Although the winter is a beautiful season, we gardeners have to be careful to plan ahead in order to avoid any damage from being done. When I am talking about damage, I mean your garden shed, your plants, flowers and vegetables. I will briefly discuss a few tips that I believe to be of major importance when preparing your garden for the winter.

Firstly, I’d like to talk about your garden shed. It is vital to make sure that you have treated your garden shed (if you have got a wooden garden shed). This ensures that the wood is protected from the humidity of the winter, preventing the wood to rot.

If you have a metal garden shed, there are some things to consider, although metal sheds are known for their low maintenance work. Metal sheds have potentially one big problem called condensation. This occurs when moisture comes into contact with air which is at a lower temperature. This may result in condensation which can damage your shed significantly. In order to prevent this from happening, make sure you have put a damp proof membrane in the foundations. When inserted correctly, you should be fine.

When you have prepared your garden shed for the winter, there are still two other things to keep in mind. If you live in an area that is known for heavy snowfall then I would recommend you to clean all your gardening tools and other expensive equipment from the floor in your garden shed. If you do not do this, the snow might get to it, causing corrosion to your tools. Also, if there has been heavy snowfall and you have a metal shed, make sure you quickly remove the snow from the roof. The reason why I am pointing this out is because ice may cause damage to the roof of your metal shed, so act quickly by removing it before the snow turns into ice.

Lastly, I would like to talk about your plants. You should know which plants need to be covered up during the winter and which plants need to be put inside. If you have any plants that love heat, these obviously need to be moved inside, but please place them somewhere nice with lots of light. Don’t do this too quickly though! I always try to make my plants adjust to the light by gradually increasing the time when they are inside. So first move them inside for only a couple of hours and increase this slowly, until the winter season arrives.

Finally, please be careful with watering your plants. Plants grow significantly slower during the winter months as a result of lower light so only give your plants water when necessary. I hope these tip shave been useful. Enjoy your garden and good luck with the upcoming winter months!

One thing I enjoy about our outdoor space is the bird feeders. It’s fun to sit outside and watch the birds flock to them. Because we now have cats, squirrels are not really a problem when it comes to our bird feeders. In fact, I cannot remember that last time I even saw a squirrel in our yard – but at our old house we did not have cats – and we had trouble with squirrels eating at the bird feeders.

Squirrels can seriously drain a bird feeder. If they aren’t eating the seeds, then they are knocking them out of the feeder. I tried using some Squirrel Away mixed in with the bird feeder. It was mostly cayenne pepper that apparently squirrels hate and birds do not mind since they cannot taste it. I joked that we had Cajun squirrels because they did not seem to mind at all the cayenne pepper. In fact, I caught them at the feeder more.

I decided that if I can’t beat them, then I will feed them. I bought a squirrel feeder and place it away from the bird feeder. I filled it with corn and watched as the squirrels now went for their own food instead of those teeny, tiny seeds. It did seem to help keep them away from the bird feeders. At least the birds had a fighting chance with the squirrels distracted.

Now we have a one true cure for squirrels – cats. I do miss seeing the squirrels scurry across the yard. There are only two things that get our cats moving that fast – the dog and food.

Most of my plants have burnt to death because of the extreme heat. Today I was surveying the damage because in a few weeks I plan on doing some more planting. In one pot, the flower may be gone, but there is a new tenant.

This is a much cuter mushroom than the others that have popped up in the yard. It reminds me of Plants vs. Zombies – it is just very pristine and refine. That makes it stick out in the wasteland that is my flower garden. I love it, so maybe I should just ignore it and it will do fine. If I try to take care of it, the mushroom will be dead in three days.

Today is Earth Day, so I thought I’d share some pictures of the flower gardens at both my house and my mom’s house. We both like to re-purpose items in our flower garden.

This is my homage to college life where cinder blocks and 2x4s make great entertainment centers and/or bookshelves. We had milk crates – which are also pretty awesome and versatile. This also reminds me of the cheap bookshelf you can buy in “The Sims.”

I also re-purposed some salt and pepper shakers that were in storage. They are too cute and now I can enjoy them.



My Mom is way more creative with her re-purposed items.

When pots no longer hold water, then they are perfect for flower pots since they already have a draining hole.



This is my favorite – it’s a flower bed complete with iron headboard.



It’s been a lot of fun playing with the flowers this spring. I’ve done a lot more than I thought I could thanks to re-purposing.

A couple of years ago, my husband made our daughter a sandbox. She played and played in it. Then she was playing less and less in it. Finally the cats begin to take it over as a huge litter box, so a plan was formed to turn it into something else – a flower garden.

It is lovely although I may be partial since I planted a lot of the flowers. My mother loves flowers and so did my grandmother. In fact, my grandmother had a nursery. I am finally developing a love for planting flowers. I learned something today – when transplanting flowers, loosely break up the roots. Don’t completely loosen them up. Who did I learn this from? My daughter. She has probably planted more (with Mamaw) than I have my entire life – so I will follow her advice.

This week I’m not sure what has possessed me, but I have been raking and clearing debris from around our house. I’m actually putting some curb appeal in our yard. Our yard really needs a lot of TLC. Now I’m finally getting around to do something about our yard.

I always said I didn’t have time for yard work. I’m not sure why. I blame it on the kid. Now that she is older and needs me less (*sob*), I really have no excuse. Our yard always reminds me of ‘Malcolm in the Middle’ – barren of anything interesting. Soon that will all change. I’ve got a clean slate to work with. Hopefully this weekend I can buy some flowers and start populating some flower beds.

Today my mom was showing me a plant she bought this past weekend. It’s a citronella plant. I can’t believe I forgot about wanting to plant flowers and such that deter mosquitoes and other pests. So I will need to do a little research to plan my garden. With any luck, we will have be virtually bug-free this summer while having a nice landscape.

It’s that time of year when I sort through all of our summer clothes to pack them up for winter. I keep a few out since even in the winter, around here it can be pretty warm. I do like to pull those ragged t-shirts out of the mix. Usually I just use them for dust rags – although I would love to crochet with some.

My mom was getting her greenhouse ready for winter when I noticed how she recycles t-shirts. She cuts 1-2 inch bands and uses them over the wood beams to hang plants. She does it because it is easier to do that than putting a hook into the wood.

My parents are pretty frugal, so they think of lots of ways to reuse items until they completely fall apart. It’s a good example and has really helped me reuse a lot of items. Next spring I plan on having a small garden and will definitely use old t-shirts to help hang some plants.

Summer is here and so that means there are mosquitoes everywhere. Mosquitoes seem to love us, so we always have a problem with these pesky insects. While I’ve tried remedies before, this year I’ve decided to plant flowers that mosquitoes do not really enjoy. One of those flowers is apparently Marigolds.

I’ve never really liked Marigolds. They really don’t have a nice smell and the yellow flower always reminds me of a Homecoming corsage. But if they deter mosquitoes, then I’m willing to put that aside and give them a try. Best of all, Marigolds are just $1. I have already bought five and plan to buy more. They will be placed all around our deck as well as the kid’s play set. It will be field of yellow but hopefully it will be a mosquito-free zone.

When I was a kid, I tried to plant a piece of cactus. My brother told me that if it grew then I definitely had a green thumb. Sadly the piece didn’t grow and I didn’t earn my literal green thumb as I was hoping to do.

I’ve never been much of a gardener but recently I’ve been very interested in doing more. I planted a few herbs earlier this year that seem to be taken over by weeds. I did also plant some sunflowers in a container. The seeds were a year old, so I wasn’t sure if they would come up at all. After a few weeks, I started to see some progress.

Now about a month has passed and they have really started to grow. It almost looks like they are getting close to blooming.

I’m very excited as this is the first flower I’ve grown from seeds. It’s very encouraging to see it grow and prosper. I try to water early in the morning or in the evening since it’s bad to water flowers in the heat.

I might do some fall planting but will have to do some research on which plants/flowers work best in our climate.

We fight a year long battle with mosquitoes. So since I will soon be planting(April 30th per the Farmer’s Almanac) I’m thinking of adding a few plants that are touted to deter mosquitoes. It would be so nice to enjoy the outdoors this summer without those pesky mosquitoes. Here are a few flowers and herbs that are supposed to naturally repel mosquitoes.

Marigolds are not my favorite flower and wouldn’t normally plant them since they don’t attract butterflies. But if they repel mosquitoes, then marigolds will be all over the place.

Rosemary and Catnip are two herbs I may need to add to my herb garden as they are both said to repel mosquitoes. Plus the Catnip could keep the cat busy and away from the birds.