Time to Refresh Your Spirit

This adorable Kashmir Paisley Pillow from Peter Dunham has me seeing green in a whole new way this week. I love the traditional holiday red and green, but each year I reach a point where I can't wait to stash all the ornaments away and give the house a good cleaning. Then I'll bring home a flowering pot of spring bulbs (preferably scented) from the grocery store. The new year has then officially started for me.

I suggest that after you, too, pack away the last of the tinsel and ribbons, consider a freshening up with a bit of spring for your home. Paperwhites, such as these from White Flower Farm, are a great way to start. There are still plenty of these kits available in my local grocery and hardware stores. A few more ideas in green and white are offered below to get you started.

Zesty Arugula, Fennel and Orange salad recipe from Williams Sonoma

Wee Key Lime Tartlets recipe from Smitten Kitchen

Trivsam bowl from Ikea

Iris dish towel, also from Ikea

Fern wall decorations by Two's Company from Country Living

My guilty pleasure

Choose the White and green bamboo bowls and white salad servers from West Elm

For a more ambitious effort, try a fresh green pair of curtains and 

a crisp new white slipcover, like this example from Country Living

Start a terrarium to sooth your winter weary soul. I love this sweet
IndieBliss Hippo Terrarium from The Fern and Mossery.

Still love this image from our visit to Dumbarton Oaks in late
September. I'm trying to remember how ridiculously hot it was that day!

Part Two, the Story of My Garden

Just as the composition of the garden was beginning to gel, another fly in the ointment:  we became host to a herd of deer. Suddenly, the lilies, sedum and several other tasty morsels became a veritable salad bar for our local herd. As I stood outside one morning at the top of the back steps and yelled at them, they barely looked up and just kept right on munching.

So out went the Casa Blanca lilies and several other favorites. I did learn that many of my existing perennials, however - the echinaceas, yarrows, astilbes and japanese anenomes - were deer resistant. I soon compiled a list of additional plants that the deer would not, it would be hoped, find too tasty. But I did hang on to my hostas and sedums. No one, not even Bambi, would make me get rid of those.

Here few snap shots of my garden yesterday morning, Memorial Day 2010.

Here's the hosta guacamole, alongside the japanese painted ferns and a bit of ajuga. They are in front of one of the forlorn boxwoods damaged in the winter 2009/2010 blizzards.

Next is the goatsbeard, flopping lazily over the astilbe. This is the astilbe 'Peach Blossom.' It is not as quite as graceful as the others in my garden, but it tolerates dry shade better than the others.

The goatsbeard, astilbe and hosta 'Guacamole', which maintains its fresh green appearance all summer. It will eventually sport incredibly fragrant large white flower spikes.

A view down the shady border. Note the boxwoods tilting permanently to the right!

Next, Part Three of the Story of My Garden