In the garden…garden tables and infusion oils.

It’s that time of year again, gardening time. I’m so looking forward to this. Everyone around here is telling us to hold on a minute there because April sometimes gets a freeze before that old Winter decides to pack up and leave. They tell us to plant after April 15th.

Master gardeners of the Ozarks go around planting these flowers everywhere.

I didn’t wait completely though. I pulled everything that was tucked away down stairs in our garage under grow lights for months now, and brought them out of their cave of hibernation…:Spring is here I was thinking to myself. I mean it looks like Spring to me. Then everyone starts writing about how they have seen buttercups in the snow, so don’t let those tulips trick you.

One of my giant ferns made it through the Winter, the other one is kind of thin looking so hopefully it will thicken out some now that it is outside.

Another person says that you will know Spring is here when you see and hear the frogs. Well the other day there were nine frogs hoping around our front yard. Where we live there is a wooded area next to us, we live in a neighborhood with other neighbors around but there is also a wooded area down the street where deer, racoon, foxes, and even coyotes come out of there. I believe all signs are pointing that Spring is here.

We went to a local mom and pop garden nursery this week. It was so beautiful. They had all kinds of flowers. I bought some sun roses for my flower boxes since the bees seem to really enjoy them. I will be sharing more photos from that shopping experience later.

I had to stain and seal the wooden flower boxes after the Winter weather we had. The wood will rot of we don’t try to protect them every year.

I also redid our huge outside garden table, painted and stenciled that over. The wood was so dry and needed to be completely painted over. I wanted to stencil over the warn and rustic looking wood, but I needed to protect the table, so I painted and weather proof that as well. I have two more steps to complete it. One more darker stain to bring down the yellow/orange color and then seal and weather proof that.

I have another base coat to go over this to rough it up a bit. I loved the old wood from before but there was a huge stain in the middle of this table from paint and I had to paint over the whole table, but my favorite was the rustic wood with stencils from the main photo.

I’m hoping the next step of a darker stain and then sealer will bring this down a bit to look old world style. This garden table is an outside table, it is going to get beat up, but I like that style of imperfections.

When my husband and I were fixing up the little red house in Arizona, a 1940’s house. I did stenciling like this on the bathroom door that was original to the house, to replace the door would have meant a custom made door because of the small size of it. It was pretty beat up. I did this process where I base coated, then stenciled, then stained, then stained again and sealed afterwards. It was a very unique door after that.

We also started the process of making our infusion oils for salves in a month or so. I started reaching out to other gardeners here, trying to learn new things as well as trade with them. This is not so easy for me, as I’m an introvert, but I’m starting to go outside my comfort zone to learn new things about this new environment I’m in.

That’s it in garden news. I heard homesteaders are being watched and recorded, which I always think why…really?..why? I try to share anything I learn so others can pass the torch as they say but things are getting weird with that, but I will keep sharing when I can. Happy gardening adventures everyone.