Tag: nature photography

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August: Organic Cottage Garden Design

Amor Milagre Organic Cottage Garden Design
Amor Milagre Organic Cottage Garden Design.  Getting lost in the intricate lace fairyland of the hydrangea blooms…

 

I love how a garden changes every day, season, and year.

Amor Milagre Organic Cottage Garden Design
Amor Milagre Organic Cottage Garden Design.  One of my writing nooks. We also have lessons and picnics here…in the shade of the cream umbrella.  The lavender and cleomes circle this garden.  We renovated the gardens last year.  Previously a lawn, this space is now full of flowering trees, perennial flowers, and herbs.  Plant seeds of goodness for pollinators.  It heals all.  We even have some tomatoes up here, as it is the sunniest area of the garden.

 

Amor Milagre Organic Cottage Garden Design
Amor Milagre Organic Cottage Garden Design.  Weeding a bit today, and I got my first ever bee sting, right through my glove!  Not too bad…just put some ice on it.  Bees love me…ever since I was little…they loved to explore my golden curly hair and just hang out… My Nonna used to say it’s because they think I’m a flower.  I love that idea, and I paint flying pollinators into all of my stories.  I always sat calmly with them, and then they’d move onto something with pollen.  I must have tread on a nest. Sorry, little friends!  Nature tells us important things.  Listen.  I usually do leave the ‘weeds’ as they’re a helpful part of the garden, but we do have some rather aggressive imposter vines that take over and under the garden.  I do minimal editing and pruning.  Plants have their own design plans.  It’s fun to learn of their endless stages.  Also, any broken or old pieces are just left in the garden to become a natural compost.  After making the pathways last summer, the cleomes seeded everywhere, which is the intent, but a few had to be moved out of the gravel and back into the soil.  These rhodies were quite ill when we moved in, so we cut them back hard and now they are full up with new green lovely leaves.  They form a nice border hedge and create privacy with a dense leafy depth and height.  Blooms next year, I’d expect.  In pink!

 

Amor Milagre Organic Cottage Garden Design
Amor Milagre Organic Cottage Garden Design.  I adore these mixed plant tangles… They’d make a gorgeous textile print.  This one is mostly:  Queen Anne’s Lace/Wild Carrot, Thyme, Sage, Salvia, Vinca, Clover, Anise…  Babies love these little fairy nests.

 

Amor Milagre Organic Cottage Garden Design
Amor Milagre Organic Cottage Garden Design.  The incredible Blazing Stars have just bloomed…grown from scattered seeds.  Easy as tossing them into the bed.  There are hundreds and the wildlife love them.  Such fancy feathery dresses!

 

Amor Milagre Organic Cottage Garden Design
Amor Milagre Organic Cottage Garden Design.  The front herb patch went wild this year, but we love to watch the pollinators favour this swaying sea of lace in the breeze so I will only tame it back a bit next year.  The new kitchen looks out onto this stone garden that we made a few years ago.  There was a bed of overgrown shrubs, too close to the house, and a paver pathway.  We took everything out, painted the house a warm heavy cream, and made space for more meadow wildflowers and three Japanese boxwoods.  The pathway was removed and recycled into the back pathway.  We made a stone wall, new pathways, and steps.  Soon, a mudroom door will go nearby.  We have the kitchen door here, too.  Little gardeners can pick some fresh sage for dinner!  I am working on some lace-like snowflake/floral design stencils in the front doorway, which I will post about when finished.

 

Amor Milagre Organic Cottage Garden Design
Amor Milagre Organic Cottage Garden Design.  Many greens…living together.  Permaculture matters.  Everything depends upon the next and the one before.  Replace lawns and pollutive machines with native plants that form a perennial carpet to keep you cool, hydrated, and full of life!
Amor Milagre Organic Cottage Garden Design
Amor Milagre Organic Cottage Garden Design.  Every window has a view of the garden!  Wake up to nature, go out and converse with her, learn how to be peaceful, bid her a good slumber and get ready for bed…  Sustainable life cycles for:  you, wildlife, the anti-pollution layers of fungi in the soil, the air, water, and for all plants who connect in their own language and routines.  Tread softly in nature.  We are the visitors of the earth, be gentle.

 

Amor Milagre Organic Cottage Garden Design
Amor Milagre Organic Cottage Garden Design.  Grow flowers from seeds to self-seed and spread each year!  I love these large areas of various wildflowers.  In the wind, the whole garden is alive and dancing.  Drought-tolerant is the way to go with climate change, and we have always just let the rain water the garden.  The plants grow stronger this way, and you can enjoy doing other things you love.

 

New blooms are coming soon…

Love to all of the bees who warn us to be more gentle.

Without you, I cannot think what we’d be.  ~ Amor Milagre

 

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Organic Cottage Garden: Lavender Ice

Amor Milagre Organic Garden Lavender Ice
Amor Milagre Organic Garden Lavender Ice

 

On hot summer days, we make simply refreshing flavoured ice.

Sometimes mint or rosemary, often wild berry, and today…lavender!

Amor Milagre Organic Garden Lavender Ice
Amor Milagre Organic Garden Lavender Ice

 

Homeschool is lovely in the summer.  Explore all things botanical in the garden, come in for a cold drink, and let the mind soak up beautiful latin names, fascinating plant uses, and charming origin stories.  Nature is the best teacher.

A few fresh books will be finished this month, and then it’s off to the printers!

Stay cool.  Love, ~ Amor Milagre

 

A Gentle Life Collection

Coming Up:  New Audiobooks & An Ethical Paperback Option

 

 

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Cottage Garden: Foxgloves in the Morning

Cottage Garden Design by Amor Milagre: Foxgloves in the Morning
Cottage Garden Design by Amor Milagre: Apricot Foxgloves in the Morning

 

Fairies slumber in the shady bells of the creamy, freckled foxgloves.  We visit them on summer mornings.

Cottage Garden Design by Amor Milagre: Foxgloves in the Morning
Cottage Garden Design by Amor Milagre: Foxgloves in the Morning

 

Cottage Garden Design by Amor Milagre: Foxgloves in the Morning
Cottage Garden Design by Amor Milagre: Foxgloves in the Morning

 

Cottage Garden Design by Amor Milagre: Foxgloves in the Morning
Cottage Garden Design by Amor Milagre: Foxgloves in the Morning.  Just now growing in new beds.  Replace lawns with perennial flowers for pollinators.

 

Cottage Garden Design by Amor Milagre: Foxgloves in the Morning
Cottage Garden Design by Amor Milagre: Foxgloves in the Morning

 

Cottage Garden Design by Amor Milagre: Foxgloves in the Morning
Cottage Garden Design by Amor Milagre: Foxgloves in the Morning.  Tall as the evergreens…well, almost!

 

Each foxglove plant gives you a garden of seeds.  Plant them, wait patiently, and adore.

Cottage Garden Design by Amor Milagre: English Roses in the Morning
Cottage Garden Design by Amor Milagre: English Roses in the Morning

 

Plant for pollinators.  Stay hydrated.  Love, ~Amor Milagre

 

 

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Green Witch’s Cottage Garden: Lavender & Mint

Amor Milagre Organic Cottage Garden Design, Lavender Harvest
Amor Milagre Organic Cottage Garden Design, Lavender Harvest

 

A table of earthy lavender feels real and full.  So much of our modern world is fake, in denial, distressing, and all about the intended facade, but plants are usually pretty honest.  I relish in the green air of my garden.  The buds, the stems, the scents, the textures, and the flavours…

Bundles of twine-tied and dried bedroom bouquets, petals for dollhouse and wardrobe sachets, and savoured preserves for kitchen teatime potions adorn our Rose Cottage rooms this last week of June.  Many blooms are left growing for the pollinators.

This spell is a simple one…scatter some seeds…rain…wait…and enjoy as your plants grow more lush every year!  New blooms will come back soon after this trim.  Our flowers bolted early from spring’s heat waves caused by climate change, and I am learning their new rhythms.  Weeks of rain follow none at all, and I am glad we designed a drought-tolerant garden.  The wildlife and pollinators adore the various intermingling plants.  Glistening wings hover over large patches of colourful petals in a sparkling, humming cloud.  Bliss!  This is the ‘reality’ we love the most.

Amor Milagre Organic Cottage Garden Design, Lavender Harvest
Amor Milagre Organic Cottage Garden Design, Lavender Bundles

 

Roaming our rambling minty hills, we find inspiration.  A handful of mint makes for a refreshing vegan shake.  You can also mix the lavender and mint together in a fresh tea infusion to brew up a calming enchantment.  Sit in the moment…feel that you are real and full of life!  Grow goodness!

*New Green Witch books are coming soon.  Check out my Lavender art pieces and books for more fresh air.  Be truly you!  Love, ~Amor Milagre

 

 

 

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Cottage Garden Flowers: June in Bloom

Amor MilagreCottage Garden Design
Amor Milagre Cottage Garden Design, Apricot Foxgloves, Planted to Match the Blush of Baby’s Cheek

 

This is the week of the foxglove, buttercup, peony, iris, pollinator-loving wildflowers, lavender, and the first rose bloom.  The soft, pillowy petals are beloved by all wildlife.  It rains, bathing fuzzy stems in shining dew.  We visit each bloom as it unfurls.  The flowers are helped by glistening insect friends and greet the clouded sun,  “Good morning!”  This is an especially magical time to study and write about the poetry of nature… and of the self.  Our lessons are taken into the garden with a cup of tea and an umbrella.

Sense all around your lovely being.  How do you feel?  What kind of messages are whispering to you?

balance in the dance

Happy Last Days of June!  Love, ~The Botanists at Rose Cottage, Amor Milagre

 

Amor MilagreCottage Garden Design
Amor Milagre Cottage Garden Design, Plant drought-tolerant wildflowers for pollinators

 

With each season, our garden renovation design grows in fuller than the last.  We replaced lawns with perennial flowers and edible organic plant foods.  We made fun pathways to explore under arches of towering stems and sweet blooms.  The low buzzing hum increases, and new winged friends stay a while.

Scatter seeds and wait for your gorgeous surprise!  Life awaits…

Amor MilagreCottage Garden Design
Amor Milagre Cottage Garden Design, Peonies

 

Let other flowers hold up earlier bloomers…they help as they grow…no prop sticks or twine needed!

Amor MilagreCottage Garden Design
Amor Milagre Cottage Garden Design, Plant Flowering Trees, Kousa Dogwood

 

Our first sense of the new flowering trees’ beautiful blooms!  Stars!  (Kousa Dogwood)

 

Amor MilagreCottage Garden Design
Amor Milagre Cottage Garden Design, David Austin English Rose

 

Sweet as June, an English Rose…heavenly scent…

Amor MilagreCottage Garden Design
Amor Milagre Cottage Garden Design, Plant for Pollinators

 

Planting beds of flowering, fragrant thyme with many pollinator-loving flowers in between is a sustainable way to replace lawns, enjoy your garden, encourage wildlife, and always have healthy organic herbs for the kitchen!  July blooms are coming soon…but we’ll sit and hum with these first…

 

Visit my nature photography and artwork collections to browse more inspiration from our garden.