Seriously I cannot get enough of Damian’s three sisters garden. I swear the thing grows six inches a day and I am just enjoying the lush vibrant greeness off it. I also love that it is currently so dense I no longer have to weed. Hopefully when everything dies back there will be an abundance harvest beneath it all but even if there isn’t I just adore it for how pretty I find the combination of companion plants to be.

I especially love that photo of a bean wrapping around a sunflower stalk. Nature can be so perfect in her design, I can just imagine the faeries flirting up the tendrils to their sky top sunflower homes.

Have I ever mentioned the tremendous weakness I have for heirloom pole beans? I am looking forward to seeing how both the Hidatsa Shield beans and the Good Mother Stallard beans do in this garden. I have pole beans growing in another bed too though I planted those a little late (after the snap peas were finished) so it is a little questionable how long before the first frost they will produce. They are called purple poded pole beans.

I love that even the stalks on them are purple. It is nice to have an obsession favorite vegetable with so much variety. I don’t like bush beans nearly as well but I am growing Empress Beans again this year (a standard green bean but also heirloom) as I needed something to fill the unplanned space left by a few failed crops. All the beans are growing like weeds. But there are such thing as too many beans in my world. Speaking of things that grow like weeds…

I just realized Ivy will be 8 months old tomorrow. Holy Hathor’s horns were does the time go?

This past Sunday was a beautiful day, so we packed up the kids and spent the afternoon at Shannon’s home, or more specifically, in her yard. Shannon has torn up almost all her grass, except for a couple shaded areas in the front yard (perfect for a picnic with friends) and in it’s place built the loveliest eclectic garden that completely compliments her personality. She has a lovely eye for design and seamlessly mixed perennial flowers and herbs with annuals as well as fruits and vegetables. It reminds me of something I would find around an English cottage. At the moment her garden is an explosion of summer color, I love it.

I feel that Shannon’s garden deserves a large portion of the credit for the creation of Graceful Symmetry as most of my flower macros come from it; especially the poppies.

The whole bed in her side yard is full of every warm shade and shape of poppy imaginable in bloom right now. Sunday was the perfect day for me to poke around with my camera, the sun/cloud mix was just right to photograph them, no digital tweaking needed. Beyond the poppies there are many other flowers in her front and back yard too, given the lighting, I could not resist filling my camera with their beauty.

Here we have feverfew (Tanacetum parthenium,) silky lupin (Lupinus sericeus), tiger lily , Bachelor’s Button (Centaurea cyanus), lavender, some kind of mint (pineapple mint I think?) and some kind of daisy I think. The last three are unknowns to me and I forgot to get a picture of their leaves for identification. Should you recognize any of them though, please let me know. I am especially in love with the little orange flower, the plant had deep red leaves and was only about 6 inches inches tall. Love!

Armed with a shovel and some borrowed pots Shannon let me bring some of the inspiration home. I dug up some feverfew, thyme, brown-eyed susans and daisies. I think I am going to have to dig up more lawn, no problem there. Recently Shannon also gave me some raspberry plants recently. She has a whole patch of them as well as strawberries yet eats neither. Damian took all the red red fruit off her hands while we were there though (Mommy helped him too…)

These are my two favorite photos from the day, a mason bee on her thyme and one of her developing cauliflower heads. Mason bees are my very favorite pollinators. Contrary to popular belief, mason bees do not bore into the wood of your home but rather take advantage of preexisting cracks and holes to build their nests. They are both solitary and quite docile so you don’t need to worry about swarms of angry mason bees descending upon your picnic either and they are more efficient pollinators then honey bees too. I know people love the honey bee but our native bee species need love too, if not more so, (did you know some varieties of bumblebees are actually endangered?)

I am getting off-topic here (can you tell I love native bees?) but that is okay since I am out of pictures to share. I really need to take some photos of Shannon’s garden from more then 6 inches away from her flowers but I hope they offered you a little bit of inspiration and if nothing else, made you smile. I think I have every color of the rainbow covered in this post so you’re favorite has got to be here, if not head on over to Graceful Symmetry it’ll be there. I’m even working on a black & white category.

“Happiness cannot be traveled to, owned, earned, worn or consumed. Happiness is the spiritual experience of living every minute with love, grace and gratitude.”
- – Denis Waitley

“How can a society that exists on instant mashed potatoes, packaged cake mixes, frozen dinners, and instant cameras teach patience to its young?”
- – Paul Sweeney