Dreaming of the Outdoors

Ok, I know it's cold and you don't really want to venture outdoors a whole lot right now. After all, it's still January...or is it? In Blogland it can be summer anytime we want. Just think of Blogland as a magical time machine, and on this Outdoor Wednesday, hosted by our gracious host, Susan at A Southern Daydreamer, we are going on a little garden tour. Yep, it's summer here at Between Naps on the Porch. The sun is shining and whew...I think I'm perspiring a bit. "You see, we southern girls never sweat, we perspire," she drawls in her best southern accent. :-)

Ok, get your garden clogs or tennis shoes on...whatever you like to wear when you're out puttering around in the yard. Let's go see what's blooming in my garden on this Outdoor Wednesday!

Patterns by Amy Lowell

I walk down the garden paths,
And all the daffodils
Are blowing, and the bright blue squills.
I walk down the patterned garden paths
In my stiff, brocaded gown.
I too am a rare pattern.
As I wander down the garden paths.

I love it when the iris spill into the path...it's their sneaky way of saying, "hey, what's the rush, come play a while in the garden."

Gardening is a kind of disease. It infects you, you cannot escape it. When you go visiting, your eyes rove about the garden; you interrupt the serious cocktail drinking because of an irresistible impulse to get up and pull a weed. ~Lewis Gannit

2003 Perennial Plant of the Year: Leucanthemum 'Becky', Shasta Daisy


It is utterly forbidden to be half-hearted about gardening. You have got to love your garden whether you like it or not. ~ W.C. Sellar & R.J. Yeatman, Garden Rubbish, 1936

Phlox paniculata 'Common Purple'


Green fingers are the extension of a verdant heart. ~Russell Page

Achillea Oertel's Rose : Yarrow, & Hemerocallis 'Stella de Oro' Daylily

Gardening requires lots of water-most of it in the form of perspiration. ~ Lou Erickson

Annual Planter with Geranium, Petunias and Ivy...


When weeding, the best way to make sure you are removing a weed and not a valuable plant is to pull on it. If it comes out of the ground easily, it is a valuable plant. ~ (Author Unknown)

Spiderwort (Tradescantia)


Let no one think that real gardening is a bucolic and meditative occupation. It is an insatiable passion, like everything else to which a man gives his heart. ~Karel Čapek, The Gardener's Year, translated by M. and R. Weatherall, 1931

Spanish Lavender, sometimes called French Lavender because it grows wild in France. The Japanese Maple is 'Waterfall'.


What a man needs in gardening is a cast-iron back, with a hinge in it. ~Charles Dudley Warner, My Summer in a Garden, 1871

Lychnis coronaria, Rose Campion


Who loves a garden loves a greenhouse, too. ~ William Cowper

A garden pretty... :-)



Earth is here so kind, that just tickle her with a hoe and she laughs with a harvest. ~Douglas William Jerrold, about Australia, A Land of Plenty

Dianthus, 'Bath's Pink' named after Jane Bath who lives in Stone Mountain, Georgia

In my garden there is a large place for sentiment. My garden of flowers is also my garden of thoughts and dreams. The thoughts grow as freely as the flowers, and the dreams are as beautiful. ~Abram L. Urban

Magnolia grandiflora, commonly known as the Southern Magnolia: Every southern garden needs one of these wonderful trees. The flowers smell like lemonade, to me. I use the leaves extensively in my decorations at Christmas time.

If you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need. - Cicero (Marcus Tullius Cicero)

Gerbera Daisy...I love these happy little flowers!

No two gardens are the same. No two days are the same in one garden." ~Hugh Johnson

Puple phlox and 'Becky' daisys down front, with tall yellow Rudbeckia 'Herbstsonne' in back...

I purchased this Lazy Hill Dovecote to use as an ornamental accent to my perennial garden. To my delight, bluebirds nested here three times last spring/summer. If you'd like to see them feeding their babies, just click on the dovecote pic in my sidebar.



I never had any other desire so strong, and so like to covetousness, as that one which I have had always, that I might be master at last of a small house and a large Garden. ~Abraham Cowley, The Garden, 1666

Remember these...from a tablescape on the porch?


Here's the source. This gardenia bush grows right beside the entrance to the garage, so I get to enjoy the wonderful fragrance each day during the long blooming period. :-)



Gardens... should be like lovely, well-shaped girls: all curves, secret corners, unexpected deviations, seductive surprises and then still more curves. ~H.E. Bates, A Love of Flowers

One of the last blooms of the spring foxgloves...

Our England is a garden, and such gardens are not made by singing: -"Oh, how beautiful!" and sitting in the shade.~Rudyard Kipling, "The Glory of the Garden"

More 'Stella de Oro'

'Black Eyed Stella' Daylily with a replica of the "Bird Girl" shown on the cover of the book, Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil.

The kiss of the sun for pardon, The song of the birds for mirth, One is nearer God's heart in a garden, than anywhere else on earth.~Dorothy Frances Gurney, "Garden Thoughts

Don't forget to stop back by A Southern Daydreamer for links to some wonderful Outdoor Wednesday posts!