St. Olaf Avenue – Valerie's Voice

Fairy Houses

As the snow melts, daffodils and hyacinth sprouts will begin to emerge, and fairy gardens will be uncovered.

The beginnings of my fairy garden in our backyard, in 2021.

I am enchanted with fairy gardens. They are whimsical and I love finding them in surprising places: under a flower or next to a tree trunks, maybe under rocks in a rock garden. I also like creating one in my own backyard flower garden.

A fairy garden on St. Olaf Avenue (summer 2019) is large, and has a theme “reading”. You can find many animals scattered throughout the garden, reading books.

Some fairy gardens are elaborate, like one on St. Olaf Avenue in Northfield. The garden is filled all kinds of miniature critters with some fairies, most are reading books. It is clever.

An inviting entrance to a fairy house, at the bottom of a tree trunk. Photo taken: 2019.

A frog enjoying a cup of tea while reading a book. Photo taken: 2019.

My fairy garden is simpler; a table with chairs, with one fairy drinking from a tea cup and another fairy with a watering can…and oh yes, I added a Norwegian troll last summer.

I’m planning an expansion to my garden this year with a few trinkets I’ve picked up in thrift stores…a lamppost and wishing well to name a few.

One of three fancy sheds on display at the Home + Garden show in Minneapolis.

A couple of weeks ago we went to the Minneapolis Home + Garden Show in the convention center downtown Minneapolis. The show always has colorful flower gardens to show off and lots of different vendors promoting their wares. Every few years we think it’s interesting to go see “what’s new in home-style”.

This year my favorite display was…what I call… life-size fairy homes…uniquely designed sheds that look like fanciful fairy houses. I wanted to bring one home to play in, but they were asking an exorbitant price!

This shed has a large side window, for a lemonade stand or such fun.

What fun it would be to have an adult-size fairy house in a backyard…especially if it were tucked in between some trees. It could be a great place to set up a small library scene: book shelf full of books, a lamp, and a comfortable chair… or a place for sitting in quiet contemplation…or a fancy garden shed with all manner of plants and dirt, tools and planting supplies…or maybe even a game room?

When writing about these sheds, a memory surfaced of playing in a shed in our backyard when I was a little girl. My dad and brother made an adult-size play shed out of scrap wood – nothing fancy like these fairy sheds – but it had a door and a window and that was enough. The neighborhood kids and I played for hours in that shed.

My brother had two photos of the shed. This is when he and my dad were building the shed.

The finished shed. Looks like deep snow that winter…up to our waists.

I’m thinking that subdued memory was what sparked such a joyful response in me when I saw the creative fairy sheds at the Home + Garden Show.

Spring = Hope

What season is it anyway? Our yard, raked clean last fall, is once again full of leaves. The snow has finally melted but it has exposed more leaves and the winds of March have blown them into our yard…as is the case in the fall. For some reason our corner lot is a collection site for the neighborhood leaves.

Daffodils are cheery and bright! These are along the path I walk in our neighborhood. (2017)

Spring in Minnesota is always welcome because our winters are long. No traces of snow or ice, longer days with sunshine and warmer temperatures are delicious, but it is not a pretty time of year in Minnesota. I wouldn’t want to show off Minnesota in the spring.

Bright red tulips on St. Olaf College campus. (2017)

True, there are the spring flowers which I love. Multi-colored tulips, white, yellow or purple crocuses, perky yellow or white daffodils and purple hyacinths, all popping up out of the ground. They add fuel for us to get past the mud and sand and brown grass and leafless trees, to summer.

Wildflower in Nerstrand Big Woods State Park. (2017)

But the wind…the wind is not a friend. It’s hard to walk. It’s hard to bike. It’s brings in cold air. It changes the temperatures back to wind chills. It blows dirt and grime and garbage and leaves all over. It is not a pretty site.

An array of tulips in the front yard of a house on St. Olaf Avenue in Northfield. (2019)

So I need to focus on the positives of springtime. My birthday is in the spring. I always like saying my birthday is the first day of spring (because it is.) Easter, one of my favorite holidays, is always in the spring. Spring does not have the bugs of summer and in the spring, we can start to discard our jackets. It doesn’t “hurt” to go outside (as a friend likes to say) and you don’t have to put on all kinds of outdoor gear. The air is fresh and we can open the windows of our houses and let the stale air and winter sneezes out. Tress start budding. Spring is a hopeful time, and a time to dream of summer days and nights. I guess that is the best part of spring: Hope.

Fairy Gardens

Two cute hedge hogs reading….I think they are my favorites in this fairy garden.

There is a wonderful, rather large, fairy garden along St. Olaf Avenue. On the property there is a large older home, under renovation with scaffolding outside, which detracts a little bit from its elegance…for now. There is a large garage that may have once been a carriage house, and a big yard. The yard has been turned into a garden and it is full of seasonal blooming flowers… I’d like to learn the history of the whole place.

A birdie reading while sitting on the elephant’s trunk.

It is a fun place to walk by and take in all there is to see on this one plot of land along St. Olaf Avenue. I walked by this spring and, although the colorful landscape of spring flowers was wonderful, I really enjoyed seeing is the sweet fairy garden, right along the sidewalk. It is full of miniature animals and most are reading a book.

The squirrel is busy carrying books while the cat is resting.

The first time I walked by the house, the owner was out in the yard. I asked him if I could take photos of the fairy garden. He said yes and told me his wife is a librarian, so that’s the why the fairy garden has a reading theme.

There is a lot in the miniature garden…flowers, mushrooms, rocks to make a pond, tiny ladders to a loft area, many different animals reading books, miniature plants. There is even a miniature “Free Little Library”. It is quite enchanting.

A bunny sitting on the edge of a book, reading.

This miniature frog is practicing yoga. Note the stones with the words love, peace and tranquillity written on them. And I like the blue gazing ball.

A couple years ago I wrote a blog posting about my ONE little fairy that I hid in my flowers one year. And then it went missing. Over a year later my husband was trimming a tree and found the fairy up in the crook of the tree. Apparently a squirrel carried it so far and then gave up on it, and abandoned it. When my husband found the fairy he brought it into the house and set it on the counter. I was so surprised to see it. We laughed and decided the only possible explanation was a squirrel’s folly. But now, my one little fairy is now back, hidden in my garden.