Flower Joy

They're still alive!

It's time to divide the succulents into individual planters.

And I may have to transplant the ferns in this terrarium, it's growing like mad!

Failure to Post

That's exactly what I'm suffering from a failure to post and regularly.  I just noticed it's been awhile since I've updated.

I've been busy writing content for the 60 Day Bird Journal Challenge, and for Almost Stitched newsletter series (24 newsletters plus 6 bonus surprises) that I forget that others cannot read my mind.

So here's a photo of Pepper, our oldest cat, sporting some attitude while sitting atop a stitched story I wrote up yesterday with my sewing machine.  In between bouts of stitching and writing I've been dodging rain storms trying to get the raised beds planted.

Right now I'm at 50% or so completion and I have to say it's looking good.  John brought one of the porch chairs out to the garden area so that I can sit and watch the birds, butterflies, bees, and paint, sketch, and write unto my hearts content.

Garden Path

Is in need of cleaning, etc., but I do love my native plants, and the pollinators that they attract.  This afternoon the thistles were visited by green hummingbirds, this morning goldfinches.

Compost Dyeing and Other Fermentation Dyeing Techniques eBook

If you purchased a copy of my eBook "Compost Dyeing and Other Fermentation Dyeing Techniques" last year through Kindle and it is corrupted please let me know and I will send you a replacement copy!

This eBook is Currently ON SALE

for $3.99

Oliver's Run Part One

Before, this is my garden that literally went to seed and to the weeds, this summer.  John mowed almost everything down, and now there's room for the new, to Oliver, dog run.  Our neighbor, Praise God, is giving us their dog run to add to our dog run so it'll go from being 12x16x6 feet to that size plus another 12x8x6 feet, I think it may actually be larger than that, we'll know for sure tomorrow once we have it all set up.

After, a few native plants were spared the lawn mower blade. Specifically the milkweed and the two white plastic buckets, which have their bottoms removed, are protecting my prairie dye plants.

Will post more photos tomorrow once we get the dog run up and usable.

Garden Update No.???

No pics tonight, just a note to say how much I hate Grackles!  The little buggers pulled all of my baby leeks and baby onions :-(  So tomorrow, if it doesn't rain, I'll be replanting and this time applying large amounts of bird netting over the nursery area.

Salad Garden

Bird netting now attached to the hoop house portion of the raised bed and just in time for the baby lettuce sprouts that are now breaking through the soil.

Garden Stakes

I needed garden stakes so John cut up some of the "shorts" that were littering his shop floor and made some really cute stakes for me, 9 inches long.   Given more time I could have put the plant names on the stakes in a prettier font, I scribbled the plant names on with a sharpie :-)

Blue Coneflowers ACEO

Blue Coneflowers ATC available in my shop!

Tomatoes and Rain

Well it's raining again... John came home at lunch and we tied up the tomatoes using a semi transparent nylon tomato tape. It's really easy to work with and I can see using this for rouge squash plants, cucumbers, etc. as well.

Todays Activities

*5 quarts and 13 pints of pork loin in the pressure canner.
*Wash the outsides of 11 quarts of beef chili, label them, and find shelf space to store them on (ok that one may take a miracle). 11 in 121 seal rate not bad.
*Chinese for dinner, made by moi' of course!
*Rescue my wind beaten tomato plants, convince them they want to grow on the trellis' instead using tomato tape to reinforce that idea!
*Celebrate because I sold two art quilts today!!!

Today's Plantings

Well today John and I managed to get the peas planted, he tilled the garden a third time. While he worked on that I planted radishes and lettuce in the cold frame. Later I hand dug the leek garden 8 x 8 foot area lets just say I'm really tired now!

Tomorrow I'll replant my garlic, dug it up so I could thin it out, plant leeks and onion seeds, I may pick up some onion sets as well to plant. I have yet to decide where I will put my strawberry plants - three varieties, Ozark, Sequioa and some ever bearing whose name I'm not able to remember.

Potatoes Planted

Forgot to mention that I planted potatoes today, two varities actually Kennebacs and Blue's. The blue potatoes my neighbor Carol gave me,s hould be fun to see what I end up with this summer. I have about 7 pounds of Kennebacs left to plant, they need more eye growing time before they can go into the ground.

New Garden Space

South looking north, about 45 feet, maybe more, for veggies, herbs, and flowers.

I grew rather tired of the rabbits destroying my grapevines, like the local thief wasn't bad enough, so the grape arbor is now inside of the fenced area.

The fence runs along the sidewalk which will soon have thyme and other herbs growing to fill in the space.

Above - looking north towards the garden shed. Below - looking south towards the front porch and the street.

We enlarged the east garden combining it with the south garden beside the front porch. Dh will build a raised bed, octagon shaped, to go around the crab apple tree under which we will plant currants and goose berries.

No more fence hopping for me, John's also building a gate for the garden as well. One of the blessings of no longer having a large dog means I don't have to have a large yard for the large dog and it also means less mowing!!! Now to finish planning the guilds to go around the trees .

Prairie Pothole No. 18

2008 Prairie Pothole No. 18 5 x 7 inches

Prairie Potholes No. 16 & 17

I'm not sure which orientation I like best for these. The goal is to make one every other day and to line the whole gallery with them.

Potato Bin

John planted some potatoes in this bin with straw, this is a new experiment for us, will let you know how it turns out.

The idea behind this potato growing method is as the starter potatoes send up shoots you put more straw, and another round of wood (or tires) and you keep doing this until you are ready to harvest. This is supposed to encourage more potatoes and less vines.

Peonies

I took a bunch of pictures (185 pics in all) of my peonies tonight, and found myself being greatly inspired but the petal and leaf shapes of this particular plant. I have some silk fabrics that I dyed using cochineal and madder root that I stitched but never went any further with them, now I'm wondering how I can go dimensional with these fabrics, in effect capturing the essence of these beautiful flowers!

Note I"m not sure why the pictures are loading with this distortion, they don't look like this in Photoshop!

Peonie Bouquet

Some Thing Pretty