Seen in my Garden

I don't have a huge garden, but I love to tend what I have.  For the past few years I've been attempting to grow flowers native to this region.  This year I stumbled on a beautiful flower - the cone flower.

They come in many different colors.  The flower matures differently than any other flower I've seen.  The center forms and looks exactly like the centers in the picture.  Then spikes appear to grow out (these will become the petals).  They are tightly rolled and you can't tell what color they will be.  Slowly, over a day or so the spikes unroll and form the petals.  It is very interesting to watch.

On another note cone flowers attract butterflies!  You can see the yellow tiger swallowtail above and here is his cousin the black swallowtail:

When I first snapped this one I was ready to toss it out, but I was amazed at the detail of the blue on his wings.  It looked like fairy dust to me.  He is just a pretty butterfly.

And of course one of my favorite garden visitors are my fat bumblebees.  I'll admit that this one was on a weed near the edge of the garden bed, but he was so BUSY.  I love it when they land on a flower to collect the pollen, but they are so fat that the flower bends.  Bumblebees are so dedicated to collecting their pollen.  I love watching them.

I find a great deal of peace working in my garden.  I often sit and look at the beautiful plants and find myself wondering on God's creative genius.  Digging in the dirt and planting things that will grow and flourish nourishes my soul.  I love to create things and I love to assist plants as they create flowers.  Most of all I enjoy when wildlife visits the garden to partake of its bounty.

What's around the bend?  We are trying out two recipes this weekend that I'll blog on!  Stay tuned for a pork loin with sauce and my favorite salmon cakes!!!

Vegetable Garden Test

More on our gardens!

My husband has spent his life either in a very urban setting or stationed on military bases all over the world - none of which truly allowed him time to plant a vegetable garden.  This year he agreed to let me try adding vegetables to my flower gardens.  You see, adding gardens in this area is a MAJOR undertaking as you have to dig (drill) through clay and then add dirt etc.  Or you can do something called raised bed gardening (on my to do list in a year or so).  Since it is just the two of us, we don't need a huge vegetable garden (yet), so I thought I could utilize garden beds that were already in existence and just add my veggies to it!

Rather than overwhelm ourselves with tons of things, I decided to try out 5 tomato plants, 2 cucumbers, 2 squash and 4 yellow pepper plants.


They resemble small trees - but they are just a few tomato plants.  These are all over 5 foot tall and have thick branches held up by the metal cages.

My tomatoes grew wildly - beyond my expectations!  It is VERY dense in the tomato area.  We have fresh sweet tomatoes all week long.  I planted a variety to see what we liked.  Honestly next year I'm going to try out new ones as none of these were exactly what I wanted.

With the horrible heat wave baking us this summer, I lost my squash and cucumbers.  I watered every day, but to no avail.  I can only take heart that other people (who are much more knowledgeable than I) lost their squash and cucumbers too!  So next year I have high hopes to try again!!

My yellow peppers!  In the beginning they struggled and then took.  Each plant had one pepper growing.  We were so excited.  Then the heat wave... UGH... cooked peppers.  I thought for sure that was it.  I was wrong.

This is only two of the pepper plants! There are two more beside them.  Look at the bounty of peppers!!

My peppers LIVE!  They are all offering us peppers - many peppers.  I can see some lovely bags of peppers in the freezer to bring out in the dead of winter!

I hope you enjoyed this tiny peek into my gardens.  I should share my husband's reaction to our attempt at farming.  He is thrilled.  I think he would make a great farmer.  He loves to work on the plantings, weedings, caring and harvesting of the plants.  He loves to eat the fruit of our labor.  I'd plant 100 tomatoes to see his happy smile when he bites into the tomatoes!

Just around the bend - I'm thinking about trying some hydroponic herb gardening under grow lights in my basement this winter.  I'll keep you posted when I figure that out! 

Crepe Myrtles

We love to garden!  Unfortunately, we live in an area that is almost 100% clay but I'm slowly overcoming that hurdle. 

Moving to Virginia from the north was great, for many reasons!  I found a whole new variety of plants to enjoy!  Hands down, my favorite local lovely are crepe myrtles.  I have 6 of them in my yard, and if my hubby didn't rein me in I'd probably have 60!  They come in all colors, shapes, sizes and they bloom at different times from spring to summer.  Here are two of mine and a close up of the flower clusters.  One thing to note is these were taken about 12 hours after a heavy rainfall, the stems/branches are bent slightly from the weight of the water on the heavy blooms.

I am working on getting more gardening pictures together to post, but I wanted to share these with you as they are my favorites. 

Surprise in my Garden

Today is one of those perfect "Summer is Winding Down" days in Virginia.  It is cool and rainy today.  My husband was on the covered front porch enjoying a cup of coffee and his newspaper when I went outside to visit.

As I sat in my chair and chatted I noticed someone had come to visit my garden.  Now I'm NOT a fan of spiders - but this one was too pretty to not take a picture of.  I also loved the way the web is sprinkled with water droplets.

I'm not sure but I believe he is a type of garden spider.

Reset on My Quilt Studio

UGH it was a huge task!

When we moved to VA one of our agreements was I could have the small guest room as my studio.  We moved in and I sort of just jammed things in the room willy nilly.  That was 5 years ago.  It was very disorgnaized and it was becoming increasingly difficult for me to use the room, and honestly I didn't want to be in the studio.

So I decided to rip the studio apart. The only thing I left in the room (besides the walls, doors,celing and floor) was the cutting table.

I use a wire cube rack system to help me organize my things.  Because I have so many crafts I need extreme organization or it is unusable.  My biggest craft, by far, is quilting.

Wire rack system set up

You'll see my flag showing 2 members of my family serving in the US military.  I'll blog on that later in a separate post.

The white boxes to the left of the wire racks, are actually drawers (and they end up elsewhere in the final room).  You can also see a wooden book case tucked in on the left side.  That is going to be replaced with a taller bookcase at a later date.  When that comes in I'll blog about it because I am going to be refinishing it myself!

So here is a corner of my room after I had it all organized.

Pretty colors, bright light through the window and my beloved Bernina sewing machine.  Beneath the window is a bench with pretty wicker baskets under it (they are stuffed with projects).  Laying on the bench are the parts and pieces for what would become the gold quilt (it has it's own blog)
And this is the wire cube wall unit assembled and filled


All of my quilting fabrics neatly wrapped and displayed in color families.

At the top is a teddy bear (you can see him sitting on top of a brown cube).  He is one of my hand drafted, hand sewn teddy bears.  I used to make these and sell them, but now I'm just making them for my grandkids. 

So much fabric!  I've been collecting for almost 20 years.  I've traded and bartered.  Some of the fabrics are left overs from commissioned quilts and some are gifts.  I don't subscribe to the old quilting adage, "She who dies with the most fabric wins" but I do enjoy having lots of choices.

You can buy the wire cubes at Target and if you're interested in the fabric storage boards I used to organize things, just drop me a note and I'll give you the contact information.