Category: Gardening

Friday Favorites {06.04.21}

Posted on by Lauren Lane

First official week of summer is in the books! First week of my new job. We’re looking forward to this weekend of more soccer starting up for Harrison, and a trip to the zoo with friends!

I got to pick out my Mother’s Day gift a couple weekends ago. New sunglasses! Nathan came home a few weeks back with new sunglasses from Warby Parker. And they looked so good and high quality for a fraction of the price of designer sunglasses. So that’s what they got me for Mother’s Day! A fresh pair of sunglasses for the summer.

These are the Rhea style. We have a Warby Parker store in Kansas City, but I used their app to try them on beforehand. Love them! And for $95, such a good deal! I think both of my designer pairs were significantly more than that.

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Friday Favorites {05.28.21}

Posted on by Lauren Lane

It finally stopped raining, ya’ll. Finally. KC can now commence with the summer weather, I suppose! We are excited to head into the long holiday weekend. We have some fun plans with Nathan’s grandma planned who is visiting KC for the weekend, and I’m sure lots of soccer, outdoor time, and popsicles in our future! Harrison suggested to me on our ride to school this morning, “Hey – I have an idea.” “What’s up, bud?” “Maybe we can have a party on home day. And eat on the ground!” “That’s a great idea, bud!” “Outside on the ground!” So maybe we’ll have a picnic, too.

Finally nice enough outside and not pouring rain for lunch on the patio! The perks of working from home. A little outside time in the middle of the day always bolsters the mood.

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Let’s Look At…Backyard Organization

Posted on by Lauren Lane

Once a month I link up with two of my favorite blogs (Shay @ Mix and Match Mama and Erika @ A Little Bit of Everything), to share a “look” into some little aspect of our life. Here’s a peak back at what we’ve “looked” at this year:

Today we’re sharing our backyard organization. My backyard is my favorite part of our whole house. It’s peaceful and serene, and it’s our very favorite place to be at home, especially this time of year.

When we originally moved into this house seven years ago, the only thing in the backyard was this screened in porch…

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Let Me Introduce Myself + Other FAQ’s

Posted on by Lauren Lane

Some of you have been hopping over to my little corner of the internet for over a year now. Others just wandered in and may be wondering, “Who exactly is this person?”

So let me introduce myself. I’m Lauren. I’m a 35 year old, organization and list lover, mama to two little boys, who spends my summers wandering through my backyard garden and then posting pretty flower pictures. I’m so glad you’re here!

Here are some of the questions I get asked most in blog world and over on Instagram.

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How to Arrange a Thanksgiving Flower Bouquet

Posted on by Lauren Lane

I get asked a lot about how to arrange a vase of flowers. I usually reply that you just have to mess around with it until it looks right, which is true! But I thought it was probably time to share a more in depth “recipe” to the perfect bouquet of flowers and flower arranging.

First, use a large vase and put a packet of flower food into the water. Most bouquets come with a flower food packet. If you don’t see one, grab one from the flower section in the grocery store. They’re free! I always grab one or two extras to have in my junk drawer at home for when I’m cutting my own flowers from the garden.

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Let’s Look At…How We Pumpkin

Posted on by Lauren Lane

I’m currently sitting on my couch, holding a baby, and trying to type at the same time. If that isn’t a picture of life lately, I don’t know what is. If your’e new here, once a month, I link up with two of my favorite blogs (Shay @ Mix and Match Mama and Erika @ A Little Bit of Everything), to share a “look” into some little aspect of our life. Here’s a peak back at what we’ve “looked” at so far this year:

And I missed August and September adjusting to life with two kiddos.

Today we’re sharing how we pumpkin. So many directions I could take this, but I thought I’d share my outside decor for fall! Plus it gives me good motivation to get in gear to get all of my pumpkins out.

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Patio Planters & Bistro Lights

Posted on by Lauren Lane

About a month ago, Nathan came out of project retirement thanks to the boredom of staying home from COVID, and approached me with an idea to switch up our patio. He had always envisioned making the rectangular side of our patio more of a set aside space that would lend itself to an outdoor picnic set or table and chairs.

Per usual, I was terrible at taking “before” pictures. I just want to get to the end result! Here’s a look from last year at what this area looked like:

We re-homed both the hydrangea you can see on the far back left of the above picture, and the boxwood on the far right corner to new homes for this project. Then, Nathan built a couple of cedar planters to put in the corners instead.

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Mid-Summer Patio Flowers Update

Posted on by Lauren Lane

I’m going to do a little potted plant update today. I love having a lot of big potted plants around our patio during the summer. It allows me to switch out the types of plants that go in them every year, see how things fare and what I end up loving and what just doesn’t look that great by the end of the season.

I do in general keep the same color theme for all of the potted plants on our patio, and echo a handful of plants but in slightly different ways throughout all of them. Last year, I did sets of three of the same plants over and over, but this year, I wanted a bit more variety.

If you’re interested in how I put together a pot, I wrote a blog post on the four easy steps of that HERE.

All of my patio plants were planted in mid-May, so this is a little mid-summer update.

In May…

When I planted this series, I thought it was going to be my least favorite combo of the three sets of pots. I was soooo wrong. It’s in the running for most favorite now.

The zinnias fared so well, that I actually pulled out one of them and put it it in its own pot.

Plants in this series:

  • Large Pot: Superbells in Double Blue, Magilla Purple Perilla (coleus), Sweet Potato Vine in Sweet Caroline Sweetheart Lime, Salvia in Majesty Arctic Blue
  • Middle Pot: Euphorbia in Diamond Frost, Zinnia in Double Zahara Salmon
  • Small Pot: Lantana in Sunrise Rose

In May:

Also in the running for my set of favorites. The hibiscus wasn’t blooming the day that I took this picture, but wanted to show you how beautifully everything came in. And one of my favorite things to do is to use the creeping thyme in a pot, because it starts to cascade over the sides of the pot and looks so cool by the end of summer.

Plants in this series:

  • Large Pot: Superbells in Blue Moon Punch, Magilla Purple Perilla (coleus), Sweet Potato Vine in Sweet Caroline Sweetheart Lime, Salvia in Majesty Arctic Blue
  • Middle Pot: Hibiscus in Passion Wind
  • Small Pot: Creeping Thyme

In May…

When I initially planted all of these planters, I loved this set this most. And now it’s my least favorite 🙂

I think it’s something about the colors in the coleus against the million bells here that I don’t love.

Plants in this series:

  • Large Pot: Superbells in Doublette Love Swept, Sweet Potato Vine in Sweet Caroline Sweetheart Lime, Salvia in Majesty Arctic Blue, Euphorbia in Diamond Frost
  • Middle Pot: Magilla Purple Perilla (coleus)
  • Small Pot: Creeping Thyme

One thing remains true, this coleus that I’ve been using in my pots for years is a stellar performer. I’m getting to a point now that I cut it back in my pots just about every week so it doesn’t take over, but it is truly a beast. That’s one of the reasons I was curious as to how I would like it by itself in its own pot this year.

We’ve reached the time of a year in mid-summer, where I’m dealing with the most pests to my flowers, they need a lot of water (as in, I water these pots daily), and fertilize them once a week with a water soluble fertilizer. This will be the routine until early September when the heat starts to subside a bit.

Hope this was helpful to see how much plants fill out in just a couple of months! Let me know if you have any questions or suggestions! I love to hear from you!

Installing Drip Irrigation

Posted on by Lauren Lane

Before I get to all of the wonderfulness of drip irrigation (which there is so much wonderful!), I just wanted to remind you to head to my Instagram to enter my giveaway for a $50 Nordstrom gift card!

Ok, now to drip irrigation excitement….

I have long been the person dragging a hose around all sides of the house watering my flower beds. I would spend an hour every other day watering. Somedays it was more! I prayed for rain and welcomed the relief from watering. This year, I decided I was finally going to invest the time to figure out how to install drip irrigation to the flower beds I hated watering the absolute most. Admittedly, I’d watched videos for years about how to install it, where to get the parts, putting it on a timer, and I just never pulled the trigger. It seemed too difficult and complicated.

But what I learned this year is GOOD NEWS! It really isn’t hard to install. And now I’m living the dream of just hooking up the hose and letting the water drip out into my flower beds for an hour while I sit in my air conditioned house and write this blog post.

Here are the supplies I needed:

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Garden Path Tour Summer 2020

Posted on by Lauren Lane

Our garden path holds a special place in my heart. After Nathan single handedly designed our entire patio remodel, and then built over three years through hours of digging with a shovel and laying stones usually BY HIMSELF, we went from a patio that looked like this when we moved in…

To this finished last year…

If you missed it, I did a whole post about our patio remodel HERE.

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