The Fairy Garden

There we all were last night, at J and J's house... enjoying dessert after a game of croquet. (Yes, croquet. We live in a country bubble out here, what can I tell you.)

The ladies were discussing gardens and gardening, and I announced that I had given up trying to make pretty flowers thrive and bloom in the flowerbeds for the first half of the summer, only to see them wither and die during the second (and hottest) half of the summer. I told them that the only thing blooming at the moment in my garden were the weeds that have grown in the vintage tub that is sitting out in the backyard, courtesy of the original owners of this house. (The wife was an expert gardener who had more garden sense in her little finger than I have in my entire body.)

I planted petunias in that garden tub last year... and spent weeks and weeks keeping them watered and healthy. Then the temperatures went over 100 and stayed there for weeks and weeks... and the petunias went to that big Flower Cloud up in the sky. So this year, no more flowers in that tub. Besides, the weeds had grown up in layers, they were all green, and they looked quite pretty. (Okay, maybe not pretty, but certainly tolerable.)

My friend JS said to me "Why don't you make a Fairy Garden in that tub?"  And what is a Fairy Garden?  Within six seconds, she had found a Fairy Garden site on her Smart-Phone and she passed the phone around the table for us all to see. Cute, cute, cute. You don't even need real flowers, just cute little things that would attract a garden fairy. Hence, a Fairy Garden.  Well, I can certainly do that. Am I not the Queen of Cute Little Things?  They are all over my house, in my booth at the antique shop, and already outside in the flowerbeds.

So there I was this morning, pulling up all those perfectly green and tolerable-looking weeds from the tub in the backyard.  Then I put down two layers of that fabric that's supposed to keep the weeds out. (It never works, but I figured it was already in the garage so why not use it.)  We also had a large bag of brown mulch left over from last year's attempt to beautify the flowerbeds, so I spread that mulch into the tub, on top of the old mulch that was still in there from last year. (You would think, with four layers of weed-stopping fabric and ten inches of mulch, weeds wouldn't be able to grow in that tub now. Time will tell.)

And so began the Fairy Garden decor....... two blue porcelain ducks from a yard sale years ago, a solar lantern in the middle with a sleeping gnome underneath it. Little porcelain ducks and chicks and pigs from a little shelf in the breakfast room (chipped little animals that I couldn't sell in the shop and just couldn't toss out because of one tiny chip). There's a wrought-iron bicycle next to the sleeping gnome, a chicken in the back corner of the tub, little heart-shaped garden stakes, and tiny pink plastic picks with pink flowers on the tops. There's also a red wood wagon which I filled with some mulch and more pink plastic flower-picks.

I'm sure there are more cute little things in my booth at the antique shop, and even upstairs in the guest rooms of the barn... there's room in that tub for more decorations that would entice a garden fairy to stop by and stay awhile before she flies off to the next Fairy Garden here in the hills.

Country bubble.... I'm living in a country bubble.  Which is okay...  if you take away the snakes that make me scream, the armadillo that makes holes in our lawn, the raccoon that poops on the front porch, the fox that eats the cat food on the back porch, and all the other creatures that go bump in the dark of a country night.