giveaway: miles of light

Good monday morning! I have a spectacular surprise today. A giveaway sponsored by the talented Romina Bacci of Miles of Light photography (whom I recently posted on here).

Her soft and natural collections really speak to me with nostalgia from summers of my childhood. They remind me of scavenger hunts my mother would send my sisters and I on in the country of western New York. We were sent off running with a list of items to find and brown paper lunch bags clutched in our fingers to hold our found organic treasures:
A leaf from a maple tree, a skinny pine cone, a small grey stone, a short twig, one leaf from the pear tree, a buttercup, a cat tail from the fields, a feather, some bark from the willow tree and paper from the birch tree.
We could play that game all summer long. I am exited to play scavenger hunt with my own girls, although we'll have to settle for urban New Jersey style: a cigarette butt from the sewer drain, an empty beer can from the patch of grass... just kidding, this is the garden state.

Romina is graciously giving the winner an 8 x 10 print of your choice from her summer collection: Coastliners, Summer Floral, Bits of Summer or Blue Feathers. So hard to choose!



giveaway participation (leave a comment for each thing you've done and your email to contact you):

mandatory
-like miles of light on facebook here

optional additional entries
-follow my blog, flores del sol via google friend
-like flores del sol on facebook here
- tweet this giveaway
- link to it on fb
winner will be chosen by random.org and announced august 10th

bird bath planter

There is this old crumbly bird bath in my yard. My girls are standing next to in this photo this past Easter. Who knows how long its been sitting there, sad, empty and deteriorating. I felt bad for it but liked the pretty shape and bones. In the spring I planted it up to try and give it some new life, make it shnazzy again. I think it worked! Sorry birds, you'll have to bathe elsewhere.

a big spider plant as the focal, creeping jenny, purple wandering jew, sweet potato vine and pink begonias as fillers and spillers.


Have a happy summer weekend dear readers.
Come back gain early next week for a special giveaway im certain you'll like!

DIY: recycled glass bottle watering globes

My husband loves coke (a-cola that is). Especially when it comes ice cold in a glass bottle. He claims that the formula in the glass bottles is different with real sugar (not fructose corn syrup) or something like that. I love the glass coke bottles but always throw them in the recycling not wanting to hoard bottles with no use. Until I saw the idea for using glass bottles as watering globes for your plants! They drink as much as they want. Perfect if you are going out of town for a few days and they can be used for your indoor or outdoor plants.

I tested it out on my sansevieria plant Harvey (named by my 4 year old). So far it's working great and Harvey is taking only slow sips!

How to:
It works best if the soil around your plant is already moist so water first. Fill up your glass bottle with water, then quickly stick the neck deep into the soil. Make sure that there is no immediate leakage or bubbles rising to the top. If there is, take out the bottle and try again until it works. I only needed to do it once. Neat huh!

found friday: summer photography collections

collections from etsy artist miles of light, one of my favorite photographers. i love her new line of summer collections. check out the pressed flowers, how lovely would they look framed on a wall?

dog days of summer

via- 1,2- prettystuff tumblr, 3- pinterest, 4- wedding chicks, 5- the marlowe bookshelf

The dog days of summer are here for sure. Blueberries are in full season in the garden state and the heat index is pushing 110 in the next few days (with high humidity in the mix.. woof!). Here is a mix of summer images I collected. I can't believe I actually found a few spare moments to do it this morning. Enjoy!

she's here!

Beautiful Penèlope Eve joined our world July 6th, 2011. All 7lbs 2oz of her. She is so snuggly and lovely and the reason why my blog is unplugged for a bit. I will be back in a little!!!
-christina

my lucky lawn

It is said that for every 10,000 three leafed clovers is there is one 4 leaf. If this is the case then my lawn is a lucky one. I've been finding tons. It is debated whether the fourth leaflet is caused genetically or environmentally, but something about my lawn's environment must be causing this lucky influx.

Each summer of my childhood I would lay in the grass of my lawn in western new york for hours and intricately comb the three leaf clovers looking for a lucky four leaf. I would then laminate them and give them to my friends and family (how "lucky" ;) ). After my father passed away I found one of my lucky clovers tucked in his wallet. I was 17 when he passed so it meant a lot to me that he had kept it all those years.

I still have this strange 4 leaf clover obsession. When walking through grass I find my eyes in the habit of quickly scanning the patches of clovers. I don't even realize I'm doing it. I still have the coveted talent of finding them while walking.

While you hang around and barbeque this 4th of july weekend, look for some lucky clovers. And happy 4th of July!

x-ray ferns

Steven N Meyers is a trained medical x ray technologist who has used his radiography techniques to capture unique details of botanical specimens that remain unseen to us and our naked eye. The transparency of these maidenhair ferns brings out beautiful details of their speckled spores and feather like daintiness.

found friday: tree blocks

My girls and I went to a National local Swam refuge a few weeks ago with some friends. They loved looking for wildlife on the paths and playing with toys in the discovery center. My 2 year old Mila especially loved stacking and playing with the tree blocks. I'm happy to say I've found some handmade ones on etsy! Monkeys on the Roof makes them from fallen trees and finished them by hand with a natural beeswax. What a great gift they would make. Find them here!

mila stackin away

Happy weekend!
-Christina

new in shop: yarrow mound

New in the shop, yarrow mound. That's what it is, a mound of yarrow! Vibrant green dried wildflower yarrow. Perfect natural organic texture in a cement square vase. Check it out here.

Its funny how many of my more permanent designs start out as a custom order. This customer requested something green with texture in a square cement vase. I liked the look so much I though it deserved a more permanent spot in the shop.

Don't all go buy it at once, I've got more nesting to get done before this baby comes!

vertical garden, hotel Ushüaia

images via urbanarbolismo and paradis express

A brand new vertical garden opened at Hotel Ushüaia in Ibiza May 2011. The green wall acts as a sound barrier between the open air disco located in the hotel's central courtyard and the neighboring guest rooms. The rows and rows of ceramic terracotta pots are planted with succulents that designers selected which thrive in the Mediterranean island climate. They include a variety of crassula, euphorbia, echeveria, aeonium, kalanchoe, sedum and sedeveria.

Happy first day of summer!

DIY container planting

Here is a simple DIY tutorial on a container planting:

To start out with I go with the thriller, filler and spiller method.
First pick out a thriller, a focal point plant for the center of your container. Next you will need filler flowers for the middle openings and last some spiller plants that will grow over and down the sides of your container.

The ingredients I used:

My client wanted the same look as last year but slightly different so I substituted ferns with a spider plant. The thriller focal in these containers is the obvious topiary tree followed by the 2nd focal spider plant (1) that hugs the topiary trunk. If you have smaller containers don't take up all the space with a large thriller but instead use something simple like just a spider plant.

The filler flowers are the fuchsia colored 4 inch double begonias (2) and plum colored 4 inch petunias (3).

The spillers I chose are variegated 10 inch english ivy (4), purple variegated 10 inch wandering jew (5) , 4 inch creeping jenny (6), and vibrant green 4 inch sweet potato vine (7).

The first step is to plant up your spillers along the edges. Make sure they are tucked in deep so they don't fall out. The ivy and wandering jew were both from 10 inch hanging baskets that I carefully separated into two new plants.

Next I added the spider plant which was also a 10" hanging basket that I carefully split into 2 plants and hugged the topiary trunk.

Last, I added the filler petunias and begonias for some slight color in the leftover holes:

Fill in and secure your plants with extra dirt and be sure to fertilize for luscious show.

This year I have been using organic fertilizer from john and bob's grow green smart soil solutions. It is a fantastic and easy organic system to convert old nutrient lacking soil into new lush rich soil in gardens, lawns, containers and even indoor plants. I love the luscious growth I've seen from using this system in my container gardens and I am excited to see the difference in my vegetable gardening this summer. I highly recommend it and it can be found here.

Here is what they looked like after a summer of growth last year. The results should be very similar this year! Good luck and leave a comment if you have any questions.

-christina


last year's DIY container planting here.