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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

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” for sale in my Art Quilt Shop on ArtFire. The link will take you to the listing if interested, where there are more detail shots.

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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A New Beginning?

Tuesday, September 13th, 2011

My last post was 3 weeks ago, and the perennials in the gardens are beginning to look a bit shabby… It didn’t help that we had nearly a week with no sun and 4 straight days with rain… One of them with 6.5″ in less than 24 hours….

Soggy Hibiscus

The above photo shows the Pink Hibiscus after one day of rain on Sept. 6…

Back Yard Rivers before digging

September 7th- The Mound Garden river was flowing again…. This time, I had a ditch dug in the dog yard to divert some water to the woods… It took a lot of water (near the back fence), but there was more water going through the Mound Garden than in any previous storms of the year….

River outside Studio

This photo shows the river as it passed in front of my studio window… The water running by the propane tank headed straight for my studio wall and ran right around it, then flooded much of the dog yard… Poor pups! They didn’t know whether they wanted to go out to do their business or not… Some water had puddled under my sewing machine and the towel I keep along the wall was soaked, so some re-routing of the river was required.

Back Yard rivers after digging

During a slower rain shower, I was able to dig the ditch in front of my studio deeper and also dug the ditch to the woods deeper to give the water a place to go. As you can see in this photo above, there is a lot of water in the ditch in the dog yard, and very little in the garden… That helped for a while, but a later heavy downpour caused breaks and overflows in the ditches, so I had to choose another break in the rain to do more digging…

Van in driveway

We usually park the mini van in the lower parking area, but we had gotten groceries the last time it was driven, so it was parked and left in this part of the driveway… The water was getting really high, and when I went to move it before my second digging session, the wheels were already partly buried in the gravel that had washed from the upper part of the driveway.

Flooded Dog Yard again

This was one of those helpless feeling moments…. The latest heavy downpour had overflowed the banks of the ditches and broken part of one of my new levees (left side of pic, inside the dog yard).  When I got out there later to do damage control, I found that grass, leaves and other debris as well as LOTS of driveway gravel had plugged the wire of the fence and caused water to stand everywhere and return even worse to the mound garden.

Dog Yard after Flood

Sept. 8th, after the bulk of the rain had fallen, this is what the dog yard looked like… The two piles of mud and gravel along the back fence is what I dug out away from the fence, trying to get the water to go under instead of through it. I had 3 areas where water was flowing under the fence, and the middle one clogged again…. The gravel came from far up the driveway….

Culvert by Upper Parking Area

This photo shows some of the deep gullies formed in the driveway… I am really glad I added the big rocks by the pipe before the storm… This culvert has been washed out too many times this year.  There was still a big ditch from the previous storm, so I filled in much of it with rocks…. Some stayed! It’s amazing how much damage water just from 1/4 mile above us could do…. all that water ended up heading to the Susquehanna after collecting more along it’s path…. We were very lucky living this high up. The river flooding was near or above record levels with many homes and businesses being affected.

Wet Mini Rose

Here is a lonely bloom on the mini Rose bush….

Harry is still trying to grow!

“Poor Harry” seemed to like all the water…. He seemed to put out some pretty good new shoots!  The poor thing has been munched on much of the summer… it seems every time he has put out new growth, it has been eaten off. This time I gave him a douse of dear repellent before he became deer snack again.

And speaking of “Poor Harry” (a Harry Lauder’s Walking stick bush), he was the inspiration for my latest batch of art cards for my trade group.

Harry in the Petunias

The full view of Harry shows the dead branches that he was left with after being mauled by deer. I liked the shape of these branches, so I left them even though they are dead. A bit of “sculpture” in the garden. I took this photo and removed the background in photoshop to  use for the art cards.

Balance ATC's Printed

The theme for this trade was “Balance”… My gardens have been about the only thing to give ma any balance to my life lately, and Harry makes a pretty balanced “sculpture” in the garden, so he was to be the star. I began by fusing random scraps of fusible backed fabrics to parchment paper until I had  just a bit larger than a sheet of paper. I wanted to print Harry’s picture on this fused background, so I painted over the fabrics with titanium white to soften the colors, and a bit of gel gloss to seal and snaggy edges.  I then set up the document to print and it  worked! No Jams!  The above photo shows the printed fabric  base.

Balance Pair started

This photo shows two of the cards after they were cut to size and Inktense pencil was added for the Petunias in the garden. I had only dampened the pencil for Harry’s leaves, and not the flowers yet.

"Poor Harry" Balance Cards

Above are four of the finished cards… See how much more vibrant the colors from the Inktense pencils are after I painted over them with very dilute gel medium. I added some more deep shading on Harry with the pencils and thicker gel gloss to give him a little shine like he has in real life.  I finished these cards the day before the heaviest rain hit, and they got in the mail just in time… I’m not sure how many days we were without mail after that….

Studio Window Garden

Since I have been pretty creatively blocked lately, I have been trying different things to get things moving again…. A member of the Quiltart list was about to turn 49 a few weeks ago and decided she would make a little journal quilt each week during her 50th year. She invited others to join her, and since I just turned 50 last month, I decided it might be something to get me back into creating.  For the first piece, I used the photo of the view of the garden I see from my studio window when sitting at my machine.

Week 1 Sept. 4

The “due date” for the first piece was Sept. 4th…. Thankfully the rules for the group are pretty flexible, and I only had part of the piece fused together by then, but for me that was better than I had done in a long time. Yesterday, I finally finished it…. It took a while to do the quilting with all the thread color changes I did, but Free Motion Quilting seems to be like riding a bike… I was a little rusty at first, but moved along pretty quickly. The photo above shows the finished piece!

Before I started quilting week one’s quilt, I worked on the second piece.

Week 2 Beginning with Photo

Since week two included the storm, I just had to use a part of one of the photos of the water flowing through my Mound Garden.  Above is the photo I used with the beginning of the quilt before quilting.

Week 2 Sept. 12

Here is the finished piece for week two. I played with different shades of beige and brown threads for the muddy water and gravel in the quilting. The main fabric in the middle of the piece is a bit of a small piece of a batik I had that gave the feel of much of the upper part of the garden. The lower part of the garden is a piece of my pale hand dyed fabric with Inktense pencil used to add the green for the leaves of the plants. I used little touches of titanium white paint for the Phlox and Echinacea flowers, and quilting with a variegated bright pinks thread makes the Vinca flowers.

While these two little pieces aren’t a lot, I really hope they will be the beginning of my creative mojo returning…. Maybe I’ll even finish a quilt that I started nearly 1 1/2 years ago.  I’ll take any creative bursts I can get!!

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In the Gardens Mid July

Wednesday, July 20th, 2011

There are still flowers on the Hemerocallis (Daylily) plants, but they are now beginning to slow down.  Since my last post, I made some interesting discoveries. The first was a nicely double flower on the variety Double Cutie.

Double Cutie Double Bloom

One of the stems of this variety opened flowers more double than the first blooms.  The one in this photo above was the most fluffy of them all… As you can see, the stamens in this bloom became petals, and they even have pollen like normal ones. One of nature’s wonders!

Another interesting discovery was with the variety Melon Balls…. One evening, I found all of the flowers were streaked with white and pale peach… I had not seen them like that before and thought it might have been caused by the sun or heat…

Hemerocallis Melon Balls Faded

The faded blooms were very interesting looking, and after a few days of stalking them, I found that it did seem to be the sun doing the fading. After a few days of finding streaked flowers in the evenings, I finally  got photos of the flowers morning, mid-day and evening… The more sun during the day, the more streaks there were by evening… What a great find! Flowers that changed as the day progressed!

Hemerocallis variegata

Also, as I mentioned in the last post, there was another double flower that hadn’t bloomed yet… It finally did, and here is one of the flowers. The original plant had variegated foliage, but most of my clumps have reverted back to green leaves. I will have to make an effort to dig out some of the remaining variegated parts to keep propagating those. The green foliage is much stronger growing, so it can take over if you let it keep growing. My clumps have been ignored a lot over the past few years.

OK, now that I have pretty much covered all of the Daylilies, there are a lot more flowers in my gardens. Other flowers that have been blooming this mid July.

Front Door Planter Right

In past years, my planters near the front door have been filled with flowers that I usually purchased early to have color out front as soon as possible. This year, I couldn’t afford to get anything new for the planters and I have had to wait for color this year. I had some extra plants left from planting this year’s Memorial Day planters, some white Petunias, Alyssum, and blue Lobelia. I had also been able to get some wave Petunias late June to add a few touches of annual color to my gardens. It is amazing what can happen when you don’t do anything more than take weeds out of planters with the soil left in them from the previous year.

Front Door Planter Left

This is the planter on the other side of the steps. The only new purchased plants in these pots are the White Petunias, Alyssum, and one Purple Wave petunia in the Left planter.  The Violas, Nicotiana, and tall purple Petunias in the Left planter are seedlings that came up from last year’s plants. The same plants and the striped Petunias in the Right planter are seedlings. I even was able to take out  some extra Petunia and Nicotiana seedlings to use in the gardens.  I LOVE “free” flowers! I had to be patient to see much color in the post, but they are now beginning to overflow!

White Asiatic Lily

Back to perennials in the gardens, here is a pretty rare sight… at least this year for me.  The mice and moles, or voles or whatever critters they were ate the bulk of  my Asiatic and Oriental lilies. These white ones are in the Maple Tree garden near the pond that is covered with black raspberry bushes.

Pink Lilies

This stem of pink Asiatic Lilies is one that lived through the critter snacking in the Back Yard Mound garden. This garden used to have gobs of Lily flowers mid July, but between the critters eating the bulbs, the water washing gravel on top of the bulbs, and snacking deer, I had one stem of pink and one stem of yellow blooms. The center of the Mound Garden used to be full of yellow Asiatics that would grow to about arm-pit height. I dug up some of the bulbs this year and moved them around.

Hostas in Washout Zone

This is the end of the Mound Garden where the Hostas have nearly been washed away or buried in gravel. It still amazes me how beautifully they bloom every year. The shade trees in the back yard are Black Walnuts and there are lots of plant that will not grow near them, but the Hosta and other plants I have here and along the stone wall have been doing great.

Mound Garden 7-8-11

This photo above shows the Mound Garden from the lawn at the top of the mound. Toward the right you can see the pitiful yellow Lily plants. The Echinaceas were just beginning to bloom when this was taken, and a couple Hemerocallis Ice Carnival plants were blooming between the Hosta and Echinaceas.Yyou can see the pale lilac Wave Petunias just beginning to grow a bit… I bought them late in the season and they were pretty long and scraggly, so I needed to trim them some so they will branch out and bloom better. I just have to have more patience waiting for the plants to fill out and bloom more. There is a Salvia Black and Blue with blue flowers with pale green leaves… My plants sat on a table out front of the trailer until I could get them into the ground and didn’t get fertilized like then should have been…. Yea, I was a professional greenhouse grower and don’t always do things right.

Back Yard Gardens from Wall

Here is another photo of the Back Yard gardens taken from the end of the stone wall closest to the Walnut trees, looking toward the new dog yard. Vladdi our son’s black Lab is standing at one of the gates hoping to be let free. He has helped my gardens a bit so far by getting a woodchuck who was teasing him from the other side of the fence. I let Vladdi out and the woodchuck was no more. The Hostas along the stone wall are doing nicely. The Mound Garden is to the right in the sun and hard to see. The wider part of the Stone Wall garden is just past the stone steps right about in the middle of the photo. On hot summer days, the shade of the Walnuts is wonderful.

Lady Fern

Here is one of my Lady Ferns tucked between one of my Krossa Regan Hostas and the stone wall. Last year the fern was pretty scrawny, but this year with all the early rain we had, it has done great.

Deck Planter with Back Yard in Background

Here is one of my deck planters with the Back Yard gardens showing in the background. The deck planters didn’t get many new plants this year either. The Nemesia in this planter was a gift, and the Petunias, Nicotiana, and Violet plants are seedlings from last years flowers. Some more “freebies”. I had so many baby plants coming up, I had to take a bunch out and put them into pots to be used in the gardens. The Petunias I had here last were plum colored with deep plum veins. This year I have shades of plum, pink and lavender Petunias.

Phlox Flame White with Eye

Here is the only new perennial plant I purchased this year. Phlox have done really well in all of my gardens, so I have been adding new colors and dividing my favorites to fill various spaces. The Flame varieties are shorter growing varieties than the older varieties. As with most perennials I buy, I just HAD to divide this one into two pieces and it is now a part of the Mound Garden.

Vinca Annual

Along with the lavender Petunias, I have also planted Impatiens in the shady areas, White Petunias along the front edge, and behind them are these Vinca flowers. I found these in a greenhouse I stopped at on the way home from giving a lecture to a quilt guild in Reading PA. I tend to “shop” my way home if I have a few dollars to spare. I also found these in a beautiful shade of pink. I only have 12 of the Vinca, but they should fill out quite nicely in the next few weeks.

Hosta Lemon Lime in Bloom

The last photo from the back yard for this post is this Hosta Lemon Lime tucked nearly under the Brunnera Looking Glass.

Hydrangea Anabelle

Back to the front yard, the Hydrangea Annabelle is blooming beautifully. These flowers last a long time, and look great with the Crimson King Maple as a backdrop. There aren’t too many small delicate plants in the Maple Tree garden… It is the largest garden and a great home for some pretty big and aggressive plants and shrubs.

Carpet Rose

Not too far from the Hydrangea is one of the few Rose bushes I have. This is a Carpet Rose that is a low growing variety that blooms on and off all summer.

One Tomato Left

Not all plants in the gardens ind up looking good. Even though I sprayed the Tomato plants with deer repellent, they still got munched on. I bought 3 nice sized plants that had Tomatoes started and this is the only fruit left. Since this photo was taken, they are all growing much better and look like they will do well if I can keep the critters away from them.

Poor Harry

Here is another victim of critters. This poor Red Leaved Harry Lauder’s Walking Stick was beginning to put out some new shoots after being chomped by deer over the winter, and the new shoots were eaten… There are still some shoots trying . I have put more repellent around this and hope it can get growing again.  It has reddish leaves on twisted branches.

Monarda Summer Wine

Here is a closeup of a Monarda (or Bee Balm) flower. This variety called Summer Wine is a really pretty bright fuchsia wine color. This is near Harry, on the end of the Maple Tree Garden with the arborvitae. I used to keep this area for annual flowers, and am slowly adding perennials here. I have planted more Wave Petunias in this garden and the Purple Wave’s that are planted near the Monarda are nearly the same color. So far not much color yet from the Petunias, but in a few weeks if the weather cooperates, I should be able to see them from my kitchen window.

Evening Sky

Again a post is getting pretty long…. Here is a photo of the sky one evening, looking through the Maple Tree garden. The left round tree is the Crimson King Maple. The Monarda and Harry are to the left not shown in this photo. You can just make out the Hydrangea flowers along the lower center of the photo. The Maple trees, Balsam Fir (center) and Junipers are getting pretty big. It’s amazing to think that less than 20 yrs ago these all were pretty small trees from a nursery I worked at back then.

The great thing about the gardens is that there is always something new popping up or beginning to bloom. There will be more posts from the gardens…. the Echinaceas and Phlox are beginning to really come into bloom now.

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The Dancing Daylilies

Thursday, July 14th, 2011

I have so many beautiful Daylilies (Hemerocallis) blooming that I decided to do one post devoted just to them.

Hemerocallis Double Cutie

This plant is right in front of my kitchen window in the Front Door Garden. It’s name is Double Cutie and it was supposed to be nearly double, but this first bloom of the year was completely single.

Hemerocallis Double Cutie 2

This is the second flower of Double Cutie to bloom this year…. It has two extra petals… Almost double! Some plants with double blooms will have more double flowers as the plant matures, so it may get more double in coming years.

Hemerocallis Pandora's Box

This photo could be a bit misleading size wise… Pandora’s Box has small flowers about 2 1/2-3″ across. I love the creamy, nearly white color with the plum near the center.

Hemerocallis Bodacious Returns 2

The next Daylily in the Front Door Garden, is Bodacious Returns. I showed a flower from a different day in the previous post. So far I have had no more than 2 flowers at a time open, but the huge blooms (nearly 7″ across) make up for the lower number of flowers.

Hemerocallis Peach Rose

This is one of the Daylilies I am not sure of it’s variety name. I tried to check greenhouse records, but did not figure out who this is. I try to label my  plants, but this one didn’t get one. I do know that it was a poor lonely plant that was brought home when we had our greenhouses.  It is a nice soft peach with a lavender rose blush toward the yellow center.

Hemerocallis Melon Balls 1

Melon Balls is next around the garden. This plant has had a lot of flowers open most every day. As you can see, there are lots more  buds.

Hemerocallis Melon Balls 2

Here is another photo showing one of the blooms closer. The beautiful melon color also has tiny blushes of reddish plum and some lighter streaks in the petals.

Hemerocallis Mini Peach

Wandering from the far side of the Front Door Garden up the path toward the house is another un-named variety… I call it Mini Peach because of the small, soft peach colored flowers. This was another lonely baby that had lost it’s tag at the greenhouse and came home with me. After many, many years here it is finally large enough to divide so I can have  more in other places. The mulching and attention I have been able to give the gardens since losing the greenhouses has helped many  plants to thrive instead of “just hanging in there”.

Hemerocallis Bella Lugosi 2

Here is another photo of a Bella Lugosi flower. I have divided my original plant and now have 4 clumps of it, two in the Front Door Garden and the others in the back yard. This photo shows how the sun makes these blooms seem to sparkle.

Hemerocallis Black Eyed Stella

Back to near the front door, walking out toward the driveway,  is the clump of Black Eyed Stella. This is another small flowered variety. This one is also supposed to be a re-bloomer… I don’t remember if I have gotten any late flowers from this plant, but this is the first year I have a bumper crop of flowers.

Hemerocallis Hall's Pink

Not far from Black Eyed Stella is Hall’s Pink. The bloom in the photo is from a plant in the Stone Wall Garden in the back yard. The plant in the Front Door Garden has not bloomed yet this year.

Hemerocallis Ice Carnival

Ice Carnival is one of my favorite Daylilies with it’s creamy pale yellow to nearly white flowers. The color of the flowers fades during the day as they age.

Hemerocallis Ice Carnival Closeup

Here are a couple more blooms…. This variety has multiplied nicely and I have these planted in the Front Door Garden as well as in the back yard in the Mound Garden and Stone Wall Garden. So pretty in the early evening.

Hemerocallis Swiss Strawberry

Swiss Strawberry is tucked in the middle of the garden not far from Ice Carnival. This particular plant was not to stay here in this garden because the flowers were too reddish and clashed with other flowers near it. I dug the whole clump (I thought) out and plunked it in the woods in a damp area. The clump in the woods is a bit taller, but still growing in the now deep shade. The Spring after I dug these out, it returned…. I obviously missed a few pieces of root and they sprouted and grew happily. I didn’t have time to dig it out again, and now it has grown on me (quite literally)…..

Front Door Garden 7-11-11

Here is a photo from the walkway to the driveway, showing Ice Carnival and Swiss Strawberry with a peek of the dwarf Blue Spruce and Echinaceas in the background. This garden probably has the largest number of different varieties of perennials in it. It was the first garden that I dug out of the yard and planted, but it did start out much smaller. It took a few years to figure out what plants were the happiest here… if it is a wet Spring, this can be a soggy area. The Hemerocallis, Echinaceas, and Phlox seem to take most any conditions I have, so I keep dividing those and adding them to other gardens, too.

This is not the end of the Hemerocallis in the gardens…. There are other varieties in other gardens.

Hemerocallis Hyperion

This pretty lemon yellow, fragrant variety is in the wet area of my Rock Garden and a couple areas in the Maple Tree Garden. Hyperion is a delicate flowered variety that is nicely fragrant. This is the last of the photos I have for this post, but not the last of the Daylilies I have. I also have a couple small Stella D’Oro plants, one is in the middle of the flood zone in the Mound Garden in the back yard, and another is in the Shade Garden that is getting washed away at the edge of the woods.

There are also a few plants that have not bloomed yet…. I have a variety with variegated leaves. A couple still have the white variegated leaves, but most of them have reverted back to green leaves. The neat thing about them is that they have double blooms even if they are a very similar color to the wild roadside Daylilies which I have growing in one of our hedgerows and along the driveway. I also have a small growing plant that I forgot the variety I divided, and planted in the Stone Wall Garden. I guess I will know what it will be soon… the little flower buds are getting puffier….  I also have another plant  in the Front Door Garden that hasn’t bloomed yet…. It is labeled Pandora’s Box, but the flower stem is 3 ft tall…. much taller than the one in bloom. What fun!! surprise flowers!!

This has been a mini-tour of mostly my Front Door Garden and a couple others filled with the blooms of Dancing Daylilies.

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July 5 & 6 Walks and ART!

Wednesday, July 13th, 2011

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.

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Catching Up in the Gardens

Tuesday, July 12th, 2011

A lot has happened in the gardens in the past month since my last post. I have slowly gotten most of them mulched with hay to keep the weeding chore as minimal as possible, the Iris and Peony flowers have long faded, and new flowers have taken their places as bright spots of color.

Riedels Greenhouse Flowers

While I would love to have the garden in the photo above in my yard, this one is along RT 222 between Reading and Kutztown PA…. The greenhouse is set back from the road, but the flowers literally pulled me in. The end of June, I was in the Reading area to present a lecture and trunk show to the Quiltessence Quilters quilt guild, and on the way home I did some “greenhouse hopping”.  In the past while we owned the greenhouse, I did have gobs of these Tidal Wave Petunias in my own gardens…. Without the greenhouse and with a very limited garden budget, I have none of these this year, and the Petunias I have were purchased the last week of June and are no where near full bloom yet.

Deer by Deck

This little deer and other critters have been making things quite challenging to keep my plants growing and blooming. The deer and woodchucks seem to love the tender buds of various Lilies, Petunias, Phlox, and more. I even found that two of my large Hydrangea bushes have been trimmed by the unwelcome guests. The deer in the photo had been playing with one of our cats in the front yard, then wandered to the back and posed while I stood on the deck. A week after the deer’s visit, and additional sightings of this same critter, we gained a couple more fur-kids…. one who is helping with the unwanted critter populations.

Andrue and Dogs

The photo above shows our two new charges…. Nick and Megan’s dogs. They brought them up from GA on their way to Germany where Nick will be stationed for the next 4 years. They took their 2 cats with them, but wanted to be sure they would be able to find a home they could have the dogs at before having them sent over. Well…. It looks like we will have Roxie and Vladdi here until they get back to the states…. They found that renting a home for 2 dogs and 2 cats was not a possibility…. most homes only will allow one pet.   Vladdi is the big black Lab, and Roxie is the brindle who lived with us for 6 months, a couple years ago.  Roxie is pretty low key… the total opposite of Vladdi, who within 5 minutes of being let out of the car when they arrived here, had killed and rolled around over a skunk AND killed an Opossum that came wandering down the yard. He began his stay as a “skunk dog” who has now had three de-skunking baths and still has a lingering odor especially when wet.  He is helping out my gardens a  bit…. I let him out of the dog yard we now have off the greenhouse when a young woodchuck was teasing him from the garden…. the woodchuck didn’t last very long….

Roxie in new Bed

What was the wood box in the greenhouse is now a comfy dog bed. With just Roxie, we could let her stay in the house and outside when we were with her. Vladdi tends to be a runner, and to be sure we don’t lose a dog, the fenced in yard was made so they can come in and out of the greenhouse. The cats are a bit put out, though…. they “owned” the greenhouse…. Now they “own” the deck for the summer. We will have to figure out how to get everyone to get along in the greenhouse come winter.

Mound Garden Mulched

This photo shows the Back Yard Mound Garden after I got most of the weeding and mulching done… This garden has taken a real beating this year with all the heavy downpour rains that have washed gravel from our driveway all the way through the garden and into the woods shade garden. It is hard to see, but the Dark Purple Japanese Iris were in bloom when this photo was taken. I also had some white Impatiens planted between the ditch and lawn along with some lilac Petunias on the upper side of the ditch.

Pale Japanese Iris

Here is a photo of a pale Iris flower I found… The flowers are usually a very deep, dark purple.

Vladdi and Cuddles

This photo shows Vladdi with his favorite toy and a few others nearby. He loves to chase and catch the frisbee and chew on various pieces of lumber or dead branches from the old Lilac bush. If  you look closely, you can see Cuddles the cat “picking on” the dog…. He is in the gravel at the top of the Mound Garden. That end of the garden was not completely weeded yet the end of June.

Before the Storm

This photo was taken the same day as the earlier two…. A few showers started, and something bigger was looming on the horizon. You can see some water already running down the driveway….

Mound Garden Water 1

Here is the Mound Garden during the storm…. The water turned the garden into a raging river…. So much for the new hay mulch…. Most of it did stay, but a lot got covered with more gravel. The water ran right through the  middle of the dog yard.

Mound Garden Water 2

Even though the Japanese Iris do like water, they are not usually at the edge of a stream. Here you can see how much water was flowing through the Hostas and across the lawn…. This storm was the biggest one yet this year. Thankfully, the Impatiens and Petunias I planted were out of the major water flow.

Lawn Ditch

The storm shown in the previous photos was on June 28, This is what the area that was covered with water looked like after I filled in the ditch, mowed the lawn, and another storm came through on July 2nd. I started with larger stones in the ditch and filled over them with gravel dug out of the garden…. July 3rd, the gravel was gone, but the larger stones stayed… not all was lost!

Deck Planter 1

With all the rains causing trouble in the gardens, I was glad I had my deck planters. I have been blessed with an abundance of flowers that seeded themselves from last year. I did plant the Impatiens, Lobelia and Alyssum in this pot, but the Violet, Nicotiana, Pansies, Violas and even some Petunias came up on their own. The seedlings were so thick I removed many and put them into pots to use in the gardens and other planters.

Back Yard Gardens planted

July 5th I finished planting most of the Mound Garden. It doesn’t look like much yet, because by the time I could purchase annuals, they were a bit scraggly but half price so I gave them a trim and with a bit of patience, will have color again in the gardens.  Things were pretty much mainly green after the Peonies and Iris finished blooming. In the photo, you can see the buds on the Daylilies on the left nearly ready to pop.

Pink Lilies

These Pink Asiatic Lilies are pretty rare sights in the gardens this year. I used to have many, many varieties of these and Orientals, too. The mice or other critters must have eaten many of the bulbs as there is no trace of many of them this year. Of the few that did escape the critters, many of those became deer snacks…. the deer seem to think that the Lily buds are like candy. The biggest problem…. Once the buds are eaten, I have to wait until next year for flowers again…  The deer also like to munch on the Phlox buds too, but at least those will re-grow new shoots that will bloom a bit later than usual.

Pink Achillea

This will be the last photo for this post. This was taken on July 5th. The Achillea, or Yarrow, likes hot, dry weather. It has grown a bit taller than usual and has flopped due to the many rain showers we have has this year. This is growing in the Lilac Garden which has not been very colorful since the Lilacs finished their bloom months ago. In the week since this photo was taken, I finally finished planting all of the annual and vegetable plants I purchased late June. All but a few areas have been mulched with hay, and the Daylilies have been blooming. The Phlox are beginning to bloom a bit, too. To keep posts from being too big, I am dividing things up a bit. I have taken many many more photos throughout the gardens in the past week or so.

 

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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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It Finally Rained!!

Saturday, July 10th, 2010

It so far has been a very dry late Spring and Summer, with so many storm fronts approaching and splitting…. rain to the North, rain to the South and none here…. (The date on my blog is not coming up right, so I am writing this on July 25- time for some tech geek help to figure out what is going on.)

Wet Planter

When we did get precipitation, it was just enough to raise the humidity and barely dampen the bottom of the bucket I have used as my “rain gauge”. The lawn became pretty crispy, and some of my newest additions to the gardens were looking sad. The spring that I use to water my gardens and planters, dried up a couple of weeks ago, and I have had buckets in sinks to catch hand or dish washing water to use to keep planters and new babies alive without using too much from our well which likes to go dry in Summer.

Sky 01

It seemed as if every time there was rain in the forecast, all we got to see were white, puffy clouds like these. They are really pretty, but when you are praying for rain, not what you want to see every day.

Wet Nicotiana

Finally, on Friday July 23, we woke to a nice gentle rain shower…. heavy storms were predicted, and there were severe ones in other areas not far away- even a tornado, but the half inch we finally got was wonderful. The above photo is of the pink Nicotiana in one of my deck planters… the blurry flower had a drop off the eves fall on it just as I clicked.

Tomato

Another nicely wet planter… This one has a volunteer Tomato plant growing in it…. I left it there to see what it does…. the only tomatoes I have grown on the deck have been grapes,  so I am hoping for similar ones.

Stormy Sky 1 8PM

The rain on Friday came with a very hot and humid air mass that hung around for the weekend. This photo above, and the following ones were taken Saturday evening. We began the evening listening to many severe thunderstorm warnings, then tornado watches and warnings. Tornadoes are not common around here, but this summer there have now been at least 4+ in the region. By the time I took this photo the sky was looking pretty “spooky”…. with pinks, yellows and black clouds.

Stormy Sky 2 8:25PM

This was the sky a bit later… The color doesn’t show great in this photo, but it did pick up all the different types of clouds that were present, from little white wisps to dark ominous ones.

Stormy Sky 3- 8:42PM

Shortly after the previous photo was taken, the rain started to fall. Heavy downpours were forecast, but things came fairly gently…. what we need to get moisture into the ground. The sky really began to change, and I was amazed that my camera got the colors pretty close to what they were. We were babysitting our granddaughter Jenna, and she had to have her stool by the front door to look out with her “Poppy”. The pink in the sky made the water drops on the door window look pink, too.

Stormy Sky 4 8:43 PM

This was the first time I remember seeing clouds that looked like this…. The puffy ones higher up were like cottonballs, not like normal cauliflower T-storm clouds, and the lower clouds were darker, wispy ones. It was spooky and amazing at the same time, especially knowing that a possible tornado had been spotted by the weather service in the county to the West of us.

Stormy Sky 5 8:43 PM

As you can see by the times of the photos, I was clicking as many as I could…. This one came out a bit more orange than the actual sky, but shows the shapes of the clouds great. It was a wonderful combination of bright pinks, oranges, shades of gray and even blue sky peeking in the distance.

Stormy Sky 6 8:44 PM

The colors in this photo are pretty close to what we saw… The trees in my Maple tree garden made some great silhouettes against the sky. It kept changing so quickly.

Stormy Sky 7 8:44 PM

This was a different angle, catching the white wisps below the streaks and ripples above in pinks and blue-grays.

Stormy Sky 8- 8:45 PM

This shows the blue sky creeping in along with more dark streaks following.

Stormy Sky 9- 8:47 PM

This is the last photo I took because it was getting too dark for the camera. I really didn’t expect the photos to show as good as they do with my old Kodak digital, but sometimes I am really amazed at what I end up with.  We only ended up with less than a half inch more of rain from this storm… much less than fell other places nearby, but yesterday AM while in church we got another rain shower that gave us a total of an inch. An inch and a half of rain in 3 days… That’s the way we needed it to come…. mostly gentle enough not to wash right off, but soak in.

White Lily 2

OK, I have to add at least one more flower… The last bud from my newest Oriental Lily bloomed…. It has been glowing in the garden… I can’t quite see this one from my kitchen window, so it forces me to get out to wander the gardens to see it. That is how I have planted many gardens…. You have to walk around or through them to see all the treasures in them.  I will have to give my gardens another day to recover from the rain  until the Petunias and Phlox are “photo worthy” again…. the rain knocked off or turned flowers to mush… I am sure it will be worth the wait!

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July in the Gardens and it’s HOT!

Thursday, July 1st, 2010

The very first few days of July were nice, with warm days and cool nights, then the heat arrived….. We are now in day 3 of a heat wave with temps in the mid 90′s.

(Today’s date is July 7, but the blog seems to think it is still July 1st..?.?.. I guess I’ll have to figure out what is going on…. Later….)

Front Door Garden

There has also been no measurable rain in a loooong time… The lawn is pretty crispy, but the gardens are doing pretty well with the hay mulch on them and occasional waterings. I have been lugging hoses all over to keep the newest plants growing well.  The Front door garden is pretty colorful now with the Phlox coming into bloom along with the Daylilies and Echinaceas. You can also see the mildew on the tall late blooming Phlox in the photo above. The lower growing varieties seem to be much more resistant to the nasty white powder that makes the plants really ugly.

Van- Not a Good Sign

Since my last post, I went back to Fillmore, NY to see family and had a bit of trouble getting on the road….. The van really needed new brakes, but during the repair things didn’t go all that smoothly. A few more parts were needed, and after an extra day of waiting, I now have brakes that stop the van very smoothly! You can see that the Maple Tree Garden in the van photo, with the Annabelle Hydrangea in full bloom.

Mom's Deck

The main reason I went back to my hometown was to see my grandmother who has ended up in the nursing home again… another fall. My sister was also visiting from TX, and I wanted to get some plants that I had taken up earlier in the spring planted for my mom. It was a busy visit, and the garden around Mom’s deck and patio is looking much better. The Hosta, Phlox, and Echinaceas I took from my gardens are now in their new homes. Amazingly, there was a lot of rain the day before I did Mom’s gardens- over an inch- we got nothing in PA….

Baby Kitties at Gram's

My sister and I stayed at my gram’s house and did some cleaning and preparing of things for her to come home when she is able. The first couple of days, there were not too many cats around, but by the last day there were cats and their babies showing up. Here are a couple that I lured out with some milk. They were pretty skittish, there was also a gray one hiding behind it’s mom.

View from Wyalusing Rocks

I had an appointment with my Rheumatologist in Tunkhannock the first day I was back home, and while driving back up RT 6, I decided to “play tourist”. I stopped at a couple of scenic overlooks along the road and took a bunch of photos of the Susquehanna River, farms and surrounding mountains. The above photo was taken at the Wyalusing Rocks overlook, and shows the river curving through the valley. Here is a link to some tourist info for Bradford County, PA. More info about our area can be found there.

View From Marie Antoinette Lookout

The photo above here is from the Marie Antoinette lookout. There is a lot of great stonework, and you can see for miles around.

View From Marie Antoinette Lookout 2

This is the view from the other end of the lookout area, showing more of the stonework and more of the river and mountains.

View From Marie Antoinette Lookout 3

This photo shows some of the farms in the valley. I will be using these photos as inspiration for some new art quilts and quilted postcards.

Back at home, I have been taking walks through my gardens with the camera.

Mound Garden Echinacea and Hostas

This photo shows the Mound Garden in the back yard with the Echinaceas and Hosta in full bloom. So far these plants are doing well in the dry weather.

Echinacea with Bees

Here is a close shot of one of the more popular flowers with a couple of visitors on it. The honey bee tried to chase off the bumblebee, but I caught them both sharing the flower for a bit.

Baby Corn

It might be hard to see them, but there are some sweet corn plants in the veggie box. I think some critters helped themselves to many of the seeds…. not many plants came up. This bed has always been very dry, so I hope with the hay mulch I won’t have to water very often and hope these plants will take off.

Front Door Garden 2

Back around to the Front Door Garden, and more Echinaceas, Asiatic Lilies and Hemerocallis (Daylilies). I also have some Gladiola bulbs planted in the bare spots in this garden for late summer color and flowers to cut and take indoors.

Pair of Daylily Flowers

This is a closeup of a pair of Daylily flowers.  Many of the Daylilies lost their buds due to the late freeze we had, or that is what I think happened. I have found lots of shriveled or deformed buds.

Hemerocallis Ice Carnival

This is my favorite Daylily variety… The white color shows up really nice in the evening, even as the flowers are fading after their single day of bloom.

Hemerocallis Pandora's Box

One of the few flowers this plant will have this season. Most of the buds died, but this variety is supposed to be a rebloomer, so maybe I’ll get a few more late summer. The photo makes it look bigger than it is… this flower is half the size of the other varieties.

Raspberry Petunias

I love pink, and I really love these pink Petunias- Raspberry Swirl, I believe. I have one plant in one of my large square planters along the front walkway.

OK, this is getting long….. I have more flower photos, but will save them for a later post. I may be wilting in the heat, but the flowers are still blooming!

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