Your Home, Garden and Travel

This fantastic bicycle planter caught my attention on a recent trip to Blowing Rock, North Carolina. Propped against a big shade tree in front of a garden shop, it looks perfectly placed and perfectly suited. On close inspection, you'll see that there are no pedals. Is it intentional? A thief could ride off with the bicycle planter if the pedals were on the bike!

Do you suppose that this may not be a real antique bike, but rather a replica intended to be a planter? I know nothing about antique bicycles. I controlled myself and didn't look at the price and I didn't ask about it at the garden shop. Nonetheless, I think it's a fabulous planter!

What's in your garage? A gardener with the right old bicycle, the right old shade tree, could have a right pretty planter filled with flower petals.

Words and photo by Freda Cameron; Location: Blowing Rock, NC; August 2009

Enjoy your Labor Day holiday! Hope you have a wonderful time with your friends and family.







Photos by Freda Cameron; Location NC Zoo™, Asheboro, NC; August 2009

I don't know what it is about September, but with each day, I feel there aren't enough hours to do everything and see everyone!

The cooler temperatures put us in the mood to get together with our friends, take day trips and go to local events. Exercise is much more pleasant in the mornings as I try to walk three miles a day before I begin gardening. It is, after all, the perfect month to work in the garden!

Yesterday, I rearranged two groupings of spirea in the deer resistant garden to make room for sowing seeds and planting bulbs. I moved Japanese irises and shasta daisies. A big clump of ornamental oregano was moved to edge the front walkway. I deadheaded zinnias to coax them to produce more blooms before frost. With each plant I moved, I probably moved another three to be able to work in the redesign. It's just the beginning!

September is the month that I try to make corrections in the design while I know where everything is located. Sometimes when spring rolls around, I will have forgotten what looked bad, or good, the previous growing season.

I'm going to make-over the flower bed along the right bank of the cottage garden stream. I got tired of watering the plants there and intend to use drought-tolerant sedum (from all those sedum tips I planted in early summer) as well as lavender that I stockpiled when I found it at nurseries this summer. Those have been in holding in different locations.

Recently, I submitted a plan to our Home Owners Association to expand a section of the garden along the dry stream to further control the rain runoff. It will have to be based on deer resistant and rabbit resistant perennials. Speaking of deer, they are getting way too friendly! As for the new garden plan - it was approved, but will I have time this fall to create the new garden? Stay tuned...


Words and photos by Freda Cameron

I don’t usually participate in a meme because I'm rather shy about receiving the attention. Then, why do I blog? I do like to research, garden, travel and share tips and information. I'm an information addict. Perhaps that's what drives me to blog.

Nonetheless, rules are made to be broken once in awhile, so I humbly accept this meme from Helen Yoest at Gardening with Confidence™ with thanks. I also thank Helen for letting me (she will now know) shamelessly copy the following explanation of this meme:

There were conditions with this Meme award. In order to participate I needed to:

1. Link back to the person who gave you the award.


2. Reveal seven things about yourself.


3. Choose seven other blogs to nominate, and post a link to them. There are so many good ones, this is difficult.


4. Let each of your choices know that they have been tagged by posting a comment on their blog.


5. And finally, let the tagger know, when your post is up.

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The Seven Things About Me

1. Please pronounce my first name as Fred-ah instead of Freed-ah. I get really annoyed when people mispronounce my first name, especially after I've told them three times. If you can't keep it straight, just continue to call me Cameron.


2. I don't like to have my photo taken. Does anyone?


3. I celebrated my 21st birthday in Moscow, Russia when it was still the USSR. That was a long time ago, but that's as close as I'll get to revealing my true age on the internet.


4. I used to breed and raise Arabian horses.


5. The most unexpected phone call that I ever got in my life was from Princess Alia bint Al Hussein, the daughter of the late King Hussein of Jordan.


6. The strangest thing that ever happened was when my 5 month old puppy dropped a lost necklace at my feet. I had lost it outside the week before. I always smile when I remember that sweet dog, now long gone.


7. My future wishes - I'd love to live in France for one year. Of course, I'd also like to be fluent in French, really fluent. I'd love to be a real photographer, instead of a person with a camera.

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Seven Other Blogs (wish I could select 100):

1. Hoe and Shovel I am fascinated by the tropical gardens created by Meems in Florida. A garden paradise.


2. Perennial Garden Lover What Racquel grows, I can probably grow in my zone. She puts together interesting combos that always appeal to me.


3. Our French Garden in the Beautiful Dordogne Okay, I would live in France if I could. I get my garden and France "fix" by visiting Rob's blog.


4. Creating Our Eden Collections of beautiful irises and daylilies displayed with exquisite taste in the gardens of Randy and Jamie.


5. Garden Endeavors Great photographer, gardener and nature lover. Patsi sent me a lot of seeds that are now flowering in my garden.


6. Secrets of a Seed Scatterer I've learned so much from Nell Jean, who I "met" on a cottage garden forum several years ago. A very wise garden mentor.


7. Clay and Limestone Through the challenges of gardening under difficult conditions, Gail is so poetic with her stories and divine garden. Jane Austen would approve.

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If I could be anywhere right now... it would be back in Paris, looking over the Siene...