I've been working on Spring cleaning for the past few days, I had several months of running myself rugged over work so it was a much needed change of pace.  I took out bags and bags of clothes, shoes that don't fit right and purses I never wore and gave them away to Goodwill.  It feels like I still got a long way to go but it sure feels nice to unload.  My goal is to clean out one bag of stuff a day, and sometimes I get really into it I would do more.  There is something about focusing on what I own rather than how I live that simply don't sit well with me anymore.  I feel like the less things I have the simpler and better I can live, so hopefully purging extra clutter is going to help me live more purposefully!

A few weeks ago I found a super nice dog bed for very cheap, the quality was amazing so I got it for my doggies, dog beds are actually something that's in constant demand at my house, they just wear out after a year or so and I usually keep one or two beds in almost every room of my house to keep my pups comfortable. But as soon as I walked out of the shop I saw this homeless guy with his dog ready to spend the night outside in the cold.  He had a large black plastic bag filled with either blanket or clothing and that became the makeshift bed for the pup while he just sat on concrete himself.  The pup had a leash on and actually looked well cared for.  I just couldn't watch it so I ripped off the tag and gave the brand new bed to that little dog.  The doggie jumped in immediately, it was a really cold night and hopefully having a real bed helped him to keep warm.  

I spent a lot of time over the past couple of weeks pulling out dead plants and weeds out of my backyard.  With some care, my flowers really have perked up!  Gardening is such a relaxing and therapeutic hobby, I wish I would remember that more often. 

I made this fairy garden as a gift for a friend. I think this one really tops it all out of the fairy gardens that I've gifted out so far. I planted a princess elm tree ( the green small bush on the left) which is extremely slow growing and live up to 20+ years no problem, not to mention that it has the tiniest elm tree leaves of all. The middle tree is a pink Serissa, the green on the roof of the house is some kind of European import, and the tree with little bright red fruit is a small Cotoneaster. With care this fairy garden will do well for quite a long time. Now, I'm always very nervous when I gift out my fairy gardens, and I usually only give them to people with a green thumb. So, best luck to this little magical world!

As long as we are making garden talk, I might as well mention that my single white Serissa bloomed. Funny all the flowers are facing the direction of the sun, which is on the left of this little plant! It only blooms during winter time, quite odd if you ask me!

While I was at the nursery today, I found this good sized Serissa tree with this crazy root formation. I was very impressed with it! Given a few years this will be the perfect tree I've been looking for!

Here's a closer look to the flower, single bloom in pink, so pretty!

I saved the cuttings off of this tree and soaked them in water, I plan to make my own serissa trees out of these tiny twigs. This sort of things are worth more than gold to me:)

I finally found homes for all my twiggy little trees. Non of these fairy gardens are really finished, but I put them in rich new potting soil, set them under a good sun spot. These were previously somewhat underprivileged trees that either had poor soil or poor pot, or little sun light. The pink Serissa tree in the first picture grew so meagerly compare to the other ones I got around the same time, I decided that it was time to move it to a deeper pot under plenty of sun. The ground covers will eventually grow to cover everywhere, but for now I'm not too worried about it! If all goes well, in a few weeks, they will start thriving!

My next door neighbors have a young renter couple that live in a separate unit. They've been living there for two years though we hardly knew them. Recently the landlords family decided to rip out a shrub wall between our backyards to re-landscape. All of a sudden I see them every single day when I'm working in the backyard. Even their cat come to visit and say hi. Turned out, one of our neighbors has quite a green thumb. He grew up on a farm and knew all kinds of farm stuff, he'd been helping a British gentleman on the other side of their house putting in a veggie garden and has quite a nice veggie patch himself. I had a tour of his veggie garden and was really impressed. Last week he offered to help trim my very over grown lemon tree for a small fee. He did a fantastic job, and this week he is helping me putting in my veggie garden. 

I remember the first year I planted lots of vegetables, but with little success. Turned out, the soil had to be turned pretty good since it was hard as solid rock.  I had two gardeners helping me work these things out before, all of them charged an arm and leg, but non of them actually did what this neighbor did for me, which is churning up the soil throughly. He also recommended organic compost, and talked to me about the various kind of winter vegetables good to grow local here in Southern California. He was about miles more knowledgable than my gardeners, and I'm learning about gardening first hand that books couldn't teach me. Anyway, my point is, other than the fact that I'm glad to get to know our neighbors better, I am so much more confident that this vegetable patch will be more successful than my previous ones. My goal is to grow enough vegetable to satisfy most of our cooking needs. Fingers crossed that it will happen:)

My miniature gardens are always a work in progress... I've had this one for quite some time now, today I added more isotoma and a little chair.  For most of them I've got down to a point where I only need to replace the ground cover every once in a while. Struggling to find good sunlight is always a problem for me!

One of my neighbor heard that I make fairy gardens for hobby, so he gave me several wine boxes, I've been able to make a couple more fairy gardens out of these boxes using trees that were stashed away for a while. The first tree from the left is a cork elm. The nursery owner told me that the trunk will crack as it ages, and while it seemed to be going that direction, I almost killed it once and all the leaves fell off at the wrong time.  I almost threw it away but decided to keep it for a while, the dry branches sprout out tiny new leaves after a while, and now it's thriving again. It's one of the happy ending trees that I have. The little tree in the middle is a hokkaido elm tree, I still have the big one here, it's loosing leaves right about now. This type of elm tree have the smallest leaves ever, I think they are just incredibly funny! The plant on the right corner with pink leaves is a dwarf bougainvillea. It has such a wonderful unusual light pink color! I'm hoping this one will grow into a handsome little tree! 

I've got more pictures of fairy gardens to come, but first, here's a little tip,

A little secret I use to keep fairy garden pots in place, glue nails to the bottom and stick them into soil!

I have been working very hard to revitalize my fairy gardens lately. They have grown in number by so much that, after giving away several of them, my backyard is still filled with them. 

I've been thinking for a while to cook for the construction workers that are working at my house for the past month and half. I see them buying fast food everyday for lunch, so I decided that it would be a good idea if I bring some home cooked meal once for a change. I started preparing some of the dishes last night and finished the cold dishes in the morning, and even brought a cake too. It was a success, even my husband drove back from work for his share of lunch!

  

After lunch I spent the afternoon freshening up my fairy gardens, it's been looking pretty sad since I've been too busy to take care of them!

This year I made another one of those Halloween themed fairy gardens, complete with happy ghosts, pumpkin patch, and doggies begging for candies! See the one I made last year here and here.

Fairy gardening is very addictive, it's kind of like yoga, or camping, if you do it long enough, that kind of end up being the only thing you will ever want to do. Being in the out doors, breath fresh air, just live life and not having to wonder about a new plasma screen tv or a new car. I'm not sure if it's healthy to be so "zen," you can really end up going into the extreme and fall off a cliff.

I admit, I have my honey boo boo moments sometimes. Today I'm treating my doggies to some fast food chicken nuggets. Mama had one piece herself. This stuff taste like rubber and felt like it could clog all your arteries in one go, but what the heck:)

A few days ago we had an episode of my doggies escaping from the backyard.  Between the gardeners and the plumbers that came rushing to my house at once, somebody somehow left one backyard door wide open. I let my doggies to the backyard to play after everybody had left, and three minutes later I started wondering why everyone was so quiet.  When I finally realized that one of the backyard door was open, I ran out bare foot to find my dogs. Luckily they didn't wonder far, a pair of black dogs were found sniffling our next door neighbor's tree, and Kelly was just sun bathing on my back porch. 

Today I finally got my acts together and made name tags for them.  I bought matching colored harness and they looked cute wearing them. The whole deal was pretty fun!

   

 I think I might have a case of the "spring fever." I can't stop messing around in my fairy gardens lately.

Just a few pictures of my fairy gardens in daylight:)

I had my gardener planted my Camellia Japonica in the front yard. When our walnut tree fell down a little over a year ago, it knocked down several small bushy trees. I had this bald spot that exposed the neighbor's driveway for a while, but I think now the Camellia tree will fill in the space nicely!

Last year around January I planted these small bushes in the corner of my front yard along with two pink carnations. 

Look how much the bushes have grown only after a year! The french lavender bush smells so good and it constantly has bees swarming around it. 

 

I love to add miniature LED lights to fairy gardens, except the last one I got has bright harsh white lights. I used a few different color nail polish to paint a light coat over the lights, and viola!

The picture doesn't do the lights justice. It's actually very colorful, kind of like the multicolored Christmas lights, except in miniature size!

The theme is suppose to be a tree man reading a fairy tale to a little girl. It was in a different fairy garden, but a while ago when our chimney had smouldering fire, the fireman accidentally knocked over this tree man and broke off one of his little branches. The fairy garden has since died, and I wanted to moved the little girl to a different fairy garden and put the tree man in the garage, but he seemed very sad without the little girl listening to his stories! So I decided to glue his branch back on and put him in another place. Now he's back into the fairy world, I think he should be happy again.

My cleaning lady always said she loved my fairy gardens each week she came to clean my house, so today I made her one. I've been really enjoying the days when she comes by, while she's cleaning she tells me about her family stories in Mexico, the kind of food she cooks, her dog, and even really scary ghost stories sometimes!

Happy Halloween everyone! I didn't decorate my house for Halloween this year, so I thought a Halloween fairy garden at my front porch for kids to see when they come for candies would be a good idea!

There are lights flickering inside the Crows Best Inn, it will be more visible when it gets dark outside...

A real slug crawling on the pumpkin:)

Keep out! ( And do you see the black cat?)

Skull and pumpkin on the house!

Tombstone, zombie's hand, and skulls... Happy Halloween:)