Backyard Bling #4 - Luxury Tweet

I've always loved the look of a dovecote birdhouse perched above a long sweeping border of perennials.

Several years ago on a trip to Wisconsin to see my family, I purchased this decorative "dovecote style" birdhouse for about $20.  And if you've ever priced an English dovecote, then you know that that was such a screamin' deal that I could not pass it up.

I placed it among the perennials in a long sweeping bed in my backyard.  

Good to go, right?

This birdhouse has served me well, giving me photo ops even in the dead of winter.

Well, you get what you pay for, 

and let's just say this birdhouse has seen better days.

It lasted about five years, so I would say I got my money's worth out of it.

Since my garden was on tour this spring, I decided a renovation -- make that demolition -- was in order.    Every time the wind blew, I knew this poor little birdhouse was just one step closer to being a pile of rubble on the ground.

So to the internet I went in search of a new birdhouse.   I may have been swooning over the English dovecotes, but the price was just as dizzying!   I kept looking and finally came across Hatterashouse.com.   I found just what I was looking for, placed my order, and within just a few weeks, I received this lovely copper-topped birdhouse!

This picture was taken in April when the 'Little Henry' Sweetspire was in full bloom.

As a side note, the Red Admiral butterflies just loved the Sweetspire this spring.

This birdhouse is not all bling.  It is move-in ready!    I sure hope the birds like their new home as much as the butterflies loved the blooms below.

Now the birds can tweet in luxury :-)

Toni 

Backyard Bling #3 - A Bridge to Somewhere

Several years ago I built a dry creek bed in my backyard.

The creek bed serves to catch water from several downspouts connected to underground drains that empty into the creek bed.   This year I had to reroute the tail end of the creek bed and transplant a Japanese maple whose roots were being exposed because of soil eroding away from the water running through the sometimes not-so-dry creek bed.

As I finished the creek bed revision, I thought, it sure would be cute to have a little bridge going over the creek bed.   I have been coveting admiring the little blue bridge in the woodland garden of Deb's Garden.  With the garden tour date quickly approaching, I figured there was no time like the present to add even more backyard bling to my garden.

So I got online and found just the bridge I wanted from DesignerBridges.com.    It came unassembled, but after the recent construction projects my husband and I have tackled, we knew we were up to the challenge.   They had already predrilled all of the holes for us AND they had written instructions to follow.   This was going to be a piece of cake!  And it was!!

Here is the finished project :-)

A flagstone path leads through my shady backyard.  The bridge connects the flagstone walk as it meets the dry creek bed.

One of my favorite shade plants, Farfugium (Leopard Plant), is in the foreground, and the transplanted Japanese maple is in the background.  

The bridge is made out of red cedar, but I added a natural cedar stain to the bridge after we assembled it to give it more protection from the elements.

This concludes our construction projects, but there is still more bling to come...

Please visit again to see another "tweet" addition to our garden.

Toni :-)

P.S.  I have not been paid to endorse DesignerBridges.com, but I have to say, I was very impressed with the quality of this product.  The online ordering was a snap!  The materials arrived in a very short time.  The cedar lumber was excellent quality, and the instructions were simple to follow.  I am so happy with our new little bridge, and I would highly recommend this company to anyone!

Backyard Bling #2 - Adorning Arbors

There is nothing like being on a garden tour to motivate you into action!

Since I was not adding any new garden beds this year, I decided to add a little "bling" to my backyard in other ways.  I have been wanting to add arbors to my side iron gates for a few years now.

Here's the "before" picture of the east side entrance.    

I have an identical gate on the west side of my house.

Every year I grow annual hyacinth bean vine on the fence beside the gates, and it ends up completely covering the gates to the point that it is almost difficult to get through them.

I love using hyacinth bean vine, though, because it grows so quickly; and after the fragrant blooms fade, it produces beautiful maroon bean pods.

And as an added bonus, you can use those bean pods to make a smiling 

garden scan of fall blooms :-)

But I digress.   Back to the bling at hand.

I got online to look at arbor designs and ended up merging a couple ideas together to come up with the design that was created for my arbors.  Although my husband and I have manged to construct a few wooden projects this year without either (a) divorcing and/or (b) losing any limbs, I figured trying our hand at constructing iron arbors might be pushing our luck just a bit.  So I contracted Surles Ornamental Iron to build the custom arbors over the gates.

Here are the finished arbors.   I just love how they turned out.

East side entrance

West side entrance

Here is a close-up of the scroll detail on the sides of the arbors.

The hyacinth bean vines have been planted.  

They seem to be taking their sweet time now, but I have no doubt that they will grow up and over the arbors by summer.    I am looking forward to being able to get through my gates this summer without having to untangle a jungle of vines first.

Stay tuned for more backyard bling...

Toni :-)

Backyard Bling #1 - We've Been Building Again

A few months ago we built the potting bench of my dreams.

It turned out to be such an easy project, that we decided to try building a table for our back patio.   As I did with the potting bench, I drew out the plans and determined all of the measurements.  Then I paid another visit to my local Lowe's, and one of the nice guys in the lumber department cut all of the lumber to my specifications.

One willing accommodating husband, an electric drill, and a box of screws later, here is the table right after we finished building it.  I used plain pine lumber for the table top and bottom shelf and treated turned posts for the legs, cut to the desired height.

Hanging above the table I have a decorative iron and wood piece.  I love the paint finish on this piece, so decided to try to paint the table with a similar finish.    Here's a close-up of the inspiration for the paint finish.

Here is the table after painting it.   I just used several colors of old leftover paints and stains that we had in the garage, and added the paint in layers until I achieved a finish that was fairly close to my inspiration piece.

Scrolled iron brackets and clavos nail heads were added to bring a little more bling to this backyard thing.

A few more garden accents were added, and this project was complete...just in time for the garden tour!

Stay tuned for more backyard bling -- believe it or not, we are not done building just yet!

Toni :-)