Spring Flowers

The snow melted and the first of the spring flowers are blooming in the garden -- dwarf Japanese Iris.

Red, white and blue . . .

All of the snow this winter, and spring, and all of the rain an cool weather have made my roses very happy. My favorites are the firecracker roses. Since I hurt my back last fall and did not get them cut back, they are starting to climb the porch railing and are very happy. The buds and flowers are just beautiful.

We also have a bumper crop of white alpine strawberries. When they are ripe, they taste like the essence of strawberries and I think they look very pretty against my blue glass bird bath.

The real blue in my garden are the robin's eggs I found in a nest. I was afraid that I disturbed the mother too much when I pruned the tree her nest is in but when I got home from work today, Mama Robin was sitting on her nest. Unfortunately, every time I get close enough to her to take a picture, she flies off. Maybe she will stay put once she lays another egg or two and has to stay on the nest to keep the eggs warm. I think it is cool that we will get to watch the babies grow up.

Summer is here

At the end of March, I posted pictures of my garden covered in snow. I spent part of this afternoon weeding and then took some pictures of my garden today. In another couple of days, I will have roses as well. They seem to like all of the wet, cool weather as well as the fact that I did not get them cut back as far as they should have been in the fall.

Right now, the garden is full of blue and purple flowers -- the red and yellow columbines have bloomed out but the blue ones are still blooming along with lupine, chives, Russian sage, and iris. Soon I will have white, pink and red roses, yellow and orange day lilies and red hollyhocks.

We are enjoying rhubarb and asparagus from my farm shares as well as a variety of beautiful greens. I am very spoiled by all of the bounty available to me this spring and summer. Soon I will be enjoying strawberries from my garden. The one white alpine strawberry plant I planted several years ago is taking over.

September Flowers

I thought I would share some pictures of the flowers in my garden at the end of the season. The bees and other insects are quite happy that we have so many flowers. This bright green insect shown on the yellow chrysanthemum is harmless, but one of the furry bumble bees bit me on my leg while I was clearing weeds out of the garden. The swelling around the bite took a week to come down. The Firecracker climbing rose is one of the prettier end of season blooms.

I have been stitching too but I don't have any finished things to share right now. I am knitting my second sock, working on parts 5 and 6 of Chatelaine's Elizabethan Sweet Bag and I finished another row of over one stitching on Anne Depauw. I should have some things to share later in the week.

Recently, I purchased some new books. I found a copy of Macrame: Creative Design in Knotting by Dona Meilach on the Friends of the Library used book shelf for $1.00. It has the Berry Knot necklace my mother made in the 1970s on page 150. I still have my mother's necklace. I also bought Bead Embroidery: The Complete Guide by Jane Davis at JoAnn's fabrics. It contains different methods of attaching beads to fabric, beaded fringe patterns and beads incorporated into surface embroidery and pulled thread embroidery stitches.

1000 hits . . .

My stat counter says that I have had over 1000 visits to my blog since May 6 when I turned it on. Now that does not mean that 1000 people have visited my blog -- it counts everytime I visit as well as when anyone else does -- but it is kind of cool. It is also fun to get comments and feedback on my blog. Most of the feedback comes from people who visit to look at the needlework and the less conventional pieces from the Take a Stitch Tuesday Challenge, needlepoint pieces, and free embroidery generate the most comments.

Today I am not at home so you will be treated to more pictures of flowers from my garden and some reflections on modern art rather than photos of needlework. The photos of needlework will return. The roses in the previous post are carefully nurtured each year. The galardia in the picture volunteered from seed that traveled from a larger planting. It grew without encouragement or coddling in an unexpected place.

I found another unexpected treasure at the public library -- a book called Pictures of Nothing by Kirk Varnedoe. It is a series of illustrated lectures on Abstract Art -- the discussions of ways of seeing and conveying meaning with a work of art are challenging and interesting to read and have led me to wander to some new locations on the interet. I visited the Richard Serra exhibit at MOMA -- there is even a web version. Jackson Pollock at the National Gallery illustrates the development of his abstract, poured paint style. Even some cool looking fiber art by Susan Taber Avila found by googling "abstract fiber art".

The dogs and me . . .

Two members of my family are on the way back from West Virginia where they spent 3 days whitewater rafting, horseback riding and playing golf. My daughter went to see Nancy Drew with her friends, and the cats are in hiding which leaves me with two large dogs who think everything I do is interesting. (Can you tell that they have pretty boring lives?)

My accomplishments for today include finishing Part 2 of the Chatelaine Elizabethan Sweetbag, doing most of the laundry and weeding the flower garden. I also cleaned out the refrigerator and am making dinner -- since both involve food, the dogs were very interested.

Instead of needlework photos that I have posted elsewhere, I am going to treat you to some pictures from my garden. The roses have not been taken over by black spot or baked in the sun yet.

We also went to see Garison Keilor last night at Ravinia. The girls got bored but I enjoyed the show -- I have listened to him on the radio for over 25 years. they did love Jon Troast, one of the guest performers. This is the second time I have seen Garison Live at Ravinia and the first time that we sat in the pavillion. The girls planned the picnic -- peanut butter and jelly or ham sandwhiches on white bread with grapes and potato chips. We went out for ice cream afterwards. So if you were listening to the live Prairie Home Companion show -- we were there!

Still Life with Vegetables

Two versions of my vegetable share this week. The real vegetables with red leaf lettuce, garlic scapes, sage, zucchini, radishes, sugar snap peas, kohlrabi, strawberries, rainbow swiss chard, and tomato puree. A quilt version with strawberries, radishes, squash, peppers, eggplant, tomato, and carrots.
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I created the quilt using EQ6 tonight while waiting for my daughter's karate class to end. I am not completely satisfied with the quilt but I was limited by the blocks in the library and I only had time to play with one layout.

Needlework Gardens . . .

I finished Eileen Bennett's Garden Sampler today -- it is a class piece from a class I took with the Lake Michigan Sampler Guild. The patten includes a number of different stitches all carefully diagramed. It is stitched in DMC Cotton Floss. Also in the Garden Theme, I have been working on Blackbird Designs Quaker Garden. I started it on Thanksgiving Day and hope to have it done before next Thanksgiving.

I also worked on my real garden -- we have been weeding flower beds, trimming trees and deciding what we need to replace or add. We have perennial beds that we have worked on ourselves, gradually building them up with different plants.