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The Birth of a New Garden- Step One

Thursday, October 13th, 2011

As anyone knows who has seen many of my posts here, I have a LOT of big gardens…. Much of the past few days has been spent doing the beginning preparations for my first New garden in over a decade. Like I really need another new garden…. Well, this one had been dreamed  about for many years, and it will be where the “Back of the Workshop Mess” photo in the previous post is, or should I now say it mostly WAS. This area has attracted a lot of birds in the past few years, but the area is full of weedy Sumac trees and have fallen over. I have always dreamed of this becoming a beautiful bird sanctuary with various trees, shrubs and perennials to attract the birds in a much prettier way.

Future Bird Sanctuary 1

Shortly after the photo in the previous post was taken, I started breaking up and piling what I could with the hour of daylight I had left after the last lawn mowing. The pile of branches in the left of the photo is from my Diablo Ninebark bush on the side of the Lilac Garden. It should have been trimmed years ago, and I finally took the pruners to it and gave it a severe “haircut”. The pile far back is what I was able to break up of the ugly Sumac trees that fell over into the lawn years ago.

Future Bird Sanctuary 2

I finally got put on Ken’s calender and Wednesday the chainsaw was put to the mess. You can see from this photo above how many of the trees were laying on their sides.

Future Bird Sanctuary 3

The bonfire…. The first day of chainsaw work we had a fire going constantly as Ken cut and we both dragged limbs to the fire. In addition to the Sumac trees, there also  was great abundance of overgrown wild grapevines. Those made getting the tree limbs out pretty tricky…. we had to cut the vines to free much of what had to go.

Future Bird Sanctuary 4A little bit later, more of the workshop trailer can be seen. We kept working till it got to dark to see where we were walking.

Fire at End of Day 1

I wanted to see what the new camera would do, and took a few photos of the fire as I left the area for the night. This one came out pretty good even with not too steady hands. One thing about all the rain we have had since August, the ground and everything else is still really saturated and we didn’t have to worry about starting an unwanted fire somewhere else.

Future Bird Sanctuary 5

By the time I got my body to allow me to get back to work the next day, Ken had gotten most of the trees cut and burned a lot more. Now most of the trailer can be seen, There are still some Sumac, wild Roses, and a lonely Ash tree left on the south end of it. The Ash tree will be the only thing left by the time all gets cleared. The trunks of the trees were left high enough for Ken to hook a chain onto them and pull out the roots. Sumac is really hard to get rid of because of all of the roots running just under the surface of the ground where new babies pop up. The more roots out the better, but I have found with the Lilac garden that if I keep a deep mulch of hay, any babies that pop up can be plucked easily and after a couple years less and less try to grow.  I am still amazed when I see some garden catalogs offering various Sumac varieties for sale…. They do have pretty fall color and red fruit clusters in summer, but they are huge invasive weeds!

Maple in Woods

Here is one of the young Maple trees that has kept growing despite having Black Walnut trees not far from it. Most of the rest of the woods is Green Ash which in some areas are being attacked by a borer, so I am glad to see other varieties finally taking hold.  I plan to find a not too big one of these Maples that might be too close to another to flag with ribbon to dig next Spring for the Bird Sanctuary garden or somewhere around the workshop to provide shade.

Baby Ginkgo Tree Leaves

Here is one of the two Ginkgo trees I purchased in the Spring. One of these will go in the North end of the new garden. They can get really huge, but that will take probably take more than my lifetime for that to happen, but I will still give them plenty of room. I also bought another Acer griseum (Paperbark Maple), a pink  Dogwood, and a Carolina Silverbell. I joined the Arbor Day Foundation and received another group of baby trees, and also have some baby shrubs from my gardens in pots. These will be used as some of the understory bushes.  I am now trying to plan how everything will be planted. Not all will fit in the new area, but many will go there. The nearly bare area after removing the junk trees is over 50 feet wide at the far end of the trailer. I have some tall trees, medium height ones, and the bushes, then will fill in with various perennials. The new garden will look a  bit sparse and the birds won’t be too happy for a while, but eventually it should be alive with them again, and more enjoyable since I plan to have some paths and seating areas in there.

Fungi on Stump

And now for some more random woods and garden pictures… Above is another rotting stump in the woods with three different kinds of fungi on it.

Steps Stone

This good sized stone looks like it has had steps cut out of it… It was near one of the old stone walls on each side of an abandoned roadway that goes through the middle of our land.

Walnut Trees

This is the back yard group of Black Walnut trees as viewed from the edge of the woods. They have really gotten huge in the 21 yrs we have lived here. The only shade that comes close to our trailer. It’s still dangerous to stand under them now with the huge crop of nuts falling, but they make the nicest shade in the summer.

Walnuts on Steps

Here on the steps that go to the back yard, you can see some of the nuts… I think this year is the biggest crop yet…. and many are Huge!

Blooming Grasses

The Ornamental Grasses in the Maple Tree garden are in their full glory! I really need to put a person in one of these photos… these grasses are huge… Miscanthus Goliath is the largest clump on the right, Pannicum Cloud Nine is the really light and feathery one, and way in the back just coming into bloom is Miscanthus giganteus…. a perfect name for it…. It is over 12 feet high. Goliath is around 10 ft high.

Variegated Grass in Bloom

Here is the Miscanthus variegatus blooming in the Arborvitae end of the Maple garden. This plant  has only been here for 2 seasons… There are two, but you can see the left one is pretty scrawny. It was a smaller chunk when I planted them and is just starting to take off.

Pink Clover

Here is a closeup of a Pink (Red) Clover flower… I keep practicing with the new camera and am getting more good macro shots.

Queen Ann's Lace Closeup

One of the last Queen Ann’s Lace flowers in the field…. We have only had a tiny touch of frost, but it won’t be long now till the flowers are done for another year….

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Posted in Flowers and Gardens, inspirations, Landscapes and Skies | 1 Comment »

Playing in the Studio Again!

Tuesday, October 11th, 2011

Well, I’m slowly getting back to posting here more regularly. Since the last post I ended up doing Waaayyyy more organizing in the studio than I had planned to, made my cards for the Arts in the Cards exchange, got behind with my weekly journals and caught back up again. In the middle of everything else I even got a little bit started toward cleaning up one of the biggest “eyesores” in the landscape around here.

Neat Shelves!

This photo above shows my shelves after I emptied every one of the “cubbies”, sorted and organized my fabrics. I have mostly my painted and dyed fabrics on the shelves now and will be selling off and storing what I keep of most of the commercial fabrics on the shelves in the office. Since my pot of pencils, pens, etc. seems to always be in the way on my table, I left a couple of the spaces free of fabric to keep things off the table.

 

Computer Parts

Once I got the cutting table cleared of debris again, I was able to get some of my projects done. The AIC exchange theme this round was Hardware…. Perfect, there is a lot of that around this place. My first thought was to see if I could find some little bits left from various computers that are stored in boxes… I soon found that nothing was small enough for an art card (and I wasn’t really into taking things apart… I leave that to my guys), I decided that I would use a photo of some of the parts as the background. I took a bunch of photos, and decided on a pretty simple layout.

 

Hardware Printed and Stitched Canvas

A photo of a circuit board of some kind? and one of part of some sort of hub-like purple thing (yea, I’m not geeky enough to know what is what) worked great together giving the feeling of sky and grass. You know me…. flowers always seem to pop up in my art.  I printed the photo onto cotton fabric, then fused that to some canvas I had to give some stability. I knew I was going to have flowers, and after playing with my card (the 7th one that included a printing boo boo) I had an idea of where I wanted stems and leaves that I stitched with silver metallic thread.

 

Painting Washers

On a trip with Ken to Lowes last week, I did wander down the hardware isle and check out all the little fun goodies they had. I only bought a package of little copper coated nails. While looking for the computer parts, I had to walk past Ken’s woodworking and hardware stuff. I found some of the cute little lock washers that look like gears on their insides. He had lots of each size, so I “borrowed” one each of 3 sizes for each of the 7 cards I needed to make. I also picked out some small “regular” looking lock washers (again… I’m no hardware expert..:). Since my little nails were copper coated, i pulled out my Lumiere paint and turned the plain washers into copper colored ones. Working with those tiny little pieces, I got as much paint on my fingers as the washers.

 

Hardware Card Wet Glue

I made two stems for each card out of copper and silver colored wire, and stitched them onto the bases (I only hit the wire once even with  my terrible eyes). After laying out the washers and nails, I realized things looked too sparse, so I pulled out some tiny grommets for paper crafting that I had collected years ago, and decided since computer parts were used for the background, I cut up an old software CD to make a couple more “flowers” for each card. The photo above shows one card while the glue was still wet. The grommets were attached using a hammer and grommet tool, and everything else was glued on with gel medium. You’d think I would have learned after painting the washers that working so tiny, I should have found a pair of tweezers to help me out. Instead, I ended up getting as much glue on my fingers and under my nails as got on what was being attached to the cards.  Once dry overnight, I printed up backs for the cards using more computer part photos, printed on a Radiant Gloss photo paper. The backs came out nice and shimmery, but the photo paper bubbled a bit with the heat of the iron when I fused it to the backs… Ahhhh another lesson learned.

 

Hardware Cards Set of 6

Above is the photo of the finished cards ready for mailing. There are 7 in this trade, so the 6 “good” ones get sent out, and the “guinea pig” one is mine to keep… Not exactly like these… it has all the trial and error boo boos on it :)

 

Week 5 Journal WIP

While doing my sorting and organizing in the studio, I found a bunch of unfinished projects dating back many years. As with the previous week’s journal quilt, I am using the smaller unfinished pieces for my weekly journal quilts. This was from my days of selling at art and craft shows, when I would work in batches. I would make up the bases of the pieces and then add the applique and quilting. This already had a few pieces fused on for fall leaves, so I finished it up with a tree.

 

Coloring Fabric

My tree needed more bright leaves, so I decided to color up some just for this one. The fabric is a leftover Wonder Under backed scrap from my placemat making days (that’s why the wierd shape). This piece is a white leaf print on slightly ivory fabric. I began by scribbling with my Inktense Blocks in orange, yellow, red, and a touch of mossy green.

Coloring Fabric Adding Water

I am still amazed at what happens when water is added over the Inktense blocks or pencil.

Coloring Fabric 1

The colors were too light and I wanted a bit of shimmer, so I pulled out the metallic paints. This was a gold color and looked too brown to start, so I scribbled with the Inktense blocks on the parchment near my thinned gold paint.

Mixing Paint

Look what happened when I pulled the Inktense pigment into the metallic paint… much nicer color.

Coloring Fabric 2

I liked the fabric a bit better after adding the mixed paint, but it still needed more, so I later added some more shades of metallic paints that I had on hand.

Week 5 Tree and Grass

While the paint dried, I turned back to the quilt itself. I cut out and fused on the tree trunk and branches. Then I added the stitched grass using one of my variegated threads in shades of green. I just did a sweeping patch of the grass to give the piece some movement.

Tree Texture and Outer Quilting Done

With the grass done, I needed to figure out what to do next. I added texture to the tree trunk with yarn couched on and added more branches by free motion stitching using a zig-zag stitch. This gave me heavier lines than straight FMQ would and it was fun to see how it turned out! I knew that because of the dense stitching in the grass and tree, I needed to keep the rest of the stitching and quilting dense, too. I used a pale variegated blue thread for the sky-like background, then I used a nearly matching thread in the green border and did a lot of tiny leaves vining around in the border. I also added more grass-like stitching along the bottom that would blend into the border. I fused a few fabric bits for fallen leaves and stitched the grass over most of them.

Week 5 Falling Leaves- SOLD

Once all the background quilting was done, I added the rest of the leaf fabric bits (some from a bright orange section of one of my dyed fabrics), and then stitched over them with a variegated thread in shades of orange through deep rust. I did this stitching to mimic the angled shapes I cut for the leaves.  After steaming it out, “Falling Leaves” is just about 8″x10″. This is the firs one I think is “sale worthy” (others may have differing opinions :) so I decided to list “Falling Leaves” is sold!  See more in my Art Quilt Shop on ArtFire.

Once I had my week 5 journal quilt done, week 6 was due, so I pulled out another WIP and finished that piece, too.

Week 6 WIP

This was a piece I started back in 2006 on the trip to Houston’s Quilt Festival as something to keep me  busy for at least part of 3 days in a car. I had fused the sunprints to the batting with the white accent fabric, then I hand couched the bulky yarn over the seams. I never got any farther with this until now.

 

Week 6 Detail

Since I have been wanting to play with my threads and stitching during this journal project, I decided to try something a bit different from what I normally would have done. I began with my “usual” vine quilting in the white areas using a pastel variegated thread that has all the colors of the sunprints. The stitching was pretty pale in color so I added more over the top with a purple metallic thread. Some of the yarn is stitched with a rosy purple metallic embroidery thread, so I thought I would add some metallic to the  vines.

 

Week 6 Sunprints

I didn’t do much new with the quilting in the sunprints themselves… I still like that the clear thread adds just enough texture to accent the prints without overpowering them like other threads I have tried do. To finish this off, I bound the edges with the same bulky black yarn with the colors in it that was used on the seams.  A lot accomplished in the studio in the past weeks! Finally!

 

Back of Workshop Mess

And to let you know that I have not totally been ignoring the gardens, here are a few photos. This one shows one of the worst “eyesores” in view of my studio’s North window. You can barely see the singlewide trailer that is a bit narrower than the one we live in that Ken is finally using as his woodworking shop. It is also where I make the wreaths in November and December. It is barely seen through the overgrown, falling down and obnoxious Sumac trees. The ones on the right of the photo fell down many years ago and are still lying there… I have had to mow around them and it’s not fun. In one way I hate to totally clear everything from here because the birds really love this mess. I plan to plant many of my baby trees in this area to have a neater and prettier bird sanctuary area. I have one huge pile of dead stuff ready to burn, and more is on today’s schedule to be  hacked and burned, too.

 

Salvia "Monsters"

I am also still learning my new camera… Here is a closeup of a couple florets of the Salvia Black and Blue… Probably the only Salvia I really like (most of them have red flowers). This photo came out pretty neat, with the florets looking like open mouths of some sort of monsters. The color even is pretty true without playing in photoshop!

 

Puff Balls and Moss on Stump

Thanks to Vladdi and Roxie chasing through the woods, I found this moss and puffballs on an old rotting stump. Vladdi and I were looking for Roxie who he left behind… She finally came slowly through the woods by the time we got too far.

 

Woods View

The last photo for this post… A shot of the trees in the woods. Lots of young trees, mostly Green Ash and Black Walnuts…. But a few more Sugar Maples are getting some size on them… They don’t seem to like the Walnuts… We usually get tons of seedlings, but very few live more than a couple years. There aren’t many Walnuts in the North end of the woods, and we are finally seeing some Fall color in that direction!  Walnuts and Ash aren’t great for color… A little yellow for a short time.  The Sugar Maples are the best! (in my opinion).

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Posted in Art Cards, inspirations, Landscapes and Skies, Weekly Journal Quilts | 5 Comments »

What a Few Months!!

Friday, June 10th, 2011

Whew!! The past months have really been a roller coaster full of things happening…. I thought I had a couple days to catch my breath a little, but…… This post is a bit of a catch-up on things…. It’s a bit long…..

Windbreak Trees in May

My last post began with a photo of this same group of trees covered in snow. Thankfully the snow left, but there have not been many days without rain, so the grass has been really growing.

With the coming of Spring came my parents trip to Texas and my usual stay with my Gram mid April. I was only able to stay with her one week this year because our son Nick’s wedding was to be April 30th in South Georgia. The original plan was to head South as soon as I got home from Gram’s, but a cabinet building project was running behind (cabinets we needed to take to GA with us for Nick).

Nick's Cabinet 1

The photo above shows one of the cabinets nearly done after we got them to Georgia. They still needed staining, varnish and assembling once we got down there.We started toward Georgia very early AM Wednesday the 27th. Did I say I was to arrange the flowers for the wedding??? I had expected to have 5 days to do them, but that time was really cut short.

I should have taken a photo of the van after we got things loaded. Four bathroom cabinets, one of my large plastic drawer units full of items that I sell from my ArtFire online shops, luggage and a couple coolers for a few meals and snacks on the road.  It was literally full to the roof…. cabinets stacked and filled with whatever would fit in them.

Tennessee Rest Area

The  first 7 hours of the trip went quite smoothly, and we were thinking that we might be able to do the trip without stopping for a night, but as soon as the day got hot and we started traveling through the mountains of Virginia, the van decided to misbehave like it did last summer. It would chug and sputter up the hills, then Ken would try to gain momentum down them, then sputter up again… We cut through the corner of Tennessee then into North Carolina. The scenery was beautiful, and we got to see more of it than planned due to having to stop alongside the highway occasionally. By the time we were nearly to South Carolina, it was time for a stop. As it turned out, it was a good thing that we did not keep going at our original pace…. That night while we were in the  motel, many nasty storms cut across our path. It was just a loud thunderstorm overnight where we were,  but many tornadoes had touched down during our first day and night of travel.

Van Repair 1

Ahhh, what seems to be a usual sight with this van…. The morning of our second day, we looked for an auto parts store after breakfast. We found one that put a computer on and a couple possible problems were found. We found out two parts were bad at a garage that was suggested by the parts store, but not cheap and not available that day, so a temp fix of sorts was done. We did get a tire that went flat on the first day fixed, so the van wasn’t shaking wildly from 2 cans of fix-a-flat that we used with a tire patch kit (another thing that slowed our progress on day one).  Not long after getting on the road again, the chugging started again up hills. when we got half way through GA, it was time to call for help. All of our boys were at Nick’s house, and Aaron had his Tahoe that could tow the van. A car dolly was rented and he started North while we kept heading South to meet up. We passed a number of areas that had been damaged by the previous day and night’s tornadoes. Lots of trees uprooted and mangled. A bit South of Atlanta, a large tornado had cut across Rt75 leaving the trees on each side looking like a huge weed whacker had gone through. Two tractor trailers were picked up off the road and tossed into the woods… If we hadn’t had the car trouble, we could have been dodging tornadoes. What was a frustration really was a blessing.  We finally arrived at Nick’s house Friday morning. I had to work fast to get the flowers ready for the wedding.

Bridesmaid Bouquets

It’s a good thing that floral design seems to be like riding a bike for me…. within a few minutes of wiring and taping flowers and arranging, I got fairly fast… not as fast as when I did it full time, but fast enough. The above photo shows the bouquets for the bridesmaids. I finished all of the flowers just in time to dress for the wedding. Talk about stress….

Nick and Megan Walking the Isle

Here are Nick and Megan walking the “isle”… a sidewalk along the side of Megan’s Uncle’s house which made a beautiful setting. It was good silk flowers were chosen… The heat of the day would have been really hard on fresh flowers.

Family Picture

The wedding was a great way to get our whole family together for pictures. Above are Nick and Megan in the center, Aaron, Zack and Marla behind Nick. The tall guy in the back row left is Derek our oldest grandson. Eva and Maia (granddaughters) are on each side of Nick and Megan. Ken and I are on the left, with Aaron’s wife Jonelle holding little Jenna and Andrue on the other side front. the only one missing was Ally, the oldest granddaughter. Not all the faces are great…. the sun was really bright.

Calla Bouquet

A very tall arrangement of silk Hydrangeas, Roses and Calla Lilies.

Bouquet and Chairs

The Bride’s bouquet lying on a little table between two rockers on the porch of the house. A number of these rockers lined the length of the porch.

Aaron, Jonelle and Kids

A nice picture of Aaron and his family, Jenna didn’t want her picture taken for some  reason that day… One photo she actually didn’t hide from.

My Guys

A photo of my 3 guys together for the last time for quite a while. Zack (middle- Army) is now back in Iraq, and Nick will be stationed in Germany for 4 years with the Air Force, and leaves in only a couple of weeks, now. Aaron is the only one who  lives not too far from us. He is in the Air Guard working in Syracuse, NY.

Bathroom Vanity

Once the wedding was over, Zack headed back to Texas on Sunday and Aaron headed back to PA…  A day later the bathroom remodel that has been in the works since before our trip last year, needed to be worked on. The photo above shows the vanity cabinet fully finished and installed. the cabinet over the toilet is another Ken made. They are made of a combination of Oak and Walnut lumber.

Bathroom Cabinets 2

These are the other two cabinets that were made and brought from PA to GA. There was a lot more room in the van for the trip home!

Ruby

One of the grand fur-kids… This is Ruby, and her sister Sapphire is another pretty black and white.  They share the place with two big dogs- Roxy, who stayed with us a couple years ago, and Vladdy a big black lab. The kitties are going to Germany with Nick and Megan, but we will be dog-sitting until they get settled into a home and can get them over there. The weather was absolutely perfect while we were in GA…. Warm enough, but not too hot with low humidity. It rained just about every day we were gone here in PA.

Van Repair 2

Another of  those common views of the van…  Nick was helping Ken to check out some possible parts that needed replacing. They did find another bad part that we would pick up after eating breakfast as the journey home began on May 9th. We hoped that new part would solve our problem, but NOT!  We got to Macon,GA after a very frustrating 5 hours… normally a much shorter trip to get that far.

GA Old Little House

Thankfully, Ken  has two cousins there, and we stayed the night with one and the next day with the other while the van was in a garage getting a new fuel pump. The photo above is a little old house that we stopped the van near to let it cool a bit before chugging on. Later we found that one of Ken’s cousins lives not far from this house.  Finally late Tuesday May 10th we got back on the road again with not enough money for a motel, so the rest of the trip was done with no overnight stop.  The new fuel pump and another new part did the trick! There were no more chugging episodes the  rest of the way home. We finally got home mid day on Wednesday, then napped to catch up on sleep.

Mower in grass

Leaving for a couple of weeks in late April to early May, is not a great thing for the lawn and gardens. All the rain kept the grass growing and it was pretty deep by the time we got home.

Weedy Front Door Garden

The Dandelions were blooming beautifully, and other weeds were also taking off in the flower beds.

Baby Ginkgo Leaves

I have longed to have a Ginkgo tree of my own, and now I have 2! They are only 2-3 feet tall and were leafing out nicely when we returned home. They will live in a large pot for most of this summer before they get planted in the yard.

Pear Blossoms

The pear and Almond trees were in bloom.

Deep Grass with Dandilions

The very shaggy lawn in need of mowing, The leaves on most of the trees were just beginning to pop with little bits of green.

New Violets

While walking the yard and gardens, I found these pretty Violets…. They must be a cross of some that I have already…. I had white, regular purple, white with flecks of purple, reddish purple ones, and now these new ones!

Red Trilliums

It’s hard to see the flowers, but here are a few of the Red Trilliums I brought from my parent’s woods last Spring. To the right is a variegated leaf Brunnera in full bloom.

April Showers Damage

With all the rain and storms while we were gone, a lot of my shade garden washed away…. there has been one gully (the one on the right), but now there are 3 deep gouges from the water.

Lilac Garden

This was taken on April 13, after I got much of the lawn mowed…. The Lilacs were blooming, but the water did a lot of damage. There were lots of moldy buds. There is my “faithful companion” Cuddles who follows me everywhere while I try to take photos.

Wisteria

Wisteria Flowers!!!  The deer had kept the Wisteria pruned pretty short, but I had nine beautiful flowers bloom. As you can see, the weeds were doing well in this bed, too.

Swimming Dandelion

We had about 3 days without rain after we returned from GA, then it began to rain every day for what seemed an eternity…. This Dandelion was swimming in the “ditch” through my back yard mound garden.

Oops!

Ken tried to get the bales of hay off the fields…. Because of all the rain, the low spot between the lawn and the field was really soggy…. The tractor remained buried for a couple weeks…. This photo was taken at least a week after it got stuck… I mowed the lawn a day after the tractor got buried, but nearly got the mower stuck, too. Thankfully I got that much done before the seemingly never ending rain began again.

Pink Lily-of-the-Valley

Wet Pink Lily-of-the-Valley…. The white ones that didn’t wash away bloomed nicely this year, too.

LOV Bouquet

A pretty bouquet of Spring flowers…. I picked these to bring in the house to brighten things up after things really took a turn and life seemed to blurr by…. Very early May 15th (before 4AM) I had to take Ken to the ER with chest pains. He was admitted for observation after a few tests, and to wait for additional blood testing. I came home for a quick nap after he was settled into his room, then things got even crazier after one of the test showed he had already had or was about to have a heart attack…. He has had artery blockages in the past, and has had 2 previous catheterizations with a stent placed during one. He has had angina pain for the most of the past 10 yrs. even after the caths.  He got moved to ICU before being transferred to the Robert Packer Hospital in Sayre, after much waiting for a doctor, a room, then an ambulance. He got settled into a room at the Packer by 7PM and he said he didn’t have any pain, so no one was super concerned. As we were waiting for the Dr to get back to us to let us know when a heart cath would be done Monday AM, Ken had a heart attack while we were watching the second half of the finale of Survivor on TV.

I was pushed out of the room, and people were coming from everywhere. His heart had to be shocked back into rythm, and I was allowed back into the room once he was awake and talking again, but very groggy. It seemed forever (but wasn’t really that long) before he was wheeled to the cath lab to find out what had caused the attack. I found that a hospital OR floor can be VERY desolate after  10PM on a Sunday night. Aaron and Jonelle came up and as soon as the procedure was done, we got to see Ken. Aaron thought he looked near dead…. One Dr showed us videos of the procedure and the two blocked arteries that had caused the attack and were now opened and everything flowing properly again.  One blockage was referred to as the “widowmaker”.  Even though it seemed that there were delays all day getting to the Packer Hospital, everyone who he needed was there when he needed them.

I went home after he was settled into the CCU for the night. He was waking a bit more, but didn’t realize everything had been done already…. I got home near 2AM and got a couple hours sleep before calling the CCU the next morning. He was sitting up and eating breakfast and all looked good, so I slept a couple more hours. By the time I got to the hospital, he was sitting up and looking perkier than he had in quite a while! He said he felt better than he had in years…. no chest pain!  He came home on the 19th after a few boring sleepless days and nights in the hospital, and we both spent the rest of that day sleeping…. Hospitals are no place for patients to get any sleep….

Dbl White Aquilegia

Once Ken got home and got some sleep, he ended up spending most every day the rest of that week visiting friends and “supervising” Aaron’s kitchen floor re-do. His only limitation was no lifting over 10 lbs for the first 10 days…. Totally Amazing!

Garden Gloves

By this time I still had not had time to work in my gardens…. Here is one of the new pairs of garden gloves I got for the task…. A great dollar store find! They don’t look like this now, after 3 weeks of use.

Glad Nubs

While pulling weeds in the Front Door Garden, I found a wonderful surprise…. The Glads that I had planted last year lived over the winter… they are not usually hardy around here…. What a wonderful find, especially since there is no money left for many annual flowers this year.

DeutsiaOops!! I guess I didn’t get the caption right on this one…. It is a photo of one of the Deutsia bushes in bloom…. They were so pretty!

Planters

A week after Ken came home from the hospital, it was time to get Memorial Day planters potted up and delivered to the cemeteries. A bit of a challenge this year with Ken’s limit for lifting. He usually moves things around for me since I can’t lift most of these myself. We ended up sharing the load to get the job done. The day we delivered the pots to the cemeteries was hot and a really nasty batch of storms popped up…. we had to wait out hail at one cemetery, and the storms seemed to follow us, we stayed dry during most of the task. We visited Ken’s aunt and uncle near the end of our deliveries, and found that there was a tornado warning up, and the storm was headed for our home…. Kind of Spooky…. We got the rest of the planters placed and on the way home we were in the middle of a really nasty storm…. Not a fun ride home, but we got there and everything was fine there.  The 2 pots above were delivered later, and just behind them is the little “creek” that was running down the driveway due to the storm.

Washed Over Hosta

My Hosta that are used to getting buried a bit each winter, really got buried with that storm…. the  gravel on them is from somewhere up the driveway…. a LONG way from the garden.

Back Yard Grass Flattened

The grass in the yard was flattened from the water in a 12-14 foot wide path.

S Curve Washout

This photo shows the edge of the road heading to our house…. The ditch is at least a foot deep and pretty wide…. there used to be a gravel shoulder there.

Shade Garden Waterfalls

Well, there are not supposed to be waterfalls in the shade garden, but the water was still flowing over 12 hours after the storms ended. There were a few plants clinging to the sides of this gully, but they must be at the neighbors or lower in the woods.

Blue Iris

One of the pretty Blue Iris that decided to open the morning after the first Big storm. The day after our stormy planter deliveries, we attended a reception at the Troy High School that was the first of 3 parts of Ken’s 50th class reunion. The skies were clear and the weather really warm when we left home, but the rains began again during the program we attended. We again drove home in another nasty storm to find that the driveway was blocked by a group of little trees that had fallen across it. We ended up walking (or running) down most of the driveway in the lightning, thunder and thankfully lessening rain (good thing I had a flashlight in the van…  I’m blind in the dark, and we had to dodge the rivers of water. It was almost like day with the lightning).

Broken Tree

The next morning, this is what Ken found…. A pretty large Pine tree had snapped off from what must have been a big gust of wind. It knocked the other trees over the driveway… That WAS a nice tree.

Driveway Gravel

This is more gravel that used to be in the driveway…. It is nearly 6″ deep in many places.

Buried Echinacea

Not only grass and Hostas got buried in driveway gravel… here are a couple poor Echinacea plants that I don’t think will recover. They are not happy having their crowns buried. First the grass from mowing caught on them, then the gravel piled on. I have a lot of gravel removal to do in the back yard.

Thankfully the night of the Class reunion dinner was nice with no storms…. A power outage caused the venue for the dinner to be changed at the last minute. We were crammed in an almost too small building with no air conditioning, just windows to let in the breeze. It was nice to have a drive home without lightning and pouring rain.

Peony with Sky

Here is one of the Peony flowers from underneath…. They came into bloom while we had a heatwave, so they didn’t last very well… The heavy rains didn’t help either.

Peony with Iris

One of my fat, fluffy Peonies with Siberian Iris in the background.

Mulched Front Door Garden

During a few cooler days, I was able to get the Front Door Garden weeded and mulched…. The mower wasn’t working, but the tractor made hauling the hay easier with the wagon. This was taken just as the Peonies were ready to pop their buds.

Miss Canada Lilac

My late blooming Miss Canada Lilac with Hello Darkness Iris in the background. May ended, and June began….

Then another Sunday in the ER…. Night this time… Sunday June 5th after church and afternoon nap, I tried to mow more lawn with the mower that kept throwing off belts and causing other problems, and Ken did some mowing with the  push mower…. probably more than he should have done.  A couple hours later while sitting watching a movie, his heart started racing and BP jumped, so we ended  up heading back to the Towanda ER to be sure it was nothing serious. By the time he was hooked up to the monitors, things were back to normal. Ken was kept over night and discharged the next morning with a heart monitor for 24 hours. Another night with no sleep, and another day of sleeping to catch up on….  A new med not taken at the right time in addition to the mowing probably caused the scare.

Ken with Cuddles

Here is Ken working on the mower again a day after getting home from the latest hospital visit… I think Cuddles is more pest than helper…. After that fix, the mower worked until I almost ran it out of gas…. This time the drive belt popped off… There are still areas of the yard that have not been mowed for the first time of the year.

Single White Peony

My single white Peonies are the latest ones to bloom…. The blooming blue Nepeta make a nice background.

Stepping Out Iris

There are still a few of these Iris in bloom…. They put out a lot of flowers this year.

Well, that’s been a wrap-up of the past few months….. Many scares and frustrations, but all in all there is no doubt that the Lord has been watching out for us…. Ken is  feeling better and we hope all is good at the cardiologist follow-up next week.

Posted in Architecture and Old Buildings, Family, Flowers and Gardens, inspirations, Landscapes and Skies, Uncategorized | 2 Comments »

From Spring and Summer to White?

Monday, March 7th, 2011

This is definitely proving to be a winter like some we used to have quite regularly…. The worst storm of the winter decided to pop up quite unexpectedly yesterday while we were exploring the beauty of Spring and Summer in Philadelphia.

Delphiniums 1

Yesterday was the first full day of the Philadelphia Show. We ended up going there as a last minute decision, and were expecting to meet Marla and a granddaughter or two. We didn’t get to see the granddaughters, but spent some nice time with Marla.  The weather forecast was calling for heavy rain all day, and we left home in rain, some quite heavy on the way to Philly.

Fallen Roses

The Philadelphia Flower Show is a Huge, Beautiful show full of displays of flowers and gardens of all types. This year’s theme was based on Paris, so there were many Parisian inspired displays. One of the first big ones we saw was this display of roses that had toppled due to someone (or more) touching the outer ring of roses. It looked like a horribly challenging thing to fix with crowds of people watching.

Pink Table

Here is part of a display of very opulent tables perfect for a wedding… I loved all the pink…  I will post a bunch of photos and not too many words here:
Oops!  If I would get the captions with the photos I wouldn’t have to write so much…. This is a beautiful Yellow Lady Slipper Orchid.

Wild Display

There were even weeds in this display… It was a natural looking woodland walk.

Can Can Dancer

There were 4 displays done like this… The dancer image is made from various items including cut up cans to create the shadow.

Bed of Roses

Not sure how comfy this would be, but it was beautiful!

Funky Lilies

I just HAVE to find out what variety of Lily this is… I am pretty sure is is a Lily that seems to grow like and Oriental or Asiatic by the looks of the foliage.

Pitcher Plant Flowers Maybe

Here is another one for researching… The plants these flowers were coming from looked to be Pitcher Plants… I have never seen flowers like these. There were yellow ones in some other planters, too.

Rock Garden

The plants in this planter were placed between thin slices of rocks placed on their edges… a really neat idea! I love the tiny Alpines growing here.

Pink Hellebore

There were lots of Hellebore plants in many of the displays… this is there usual blooming season. Another “I want”.

Floral Fashion 1

There were 4 parts to this display… Each had a floral arrangement that depicted gowns on mannequins.

Botanical Prints

A very large display of watercolor and colored pencil botanical art pieces really got me thinking that I need to start sketching and trying this myself…. I love these and would love to be able to do some of my own….

Tulip Vases

Very Elegant, simple vases full of Tulips… So pretty with the narrow metal bands curved throughout.

Rose Ring Fixed

On our way out of the show, I was able to get a photo of the Rose display that had toppled over earlier in the day.  The photos shown here are only a few of the 270+ I took… There are many “flops” due to my camera and the very low light at many of the displays. It was a very crowded day, but it was great to be able to wander through the flowers and plants in the displays since things have been pretty white here at home.

Philly in the Rain

When we finally left the city, the rain was pouring down…. Made for a few interesting photos, but it was not raining all the way home. After calling home to see how cold it got, we found that it had been snowing much of the day here….

Ice Covered Tree Half Way Home

It was spooky enough riding in a car on busy highways in the pouring rain, but things changed…. The photo from downtown Philly was taken about 6PM…. at about 8:20, the wet road turned into a slushy road, and the rain turned into sleet. We stopped for gas where this tree was covered in icy slush.

March 6 Snow Storm1

Fortunately, Ken is a much better driver than I am as a passenger… I spent most of the ride home gripping a door handle…. We passed a lot of big trucks that were not able to climb some of the steeper roads, but we were able to slowly keep going. Each town we got to meant we were that much closer to home. We had heard that our county was under a state of emergency, but we had no place to go but home…. The main roads actually were better once the slush and ice had turned to snow and frozen roadways.  Most of the main roads were plowed, but when  we got off them, we were following tracks made by others. The road we live on was the spookiest…. drifts over it, not plowed, wind whipping, but Ken was able to get the mini van all the way to our driveway!

Bird Houses When Home

Ken got the van off the road, just into the end of the driveway and we ended up  walking down it. We were not prepared for a 1/4 mile trudge through drifts of all sizes and gusty winds…. When we left home it was warm and raining. I had my duckie shoes for the mud when we left, but they stayed in the van…. My sneakers were warmer than they are and easier to walk in. I was lucky to have taken my gloves and always keep a quilt or 2 in the van. With no hat, I wrapped in the quilt. Ken had no gloves or hat, and carried our bunch of curly willow purchased a the show in the hopes we can get some to root. I don’t see well in the dark, and we had no flashlight, so I followed Ken’s tracks. Some areas were blown clear of snow, but there were some drifts nearly butt deep, not fun, but we were not sure how close we would get to home, so only walking the driveway was better than some options.  The first snow photo above shows our tracks to the front step. The other is one I tried to take of the bird feeders, but the snow was falling so hard the flash caught the flakes the most. Pretty interesting shots.

March Blizzard 1

With all the snowing and blowing, we had no idea what things would look like this AM…. Well, here it is…. No tracks can be seen where we walked in, and the large planters that line the walkway are totally buried in snow. To the right you can just see the front corner of Ken’s big van…. A pretty big drift beside that.

Deck Steps

The deck has quite a bit of snow on it even with the roof, and this is what the steps look like…. I remember the guys purposefully packing snow on them to make a sled ramp when they were at home. It is a ready-made ramp now…. The pool rock pile is nearly fully buried,too.

Outside Greenhouse Door

Here is the view out the greenhouse door, with my short handled broom to give an idea of the snow depth. The drift between the door and the Lilac bush is 3-4 feet… just guessing….

Tractor and Van

See that tractor nearly buried in the snow?? Poor Ken has to dig it out so he can use it to dig out a path to get the van out of the way of the pickup, who’s plow is not on right now…. It was only to be a rain storm with maybe a couple of inches of snow at the end….

Pickup and Alberta Spruce

The Dwarf Alberta Spruce out my studio window has a really neat pattern of snow on it, and you can see why the tractor will be needed to get the truck out…. The tractor will have to be used to dig a path before the truck will be able to get to where the plow is buried and then to get it out of the driveway.

Cardinal at Feeder

I guess with the tons of snow, the Cardinal wasn’t as spooky as he has been… It was a bit tricky catching a photo with the feeder twisting in the wind with the bird clinging to it. It will be a while before I get a path to the feeders, so for now I just tossed some seed out onto the snow…. The birds approve. I had to knock snow out of the deck feeder before I could fill that one.

Blackbird

I don’t think the Red Winged Blackbirds expected this… He was very happy to have the tossed seed.

I thought I would be posting photos of slightly greening grass with the rain taking away most of the snow that was on the ground…. I guess not yet….

I am so glad I got to see Spring and Summer flowers yesterday…. Back to reality today….

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An Icy Walk

Wednesday, March 2nd, 2011

Yesterday was March first, and the month started off on a sunny note. This winter so far has been very cold and snowy…. much like the winters we used to have when we first moved here.  Ken had the mini van and I needed to ship an order, so I decided to take a walk up the driveway…. It was quite an experience, but I made it home safely.

Snowy Sunshine

Looking out the front windows, things looked much like this without the snow on the trees, and more dirty snow showing. It looked much warmer than it really was. I have avoided walking the driveway during the winter for quite a few years now. With a pickup with a plow and a tractor, the driveway can be plowed when we get snow and if needed a vehicle can be towed out. With no vehicle,  it looked like a “nice” day for a hike…..  A couple lessons were learned (or remembered from the days of walking kids to the bus and tobogganing groceries down from the top):
1) Wear a hat…. I wore gloves, but it looked warm enough to skip the hat…. I wished I had it very quickly, but not soon enough to go back to get one. Once I got up to the row of pine trees, I found there was a pretty good breeze headed straight at me. Holding gloved hands on ears while walking, holding a package is not easy.

Ice Flow

2) Wear boots or grippy footwear on ice…. The day before had been above freezing and there was water flowing everywhere…. I thought my “duck” shoes would work…. Note: Plastic shoes are very slippery on ice…. The photo above is where we turn and park the van, taken the morning of my walk. Frozen water is also very cold and my feet froze in the thin duckies…. extra socks might have helped. I ended up skating a few times… not fun.

Iced Over Driveway Section

Thankfully, much of the driveway had a strip or spots of bare frozen dirt to walk on. Here was one of the “fun” spots where water runs across it and was a skating rink. This is probably the most level part of the driveway, at the top before it slopes down toward the road. This photo was taken looking back toward home.

One thing I did remember was to take my camera with me. I have been trying to keep it with me at all times… I didn’t try to take photos on the way up because I was carrying my package, so I began clicking once I dropped it into the mail box.

View From the Mail Box

Actually this was taken from the driveway a bit in from the road…. The little community of Black can be seen with the Church and a few farms. It is a pretty view from here.

Bus Stop Wreath

Here is the big wreath that I made for myself… I never did get a picture of it finished until now. It still looks like it did the day I put it there, and with the pink ribbon it doesn’t look out of place.

Dead Log Emerging from Snow

The snow has melted a little, but there are not too many bare spots yet. This was part of a rotten log that was emerging from the snow….

Glistening Driveway

It is hard to see from this picture, but this is probably the steepest part of the driveway. You can see where there were two rivers running down the tracks the day before. The sun was reflecting beautifully off the ice.

Hay Wagon and Bales

Here is the hay wagon and a row of hay bales that are sitting in the field beside the driveway. I is hard to remember how hot it was when Ken was piling the wagon full of the square bales last summer.

Bubbles in Ice

The ice may be very cold, but it is also very beautiful, especially upon closer inspection. A lot of bubbles formed as the water was freezing above. There are also some frosty flakes decorating the top, too.

More Ice

This frozen puddle was driven over and the ice cracked in an interesting way.

Frozen River

The lowest section of the driveway in front of the trailer. The water was rushing the most here…. Thankfully the plow dug into the edge of the lawn a bit and made for easier walking.

View from Lower Driveway

This is what the view looking toward Towanda was like standing where I took the previous photo. The mountains have a blue cast along with the blue sky. Photos from the days earlier were all shades of gray.

Ice under the Pickup

I don’t think the Pickup would have gone anywhere without ashes over the  ice… All 4 wheels were on the slick stuff…. The day before, it was standing in running water. The water coming down the driveway goes around the end of the trailer and into the back yard…. right through two of my gardens.

Back Yard Gardens

This is what the gardens in the back yard look like…. toward the right, you can barely see where the water was flowing the day before. There is a little bare spot starting where the “river” turns to head into the woods.

Shade Garden 1

This is where the first of the Spring flowers will hopefully bloom. So far the snow has only melted from the stones that are on each side of the steps that lead into the yard.

Shade Garden 2

The other side of the stone steps…. I hope to have Trilliums blooming here along with the Hostas. I need to have patience…. it will take a while longer for the snow to melt and allow the hidden treasures to show themselves.  I do love the way the shadows of the Walnut trees look on the snow.

Stone Wall Garden

This last photo shows the length of the stone wall garden…. The stalks and empty seed pods are still standing from the tall Oriental Lilies along with the Phlox plants. I can’t wait until the snow leaves and little bits of green and flowers start peeking out. The first to show themselves last year were the Winter Aconites in mid March… At least a couple of weeks to wait…. I guess until then, I need to keep finding inspiration from the snow and ice while it is still here.

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