Harmony Hills Home and Garden: Friday Round Up

Hey guys, it's Friday Round Up! Time to pull together some of the best things I saw online this week.

If you need some eye candy, some pure garden bliss, you will always find it at Aiken House and Garden blog. I've been following Carolyn's blog about her beautiful gardens on Prince Edward Island for years and years, and she never disappoints.

My favorite new-to-me blog this week is Rusty Duck, from the South West of England. Jessica and her husband are renovating an ancient English cottage. The photos are gorgeous. The cottage is the stuff of fairy tales. The writing is witty and bright. I'm in love!

I saw an intriguing new method of small space gardening, called the Keyhole Garden. Have you ever tried that method?

Another great blog I found this week is Pith+Vigor. Rochelle is a garden designer and writer. I popped in to her site for the article on navigating the nursery for late season shopping, and I found myself diving in for one more article after another. I love it when that happens!

As a new blogger, I've been devouring article after article about best practices in getting your blog off the ground. I've spent a lot of time reading about using Pinterest to maximum advantage, and this article from Busy Blogging Mom has helped a lot.

Another helpful blogging advice site is buildingaframework.com, and I'll admit to having spent way more time here than I should have (like, forgot to make dinner once!). Lots of info to comprehend at once, so I'm sure i'll be back over time.

I'm so heartbroken by the headlines and stories of hate and death and destruction around the country and and around the world. In the spirit of spreading love and joy, not hate, here's one of my favorite songs expertly sung by two great a cappella groups. Not new this week, but definitely relevant.

Here are some of the behind-the-scenes things happening here at Harmony Hills this week that didn't make it into a blog article:

Darn those dastardly dogs! Had to resort to fencing off some of the plants in the North Side Yard garden area, due to heavy canine traffic in the squirrel hunting grounds. We may have lost the spreading plum yew and maybe a hosta. The impatiens are long gone. I'm still holding out hope for the Twist & Shout hydrangea and the brunnera.

Hooray for a blessedly cool morning on Wednesday... even had the kitchen window open for a couple hours. I was surprised to see that the basil cutting that I put in a glass of water "just to keep fresh for a day or two until I use it" has been there so long that it has sprouted roots in the water. Looks like my friends will be gifted a potted basil plant soon. (And in other news - we got a grand total of four banana peppers off the plant before it blew over and broke off in a thunderstorm on Tuesday.)

Couldn't stand to look at the raw wood fence another minute. So out came the can of stain and the paint brush. Of course, that meant getting the weeds pulled out that had grown up along the fence. And that turned into a full-on edging event with mulch and everything. It had to happen sometime, why not this week? Three panels down, six to go.