Monday, December 22, 2008

Gathering Greens...

A couple of weeks ago, I went out on an searching for some evergreen foliage to fill the old containers on the front porch.

One good think about living in an old house is all the old plants that someone else planted.


A good thing about living in the south is the Magnolia.



One good thing about winter is Dead Kudzu.



The vibrant red holly berries are oh so "Christmas."




And the coppery seed pods from the Golden Rain Tree are just so interesting.

The evergreen above the seed pod has these rose type pine cones. I collected those too.





Fragrant Cedar. With the little blue berries.



Boxwood.


Some sticks that I painted red. ( Back in the Summer)

I found the gloves, my husband gave me. ( he is romantic like that)


I just had to show you the coppery underside of the magnolia leaf. LOVE IT.





And I stuck them all in the old containers by the front door.
Nothing fancy. Nothing stuffy.
I wish you all a Merry Christmas.



13 comments:

Jen said...

That and the lights are all the decor we had this Christmas.

Jen said...

um........what is....." one good think"...

I would change that if the google phone was any good @ editing google blogger. "one good thing".

laura said...

very nice, jenni! i especially like the rose pine cones. merry christmas!

Natalie at Our Old Southern House said...

beautiful!! and i have a GIGANTIC acuba in front of my house too (...and holly...and privet) and i don't have the heart to cut it back too much b/c it was here before the previous owner was born..and she just turned 80! how can you cut back a bush that is almost 100 years old?!

Jen said...

Acuba....That is the name of what my F.I.L. calls the sprite plant. I could not remember. We have several....however some died in one of the attempts to rid the property of Kudzu. oops....
Thanks Natalie.

BTW...Do you know the name of the tree that has the rose shaped cones?

Anonymous said...

Neat... never even crossed my mind before to paint sticks. Great Idea!

Di
The Blue Ridge Gal

Sandy said...

Merry Christmas, Jenni & family (even Puppy). Your decorations, and the photos, are so very pretty.

Natalie at Our Old Southern House said...

It's definitely a cedar...
Probably an heirloom variety of either a Blue Atlas Cedar (that's what I think it is) or a Deodora Cedar. They are hard to tell apart without looking at the actual tree and it's natural shape. (and since the cones pictured are open/mature cones it makes it harder to tell apart too)
Blue Atlas-
http://www.hort.uconn.edu/plants/c/cedatl/cedatl1.html
Deodora-
http://www.ces.ncsu.edu/depts/hort/consumer/factsheets/trees-new/cedrus_deodora.html
Man, my plant ID isn't what it used to be. If this was 8 years ago I'd know without a shadow of a doubt...I'm out of practice and my old professors at UGA would not be proud! haha
Merry Christmas!!

Joanne said...

Beautiful! It looks great. Merry Christmas to you all!

Jen said...

Di- I saw a bundle of "painted sticks" at a fancy dancy shop in Atlanta and liked the way they looked coral-ish. The PO left some red paint in the basement and I put it to use. $0 spent only a little time.

Natalie- Thanks for the links I will post more pics of the tree. It is a "fat" tree,yet not very tall, and was a good size in the 50's from a pic of the PO's.

Thank You Sandy and Joanne. Merry Christmas to you all.

And to all a good night........

Jean Martha said...

It looks lovely!

Larry said...

Looks like you had a great assortment!

We miss doing this sort of Christmas activity.

I hope your holiday was a merry one!!

Stephanie said...

So pretty!