When thinking about your garden and landscape, it's common to want to grow and enjoy plants that you are accustomed to.  Either from where you most recently lived, or from where you grew up.  We all have that nostalgia for a familiar landscape.

But, one of the most frequent questions I hear from newcomers to the Prescott, AZ area is that they struggle with finding the appropriate plants that will not only grow, but thrive and become well established without a lot of fuss.

One of the core refence tools for gardeners and landscape design, is known as the USDA Plant Hardiness Zones.  There is also an index by Sunset Magazine, and then there are climate and heat tolerance zones as well.  Lot's of different indicators that can be helpful, but for this post I am going to focus on the USDA Hardiness Zones.

My advise:  Know and embrace your garden zone!

Keep reading for all the details.

I've been fixing, building, renovating, and remodeling most of my adult life. 

Early on, I would jump right in and just start, then do the next thing, and so on.  Over time, my experiences have taught me that if you've got enough drive and persistence (and lots of luck) you can pull that off.  Kinda sorta.

But I've learned some really important lessons about the planning process that can make it less frustrating and hopefully a lot less drawn out.  And I wanted to share those.

This week we are thinking about and celebrating local places, local-ness, the beautiful scenery we are lucky to have, and picnics.  Let me explain!

Tomorrow is International Picnic Day, not that we need a special holiday to make a picnic worthy of celebrating.

And since we want to share time with Dad on Sunday, I think we should all spend the day outside  with our family and friends enjoying a picnic.  There's nothing that sounds bad about that, right?  Consider that aside from some well-earned downtime, there are health and general wellness benefits too!!  

Keep reading to see my list of local Prescott picnic-worthy spots.

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​You know you need to tackle a few things in your home (or garden) to get it dressed up a bit, but it's so overwhelming and confusing that you just never really get going and it drags on and gets stale. 

It can get confusing with all the media and buzz about what the latest trend is and what's in and what's out.  If you're not a do-it-yourselfer and want to hire professionals to do the work, the truth is you still need to be able to articulate what exactly you want to do and in what priority.  

It can be really hard to know where to start.  And maybe even more importantly, how to bring it all together so that it makes sense when you are done can be very elusive.

The result can be some false starts or even not getting started at all because you aren't confident with how to get going.

I get it.
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Every autumn we do a monthly cottage feature, to share with you the wonderful local inspiration of other homeowners in the Prescott, Arizona area.  #cottagesofprescott

For October, we got to check out Vyne House, in downtown Prescott.
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Every autumn we do a monthly cottage feature, to share with you the wonderful local inspiration of other homeowners in the Prescott, Arizona area.  #cottagesofprescott

​For September, we are starting with a sweet downtown cottage.
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​This is a new summer monthly feature for us.  #gardensofprescott

​So, for the month of July, just to kick things off, I've decided to start with my own garden here at Juniper Hill Cottage - in downtown Prescott.  

Every year, usually the week leading up to Independence Day in July, we support a state-wide effort called Indie Week which highlights and encourages Arizonans to support small, locally owned businesses in every way that they can.  

This year, of course, nothing is normal.  Indie Week kinda got squashed.  And so it was brought back a bit late for the whole month of September to make up for it.  We are proud members of Local First Arizona who sponsors this event and hope that you will support this effort, now more than ever.

It's fun, it's the right thing to do, and... you stand to win some cool prizes.
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• Indie Week XXL brings you a whole month to discover and support Arizona’s small, independent businesses — like us — and when we need it most!

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• ​Join in on the fun by visiting localfirstaz.com/indie-week to download your #IndieWeekAZ Action Card, shop and live locally (which you may already safely be doing), and get rewarded for it!

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• Cross just 5 calls-to-action off your card and get entered to win locally-curated prizes.

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• Small businesses need your help this summer. Shop with purpose, shop for your community, and let’s come out of this stronger together.

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Thank you for your support.

Peace and contentment,
~Miriam

This week, we are thinking about some ways to incorporate artfulness in our lives.

I think it's vital to carve out time in your schedule, whether it be weekly or just monthly, to open yourself up to creativity.  It may seem frivolous if you aren't an artist, but the truth is that doing something creative is beneficial in countless physical and emotional ways.  It's good for you!

And it brings you together with other people in a positive and open way.  Nothing bad about that.

There are two general ways to incorporate more creativity and artfulness into your life:

1. Do it yourself - as in, create something 
2. Explore and support the arts in your community

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I'm actually not all that much of a beer drinker, too rich for me, but my husband is and has traveled the world enjoying the wonderful local-ness of this beverage.  I enjoy wine and whiskey, and we'll have lots more scoop on that later this year. 

Since I'm all about local makers and creators, we are going to share a few local spots that craft adult beverages here in the Prescott area.  

I have not had the pleasure to visit them all personally just yet, but we've got them on a list  to check out soon.  Hopefully you will do the same and share your thoughts. 

We are lucky here in Prescott to have a nice variety of crafters specializing in everything from beer to cider to mead and even whiskey.  We'll get to local wineries in another post...

So, let's get to the list:
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