘White Diamonds’ fern leaf bleeding hearts.

They have a lovely blue green foliage and white flowers. Fern leaf bleeding hearts like partial shade, and this spot is what I would consider full shade. But I have another fern leaf bleeding heart in this area and it has done really well in this amount of shade. It’s one of the first things to bloom in spring and then it keeps blooming all summer.

I’m hoping the white ones do as well.

I also added in some ‘Unique Ruby Red’ astilbe just behind the fern leaf bleeding heart.

Up until this year I had a white astilbe in this spot that was loving its life. So hopefully this replacement will thrive, and hopefully we won’t have another killer winter for a few years.

Last up, I replaced the hostas that didn’t come back with some freebies from my neighbor nnK’s mom’s garden. Judy was kind enough to tell me that I could divide any of her hostas and help myself to the divisions.

I started with this pretty little one with rounded leaves.

And I also chose this one that is a little bit larger and had pointed leaves and a bit more variegation.

So, how about some progression shots?

Here is how this space looked last summer.

So fab!

And then nearly every one of those plants died over the winter with the exception of the ‘Stiletto’ hosta that you can’t actually see in the photo above because it’s behind a larger hosta.

Here’s how this space looked a week or two ago.

So sad!

I just don’t know what happened here. As I’ve mentioned before, I do have jumping worms in my garden. So it’s possible this is jumping worm damage. However, this spot wasn’t particularly loaded with the worms last summer. I definitely had other spots in the garden that were worse, and they are doing fine this spring. Thank god all of my gardens don’t look this bad!

And here is how it looks now.

By the way, all of those extra pops of pink are impatiens. I decided to fill in with some annuals this year since the perennials are not going to fill out for at least a couple of years.

You may also have noticed that I am using cocoa bean shells as mulch here. I read that there is anecdotal evidence that jumping worms don’t like them, so I’m giving them a try. I’ll report back at the end of the summer with any results I notice.

In the meantime, today’s gardening lesson? You have to be able to roll with the punches. You just never know when Mother Nature is going to take you down. You just have to dust yourself off and start over again sometimes, right?

vintage garden style.

Published on May 29, 2025May 30, 2025 by Quandie5 Comments

I recently picked up a copy of Better Homes & Garden’s Vintage Garden Style magazine at the supermarket.

This is one of those special publication re-print sort of magazines, ‘back by popular demand’. Which tells me that people still love vintage garden stuff as much as I do.

As I’ve been getting ready for the Carriage House Sale (which starts tonight!), I realized that ‘Vintage Garden Market’ is definitely the theme of our sale.

We have quite a few items from the various categories featured in the magazine starting with watering cans.

This first one is a no-brainer. Of course we have vintage watering cans …

and some that are maybe not so vintage.

Next up, vintage enamelware.

Yep, we’ve got this too.

The article in the magazine on collecting (or non-collecting in my case) vintage garden books really struck a chord with me.

There were so many lovely books featured. Now I’m tempted to be on the lookout for vintage garden books myself.

And Sue brought a few for the sale.

We’ve got a few newer garden books too!

There was also a feature in the magazine on filling unique vintage items with succulents.

We have quite a few wooden totes like the one shown above that you could fill, plus any number of other vintage pieces that would be perfect as succulent planters.

For example, I’ve decided to sell on my antique newspaper roller that I used to plant with succulents myself.

I loved the look of the succulents in rusty iron urns shown in the magazine …

And I just happen to have a very similar faux rusty urn for sale …

along with a bunch of other rusty pieces of salvage for the garden like these old iron headboards.

I also am selling this rusty lady …

Remember when I purchased her in bright white?

Doesn’t she look so much better rusty?

FYI, I use the Dixie Belle Iron Patina Paint with the Green Spray to achieve that rusty look.

There’s another fun article in the magazine about giving an old structure a new life as a potting shed.

While I don’t actually have an old shed for sale, I do have one in my back garden and if you come to the sale you are welcome to pop your head in and check it out.

I recently recovered the seat of my wicker chair with some gorgeous vintage bark cloth that I purchased at my friend Lisa’s sale (one of these days I really have to share her sale with you).

Not that I didn’t love the bark cloth that was previously on the chair, but I needed to scavenge that for a chair that I am including in my sale.

The florals on it were perfect with the Miss Mustard Seed Apron Strings milk paint color on the chair.

By the way, there are three different shades of pink in that photo from three different brands. The chair is in the Apron Strings (read about that original makeover here), the French flower bucket is in Dixie Belle’s Apricot (read about that project here), and the oval lidded tin on top of the box is painted in Fusion’s Little Piggy (read about that paint job here).

We’ve got a slightly bigger selection of pink/floral items this year. I feel like the floral trend is coming back around, what do you think?

Although this next article doesn’t specifically pertain to items at our sale, I still thought it was worth a mention.

It features 7 tips about shopping at a vintage market and the photos are all from the Oronoco Gold Rush held at the end of August about an hour south of the Twin Cities. I’m sure that most of my local readers have been, right?

I suppose some of the tips might apply to my sale, especially tip no. 6. Love it? Buy It Now! Because if you don’t grab it quick, someone else will.

As I mentioned, the sale starts tonight from 5 pm to 8 pm. We’ll also be open tomorrow morning from 9 am until the noon whistle sounds in North St. Paul.

We are accepting Venmo and Cash only.

Hope to see you local readers there!

another rainy garden tour.

Published on May 25, 2025May 24, 2025 by Quandie9 Comments

Good morning from the garden!

Or maybe I should say good morning from a garden, because this garden is not my own. Today I’m sharing Longwood Gardens located in Kennett Square, Pennsylvania.

As you’ll soon be able to see, we visited Longwood Gardens on a rather rainy day on our recent trip to the Brandywine Valley. But you know what? I actually don’t mind visiting a garden in the rain. It was raining during my visit to de Hortus in Amsterdam, and during my visit to the Munsinger and Clemens Gardens in St. Cloud. I think you can get some of the prettiest garden photos on a rainy day.

So … Longwood Gardens … have you heard of them?

USA Today recently named them the no. 1 best botanical garden in the U.S. Consisting of more than 1,100 acres, Longwood has pretty much everything you’d want to find in a botanical garden. The map shows 32 ‘districts’ including a cascade garden, a bonsai courtyard, an Italian water garden, a meadow garden, a rose garden, the oak & conifer knoll, and the topiary garden shown above plus more.

The land that Longwood Gardens sits on was originally purchased by a Quaker farmer in 1700. In 1798 his grandsons began planting an arboretum. Their heirs weren’t interested in the project though and over the next 100 years the arboretum was allowed to deteriorate. Then in 1906 Pierre du Pont purchased the property to save the trees from a lumber mill that had been contracted to remove them.

The Flower Garden Walk was du Pont’s first addition to the arboretum.

I loved the way the flowers are grouped by color in this area.

I think my favorite is the purple section.

I’ve always thought it would be fun to try something like this in my own garden, but I’m not sure I could pull it off.

In 1929, du Pont added a 61′ tall carillon, or chimes tower.

It has had a variety of different bells over the years, but it has been kept in running order and it was lovely to hear it chime out throughout the garden.

I took so many photos, and there was so much to see. I don’t want to bore you guys with a million garden pics, so maybe I can just share the highlights.

There is a ginormous conservatory and this next photo might give you some indication of just how large it is.

It’s filled with beautiful things.

All of that pink? That’s hydrangeas!

I sure do wish I could get these kind of results with a macrophylla hydrangea, but they really don’t like our cold weather.

They also had a beautiful display of blue ones too.

In case you are wondering, that tall purple flower behind the hydrangeas is a Canterbury Bell.

That’s another plant that I’ve never had much luck growing. It’s a biennial, and I just don’t have the patience for a plant that takes two years to bloom and then dies. Same with foxgloves.

The perfectly round globe shaped hanging planters in the conservatory were gorgeous.

This is the sort of thing you can do if money is no object, and you happen to have a greenhouse to grow them in.

Beautiful to see, but hard to emulate in real life.

There was also a fern wall in the conservatory …

and a children’s garden …

and an orchid room.

There were so many beautiful orchids (I thought of you when I saw this room Monica!).

There was a bonsai display tucked just behind the conservatory.

Some of the bonsai were 80 to 100 years old. I can’t imagine the skill it takes to create these beautiful pieces of plant art.

I’ve saved the most spectacular aspect of Longwood Gardens for the end and that’s the fountains.

Remember the fountain show at the Bellagio in Las Vegas that I shared a few weeks back?

Well, the fountain show at Longwood is about 10 times more spectacular.

Unfortunately, I didn’t actually get any photos of the ‘show’ where the fountains dance to music. By the time we got to that part of our day I was a bit worn out (we spent nearly six hours exploring Longwood), and the rain had decided to come down a bit harder just at that moment. My photos above show the basic fountains while they aren’t ‘performing’.

So I guess you will just have to head to Longwood Gardens yourself to see the fountains dance. It is definitely worth the trip.

Have any of you been there? If so, what was your favorite district? Or do you have a botanical garden to recommend near you? Leave a comment and let me know.

the flower market tote.

Published on May 23, 2025May 21, 2025 by Quandie9 Comments

Remember the wood tote that I picked up while garage saling a couple of weeks ago?

Well, I’ve given it a quick makeover.

I started by cleaning it well. While doing that I noticed that there was some sort of oily looking stain on the inside bottom of the tote. So I gave just that bottom two coats of Dixie Belle’s Bonding Boss, just in case that stain wanted to bleed through my paint.

After letting that dry for 24 hours, I painted the inside of the tote in Dixie Belle’s Kudzu.

And so far, so good. No oily bleed thru.

Next I painted the outside in their Drop Cloth. Once that dried, I taped off some grain sack style stripes and painted those in the Kudzu.

I followed that up with adding just a portion of Dixie Belle’s Flower Market stencil.

Here’s the full stencil …

I taped off everything except the “Flower Market” wording for my tote.

I then gave the entire tote a vigorous sanding to age it up a bit. I finished it all off with a coat of Dixie Belle’s Big Mama’s Butta in the Fresh & Clean scent. If you haven’t tried this product, I describe it as halfway between hemp oil and wax. It comes in 5 different scents, plus an unscented version. I think I like the Orange Grove the most. The Fresh & Clean is a little bit more subtle, and … well … fresh and clean smelling.

Next up I filled the tote with a load of lilacs.

I came home from the Brandywine Valley to find my lilacs in full bloom, and since then we’ve been having very cool weather (as low as 38° one night this week) so the blooms are sticking around a bit longer than usual which is nice.

Those purple lilacs are the Albert F. Holden variety, FYI.

But you wouldn’t have to fill the tote with flowers. You could display lots of things inside, like pretty china and a lovely vintage floral tablecloth.

or maybe some books.

Speaking of books, I am planning to include ‘a year at Brandywine Cottage’ in an upcoming giveaway.

I just need to get that pulled together. Some of you may know that I used to always bring something home from my travels to give away here on the blog. But I looked back and I haven’t done that since my Amsterdam trip back in 2023.

I’m really slipping, and time is flying by so fast!

But, stay tuned. At the conclusion of my posts about our trip to the Brandywine Valley I will have a giveaway that includes that book.

As far as the tote is concerned, I’ve put it in the pile of merch that I’m gathering for my upcoming occasional sale. And that’s coming up awfully quickly as well!

If you’re local, be sure to save the date!

a disappointing spring?

Published on May 18, 2025May 16, 2025 by Quandie7 Comments

Good morning from the garden!

As you may remember, last year’s gardening season ended on a bit of a low note.

First of all, I discovered that I had jumping worms, and secondly, my neighbor removed a huge, glorious shade tree and now my back garden feels like it’s baking in the sun (#stillnotoverit).

It probably hasn’t helped matters that I just returned from a trip to visit some of the most spectacular gardens in the U.S. (more on those visits in future Sunday posts) only to find that my own gardens are a hot mess. Apparently we had a freak heat wave while I was gone that encouraged the weeds to completely take over while I wasn’t looking.

In addition to all of that, I seem to have lost quite a few plants over the winter. It seems that little to no snow cover and sub-zero temps combined to create a winter that was quite hard on gardens. According to the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources, the frost line was deeper in 2025 than any year since 2019. Here in Minnesota we need that snow to protect our plants from the cold and we just didn’t get enough of it last winter.

All of these factors have contributed to what has been a rather disappointing spring in my garden.

Most of the perennials that I planted last year have bit the dust including a Lemon Meringue baptisia, a hosta Wu-La-La, a couple of azaleas, several Queen of Hearts brunnera, a Rozanne cranesbill, and some Japanese Forest Grass. Although I have to point out that the azaleas and the forest grass were iffy propositions in our climate in a good year, so it’s not surprising that they didn’t make it.

But I also lost some things that had been in my garden for years. One of the biggest losses was my lamium.

I had a lot of this ground cover in both my hosta garden and the front garden. In the past it has been semi-evergreen, meaning it would retain some of it’s leaves through the winter. As the snow would melt in the spring it would reveal mostly intact plants that were even still a bit green.

This spring there is little sign of it. The arrow in the photo below is pointing to one tiny sprout that has managed to survive.

I’m not entirely sure if this loss is a result of the winter, or from the jumping worms, or maybe a combination of both. However, my neighbor nnK belongs to a local Facebook garden group, and apparently many of the members are complaining about having lost ground covers in particular this past winter. So I’m hoping it’s that. Otherwise, I have little hope for replacements surviving in the future.

I’ve also lost a good bit of my ajuga, although it’s trying to come back. Last year it was finally filling in …

And now it’s quite sparse and barely blooming.

I’ve also lost my gorgeous Aralia cordata, or ‘Sun King’ Golden Japanese Spikenard.

This would have been its 3rd year in my garden. I may also have lost some of those hostas around it. In fact, I’m quite baffled by this spot …

As you can see, it looks quite decimated. I’m taking a wait and see approach for now, maybe those hostas are still going to come up? Fingers crossed.

Either way, I’ve already purchased a replacement for the aralia, and FYI, I found it at Home Depot. So this plant is definitely more readily available than it was when I first planted it.

Alright, enough of this dismal reporting on garden failures. Let’s look on the bright side.

My Pagoda Dogwood looks great this spring.

I planted it back in 2022, so this will be its fourth season. It’s finally tall enough to really see it above the tops of all of those ferns, so I’m very relieved that it came through the winter.

I’m also happy to see that my lilacs are full of blooms right now.

If you’ve followed me for long, you know that I’ve really struggled with this lilac hedge.

I started out planting all hybrids with gorgeous flowers, and they never took off. I eventually had to replace all of them. I replaced two of them with the Common Lilac, and those have grown like gangbusters. They are over 15′ tall, and they are blooming like mad. They had a bad case of leaf spot fungus at the end of last summer, so I wasn’t sure if that would affect the spring blooms but apparently it didn’t.

Unfortunately, their flowers are just a bit blah. So I succumbed to temptation and added a few more hybrids on either end of the hedge a couple of years ago. Just look at how much prettier the flowers are …

But the hybrids continue to look more straggly overall compared to the Common Lilac and I’m just not sure they are going to fill in enough to provide a screen from the unsightly neighbor’s fishing boat storage area behind us.

I’m incredibly relieved to find that all of the new Quick Fire Fab hydrangeas that I planted to create a hedge have survived. Especially since I didn’t plant them until August of last year, so they didn’t have a lot of time to establish. I also underplanted them with some muscari and daffodils, and they look great.

That is Muscari Valerie Finnis, isn’t it the loveliest pale blue color?

The daffodils are an all white variety called Trumpet Mount Hood.

I’m hoping that both of these naturalize (ie. multiply) and fill in all of the space under the hedge eventually.

This area is sunny enough now that the bulbs should do well from year to year.

I’m slowly starting to get over my dismay at the number of plants that didn’t make it this year. On the bright side, this gives me an opportunity to get some new plants, right?

And as for the jumping worms, I’m going to have to learn what works and what doesn’t going forward. Leaf mulch is definitely out, but I recently read that using cocoa bean mulch might be a good option. I used to use cocoa bean mulch all the time, but it is difficult to find around here. Also, FYI, it is highly toxic to dogs, so if you have a dog that likes to munch on stuff in the garden you definitely don’t want to try it. Another study suggested that slug bait might work to help control the jumping worms. Some of you might remember that I had to give up using slug bait because our cat liked to eat it, but now that she’s gone (#stillnotoverit) I can go back to using it.

How about you? How has your spring been so far? Did you have many plant losses over the winter? Are you dealing with jumping worms? Leave a comment and let me know!

you win some, you lose some.

Published on May 4, 2025May 3, 2025 by Quandie4 Comments

Good morning from the garden!

My gardens are slowly but surely starting to wake up for spring, but while I wait for that to happen I thought I’d report back on some of my over-wintering experiments starting with those gorgeous rex begonias.

You may remember that I planted two different varieties of rex begonia in my front window box last year. I think you can get a feel for how small they were when I purchased them in this next photo from last May.

I really wasn’t sure whether or not they would do well for me in that north facing window box, but as it turned out they loved it there.

Last fall I decided that they were too fabulous to just discard, so I potted them up to see if I could save them indoors over the winter.

I also took some cuttings to root in water.

Both cuttings developed nice roots within a couple of weeks, and ultimately I potted them on for winter.

In the end, one of them dried up once it was in the soil, but the other one continued to live. I wouldn’t exactly say it thrived over the winter though. It was basically a single leaf sticking out of a pot of soil for the bulk of the winter and I did not have high hopes for it. But then, earlier this spring, I noticed that there was some growth sprouting out of the base of that single leaf.

And then a week or so later I noticed that there was also new growth coming from the soil too.

Eureka! It lives!

Now I kinda wish I’d started more new plants from cuttings. But that being said, the two original plants also did well over the winter.

I may have lost a little bit of bulk, but I’m sure that as soon as I get them outside they are going to take off again this year.

I think I will give both of these a little hair cut and see if I can root up a few more cutting before planting these out in mid-May.

Since I typically spend around $200 on annuals to fill that front window box, it would be nice to save some of that money by keeping rex begonias going from year to year.

That brings me to my 2nd overwintering experiment, the succulents.

As you may remember, I planted an antique newspaper roller with succulents two years ago.

I overwintered them in the roller the first winter, but it took up quite a bit of space in my window sill, and it leaked all over when I watered it. That’s OK for an outside planter, but not so great on a window sill.

So last fall I decided to pull the succulents out of the newspaper roller and put them all in a pot together.

I placed the pot in a south facing window for the winter, and here is how it looks now.

As you can see, not everything made it. Particularly that lime green sedum in the front, and that one succulent on the right. But other things really thrived, like that rather spindly sort of succulent in the back right.

I don’t plan to put these back in the newspaper roller this year. I never really did have a good spot for displaying it. We’ll see what I can come up with for a unique succulent planter this year.

Finally, that brings me to my massive over-winter gardening failure, the bulb lasagna.

If you’ll remember, I found some half price bulbs at Home Depot quite late in the season last year. Too late to plant them outside really, so I decided to try planting a bulb lasagna.

I filled two pots with a couple of layers of different spring blooming bulbs.

After watering them in, I placed the pots on my front three-season porch and I wrapped them in blankets. I set a reminder on my calendar to give them just a little water once a month so they didn’t dry out completely. Then as the weather started warming up this spring I uncovered them and set them in a sunny spot indoors.

And …

Nothing.

So I waited. One week. Two weeks. Three weeks. Still, nothing.

So I thought maybe they had to be outside at this point and I put them on the deck.

Still nothing.

So I decided to dig into the soil to see if I could find the bulbs and sure enough I found a bunch of rotted bulbs.

In hindsight, the porch must not have been a suitable location for them. It probably got far too cold even though I’d protected them with blankets. Or maybe I gave them too much water (although I really did only give them a very small amount).

Regardless, it was rather disappointing to get zero results. Maybe a bulb lasagna just isn’t for me.

How about you? Have you tried growing bulbs in pots? Did you have success? Have you got any tips to share? If so, be sure to leave a comment.

desert gardens.

Published on April 27, 2025April 23, 2025 by Quandie5 Comments

Good morning from the garden!

I’m so happy that gardening season is nearly upon us. Here in Minnesota there is only so much we can do this early in the season, but I’ve pruned my hydrangeas and I’ve top dressed my gardens with some Espoma Plant Tone. Now I just have to wait until after our last average frost date to start planting my annuals which is usually around mid-May.

My scilla are up and blooming …

but that’s about it.

But to tide my garden loving readers over until spring has truly sprung for us, I thought I’d share a couple of gardens that I saw on my recent visit to Las Vegas starting with the Ethel M Botanical Cactus Garden.

If you aren’t familiar, Ethel M Chocolates has a factory in Henderson, Nevada (which is the suburb that my mom lives in). It’s around 10 miles away from the Las Vegas strip, so if you are visiting Las Vegas without a car, it won’t be practical to get to.

But if you do have a car, it’s definitely worth a visit. Especially if you’re planning to drive out to Hoover Dam since it wouldn’t be too far out of your way to stop here too.

I recommend visiting in the spring when quite a few of the cacti are blooming, but it is pretty all year ’round.

I used to think that desert landscapes were boring, but spending so much time out visiting my mom since I’ve retired is helping me gain a new appreciation for them.

Entrance to the gardens is free, as is entrance into the factory where you can see how they make their chocolates. You can also purchase chocolates in their gift shop, but I’ll warn you, they aren’t cheap. A box of 24 chocolates will run you around $55.

I’m not a huge chocolate lover, give me a bakery item over a chocolate any day, so I tend to not buy anything when we visit. The garden is well worth a visit whether you love chocolate or not though.

One of the most unique things in the garden are the saguaro skeletons.

Have you heard of these? They are the dried out ‘ribs’ of the saguaro cactus that remain after it has died. They are highly valued for their unique sculptural look. I think they are a little bit spooky, but still quite beautiful.

Now for a completely different look, let’s head to garden number two.

As I mentioned last week, we stayed one night at the Bellagio on the strip last week. I mainly picked this hotel and casino because I wanted to visit its conservatory.

Now, you don’t have to stay at the Bellagio to see the Conservatory, anyone can walk in. That being said, it was massively crowded from about 10 a.m. onward. By the afternoon it was literally wall to wall people. But I got up at 6 a.m. to pop down there and see it before the crowds descended.

It certainly is a beautiful display, but it was fairly obvious that not all of the ‘flowers’ are real. Certainly that purple vine was artificial.

It reminded me quite a bit of the Flower & Garden Festival at Disney’s EPCOT where they also add artificial plants to create specific looks that would be next to impossible to maintain with real plants.

That being said, there are quite a lot of real flowers to admire as well including lots of spring blooming bulbs like these hyacinths …

and plenty of tulips.

They completely change up the display with the seasons, and it takes them about a week to switch it up during which time the conservatory is closed. So if you’re planning a trip to Vegas, be sure to check the Bellagio website for the dates the conservatory will be closed. For this year those dates are 5/18/2025 thru 5/23/2025, 8/24/2025 thru 8/29/2025 and 11/9/2025 thru 11/14/2025.

The Bellagio Conservatory is definitely worth a visit if you’re going to be on the strip anyway, but I’d definitely try to time your visit for the very early morning. I’m not sure it would be worth battling the crowds later in the day.

It will probably be several weeks before I have anything of interest to share from my own gardens, but not to worry, Mr. Q and I are heading out east in a week or two and I’ll be visiting both Longwood Gardens and Chanticleer Garden. I’m looking forward to sharing both of those with you soon so be sure to stay tuned!

the year in review.

Published on December 31, 2024December 29, 2024 by Quandie15 Comments

Happy New Year!

At the close of each year I typically like to put together a blog post sort of summarizing the year.

Unfortunately, I suspect that it comes across as one of those annoying holiday letters that some people send out. You know, the ones where they talk about all of the trips they went on, and how great their kids are doing, and how much they love their new winter place in Aspen.

You know what I mean, right?

But in all honesty, this particular blog post is more for me than for you.

I like to have a summary of the year to look back on later. I often go back and read previous year’s posts to remind myself of things that I have done from year to year. There is a common theme to all of these year end review posts; that I feel like I haven’t really accomplished much this year, but discover upon review that I actually have.

So if you’re annoyed by those holiday letters you may want to stop reading here and just come back later in the week for a less boring post.

But if you’re sticking with me, let’s review 2024 starting with the elephant in the room … a.k.a. furniture painting. Yep, in the beginning this blog was mainly about furniture painting. But I have been moving away from that for a while now. I did do a few furniture pieces in 2024 though.

Well, OK, literally just a few … or well … like maybe 4.

I’ll admit, I mainly did this one because I wanted to use that gorgeous transfer from I.O.D.

I did a couple of other very simple makeovers of pieces that I found really cheap (and/or free) at garage sales, like this bookcase.

But overall 2024 was not the year for furniture makeovers for me, unless you count the miniature ones.

I have been having way too much fun with those.

There is much less heavy lifting involved in painting dollhouse furniture.

I also retrieved my dollhouse from the in-laws, and gave it a makeover on the outside (plan to see more of the inside in 2025).

Once again, 2024 saw lots of toolbox refurbs with the northern grown toolbox being one of my favorites.

I also really loved how the duchesse’s toolbox turned out.

And just to prove I don’t always paint everything in Dixie Belle’s Drop Cloth, I went green with the st. patty’s toolbox.

I have to admit, 2024 wasn’t a spectacular year for garage sale finds.

I did bring home a few goodies here and there though, including this haul from the Tangletown sales.

That little mirrored cupboard was one of my favorite makeovers in 2024.

And remember this guy from the Bryn Mawr sales?

He was an awesome find.

But speaking of sales, 2024 saw the return of the Carriage House Sale!

That was a biggie. It had been 8 years since my last sale.

It went rather well, so I’m tentatively planning to have another sale in 2025. This time I want to schedule it a little earlier in the season, late May possibly. Don’t hold me to that though, we’ll have to see whether or not I can find enough inventory by then.

I did manage a few home improvement projects in 2024 starting with redecorating the q branch.

In May, I painted the shed …

and the fence.

I’m still quite happy with my decision to go with a black stain on the fence. It does exactly what I want it to do, which is recede into the background and become nearly unnoticeable.

It was lucky that I got both of those projects done early in the season, because the summer ended up being so rainy that I was barely able to find three sunny days in a row to recoat the sealer on our deck.

On a rainy morning in July I finally got around to painting the sections of wall in the dining room that I’d stripped the wallpaper from more than a year ago.

Speaking of all that rain, 2024 ended up being a tough year in the garden. It started out great. Things were looking really good.

I initially thought the rain was a good thing for my plants.

I never had to water anything.

But then there was a hail storm.

It did a fair amount of damage, especially to the hostas.

Then the wet weather started to cause other problems like the leaf spot fungus on my lilacs, and a massive earwig infestation on the hostas.

The super wet summer also led to a jumping worm population explosion that I’m going to have to figure out how to control going forward.

And then there was the loss of my neighbor/handyman Ken’s tree.

I’m not gonna lie, I’m struggling with this one. I can totally blame this loss on the rain as well. We had numerous storms that led to trees coming down all over in our area, and Ken was worried that his tree would be next. So he had it cut down instead.

I’m still not over it, and I don’t want to talk about it so let’s move on.

It did lead to me planting a hedge of Quick Fire Fab hydrangeas though, so it will be fun to see how that turns out (hopefully better than my lilac hedge).

Although I did manage to go on a few trips in 2024, they were mostly repeats. My sister and I went to Disneyworld for the Festival of the Arts back in February.

I visited my mom in Las Vegas in March, but didn’t find anything fabulous at her local Goodwill.

Then I went back again in April with my sister …

and again in October with both my sister and my niece when the three of us also took a side trip to Disneyland.

And we visited the Clark Co. Museum for the first time.

Finally, I also went to Mexico with my neighbor nnK’s family in early December.

Mr. Q and I plan to visit a couple of places that are new to us in 2025, so be sure to stay tuned for that later in the year.

Once again writing this annual post has reminded me that I did get a few things done in 2024.

I totally recommend this exercise for all of you too. Rather than making a list of New Year’s Resolutions for 2025, take some time to acknowledge the things you’ve already accomplished. Just get out a pad of paper and make a list of everything you got done in 2024. You might also be surprised to see just how long that list is.

a tropical morning walk.

Published on December 15, 2024December 14, 2024 by Quandie4 Comments

Good morning from the garden. Well, sort of.

This morning I thought I would share a few of the tropical flowers I came across while in Puerto Vallarta a week ago, like this one …

Is that a Bird of Paradise? I believe it is, but I’m used to seeing the variety that has a purple and orange flower, and this one is red and orange instead.

As I mentioned last week, my sister was invited along on the trip to Mexico that we took with my neighbor nnK’s family this year. It was nice having her along because she is more of a morning person. We got up early every morning and took a walk around the neighborhood before everyone else got up for breakfast.

We saw lots of lovely flowers during our walks, like this pretty pink one.

I’m pretty sure that’s a bougainvillea, but I’d never seen one in that color before.

I’m used to the white ones, or the typical bright magenta colored ones.

I think if I was planning my own tropical garden I’d go for the more subtle pale pink variety.

I saw a few hibiscus, which I think of a classic tropical flower.

When I first started gardening in Minnesota, it was hard to find hibiscus hardy enough for our climate. I did a little research online while writing this post and discovered that a hibiscus hardy to zone 5 was developed in the 1950’s, and a grower in Japan started hybridizing other hardy hibiscus in the 70’s and 80’s. These days you can find lots of options for hibiscus that are hardy to zone 4, including the Summerific line from Proven Winners.

Personally I find them too tropical looking for my cottage style garden, so I’ve never been tempted to grow them.

I wouldn’t classify all of the plants I saw in Mexico as tropical, for example there were these gorgeous blue hydrangeas.

I’m fairly sure that those plants are just temporarily tucked into that flower bed though. They were probably forced to bloom in a greenhouse, and when the blooms are done, they’ll pull them out and put something else in that spot.

I saw quite a few flowers that I didn’t recognize at all, like this pretty little one.

The flower has an orchid-like appearance, but it’s growing on a vine. Aside from a variety of orchid that grows on a vine and has yellow flowers, I couldn’t find any info online about any other vining orchids. Maybe you know what this flower is? If so, leave me a comment.

I also had no idea what this next flower was, but that combination of red and white petals really caught my eye.

So I did a bit of googling and I think it’s a Bleeding Heart Vine, or Clerodendrum thomsoniae. It’s only hardy to zone 9, so it won’t be making its way into my garden any time soon.

I also saw some old favorites of mine at our resort including the Blue Sky Vine, or Thunbergia grandiflora.