I will be planting this rose in my new garden bed today in honour of my own mother, who sadly has passed a few years back.

I am going to be trying something new this year with any new roses I plant as well as those I've already established.

That is planting glads around the base of my roses in a circle and hope that they will grow up into the frame of the rose and act as the stakes for them. These are the colour I am going to be planting around this new rose. I thought the pink hues will look lovely with the deep pink of this rose.

Most often you do need to stake glads, but we really need to here at Toad Hall, as this garden is facing the sea and we get strong salty winds. Many things need staking, but I hate using stakes and never have enough. I thought of this the other day and wondered why not use a shrub or strong mid sized plant as the base into which I can plant my summer bulbs that need staking. I am going to be mixing in some lilies with this planting too, also in a pink tone.

As some readers may recall, I talked about a new garden/terrace/porch I am undertaking to make. I decided to move my far too large Veg garden (Which was partially walled facing sea side to keep out the winds and keep temps up) closer to the house and make it smaller. It was a bit of a hike from the house and it was far too large for just me to manage, so I decided this Spring to steal some of the picket fencing and make a much smaller sea facing veg/flower bed I could manage.

Here is a shot from when I first started. I took this disused corner of the house, sea-side, and began placing my fence panels.

@winstonalden helped my by clearing out all these lowgrowing evergreen shrubs that abutted the back of the house and really needed to go in order for me to start adding a little garden oasis here for us.

Now, this project is still underway but it has come along. I am doing the work myself so it has to go at the pace I can manage, but I am pretty good about dividing my days into tasks. Thus, after art and steem time in the morning, I spend the rest of the day in the garden really making this project come about.

Here is it's current state with the porch put in and a pergola just built.

Readers will hopefully forgive the amateur state of the thing, but as I am doing it all myself I am approaching it rather like I do painting: I plan it out, rough it in, and then add the details. This means the size and placement of things change as I go along. And when I am at the lumber yard I also might decide "Oh, it'd be easier to try that" or "This would work instead". In fact the little railing was bought in the reduced bin of the lumber yard for $4.50 if you can believe it. It had a small crack at the base, which didn't affect me, as I was screwing it into two other pieces to make the railing anyway. That is one of the benefits of just doing the project yourself, saving as you go along.

I will be staining the pergola mainly white and the porch will be stained weathered grey to match the old weathered cedar of Toad Hall's exterior (which needs so much love, but we try).

You can also see that the gravel terrace and paths are still in progress. But, one must understand that rather than just ordering a large pile of stone to be delivered to the house, which I should have done, I have been getting bags 10 at a time and adding them as I go. I just chalk it up to being a 'quirky artist'. This allows me to fudge my way through many such projects or social gaffs.

When it is finished the gravel paths and terrace will either terminate at the lawn in cedar garden timbers or in stone walls, depending on my energy and time I can allot to it.

Really as I go along I live for the moments to place things like this to get the view of the finished garden, which I can clearly see in my mind.

Case in point is this newly purchased vining honeysuckle and the configuration of clay pots on old timber set amongst a gravel path. This railing and post will be white, but the old garden seat will remain as is. I took this from my old veg garden as well and also made it. It's an old large slab of wood I scavenged from our beach after a big Autumn storm a few years back. The honeysuckle will be planted in the earth with the gravel around it and trained over the pergola.

To me, gardening truly is painting with plants and hardscape. I see a vision in my head and set about making it real in this case in timber, stone, earth, and seed.

I imagined these old cement pots that belonged to @winstonaldens gran, flanking this new terrace.

Right now they are filling up with the succulents I planted in them when we came to Toad Hall. Succulents are a sea-side gardeners best friend. They love to bake all day in hot sun and wind and salt spary seems to only make them flourish.

I also imagined this view, which is still in progress, of sitting on the little porch I made of a morning sipping my coffee and having a bit of the view framed with the posts of the pergola and the railing a catch all for my Summer treasures from my daily beach combing, shells, bits of sea glass and bits and bobs washed ashore.

Here I have placed two chairs that I will use at either end of a table to sit under here. I have place them thus because I wanted to imagine the table, what it would be like. And I have decided that I will make a long thin table of the old wood and set the legs in deep enough that these two metal arm chairs can still sit under it. I'm going to be getting some great little metal garden chairs, of the kind you always see in public gardens in France or England. Then, if we have more people over, we can pull out my odd long thin table and place more of these seats around them, but mostly it can stay there where I can sit and type away on Steemit or draw and dream of art to be made.

This isn't a very technical way to work, no architect nor builder would subscribe to my odd building and design, with quick actions and then quiet contemplation.

Cities would not get built with this method, but for our weather worn old shack stuck up over the sea, it works just fine for me.

Now, I will close with this sweet little gift @winstonalden gave me today.

Although I am not "technically" a mother, that is to say I have no human children, I certainly have a large brood of animal children; chickens, quail, fish, cat and dog. So, today I got this nice little antique young adult book from 1916. @winstonalden knows I love old books, old illustrations and especially those with ladies and animals. Here is one of the darling illustrations.

A girl and her dog with a lovely cottage in the background. The sort of world I love to get lost in.

Well, I hope all have a lovely #sublimesunday and if you are in the US a happy Mother's day.

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Happy Mother's Day and happy a #sublimesunday in the garden dreaming of my projects.

I will be planting this rose in my new garden bed today in honour of my own mother, who sadly has passed a few years back.

Here is it's current state with the porch put in and a pergola just built.

Really as I go along I live for the moments to place things like this to get the view of the finished garden, which I can clearly see in my mind.

To me, gardening truly is painting with plants and hardscape. I see a vision in my head and set about making it real in this case in timber, stone, earth, and seed.

This isn't a very technical way to work, no architect nor builder would subscribe to my odd building and design, with quick actions and then quiet contemplation.