Mums the Word....

I have never been one to keep tabs on which flowers you need to grab up at any particular time of the year. Coming from many years in the valley of Southern California, I just haven't needed to. You plant something and you watch it grow. And grow. And grow. Or you hit summer and have to make the choice if you should keep watering it through the impossibly dry, impeccably hot summer - or you just scrap the whole idea, put in a few succulents and bougainvillea and call it a year. Or a decade; a magical, overgrown tangle of natural beauty kind of decade, but not one that really requires that you plant things for cooler air while the desert sun beats on your back.

As we head into our new seasonal life in the Midwest though, I find myself spotting plants that weren't all that familiar to me before. I see neighbors outside trimming things down, bringing out new blooms, prepping for something entirely new. My kids' school has a mum sale. And so then I got to thinking about mums and dreaming of all the pretty ways I could add them to our lives. And of course I had to share...

Let's just start with my dream home in the background right here: