Gardening With – Doors? Add Color And Plants To Your Entrance

When I visited the Pike Nurseries garden center this weekend in Peachtree City, GA, I was looking for a few new houseplants to bring home, to tide me through the dreary winter days.  But here’s what I found instead: 3 displays of brightly-painted doors, arranged with color-coordinated plants.

I’ve been fascinated by doors for some time now. (Is anybody else pinning beautiful doors they’ve found on Pinterest? Love that site.) These appealed to me, in these shades of purple, lime green, and soft blue.

Admittedly, the plants in the display look like houseplants, and they wouldn’t survive outside in the Atlanta area, since our temps can drop below freezing during the winter.

But I like the concept of matching plants to an eye-catching door color, and I can envision using tropicals, perennials, and even annuals, in containers and  beds at the front of my house, once spring returns.

I also plant to re-paint our door when better weather arrives. Right now, it matches our shutters, which are medium blue. Not bad, but the door could be a lot livelier.  Maybe I can find a warm, deep red. If we don’t like it, it wouldn’t be much trouble to repaint it, even after one season.

If you decide to experiment with your front door this spring, here’s a great video with DIY guy Carter Oosterhouse: GMC Trade Secrets: How to Paint Your Front Door. I’m going to try his tip about photographing my house, cutting the front door out of the photo, and then sliding different paint chips behind the opening, to see how various colors would work.

Got a picture of your front door you’d like to share? I’d love to see it here. I’m always looking for inspiration for the garden!

Brave Seeds

We had a fierce storm last night–I mean, fierce. The winds were so strong, they blew rain right through the window screens, into the house and all over the floor, which made me hop up out of bed, when I realized what was happening, and grab a mob.

But before I rescued our floors, I ran out to the porch, where I’d left a couple of trays of seedlings. I knew that our gutters were packed with the last of autumn’s leaves, and soon rain would be pouring onto the railings where the seed trays sat. I saved them in time, although they took a bit of a beating from all that water.

When I got up this morning, I made the picture you see above. Not very impressive, is it? Just a plastic tray with a few tiny green shoots coming up. Or maybe that’s all you see at first glance. Squint a little, please, and use your imagination, and maybe you’ll see more.

To me, these are brave little seedlings. They’re still small and fragile. One hungry bird could take them out in a quick peck, or they could collapse from a fungal disease, since this spring has been cool and wet. But they haven’t.  At least, not yet. They’re still standing, just growing their tiny hearts out.

Maybe it sounds silly, but I love that. Isn’t that what we are called to do, everyday? Sometimes we get pounded by the storms, and they can hit in our darker hours, when we’re feeling weak and defenseless. But you know something? We’re stronger than we guess, because we have have a living Spirit in us, just as these little plants have a life-spirit in them.

My seedlings made it through a bad-weather night, and now I’m looking forward to seeing them grow and bear fruit (tomatoes and peppers, in case you’re wondering). So, too, the Father waits for us to grow and bear fruit, and we can do this, because we know that the storms are not bigger or stronger than His love.

“…I chose you and appointed you to go and bear fruit–fruit that will last….This is my command: love one another.” John 15:1-6-17, NIV

grace and peace,

Lynn