Gardening Joy & Opening a New Etsy Shop !

So my husband & I got to enjoy a full 2 days & nights without our son ! One of his good friends chose to celebrate his birthday by going sailing with 2 of his friends, so his stepdad took the 3 boys to Poets Cove on Pender Island British Columbia ( about a 2 hour sail from Vancouver Island ) where they enjoyed free use of the resorts swimming pool, hot tub, tennis & basketball courts, along with beach fun, kayaking & playing in the dinghy. Sounds like a really rotten time eh, lol ! What a wonderful opportunity to really get away from it all and fully enjoy the outdoors. Yes, I was a wee bit envious ;)

As for my husband Jacques & I, we enjoyed our time by having a very tasty and filling lunch at Mary's Bleue Moon Cafe located in Sidney B.C. across the street from the aviation museum and a stones throw from the airport. The menu variety was fantastic, so much to choose from ! Jacques had the corned beef sand. with spinach soup ( thick with chunks of spinach, crunchy bread with spicy dijon and thick slices of corned beef ) and I had the chicken quesadilla with fries ( two huge slabs of quesadilla filled with cheese, chunks of chicken, green onions, not too thick fries with little bowls of sour cream & salsa ). I had to bring one slab home, the food size was very hearty ! Couldn't find any decent pics. for you to show off, but every wall was covered with memorabilia from WW2 to today, pilot photos, newspaper articles about the restaurant, the bar had a long plane wing converted into a glass holder, a huge plane engine cemented to a wall ( stunning piece of art ! ). Loved the atmoshpere. Will definately be going back !
After that we headed to Marigold Nursery & purchased quite a few plants. Home we went and spent just over 3 hours of planting. This is the year we plan on getting our large new plot filled up with veggies, blueberry, raspberry and English-style garden plants & flowers !  --but we did not work on that yesterday, instead we worked on the other side of the garden, filling in the bald spots with a variety of heathers, wallflowers ( smell like candy ! ), Irish Moss, lobelias, bacl eyed Susans, bee balm and several other colourful flowering plants. Our hopes are to fill in that area enough so we don't need to do any weeding ! My other hope is that the deer in the area don't 'find out' anytime soon lol ! --we will be finishing off our backyard fence too, hopefully that will deter them even more.

Here are a few before and after pics. of the garden. They don't look like much yet of course, over time things will begin to fill out, will post more pics. in a few months.

Before, churning up the bald spots:

After, even the bird bath got cleaned & I added a rock for those birds who might enjoy sitting near the water. The pics. look darkish but the area gets quite a bit of sun, especially in the Summer when the entire backyard gets filled with sunshine. The thing on the fence is a squirrel feeder, nuts are put in the jar & the squirrel goes into the house-looking structure and grabs the nuts without getting wet. Eventually I would love to hang a giant sun on that fence.

And speaking of squirrels, this fella ( or female maybe ) is quite a little piglet ! But I understand, the bird feed we have does contain some large bits of nuts the small birds don't eat, so they usually get kicked out and now this squirrel has some extra treats. We don't mind it being there, makes for some giggles watching it chew so darn fast. I think you can enlarge these pics. to see the details better.

And finally, no pic. to post but I plan on opening up another Etsy shop ! I've put my art aside so I can concentrate on listing a bunch of my parents vintage items. My art no longer fits in with the vintage items and i really don't want a jumbled up  messy looking shop. I do have a shop name and it's already been listed with Etsy: ChocolateRoseMint. Yes it is a rather yummy sounding name :) It does represent 3 things I really like and seems to roll off the tongue with more of a softness than Ravensmagiclantern. And when I say the name to myself, I imagine romantic necklaces with roses and swarovski, pink chain, candy-like features. Please think good thoughts for this shop, I have so many little dreams and creations, it would be nice to have them fulfilled. As of yet I have not listed this shop for selling, which means I can take my time with creating new art pieces and a shop banner and then I will open it for all :) So remember: ChocolateRoseMint for altered art treasures by Tracy :)