Inspiration from the Garden

While organizing my art space, I found this unfinished garden wall hanging that I started in 2005. The concept of this was to use some recycled elements, and I chose recycled dryer sheets which I washed and dyed with paints and cut them into shapes and fused them to a fabric base with an iron. I did some machine sewing using random patterns in the background and helping affix all the materials together, adding dimension and started to attach glass beads in some areas, along with some heavier embroidery thread that I used to make more details in the flower centers. Once I get to feeling creative again, I might be inspired to complete this now since it really makes me think of the garden space that I created this summer. It’s almost a glimpse into my future back then if I really think about it. All of the sunflowers, zinnia and Dahlias that grew this year are magically in this painting. 

Many years ago I belonged to a local art quilting group and one of my favorite things that we did was to challenge each other to complete projects and had a mind set of anything goes where there were no rules and that is how I discovered this unusual technique as I was challenging myself to do something different and just have fun and play experimenting with different mediums. I felt that I was always the odd one in the group because I used a lot of non traditional fabrics and leather. I enjoyed also belonging to a group that used traditional fabrics as well since it held me to see both sides and helped me with my confidence in trying something new.

      

Planting Fall Bulbs

This is a very busy weekend with plans to dig up my larger Dahlia tubers and store them today. Yesterday I planted about 100 bulbs for spring in a mixture of many colorful tulips as well as some peony variety tulips and a unique mix of daffodils along the fence in the picture below. This is my first time planting bulbs so I am hoping that I did everything right. It was easier to plant them than I thought though and glad that it is done. Something else that I did was to dig up two dahlias that I planted from seed in the spring and they actually have little tubers so I am excited about that as well. I don’t know if I did this right but I did experiment with dividing the two and now I have six new plants. I am hoping that they survive and don’t shrivel us because they are pretty tiny. Today I will be digging up the other Dahlias that I have. I  actually a little nervous about it as I have never done it before.

 

Collecting seeds

For the last few weeks I have been collecting seeds from the garden. This is one of my favorite things to do. The organizing is not may favorite part but the collecting part is very calming to me. It just amazes me that a tiny seed can create such a beautiful display. This year I have a lot of new seed varieties that I am saving. In the past it has been mainly sunflowers and cosmos but I have so many new flowers that I added this year, so I have many more to add to my collection. I am also trying something else that is new and that is collecting some Dahlia seeds from my garden. I’ve learned a lot about Dahlias this year. I am fascinated at the fact that a seed from a flower can produce a new variety and is not like the mother plant. I think everything about this flower is mind blowing actually and I am excited to learn more as my gardening experience grows. 

   

First Frost 2023

This time comes every year and it makes me a little bit sad, but also it is a time to renew and make plans for next year and learn from the things that did and didn’t work. Also a time to reflect on everything that I am grateful for and all the amazing flowers that this garden provided us with. I am starting to prepare for next years garden as well as alot of clean up. Since this is my first year growing Dahlias I don’t know what to expect when I dig them up, but I have been reading a lot online to get somewhat prepared. We had one frost but I read that I should wait until I have 2 more. I have no idea if this is accurate information but it makes a little sense, so for now that is what Im doing. I made sure that I did label them with tags while the flowers were still in their recognizable stage so Im very happy that is one less thing to worry about because it can get confusing knowing what is what.

I am going to keep searching for information and hope to gain some clearer insight on what I should be doing. I think it is important to check as many resources as possible when looking for advice on gardening topics and make your decisions based on that knowledge. 

So for now I am letting my tubers rest in the ground all dried and partially blackened until I am clear about what to do. It’s amazing that even when these flowers are dried they still look so beautiful!

Dream Cutting Garden

I never imagined that I could create a cutting garden like this and it would bring such a feeling of beauty and peace to our lives. When I began planning this cutting garden in 2022, I decided that I wanted to grow flowers that were best for fresh cut flowers in vases so that I could give them away to my friends and be able to fill up vases much better than the previous year. Almost all of the flowers that are in the new garden are varieties that I’ve never grown before, with the exception of Cosmos, sunflowers strawflowers and Zinnia. Everything else is new to me and this turned out to be a dream! I could not be happier!

Since this a fairly new blog, you will not find many posts here, but I did try and catch up for the whole summer by posting many of the top happenings with my project all in the month of October so there will be many posts for October when searching the archives. These could be anything from the starting thoughts of the garden and all the manual work that I did to make it to this point. Thank you for visiting my blog and Happy Gardening!