Floral Love!

Buying flowers and arranging them (and then clicking of course!) is one of my favorite things to do.

Happy Holiday! :)

2017 Summarized

2017 has been an eventful and wonderful, and so much to be grateful for.

Settled into the new job. Made the trip to Joshua National Park (and Palm Springs and LA), which had been on my bucket for a long time. Got the best news that we will be having a niece in September!

In May, we got the news that we will be expecting a girl in January! 

Family visited from India in June and we had wonderful time doing the touristy stuff around the city. We visited Banff National Park and Jasper National Park in July. I set up my indoor garden corner this summer, which was a long dream. I made my first Etsy (a website I have been been eyeing for years too) purchase - swiss cheese plant. In August, Harvey hit Houston and though we were fortunate to not have any major damage, it caused wide spread suffering and damage to others. We will be talking about Harvey for a long time.

T and I became proud mama and mama and welcomed our niece in September. We have been smitten since.

We visited family in Virginia in October and made a last trip together before we settled into getting ready for parenthood. T visited his niece in November - it was love at first sight and I enjoyed watching all the videos and pics from across the continents.  While T was away, I had staycations- a weekend with Oj and kids, where I was pampered by her cooking and a week with mom that gave us just enough time to visit the garden stores and antique malls in leisure. Had a mini baby shower at work and our friends threw the prettiest Hokie themed baby shower with Pinterest worthy decorations. Megs visited and we got to catchup.

 We had a snowfall in Houston in December and enjoyed one dreamy morning that put everyone in high spirits. December was also busy getting ready for the baby. First purchase/splurge was made on Minted (another site I had been eyeing for a long long time) for baby's room. Family visited us, mom and K threw another grand baby shower with lots of flowers, decor and the penguin cake (which was the highlight) and family love.

Other big events for the year also involved a lot of immediate family moving around. A&L moved from Delhi to Pune - miss that they are not in Delhi anymore, but also so happy that they are closer to Mumbai now. A&K finally moved in together and are settled in Chicago for now. Mom and dad moved in closer to us so the fresh food delivery has become easier. 

Adios 2017 and thank you for the wonderful memories. Looking forward to all the new experiences, joys, challenges and memories that 2018 will bring. This will be a busy year for sure!

Urban Garden

The garden is always a changing landscape.
From spring florals to fall foliage, its always fun to keep updating it. I am going to update it once again this month to a all bare minimal succulents and low-maintenance plants. But before that, here are a few shots of how it looked the last 18 months...

The urban garden is really limited to a 6x12 area with a tall fence. So vertical option is really the only way to add plants and decor. The yard sale finds that were collected over the last 3 years added life to the bare fence!

Then string lights were added for warmth, specially in fall evenings.

Fall is when the fairies and their Godmothers came out to play in the crisp air and to keep a check on the little halloween monsters!

Winters were really restricted to a few hardy plants like Euphorbias.

And Spring is when the garden was in full bloom!

 Looking forward to many more seasons and changes! :)

Mom's spring garden - 2017

Made a last minute spontaneous visit to mom today and although I would have loved to capture the garden in the morning light, here are some pics taken today afternoon. Spring blooms of 2017 :D

The backyard is dominated by pink flowers and lovely lush greens...

The red mulch in the front yard is bright and colorful and warm. Love this sight of welcoming bunches :)

And the old bear continues to hang on the tree with his birdie! 

See another view of the garden as it bloomed in 2014 here.

In other recent updates, here are some more pics taken by mom :)

Fiddle Leaf Fig

Fiddle Leaf Fig was my biggest obsession for a long time. I could not find it in the local stores, but when Ikea had baby plants for $12 - I bought myself two plants and hoped that one day they will be 4 feet tall! That was in 2013. Read about it here.

Now the plants are more than 6 feet tall and are still doing well.

They are still in their original pots they came in which seems a little small for the big plant. I also noticed that the leaves were drooping for one of the plants, maybe due to lack of nutrients. So last year, I decided to experiment changing one of the plants to a bigger pot. I did not want to risk moving both plants into bigger pots at the same time.

I moved the plant in September last year, but got to blogging about it just now. The plant looked a little sad in the pot, so I did not want to wait till spring to move it. I am glad that the plant adjusted well.

Also looks like it grew about an inch since last September (although the leaves have started drooping again). Now its time to feed it some spring fertilizer and continue watering it once a week. Lets see how far this journey continues.

The next thing I want to experiment on the plant is to see how it can branch out instead of growing up straight. Maybe something to try next time. :)

Hello May!

Hello May!

Time for lots of sunshine, summer blooms, long walks, late evenings, mimosas and brunches!

P.S. - Impatients are my favorites for this season because they are low maintenance,  bloom non-stop and  have high impact colors.

Overgrown fairy garden/jungle!

The miniature fairy garden has grown into a jungle now and needs some revamping to be done...

Wondering if I should still keep the succulents theme or if I should change it to something else. A project for the upcoming weeks! :)

See the developments on the garden here.

Ikebana

Recently I found a few local floral shops around home and they are my favorite place to visit on weekends! One can pick up individual stems and make their own bouquet and it is so much more fun than to buy a regular bunch of flowers at the grocery store.

Today, I picked up a few stems to try an Ikebana flower arrangement. The emphasis on the leaves, shapes and stems really bring out the simple elegance in these arrangements.





















Ikebana is practiced in silence and is a serious form on art in Japan. To create a basic Ikebana flower arrangement, you need a shallow vase, a floral frog to hold flower stems, and flowers/leaves/stems of at least three different lengths symbolizing sun, moon and earth.

 

The left-over flowers fill a bonus vase for the bedside :-)

Have a lovely weekend! 

Happy November!

 

Happy November!

What a lovely chill in the air today! It's time to get the plants indoors for the winter. Also, time to plant the Paperwhites to force them to bloom just in time for the holidays.

Forcing Paperwhites is easy and they bring so much joy and life to holiday decorations. I love them when mom plants the cheerful flowers around the house. They make really nice hostess gifts too. 

So today I hunted down all the jars and decorative containers I had bought at various sales, the extra pebbels I had from two years back when I made an attempt at the succulent garden (btw - that was a failed attempt!) and I bought some Paperwhite bulbs.

Now all I did was fill the container half-way with pebbles, then placed the bulbs firmly in-between the pebbles with the pointed-end facing up. Then I filled up the container with water, keeping the water level just below the bottom of the bulbs and added a little moss on the top. 

Hopefully, they will bloom in 4-6 weeks.

Spring planting

 I made a huge investment this year and bought a bunch of bulbs for Iris (in blue, yellow and pink shades), Crocus (the flowers that produce saffron and look really pretty) and Hyacinths. Hope I get some good blooms in spring ..... patiently waiting now.