New May garden pictures, Junque swap and my latest collage work

Welcome to my May garden dear blogging friends and readers! I just spent 14 days of vacation in my garden with splendid weather and it felt so good! It's the most wonderful time of the garden season when you can see everything growing fresh and sometimes even exploding! I took the picture of the Allium a few days ago and it has grown so much since then. Well let's start on my deck, I had to move the hard wooden bench away from the window to the left side of my patio because a huge hollyhock has selfseeded in a small gap between the terrace stones and it needed space to grow there which wasn't possible with the bench on top. I can't wait to see the hollyhocks looking directly in my living room window, but know there is only foliage so I haven't took a picture of it yet. So this is the new sunny space for my bench and I must say that I really like it there!

The only sad thing is that my Wisteria isn't going to bloom this year, it has a disease and I just hope that it will recover again!

These are close ups of my decorations on the patio walls, as you can see blue and terracotta are still my fave colors here:

I have got me a new addition for my patio at our Garden fair on 1st of May which is the iron shelf you can see in the next picture and which is hopefully clickable to enlarge for more details:

So what the beautiful morning light is to the left side of my deck and garden is the evening light to the right side where my neighbors huge Lilac is blooming beautifully in the background and the sun has illuminated the bush of Hibiscus Syriacus next to my blue trellis (where Clematis is growing) which is just getting fesh leaves:

A big blue delphinium is growing in a pot on my patio and since I took this picture at the beginning of the week it is already blooming today

To my great pleasure my Agaphanthus has finally got a flower too this season, just one so far but this is better than nothing.

Down in the yard there is still May green the defining color but more and more colors starting to evolve like the blue of my columbines and clematis for example and the white and pink of my bleeding hearts of which I will show you some close ups later in this post.

To the left side of my garden I just removed one of the two huge cherry laurels and have got so much more light and space for my flowers and roses that I think it was a good decision. There are 4 big roses growing between my booxwood hedges. Make sure that you don't forget to double click on the photos to see more details!

This is my first big clematis bloom of this spring (there are also the smaller clematis montana blooming at the fence to the right hand neighbors), it is called Multiblue and it isn't finished yet, it's going to become more blue in the upcoming days.

Another highlight of my May garden is the gorgeous Virburnum opolus roseum which always make me think of Hydrangeas.

Here is a close up of my beautiful white Bleeding heart with blue and white colombines blooming in the background:

And still there are lot's of pretty Forget me not's blooming between my boxwood hedges:

And my lawn is full of white daisies, I love them so much, I could never remove them, don't you juat want to start a daisy-chain when you spot them?

M pink bleeding heart is not that big this year because it was burried under the huge foliage of some new white Alliums and it took me a while to find it and remove some foliage so that it could get enough light to evolve.

My Alliums are all doing great and I have 6 different sorts this year but I restrain myself to post just one more picture and will take more, when their heads have grown bigger than the ones of these Purple Sensations. I grow Allium since 4 years now and I'm hooked to their beauty. The Allium Globemaster is going to get the biggest blooming heads as big as a child heads, can`t wait for them to get to their full size and beauty!

So that was it of my May garden photos today and I hope you have enjoyed them!

Now to change the subject my fab swap partner LiLi is back to her Dutch home from a vacation in Florida and has finally got my swap parcel from Heather Pretty Petals "Junque in my trunk" swap and so it is save for me to post some pictures of the wrapping without spoiling her the surprise. Heather asked us to pack and wrap the parcel so beautifully that we would not want to open it and this is something I love doing anyway and I tried my best without overdoing it. In my chair you see the packed parcel just before I brought it to the post office:

And here is what LiLi found inside:

Seeing her color scheme for her swap to me was pink and black, I chose aqua/turquoise/light blue, white and gold for my parcels to her:

Inside this parcel was the trunk I filled with junk which actually is a tin box I found at the Bremen flea market. I was drawn to it because of the beautiful colors, pattern and of course the little birdie on top:

Seeing how much I was spoiled by LiLi I packed a few more parcels for her, like this one which I decorated with millinery flowers and a vintage hat pin, inside is one of my big two sided round soldered pendants:

And this lil box that I filled with turqouise items such as baubles, a vintage hanky a pearl clip bird etc. and decorated it with ruffled borders, Dresden gold borders and trims:

Here are a few pictures of the wrapped content of the tin trunk box and I made a Welcome Spring sign for LiLi:

It was so much fun to pack and wrap it all beautiful!

This was such a fun swap and LiLi and I both felt like Christmas and Birthday when we received eachothers trunks:

This is a pair of earring I made for LiLi:

I also gave her one of my fave living and garden magazines which I filled with Dresden borders, a vintage Bird card, sheet music and more emphemera for her to use:

If you are interested to see more pictures also of the unwrapped content you can just hop over to LiLi's blog here http://lilimsadventures.blogspot.com/ where she have posted lot's of pretty photos! Thanks again dear Heather for matching LiLi and me you have done so well! :)

Now lastly I'd like to show you one of my latest creations. This was a simple cornflakes box before I collaged it and made it into a wall box to store some of my wallpapers, ledgers and such:

I used Vintage sheet music as the base then some pieces of Vintage wall paper (thanks again Nicki to spoil me with it!!) Dresden borders in pink and gold, a cameo and a plastic bird, some fabirc flowers, a pom pom fringe and a yoyo I got from my friend Anita to embellish it.

Now this was a very long post and I'd like to thank everyone who stayed with me until the end and hopefully enjoyed it. I'm looking forward to read your comments and will visit all your beautiful blogs too.

Have a great week and enjoy your gardens!

Hugs Carol xox