Every Blooming Thing

The summer in the garden has had some ups and downs.  Let's start with the highlights:

New roses this year. Here we have David Austin's "Mary Rose" English shrub roses. 

The lavender hedge is maturing nicely. 

Starry Night petunias

A lovely "Shirley Temple" peony.

Our bird feeding station.

This hydrangea is called "Curly Wurly".

Our fire pit

This shrub rose is named "Winchester Cathedral ".

"Ebb Tide" English rose. 

Purple perennials.

Now for the unpleasant part -

Our beautiful Norway spruce tree that canopied the cottage... 

...fell ill and had to be taken down. 

I cried that entire day, to be honest.

Hard to see, but there's a guy in the tree cutting limbs.

 Just a bit of the trunk peeking over the roof.

 Some of the bits and pieces.

Nothing left but the stump.

 Proof that it was TRYING to live. New growth, but not enough.

I planted a willow tree nearby, in hopes for a new canopy in a few years.

Painter of Light

I've always had a fascination for cottages, going back to the fairy tales that my mother would read to me at bedtime. The moment that fascination turned into a full blown obsession would be my first time seeing a Thomas Kinkade painting -

                                       "Moonlight Cottage" by Thomas Kinkade

From that day forward, I've been hopelessly in love with cottages, as well as this artist's work. Every Christmas we watch "The Christmas Cottage", a biographical film about the early life of Thomas Kinkade. 

If you've ever seen one of his paintings, the thing that jumps off the canvas is the use of light. There's a warm, welcoming glow in the windows which earned Mr. Kinkade the title of "Painter of Light". It draws you in and makes you want to see inside. 

Long before we found our little house, in fact, long before I lived in Ireland I dreamed of living in a home bathed in that same warm glow. So that's my long term goal for our home - to pay homage to the Painter of Light himself by using his paintings as the inspiration for our own cottage. 

And now you know the inspiration for the name of our home - Moonlight Cottage.