Can You Tell I'm a Gardener?

Our homes tell a lot about our personal lives, as they should. We like to surround ourselves with those things that bring us joy, both inside and out. When you see Our Little Acre from the outside, it's pretty obvious that we enjoy tending our gardens. But what about when you walk through the front door?

The 177 house plants probably give it away. (Oh wait...that's now up to 179, isn't it?) But beyond that, what does our house say about us? Probably not a lot about Romie, other than he has a wife. Given a choice, he'd live in a log cabin with the bare minimum of furniture and those bucolic farm scenes for art on the walls.

I wondered if you took the live plants out of our house, would anyone guess that I like flowers and gardening? Let's take a look at the evidence...

If you were an overnight guest in our home, you would get your choice of which room you wanted to sleep in. You could choose Kara's former room, which has these botanical prints:


Or there is Jenna's former room, which has thankfully been redecorated from its former red-walled Mickey Mouse theme. (I toyed with the idea of leaving it that way so when the future grandchildren came to stay with Grandma and Grandpa, they would remember sleeping in "The Mickey Room." What kid wouldn't love that?)



Now this room has a definite botanical influence. The drapes have a leaf pattern in the weave, as do the finials on the drapery rods.







The chair, besides functioning as a plant stand, has a floral pillow propped in its seat.











On the walls are a couple of leaves that have been skeletonized. I doubt it was Japanese Beetles that did it, and although it looks beautiful used in this way, I don't want to see any leaves looking like this in my own gardens!






There's also a large bronze leaf hanging on another wall.





Across the hall, in the master bath, hangs a picture of daisies. I love daisies.









There are a couple of black-and-white pictures of blooming spring bulbs.









Downstairs, in the family room, the bookshelves hold lots of ... well ... books. And more than a few of them are gardening-related:























On the end table by one of the sofas, there is a stack of coasters made by my dad. Two summers ago, we lost a pine tree from our yard. This tree was one that Kara had brought home from school when she was in the fifth grade. It had grown a lot and was doing quite well when all of a sudden it started losing needles and died.

We kept the tree, or at least part of it. That's now the directional that is in the garden, but we also kept one of the larger branches. I asked Dad to slice it up to make coasters, which were given to Kara for Christmas that year. There were enough that we could have some, too.




This room also has a picture that was given to me by Jenna last year for Mother's Day.






In 2004, I went on a bus trip with my mom to Chicago Botanic Gardens. To remember the wonderful day we spent there, I purchased a piece of Guy Wolff pottery he made especially for the Gardens. I put fake ivy in it, but that's only because where I used to have it displayed, there is no natural light. I guess I could replace it with something live now.



In the utility room, next to a large collection of live plants overwintering in the south window is a ceramic art piece that I bought in Florida last winter. I got a couple of these for Mom for her birthday, too. Hers are a large hibiscus and a Monarch butterfly. She displays them together and they really look pretty in her sun room.

Every summer, Fort Wayne (IN) has its Three Rivers Festival. There's always a fabulous Art Show on the two weekends of the festival in Freimann Square. One year we went to it and I found some gorgeous pottery by John Reishus from Alexandria, Indiana. I purchased a canister set and a covered casserole dish to match. I think the set goes well in our kitchen, which has ivory appliances and wallpaper backsplash that looks like tile imprinted with herbs. (I love this wallpaper. It's very thick and has a unique texture, making it really look like tile!)

Mom gave me the cute ceramic mouse, to which I added the leather tail, although it's not permanently attached. Jilly thinks that tail is her personal plaything and every now and then I'll walk into the kitchen and the tail is on the floor. Sometimes she even hides it under the rug that's in front of the sink.

We don't use our formal dining room much at all for formal dining - that's just not our style - and strangely enough, the desktop computer is situated in this room. There are also french doors to the patio area, which we use quite a bit in the summer. The door to this room is just off the kitchen and my garden hat hangs on it. I suppose it's an odd place to hang this hat, but it's handy there!




On top of a short curio cabinet in this same room sits a pottery bouquet that used to belong to my grandma. There was an unfortunate accident during some housecleaning at her place and a glass shelf fell onto this bouquet. Many of the flowers suffered breakage and she told me if we wanted to take all the little pieces and glue them back on, we could have it. Romie is pretty good at doing that, and unless you look really closely at it, you can't tell anything happened.


So yes, even without the 179 house plants, there are signs that gardening is my "thing." I wonder if they could tell we love cats, too?