~ Pretty Purple Posies ~

I love to garden.  Got that little gene from my dad, who got it from his Italian mother, Nana.  It’s in the blood.  Nana owned and operated our family greenhouse in Beverly, Massachusetts for many years.  It’s gone now, but the green thumb lives on in my dirt-encrusted, poorly manicured hand.

And at The Little Cottage, I propagate, and I nurture and I design everything …

from my cut-flower garden,

to my scented butterfly garden,

to my driveway.

We have shade, a LOT of shade, so I’m relegated to things like hosta, and ferns, and ivy.  But after years of seeding and re-seeding the hosta, my driveway now looks like this:

at least, when the hosta is blooming.

So for those two or three glorious weeks in July, the sweet, busy bumble bees, the handsome hummingbirds, and the colorful fluttering butterflies really get to enjoy the fruits of all my labor.

Invariably, though, we are at Pop-pop’s beach cottage in Delaware for those weeks.

And this means that all of this lovely purple, and lavender, and mauve….

and all of this glorious wonder of nature’s beauty…

pretty much looks like this when we get home:

Story of my life.