Fairy Garden

I have seen Fairy Gardens all over the web, mine is nothing special except for the fact that my 12 year old daughter Kimmi and I bonded and had a special time making it. In my book....that's enough to make it the most special Fairy Garden!

Being the 4th in a line of girls and seeing that those 4 girls were all born in a 5 1/2 years span of time, life hasn't been easy as the baby. Sure she's cute, gets her way, gets out of work sometimes, but she also gets left behind, gets hand me downs all the time, is told to "be quiet", "Don't follow us", "Don't bug us" and many more helpful things by her sisters! Sometimes the littlest wants to feel loved and as important as the older ones! We have our garden in the side yard in full swing now. Things are growing like mad and we have started to harvest as well. Kimmi helps with the garden, but the 16 year old (2 kids up from Kimmi) has made it her "special project". She didn't mean for it to become "her" garden, she's just thrilled to live in a home where we can have a garden again and is so excited! In  turn Kimmi has felt like she has "nothing that's her own!" Now realize that is a bit of an exaggeration, but her feelings are valid and I respect them. So I came up with a great idea (stolen from the millions on the web). I suggested a Fairy Garden, this intrigued her and she started grilling me about would it be HERS? I said part of a family and the joy of being in a family is to share wonderful things but that she could make it alone with me. This seemed to satisfy her. Now I thought this would be a very cheap project....ha ha ha!

Succulents are about $3 a pop at the garden center so I have to say this project ended up costing about $12 in plants. I guess in the grand scheme of things the same amount of time spent out doing something would have cost more and then there's just the memory, this way we have memories and something to look at daily. I'm glad we did the project.

Here's a top view of the garden. I used an old enamelware baking dish for the garden and filled it with a compost and peat mixture. (black hen) We used Irish moss (which gets little white flowers!), succulents a cactus (Kimmi is fascinated by them) and some gravel sold in little bags near the orchids!

The small bench, fence, arbor and mushrooms were made by yours truly and my wonderful hubby wound wire around the little pickets for me. 

Kimmi thinks the plant to the right looks like a sea anemone. It does!

Here she is surrounded by messy stuff... which she cleaned up as she promised!

She was very happy and really enjoyed the bonding time we had together.

I encourage you to explore the web. Google images of Fairy gardens and see how many ideas are out there and try one yourself. It was so much fun and kids love it!

Until next time Dear Reader,

Chatty Cathy