Overgrown Beauty

My photos today are not from an unusual city park or professionally landscaped, meticulously manicured award-winning garden, but from our own little cottage garden by the sea. It is overgrown and practically wild, with dandelions taking over the lawn and bees buzzing busily around the abundantly blooming bushes. The people who planted all the trees, shrubs and flowers around the cottage many years before us did really an amazing job, so even without much care everything grows and blossoms beautifully, and every Spring we have our own marvelous display of blooms. It is especially generous this year due to the enormous amount of rain we received last Winter, I suppose, and I wanted to share this beauty with you before it's gone for the season. 

Our garden starts blooming in early February when the red camellia gives her first flowers. Its fantastically rich display goes on for many months - there are still red camellias here and there, and it's been 4 months since the first flower! In early May, rhododendrons begin blooming, first the red one, then one of the purple ones, then if we get lucky the tall pink one - and we got extremely lucky this year because it is blooming like never before, it is covered with flowers top to bottom! Other purple and lilac rhodies add to the variety of blooms (one of them blooms twice a year in some years, I guess when Autumn is particularly warm).

The view from our front garden. 

There are other trees and bushes, many of which have berries, like this tall holly tree that is covered with red berries (again, especially this year!). There are also gorgeous ferns and perennial flowers that bloom one after another and don't demand much attention (honestly, we hardly give them any), like yellow poppies, columbine (photos below), forget-me-nots, blue bells, daffodils and irises... We live in a rental cottage and don't make any big changes around here. That is why I am especially grateful to those loving hands and eyes with truly artistic abilities which planned and planted this garden so beautifully many, many years ago! We enjoy it literally year-round, but of course the peak season is Spring, especially now, May and early June. I take photos in our garden often, but rarely share it here on the blog. It isn't one of those meticulously manicured spaces that everyone admires, but I really find beauty in everything, and to me there is a lot of charm in semi-abandoned, overgrown gardens and shabby homes. And I do think that this quintessentially Pacific Northwest little garden is a wonderful and truly amazing tiny gem that is well worth sharing.

Photos of me by Justin.

Photos of the garden by me, about a week ago.

Dress - Lane Bryant (earlier this Spring)

Shoes - Born (old)

Hat - Old Navy (old)

Jewelry - boutique and antique mall finds (old)

Sunglasses - Lane Bryant (old)

African basket - via local market

Linking up with Tina's Pink Friday
Hat Attack
Visible Monday

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