Cedarburg, WI Strawberry Festival

Not too far from my neck of the woods there's a quaint little town called Cedarburg. My husband and I first visited here on the coldest day of winter in January 2004, just months after we moved to Wisconsin; we ate crepes, drank hot coffee, and ran up and down the street after we sampled wine in a winery built in an old mill (I found out weeks later I was preggers, so I didn't drink the wine we bought until over a year later, LOL). I fell in love with this town, and have been back during every season of the year since.

This summer, as my mother planned her visit from Southern California, she found Cedarburg's Strawberry Festival was scheduled during her time here. Of course, we made time to venture up and take in the festival!

I viewed the whole thing through a gardener's eye, and brought back pictures to share.

I guess this is garden-related. Look at the size of this strawberry I'm devouring! How did they do that? LOL.

Well, okay, I threw in a picture of some of the chocolate I saw. What gardener doesn't love chocolate, too?

Here are the hanging baskets on the light poles! Not just a bucket of petunias, that's for sure! This town loves gardening, clearly.

Cedarburg's main alley is filled to the brim with shops specializing in anything from candles to bread, wine, gifts, cookies to flowers. The garden haunts are, by far, the reason I keep coming back.

This much-more-than-a-gift shop is one of my favorites. I could spend hours in here, but I have trouble making it past the front door and the garden goodies. I live in an old farmhouse that could pass as victorian with some decoration to it. Each time I see this beautiful home-turned-shop I want to make my house look just like it.

And I'd love to have an arbor like this one; I'd cloak it in roses and clematis. I get so inspired when I'm here!

The streets were lined with vendors. My husband sampled this chair, and decided, someday, we need some in our garden. I guess it distributes you weight so evenly it takes the pressure off of your back? Pretty cool.

This is a flower shop's entrance below. Gorgeous!

I'd never been in this store before; it's off the beaten path a tad, but well worth it. They had garden goodies, and tons more inside. I often wish I could decorate my house over-the-top like one of these gift shops, lol.

Yet another treasure filled store:

This has to be my favorite garden store on the planet. They don't sell plants, but they have ever kind of garden trinket, fence, ornament you could phathom. You can enter three ways, through tthe store, or on either side of the building. Here, my mom (the cute blonde) and I meander down a path of daylilies.

To our left this rose has a beautiful trellis to fill.

This is the back of the store:

Look at all of this metal garden goodness. Sigh.

I could fill this stand with some gorgeous plants!! I love it.

Even a Halloween gate!

I fell in love with this arbor. I like how the word "garden" is asymetrically positioned.

In the back of the store, smack dab in the middle of the garden, they have a nice big garden shed filled with more gidgets and gadgets to buy. Had I more money, I'd have picked up some more birdhouses, metal art, feeders, stars galore... the list goes on.

This massive shrub was blooming in the garden. My guess is it's a weigela, but I truly have no idea. I hope it's a weigela, b/c I picked up 4 'red prince' weigela at Walmart for $2 a piece this week, and I'd love for them to turn out like this!!

As we drove around finding a place to park earlier in the day we spotted an incredible house and garden. I vowed to make my way back and stroll by the house before we left town. As luck would have it the owner/gardener was on the front porch when I made my way by! He gave us a tour of his garden. I was so pleased to ask him questions and take in all his hard work. He said he'd ripped out all the lawn just a few years ago, and many of the sweeping drifts of plants started just a one or two plants. I didn't want to be too forward and take pictures of the whole backyard or anything, but I did ask if I could snap a few pictures of his front yard. Here, you can see his passion for gardening is strong. You can see the drifts of catmint, red knock out roses, and lady's mantle. In other areas he had a gorgeous smoke bush, severeal wisteria vines on arbors and garage walls, masses of geraniums, hostas, calla lilies, foxgloves, and dozens of other magical combinations. Not to mention one handsome house, too!

A great day, and so much more to come from my week!