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Garden House Showcase: A Special Place for Mom

April 18, 2017 by Vanessa Leave a Comment

My mom is quite talented at a lot of things. When guests come over she rolls out the red carpet with the some of the most delicious meals. Even if you’ve dropped by the house mid-day, she’ll serve you a delicious cheese and fruit platter and pour you a glass of Chardonnay. Yea, she’s that kind of hostess.

But don’t be surprised if you knock on the door and she doesn’t answer. She’s most likely outside in her custom built garden house doing what she does best…gardening. Make no mistake. This is no She Shed. She refuses to let people label it as such. This is a real-deal garden house where she spends time cultivating her craft – making her gardens flourish. Whether she is sitting in the screened in porch chair reading about rose bushes or potting plants in the stainless steel sink, her green thumb is at work.

Located behind my parent’s home, mom’s garden house often entices strangers driving by to stop and ask to see it.

It seems only fair that my step-dad, who has his own woodworking shop, would build a garden house for her, right? The 8’x12′ house (not including the 5’x12′ screened in porch) includes the same amenities that any home would have including running water and electricity. During the winter it houses plants she wants to keep alive from the outdoor elements and during the summer the sun beams in on oversized house plants.

I recognize quite a bit of my mom’s style in her garden house’s design from the upcycled screen door to the ceiling light fixture that she held on to for years until this house was built.

Mom’s garden house is an extension of her own home. The interior’s neutral colors, off-set by the bright white counter tops and trimmed windows, includes various green hues from decorative additions and dark black metal pieces. Having collected many of the sitabouts over time, she decorates in a style more sophisticated than rustic farmhouse but less stuffy than classic traditional. She has an eclectic sense of design style that is uniquely her own.

Once inside the screened in porch, glass French doors remain welcome you into a spacious window lit space.
Muted green wicker chairs flank both sides of the screened in porch to the east and the west.

When not busy nurturing plants, she uses the garden house as a quiet refuge to read or just watch her many bird feeders in the yard over a glass of wine. When friends visit on occasion, like her Bunco gal pals, it serves as a getaway space to venture to between games for a quick tour. You can hear the women audibly dote over each detail of the garden house. They want one too. Who wouldn’t?

A serious gardner needs a space to pour over the details found in gardening books. Always the humble student, my mom enjoys learning why some plants and flowers flourish and how she can attract or eliminate insects.

Mom’s appreciation of nature goes back as far as I can remember.

“It (gardening) feeds my soul in a way nothing else does. I’m connected to plants in new says every year,” she said recently.

My childhood was spent watching her in the yard with her hands in the dirt on weekends. After coming home from school we would drag around the hose to water thick, layered flower beds of all colors and varieties. Sunflowers towered over our heads and wildflowers nestled at our feet. She would tell me about butterflies that she adored and the grasshoppers that broke her heart.

Today, she still sees beauty in the colors of delicate flowers and enjoys the harvest of a vegetable or herb garden. Her accepted challenge each year is to learn about the needs of plant placement in her landscape while always attempting to attract birds, bees, and insects.

Antique pottery and her favorite pieces adorn a shelf above the door inside the garden house.
The east side of the garden house exposes an area behind it where she also pots plants and flowers.
The wooden table on the right was her only potting station at our old house.

Gardening is not easy. She admits that the challenge is to find the balance between what she wants to plant and what nature will allow. Admittedly, she says there are more failures to learn every season and enough small successes to keep her happy.

I love spring and wish it lasted longer, she says.

It’s true. She smiles the most in the spring (with college basketball season in a close second place). When the weather begins to warm up and the days spring forward, she is more outdoors than she is indoors. I often call her to wish her a “Happy Spring” only for it to go to voicemail because she’s outside playing in the yard.

While I love the outdoors, I’m not a natural gardener. I struggle to keep plants alive. I either over or under water them. Completely forget about them. I never installed the proper drip system. Can a person’s “green thumb” be learned? Maybe I just wrote it off as “mom’s hobby.” I should have really paid more attention when helping her in the yard as a teen. Just last week I called her seeking advice about our sad rose bushes. Before I knew it, I was at her house on my hands and knees pruning her rose bushes while she used wood glue on the stem ends to prevent bores for invading them again. Glue? Who knew!

A rusty garden tool serves as a door knocker on the exterior of the garden house.

I’m “foodie” thanks to my mom’s love of cooking. In fact, many of her garden harvests end up in her recipes. Ripe tomatoes are the star ingredient in her homemade gazpacho, a cool treat during a blazing hot summer day. Fresh herbs like rosemary and thyme find their way into many of her savory recipes. This year she has decided to trade her tomato plants for perennials because it’s just less to have to worry about and each year perennials come back stronger when given the space to spread out.

I’ve have so much to learn from her wisdom about nature, about plants and birds. As I mentioned before, I’m at best a wannabe gardener. In fact, I’ve killed so many house plants over the years that if there is every going to be any hope for me, I’m going to have to spend more time with mom in the garden house. If you’re more like me, you’ll appreciate a post she helped me write last summer 10 Hard to Kill Houseplants You Can Leave While on Vacation.

But not every day can be spent gardening. Sometimes the body needs a day of rest between the hours spent digging in unforgiving soil and pulling weeds away from flowers. On these days, she takes time to let her body relax but we all know she is still thinking about her next outdoor project.

A water drip system was installed for her window boxes, which extends to the container pots near the garden house entrance.

What can we learn from mom’s garden house? Every woman, every person, needs a space to call their own. Where they can go to escape the chaos of the day and appreciate some quiet time or just enjoy their hobby.

Looking west from inside.

What is it that brings you peace? What do you enjoy learning about most? Tell me in the comments section how you pursue your hobby or where you like to spend quiet time.

Filed Under: Lifestyle Tagged With: antiques, backyard, bird feeders, bird watching, birds, books, botanical garden, break, bugs, Bunco, ceiling fan, chalkboard, chickens, cigar box, decor, design, desk, dirt, DIY, do it yourself, door knocker, earth, farmhouse, flower frog, flowers, framed art, French doors, garden, gardening hat, gardens, gazpacho, grasshoppers, green thumb, greenhouse, harvest, herbs, hobby, homegrown, horticulture, hose, house, houseplants, insects, interior, ivy, landscape, landscape lighting, lawn, mom, mother, nature, outdoors, patio, place, plant stand, plantings, plants, porch, pottery, potting, potting station, quiet, read, reading, reading nook, refuge, rest, roses, rustic, sconce, screen, seasonal, seed packets, seeds, shade, She shed, showcase, shutters, sink, sitabouts, soil, space, special, spring, sunshine, tile, trees, upcycled, urban garden, vacation, vegetables, vintage, weeds, wicker chair, window, window box, wine, work, yard

5 Ways to Use Leftover Orange Peels to Improve Your Home

February 22, 2017 by Vanessa Leave a Comment

Call me thrifty. I love to repurpose stuff. I save money and get to use something “new.”

If you’re like me, you appreciate finding new purposes for old household items. It comes as no surprise that I would think, “hmmm, how can someone re-use orange peels?” and then create 5 Ways to Use Leftover Orange Peels to Improve Your Home post just for you. Random? Maybe. Awesome? Definitely. Most people just discard the peel, which is a waste literally and figuratively.

  1. AS A ROOM FRESHENER. Fill a small pot with water. Add orange peels, a cinnamon stick, and sliced apples to this stovetop potpourri (simmer on low) and your home is smelling phenomenal in no time. If you prefer the smell in cinnamon in fall and it’s July, add orange peels to a essential oil diffuser with a spring scent.

    Just don’t forget to turn off the stove before you leave the house or go to bed!
  2. USE THE ORANGE ESSENCE AS PART OF A CLEANING SOLUTION. Add the peels of 2-3 large oranges to a mason jar. Fill half way with white distilled vinegar. Secure lid and store in a dark place (like your pantry or cabinet) for at least two weeks. Strain the orange-infused vinegar and pour using a funnel into an empty spray bottle. Top off with water and you’re good to go! Spray countertops or the inside of the sink to clean it and add a pleasant orange smell.
  3. REFRESH YOUR GARBAGE DISPOSAL. Use the old orange peels that you strained from the cleaning solution you made and put them down the drain. Run the disposal. Ahhhh the sweet smell of orange!
  4. INFUSE VODKA. Add orange peels to a vodka bottle in your liquor cabinet, secure lid, and store unopened for a a few days to a week. It’s martini time. Yes, that improves your home! You deserve a martini after all that house cleaning, right? I like Chef Jamie Oliver’s how-to recipe post for Homemade Citrus-Infused Vodka. 
  5. STORE IN YOUR BROWN SUGAR. Don’t you hate it when your nearly full bag of brown sugar becomes rock hard because it wasn’t an airtight seal? Adding orange peels to your brown sugar will keep it soft and add a subtle orange flavor. You only need one or two peels for a bag of brown sugar.

You’ll never be able to toss an orange peel in the trash again! You’ve got the tools to make your house a citrus-happy home. Now, orange you glad?

5 Ways to Use Orange Peels

Filed Under: DIY, Lifestyle Tagged With: air freshner, brown sugar, cleaning, disposal, essential oil, infused, kitchen, natural, oil, orange, orange peel, organic, potpourri, refresh, reuse, room freshener, sink, smell, vinegar, vodka, water

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Hello! I'm Vanessa. Welcome to One Delightful Life, a blog created to add more delight to your life with delicious recipes, travel destinations, and lifestyle improvement ideas. Thanks for exploring my blog!

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