Mary Mary quite contrary...

Mary, Mary, quite contrary,
How does your garden grow?
With silver bells, and cockle shells,
And pretty maids all in a row

Although when I was little we used to trade out the last line for "and one darn onion" - I have no idea why.

I guilted invited my mother to go to the cabin with me for the 4th of July weekend since Mr. Paisley was working thru the holiday and after several calls back and forth with my Tennessee neighbor - I just really felt like I needed to go. Turns out my bench was the only thing missing - from my house. My neighbor was kind enough to move the rest of it into the house...I asked her if she could put it on the screened porch - it's locked and frankly, more trouble than it's worth to break into. She rolled up my rug and put it out there...everything else she put in the living area inside. 

While I sincerely appreciate her doing that...OH MY FREAKING GOD!  The bugs, the spiders, the spider webs I kept walking into, the dead things...I nearly had a heart attack after running into the "critters" that were living in the stuff that she brought into the house. Seriously. 

For instance...this beauty (pardon the crummy cell phone picture and the fact that there is like no light in the downstairs bathroom). That's a dead (THANK GOD) spider. Please note the size of the drain in relation to the size of the curled up and dead spider.

Kill me now. As if the spider wasn't bad enough...there was the thickest, stickiest, ridiculous web coating nearly half the tub. HALF! 

Another of these lovelies turned up as I went to do a load of laundry. It was IN the washing machine. I popped the lid open, it ran, I cranked it up to a full wash cycle on heavy duty with hot water and ran screaming - to myself, but screaming in my head none-the-less. Spiders don't swim. I nearly barfed when I was shaking out a towel fresh from the dryer only to find a few crispy stray spider legs. Long crispy spider legs. 

Kill me now.

I ran into on SMALL spider still alive. I sucked it up with the vacuum and then dumped the canister over the deck rail. Then there was the centipede...or millipede. Whatever - I didn't stop to count the legs. I stomped on it, screeched and did the "ew ew OMG it's on me, get it off" dance.  

My aunt and one of her granddaughters came down from Ohio for part of our visit. We had a good time.

The day my aunt was leaving, she and my mom decided they needed to plant me a garden. Like that? Proper English / Grammar Police beware! The said I should have hostas there. Well duh...we planted, oh I dunno, 10 or 11 of the damn things last summer, they didn't come back. So they raked. Worked on my little rock wall. Ran the drip hose. Made a couple trips to Lowe's for plants and rocks and planted a nice little garden that I don't have great photos of...but here they are anyway. 

I bought a cute red, white, and blue pinwheel for a little 4th of July festive-ness

Hostas, day lilies, lantana and a couple of other plants that I can't remember the name of (probably stuff we don't have in FL)

My creative aunt added two sizes of rocks in sort of a wave pattern to look like they had washed down the hill from the road above.

The hose isn't pretty, but not sure what else to do with it. It will get partly covered up as the lantana starts to creep.

My aunt says she's going to drag her ex-husband down to the cabin with her one weekend and totally redo my rock wall. She said "it needs rock glue" whatever that is...she's always the one with the best looking yard, so she can do whatever she wants with it!