We did have some light frost last night (Thursday night, Friday morning). I do not believe it was enough to cause any damage. It was the kind of frost that if you weren’t an early bird, you probably wouldn’t have noticed it.
Who are you calling an early bird? Oh, me. Yes, I am, generally. That’s how I knew we had some frost.
Here’s a close up of the frost. Only on the Internet, right? Stare into that frosty picture for a full 60 seconds and tell me what you see. Or just 15 seconds…
Yes, I thought I saw some garden fairy footprints in there, too. They go from the lower right to the upper left corner. Or did you see something different?
In other garden news, some of the daylilies I transplanted to my renovated perennial garden by the patio already have bloom scapes on them. I assume it won’t be long before I have some daylilies blooming.
I was going to plant the vegetable garden today, but it might be cold enough for light frost again tonight, so I decided the tomato and pepper plants are safer on the brick patio next to the house for a few more days. With radiant heat coming off the brick of the house and the brick of the patio, it is unlikely that they will be bothered by any frost.
So I cleaned up the garage instead of planting. I had pretty much destroyed it when I was on vacation last week, leaving stacks of pots and flats and spilled perlite and peat moss all over. I still have stacks of pots and flats, but at least now they are neat stacks of pots and flats and the floor has been swept clean.
Tomorrow I plan to put together two wooden towers that I bought on clearance last fall at Menards. I’m going to put them in the vegetable garden to grow pole beans on. They are not cedar, so I should put a wood preservative on them.
While I’m doing that, and in a painting mood, I’m also going to repaint the bench in the vegetable garden. See it in the first picture? I painted it cream the first time. Now I think I should branch out and find an actual color on the color wheel to paint it. Any ideas? Pumpkin orange, tomato red, maybe eggplant purple? How about tomato blossom yellow? Or maybe all those colors?
Some gardeners are confident about using bold colors in their gardens, like Pam/Digging in Austin. Hey, until I saw her garden, I thought the cream bench I had was a little “edgy”!
Just kidding, I knew it was b-o-r-i-n-g, but I think I had some spare cream paint or something like that when I decided to paint the bench. Yes, that’s my excuse, I already had the paint and I didn’t want it to go to waste.
Another thought… why I am I thinking of just putting a wood preservative on my new towers. Maybe I should paint them a color to match the bench?
Well, thanks! I’m thrilled you mentioned me!
I can’t believe you had frost…yikes! Time for that to be gone!
Yeah, I’m thinking you should be bold with color (you can always change it if you don’t like it, right?) and match them both!
Now that’s a great idea! Paint the bench AND the towers. Lilac or pale green might be nice also, if you don’t feel too bold. Gotta Garden is exactly right: paint color is easily changed if you don’t like it.
For the record (if I dare admit it), I also have two cream-colored benches in my garden. 😉
We’ve had a couple of almost frost mornings (I’m an early riser too)…I hoping that the risk is diminishing each day. Sounds like you have a busy time ahead of you and I’m sure the benches etc will look fabulous.
Gotta Garden… Thanks for the encouragement. I’ll see if I can find some paint today.
Pam/Digging… I can not believe that in your brightly colored garden you have cream colored benches! Pale green sounds good to me.
Ruth… I hope the frost is in our past, too. This morning there was no frost, so I am moving ahead with my plans to plant the vegetable garden on Sunday.
My vote: Eggplant purple!
Eggplant purple would look good, or how about a bright red or yellow to match a particular color flower. Just take the flower to the paint store and ask for a match. Be creative.
Yes to colour, no to frost! How fortunate it didn’t freeze too hard last night!
Is there any colour you use elsewhere in the garden or perhaps on your house (windowframes, doors)? If so, use that colour or is it cream too? 😉
Go on, and boldly go for something a bit more daring than cream!
Oh sighhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh… Even a light frost is not nice. But we don’t dare really do lots of planing here, till Memorial Day. Just in case of such an event. Hope yours did no damage.
My husband recently made some hight things to grow roses up… some French name, which we can’t remember right now. I should picture them, in my Seasonal Snapshots blog. I’m sure you would appreciate them. 🙂
Mari-Nanci
Eggplant purple for both the bench and the towers sounds great, although the lilac or pale green that Pam suggested sound beautiful too. I know I’m going to add some color to my garden furniture this year, too, so I’m curious to see what you end up doing 🙂
Carol,
I can’t imagine you painting any color other than green.
Carol, the light green would be a baby step, right? The eggplant and lilac sound wonderful, but I haven’t done anything colorful yet… my bench is green, my shed is white and green, my patio table & chairs are green…etc. Maybe we should both make green bottle trees!
I’m glad the frost didn’t wreck things!
Annie at the Transplantable Rose
I’d go for the colour – colour always does good things for a garden.
So glad to hear that the frost wasn’t a deep one.
I say go with a color that speaks to your emotions. What color is your favorite flower? That might be a good color to choose. Pick a color that brings a smile to your face.
Of course, the frugal gardener would look in the clearance bin and buy whatever color paint that was on sale!
Tying the bench in with your house color is also a good idea.
All… thanks for the comments and suggestions. My favorite color is green, and the trim on my house is mossy green. Won’t that open up some color possibilities for the bench? I think I might do something with lilac purple and green. Stay tuned!
I’m a big fan of Alice’s tomato stakes if you are feeling particularly daring.
My vote:
Give a child some paint color cards and let them pick. No kidding! They make great uninhibited choices, and amazingly, they’re usually right on the money.
I let my youngest daughter pick the color for the arbor the hubster built right across the front of the house (because I thought the house looked flat and boring) and I literally cringed when she finally chose (after staring at 8000 colors for an hour). What did she pick? Bright, in-your-face Florida Bay Blue.
I kept saying, “Are you really, really sure? Because this color is going to be right in front of the house, so it will be kind of obvious!”
She stubbornly insisted, we finally agreed and it came home and got slathered on, both adults mumbling that it was going to be just way too much bright blue smack in everyone’s face.
Grrr…the kid was right! And she’ll never let us forget it! We get more compliments on the color of that arbor than anything else. People absolutely adore it. Even strangers jogging by mention what a perfectly, beautiful color it is! Ok, ok, and we like it too. 🙂
Be bold – ask a kid! Besides you’ll be more likely to live with it for a while and it’ll give you a chance to see if you really do have a wider color horizon than you ever thought you did.