To keep my posts from getting too long, I am including a couple days of photos in each. This post includes Photos of flowers taken during my July 5th and 6th garden walks, and as a bonus….this one also includes the first creative project I have done in a LONG time!
Black Caps
This year the Black Caps (or Black Raspberries) have been very productive. I have picked a few quarts of these luscious berries and eaten most of them myself… I LOVE them!
Blurred Berries
This is what happens when the camera isn’t ready to take a picture…. I am not sure if I could reproduce this effect, but it did result in a fun photo of the berries on this wild Honeysuckle bush.
Free Pink Petunias
These petunias flowers are on one of the self seeded plants. Last year I planted some plum colored flowers with deep veins in them, and this year I have an assortment of pretty shades of pinks, plums, and lavenders.
Kitchen Art
Since all of the drama around here, I finally got out some of my art supplies and worked on some very late ATC’s for the “Arts in the Cards” exchange group. Thankfully, the other traders were very patient with me! The studio is a hopeless hovel right now, so I took over the kitchen table.
Hearts ACEO Pair
The group of cards due my the end of May had the theme of “Fabulous Fakes”. I had planned to do something with fake flowers or such, but after Ken had his heart attack a new idea crept in. Our real hearts don’t look as pretty as the “fake” ones we are familiar with. I used an image from one of Ken’s brochures of a real heart on the backs. We don’t tend to think too much about our “real” hearts unless they cause us trouble. For these, I cut my own stamps for the simple solid heart and the one with the rays around the heart. I also used some thin metal in pink that I embossed with a pencil on both sides to give different texture. I also played with embossing powders for scrapbooking that I have had for quite a while now.
Wild Daisy
Sunflowers Daisy Print
The second set of cards were done for the theme of “Sunflowers and Lemonade”. The wild Daisies were coming into bloom, and I thought I would do some flower prints with them to make my Sunflowers. The idea didn’t work as well as I thought it would. I am used to printing on fabric not paper, so the textile paint I used was too thin. I had to play with the paint to get it thicker and finally got some decent prints.
Pair of Sunflower ATC's
The prints needed a bit of touching up with my Inktense Pencils and I added the leaves with the pencils too. The backgrounds were painted in a watercolor effect using my Inktense Blocks, water and a paintbrush. I used the pink metal again and used a scrapbooking paper punch to cut the butterflies, and embossed them with a pencil from the backs. The centers were made glossy and sparkly by using embossing powder with Art Glitter over Inktense block.
Pale Yellow Pansies
Back to the flowers…. Here are a couple of pale yellow Pansies that came from seed in one of the deck planters. I had assorted Pansies and Violas in the planters in the past couple of years.
Seedling Petunias
This photo shows what I think are flowers from the same plant in an earlier photo. You can also see some of the purple Petunias and Lavender Violas that are also seedlings. The only purchased flowers I added to the deck planters are Impatiens, Lobelia, and white Alyssum. I have even found baby Lobelia plants, too!
Hosta with Cuddles
The nearly washed away Hostas were beginning to bloom in the Mound Garden. In the background you can see the top of Cuddles who likes to follow me when I try to take photos in the gardens.
Hemerocallis Bella Lugosi Closeup
This is one of the first varieties of Daylily to bloom….. Bella Lugosi is a really deep wine purple color with a greenish yellow center. They are hard to photograph due to the deep color. I really wish these blooms lasted more than one day… At least there is a bumper crop of buds this year.
Hemerocallis Bodacious Returns
Bodacious Returns was the first Hemerocallis to bloom this year. The plant is not very tall… barely over a foot, but the flowers are absolutely HUGE! As the name implies, this is a re-blooming variety. It should bloom again sometime in the fall.
The next post will have lots of Hemerocallis flowers of all colors. I have counted at least 13 different varieties in the gardens with flowers in all sizes and colors.
I am a former textile artist and new pattern designer with a degree in horticulture, wishing to share my love of nature, flowers and gardens with everyone through my photos, sunprinted fabrics, and now pattern designs. Chronic Lyme Disease has caused major changes to the direction my life. I have to limit the amount of time spent digging in my gardens, and quilting has become more difficult. I discovered pattern design as a way to get art back into my life. I now use my gardens and photos to inspire designs that can be used on fabrics and print on demand items.
