This morning, after watering and fertilizing my porch pots, window boxes, and hanging baskets, I took a stroll around my “garden.”

Really all I have is a rolling, bumpy, rough-around-the-edges yard.  It isn’t really a garden, yet.  Though I do have a small but lovely island of various Sedums, Euphorbia, Goat’s Beard, Iris, and Geranium in the middle of my backyard.

In the back corner, someone, long ago, had a garden.  I’ve pulled multitudes of weeds from that corner, leaving behind strawberry plants which I had hoped would bear lots of fat juice red berries.  Ha!  Unfortunately they are not that kind of strawberry plants.  They aren’t even the Alpine Strawberries.  These strawberries are a ground cover.  Phooey!

In that corner, there also is a spiky plant, which I assumed was some sort of Iris.  This morning to my surprise those spiky things were blooming.  And NO they were not Iris.  I have Gladioli!  Beautiful flowers of orchid and butter yellow filled their small stems.  The last little bit of summer blooming.

I quickly picked them and on my way in the house I thought, “How am I going to put these in a vase…the stem is too curvy to slip into a vase?”  And then I remembered the floral frogs I received from my friend Marion when she was purging her woodland home in preparation for her move to a ‘golden years’ apartment complex. There were 2 frogs…one a fat round one and the other a slim oval one.  But what would I put it in?

Recently I unpacked some china and pottery that was my mom’s.  There was a small low green bowl that I never knew what it was for.  Candy?  I pulled it from the cupboard, placed the frog in it, and immediately knew it was going to be fabulous!

Seriously, this was the easiest floral arrangement I ever made.

Here’s the recipe:

• Take a pretty low bowl,
• add a floral frog, fill with water,
• cut stems of flowers,
• push flower stems down on froggy pins,
• stand back and admire.

How much easier can it be?

Thank you Mom!  Thank you Marion!  Thank you former tender of the corner garden!!

I found a spot for this little bit of loveliness on the chest in my front room.  In front of that very fun French screen which I should tell you about some day.  (If the tech guy is able to retrieve my photos from my computer, that is.)

You’ll laugh, but this was so fast and so fun, so spontaneous, that I just wanted to share it with you.  But today, the clouds insisted on hiding the sun.  I did my best considering the poor light for the vignette on my chest.  For the other photos I set up a table by the window and shot a few pics when I saw there were a few breaks in the clouds.

The books, and blue glass resister, along with that piece of a shell I found several years ago, were already there.  I just swapped out another pot of greenery for the pretty “glads.”

Don’t you just love it when you are blessed with an unexpected discovery that just keeps getting better?

What was your recent unexpected blessing?

Thank you for stopping by today.
I appreciate you and your sweet comments make my day.

Joyfully!

Diane

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