New May garden pictures, Junque swap and my latest collage work

Welcome to my May garden dear blogging friends and readers! I just spent 14 days of vacation in my garden with splendid weather and it felt so good! It's the most wonderful time of the garden season when you can see everything growing fresh and sometimes even exploding! I took the picture of the Allium a few days ago and it has grown so much since then. Well let's start on my deck, I had to move the hard wooden bench away from the window to the left side of my patio because a huge hollyhock has selfseeded in a small gap between the terrace stones and it needed space to grow there which wasn't possible with the bench on top. I can't wait to see the hollyhocks looking directly in my living room window, but know there is only foliage so I haven't took a picture of it yet. So this is the new sunny space for my bench and I must say that I really like it there!

At this time of the year the wine foliage isn't that huge yet and you can see the morning light looking through the wooden fence walls which I find so pretty:

The only sad thing is that my Wisteria isn't going to bloom this year, it has a disease and I just hope that it will recover again!

These are close ups of my decorations on the patio walls, as you can see blue and terracotta are still my fave colors here:

I have got me a new addition for my patio at our Garden fair on 1st of May which is the iron shelf you can see in the next picture and which is hopefully clickable to enlarge for more details:

So what the beautiful morning light is to the left side of my deck and garden is the evening light to the right side where my neighbors huge Lilac is blooming beautifully in the background and the sun has illuminated the bush of Hibiscus Syriacus next to my blue trellis (where Clematis is growing) which is just getting fesh leaves:

A big blue delphinium is growing in a pot on my patio and since I took this picture at the beginning of the week it is already blooming today

To my great pleasure my Agaphanthus has finally got a flower too this season, just one so far but this is better than nothing.

Down in the yard there is still May green the defining color but more and more colors starting to evolve like the blue of my columbines and clematis for example and the white and pink of my bleeding hearts of which I will show you some close ups later in this post.

To the left side of my garden I just removed one of the two huge cherry laurels and have got so much more light and space for my flowers and roses that I think it was a good decision. There are 4 big roses growing between my booxwood hedges. Make sure that you don't forget to double click on the photos to see more details!

This is my first big clematis bloom of this spring (there are also the smaller clematis montana blooming at the fence to the right hand neighbors), it is called Multiblue and it isn't finished yet, it's going to become more blue in the upcoming days.

Another highlight of my May garden is the gorgeous Virburnum opolus roseum which always make me think of Hydrangeas.

Here is a close up of my beautiful white Bleeding heart with blue and white colombines blooming in the background:

And still there are lot's of pretty Forget me not's blooming between my boxwood hedges:

And my lawn is full of white daisies, I love them so much, I could never remove them, don't you juat want to start a daisy-chain when you spot them?

M pink bleeding heart is not that big this year because it was burried under the huge foliage of some new white Alliums and it took me a while to find it and remove some foliage so that it could get enough light to evolve.

My Alliums are all doing great and I have 6 different sorts this year but I restrain myself to post just one more picture and will take more, when their heads have grown bigger than the ones of these Purple Sensations. I grow Allium since 4 years now and I'm hooked to their beauty. The Allium Globemaster is going to get the biggest blooming heads as big as a child heads, can`t wait for them to get to their full size and beauty!

So that was it of my May garden photos today and I hope you have enjoyed them!

Now to change the subject my fab swap partner LiLi is back to her Dutch home from a vacation in Florida and has finally got my swap parcel from Heather Pretty Petals "Junque in my trunk" swap and so it is save for me to post some pictures of the wrapping without spoiling her the surprise. Heather asked us to pack and wrap the parcel so beautifully that we would not want to open it and this is something I love doing anyway and I tried my best without overdoing it. In my chair you see the packed parcel just before I brought it to the post office:

And here is what LiLi found inside:

Seeing her color scheme for her swap to me was pink and black, I chose aqua/turquoise/light blue, white and gold for my parcels to her:

Inside this parcel was the trunk I filled with junk which actually is a tin box I found at the Bremen flea market. I was drawn to it because of the beautiful colors, pattern and of course the little birdie on top:

Seeing how much I was spoiled by LiLi I packed a few more parcels for her, like this one which I decorated with millinery flowers and a vintage hat pin, inside is one of my big two sided round soldered pendants:

And this lil box that I filled with turqouise items such as baubles, a vintage hanky a pearl clip bird etc. and decorated it with ruffled borders, Dresden gold borders and trims:

Here are a few pictures of the wrapped content of the tin trunk box and I made a Welcome Spring sign for LiLi:

It was so much fun to pack and wrap it all beautiful!

This was such a fun swap and LiLi and I both felt like Christmas and Birthday when we received eachothers trunks:

This is a pair of earring I made for LiLi:

I also gave her one of my fave living and garden magazines which I filled with Dresden borders, a vintage Bird card, sheet music and more emphemera for her to use:

If you are interested to see more pictures also of the unwrapped content you can just hop over to LiLi's blog here http://lilimsadventures.blogspot.com/ where she have posted lot's of pretty photos! Thanks again dear Heather for matching LiLi and me you have done so well! :)

Now lastly I'd like to show you one of my latest creations. This was a simple cornflakes box before I collaged it and made it into a wall box to store some of my wallpapers, ledgers and such:

I used Vintage sheet music as the base then some pieces of Vintage wall paper (thanks again Nicki to spoil me with it!!) Dresden borders in pink and gold, a cameo and a plastic bird, some fabirc flowers, a pom pom fringe and a yoyo I got from my friend Anita to embellish it.

Now this was a very long post and I'd like to thank everyone who stayed with me until the end and hopefully enjoyed it. I'm looking forward to read your comments and will visit all your beautiful blogs too.

Have a great week and enjoy your gardens!

Hugs Carol xox

My childhood toys, another swap and new garden pictures

Welcome back to Boxwood Cottage and to another mixed post with garden photos, childhood photos and toys and a private swap. I'd like to start with a the private swap I recently did with my blogging friend Ginny from England. I made a two sided Welcome Spring pendant (see one side in the pic above) for Ginny but I was so in a hurry to send it off that I forgot to take a picture of the wrapping before, well in the next picture you can see the wrapping of Ginny's parcel to me. I tried to rewrap it for the photo. It's gorgeous old linnen and a beautiful tassel border which I'm looking forward to use in future projects:

And I'm so very happy that I got one of Ginny's wonderful shabby ruffled rose hearts that you see in the next picture! Thank you so much dear Ginny it is very much appreciated!

This Sunday there is no Show and Tell hosted by Cerri and Analise, but Miss Jessi over at http://www.scrappyjessi.blogspot.com/ asked us to show off our favorite childhood toys on May 1st. I'll be away on May 1st and the upcoming week will be very busy for me too, so I decided to do this post a bit earlier - actually today - because I don't wanted to miss out on this great topic, hope that's okay with you Jessi! Well seeing that I'm meanwhile 45 years old, this was quite a trip down memory lane for me which I thorougly enjoyed! In the first picture you can see my well loved childhood teddy bear, one of the few toys I still own, for today's photo he's dressed up with a little silver Dresden foil crown and Ginny's gorgeous heart. I got this quite big teddy bear for my second birthday in 1965, so in the meantime he became really Vintage (click picture to enlarge):

Then I own these pictures of a Christmas eve at my Grandparents (Dad's parents) home when I was almost 3 years old and got a fabulous police car (my Dad is a police inspector/commissar) and you can see how happy I was to get it in my facial expression:

Oh I wish I'd still own this car today, I think it looks so pretty! Here I am very concentrated on unwrapping another present:

In my childhood we often visited my other Grandparents (Mum's parents) who lived in the beautiful low mountain range "Harz" and there was always lot's of snow and I loved my sleigh:

and also my skates when I was a little older! We could go skating somewhere on natural lakes every winter when I was a child unless like today where winters became rather warm here in nothern Germany.

Now here you can see me on my 5th birthday (I already had a little baby sister then who slept in the baby bed behind me) very proud getting a beautiful bike and a doll named Petra with a bike seat so that I could drive her around, which was real fun:

And this picture is from a Christmas eve at home when I was almost 8 years old and when my sister (it's the more blonde one on the left, doesn't she look just too cute?) and I got gorgeous soft body baby dolls, see how happy I was?

I also was quite a bookworm as a child, I remember that I loved beeing sick at home when I could lay in my bed all day long doing nothing but reading. Last summer my mum gave back to me a few of my childhood books that she had saved and I already took pictures of them but posting them all here today would be to much, they would make a whole topic for themselves and I'll probably do one some time soon.

But now it's on to Spring! Yeah!

We have beautiful sunny spring weather since Monday and today it will get really warm with temps over 20 degrees Celsius which is over 60 Fahrenheit and my fave temperature. This next picture of a spring post card from 1903 that I found at the flea market recently is so beautiful that I had to show you a photo, the sheet music underneath is from a song called Spring love in English which I find so appropriate to my feelings these days:

It's finally back to my garden for me and to enjoy time in the wam sun on my deck:

All pictures should be clickable to enlarge and see more details if you like!

On Wednesday night we had a good rain shower and the next day suddenly it was all green again, I so love the fresh leaves in my trees:

I got a little crapapple tree for my last birthday and it is blooming now so beautifully:

Well to me spring is not only green, it is also pink/purple:

and feshly white like the ranunculus and sweet smelling primeroses on my patio table:

and of course blue and purple! Pansies and the smaller Viola cornutas are still my fave spring flowers to bring bright spring mood in my garden:

You just have to love their little faces, don't you?

Since last year you can also get frilly pansies here!

The frilly ones are called "Rococo pansies" and I find them absolutely unresistable charming:

Well I think 20 pictures should be enough for one post so I better come to an end and go outside to enjoy Spring! Hope you'll all have a wonderful spring Sunday or better week too!

Here is my new blog signature btw: