Beautiful Christmas Green!

Dear Friends,

Happy first day of a brand new week! Let’s get this week off to a festive, fun and inspiring start, shall we! It is already starting to look alot like Christmas at our home! Big Elf (a.k.a. husband) helped me yesterday on a record-breaking day for cold (-10.7 Celsius) to festively festoon our front door with fresh foliage! I know! That’s a mouthful!

Despite the bitter cold, we felt energized by the job! We spent the entire afternoon decking the outside of the house and the hours just flew by! I love this time of year, readying for the approaching holidays.

The tea’s ready! (hope you like Earl Grey). Clasp your hands around your cuppa to keep warm and let’s go outside to see the progress so far, shall we…

I started with our never-ending garden planters and window boxes last weekend, trying to cram in all the cedar and fir and ivy clippings I could gather before we got a solid frost to save me from having to run back and forth the house with a steaming kettle, like a mad woman, pouring hot water over the soil in attempts to soften it up just enough to stick in a few branches and fashion them into something that resembles a ‘design’. Luckily, I pretty much had them completed before the freezing weather came upon us.

I just LOVE the welcoming planters that dot our front walkway and deck in nod to the season!  In fact, I’ve decided they please me as much as when they’re filled with summertime blooms!

Contents include a wonderful aromatic mix of cedar, pine, fir, magnolia and berried juniper purchased from garden centres and grocery stores, combined with homegrown clippings of boxwood, perennial ivy, euonymous, ornamental cabbage, seedpods, twigs and bare branches and, of course, pinecones large and small. Oh, and a few birdhouses and abandoned nests, obelisks, fresh pineapple and apples and even some garden statuary thrown in for good measure! The possibilities are, indeed, endless! I am limited merely by lack of time and shortened hours of daylight! Sigh.

Seasonal garden planters bring an incredible note of warmth and welcoming to an otherwise ordinary front entry, don’t you think!  

And, remember to put your garden accessories to work in the off season! Why not!  Birdbaths, birdhouses and birdcages, benches and wagons, vintage lanterns, snowshoes, skates, sleds and even horse hames (I’ve used them all through the years) help create joyful vignettes that will delight young and old alike.

I’m thrilled you took time out of your busy day to stop by and share.  Come back soon and I’ll share how I turned my garden obelisk into a Christmas tree!

Wishing you a beautiful day,

Linda

“Bloom Boxes” on my upper deck look great year round planted with easy everlastings: mini cedar trees, mini boxwood and perennial English ivy (translation: no deadheading ever — “The Gin and Tonic Gardener “style- a reference to a Canadian best seller by Janice Wells). I simply push into the soil a few sprigs of pine, fir and cedar at Christmastime. Easy peasy!

I’m thrilled to be joining the party at Inspiration Monday, Make It Pretty Monday, Metamorphosis Monday, Tea Time Tuesday, The Scoop, What We Accomplished Wednesday  Wordless Wednesday, What’s It Wednesday, Cottage Style Party, Friends Sharing Tea, Home and Garden Thursday, Open House Thursday, Show and Tell Friday, Feathered Nest Friday, Home Sweet Home, What To Do Weekends, The Homemaking Party, Christmas Extravaganza, Saturday Show Off , Pink Saturday, Be Inspired and Seasonal Sunday.

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