Beginning Summer Flowers . Faux vs. Real

 

Have you seen how faux flowers are all over IG and FB.  People are replacing a lot of the real flowers with faux.  I decided with all the wild life deer, rabbits, squirrels etc. I would try to put in some faux flowers along with real ones this year.  Mix it up!!  
Last year I had to plant a lot of full sun loving flowers that do not attract the bunnies or deer.  Well with the shade from the big tree and limited sunlight the critter proof flowers did not thrive like I would have loved them to do.  This year faux will be mixed  along with real.

This is my blue and yellow painted bike.  She is back out into the garden and I decided to plant faux yellow and white flowers around her.  Seriously you cannot tell these flowers are not real.

I was amazed at how real they look and feel.  They come in bundles with long stems that go right down into the ground. No shovels needed.  At the end of the season I can pull them up and pack them away for next year.

I bought mine on Amazon.  They were pretty inexpensive. They claim to be UV protected.  I hope this is true and they will hold up through summer.
I have a big issue with the large tree we have out front.  I get mostly shade and not a lot of sun except in the late afternoon when the sun is over the house.  It is good for partial sun plants but most of the flowers in our region need full sunshine.  

I had a hard time last year with having only certain parts of the flower beds doing well.
Like I mentioned deer and bunnies do not like many of the full sun loving flowers.   They kept the deer from dining in my garden last year but the flowers did not thrive without enough sunshine.
This is my dilemma.  Full sun flowers do not do well but keep the critters away.

I am still working on getting the real flowers and the faux flowers done in the yard.  I hope to get them in soon and show you all of the yard.
As you can see in this sneak peek I have real petunia bags and some faux geraniums mixing together.

I hung two Laura Ashley shower curtains to frame the outside of my sliding door on the patio.  In a later post I will show you why I hung these curtains outside.  
This is one of the real flower bags.  I hope these bags do as well as last year.  Lots of TLC and flower food I hope they will thrive as last year.

I am excited we are getting nice weather going into May to start our planting.

We had to have our front yard dug up where the water line comes into the house.   In order to have a new shut off valve replaced we had to have the city come out to shut off the water for a few hours.  That started a whole thing with the village employee showed up to shut off the water line and said he could not get down far enough so they were going to have to dig and do a bigger job out there to get to the shut off valve.
I tell ya nothing can ever just be normal for us.  It always has to have drama attached.
The plumber was able to do some of the plumbing needed but the new shut off valve will have to wait for another day.

The city did get down to the water line with digging up the yard.  Now we just have to get the plumber back to finish the work.  Yikes!!!!

Have a good week.
I will be back with another post soon on the yard all ready for summer.
Hope where you are the weather is nice and you are starting to see the beauty summer coming to life.
Hugs,
Kris