Lots of Work Needed. A Photo Tour of the Garden

The bright green pot is full of sedum, celery and dill.

I love this corner of the yard this tie of year. The yellow of the wild geraniums really brightens things up and my sister brought some bright yellow metal bees to add to the fun.

This section is up by my main path and we just transplanted some sedum, iris and geraniums to brighten up the entrance to the garden.

Somewhere in this mess you'll find roses, lilacs, spirea, grapes, geraniums, lilies and a number of other things that I hope someday to turn into a nicely arranged series of flower beds.

Here's a lot of lily of the valley that I'd like to use as a border.

I love the way the sunlight filters through the trees and love to surprise people by placing chives in among the other plants for a bit of color and to clip and send home with visitors.

They love the story  of my friend Ruthie who gave me a cake pan full of the plants over 30 years ago that have been at 3 of my homes and started gardens for lots of other friends as well.

 Both the hosta and the wild geraniums were a welcome to the neighborhood gift from neighbors on each side of the street of the home I moved to here 15 years ago.

So many of my plants have a history of their own. Even this new bed I'm planting includes Iris from a neighbor at the corner house here.

All of the people and stories are a part of the garden now and perhaps one of the reasons that there's a sense of peace and happiness as you move through the garden here. Dappled sunlight and warm memories are a bit like being wrapped in a hug.

I don't do much drawing and painting while everything is blooming, there's just too much work to do but I take lots of photos from different angles and draw and paint from them over the long winters.

 Any painting that happens over the summer is generally on birdhouses, the wheelchair ramp or the arbor.

My hope is to turn this into a creative haven for writers and artists of all kinds where amazing things can happen inspired by the things we grow and do here.

The aim is to feed body and soul with the fruit, flowers and plants including a tea garden where you can pick and brew fresh teas and enjoy a treat topped with the jam and jellies made from the berries we grow here.

Rounding up the Paintings to Exhibit

These are my latest paintings. All but one have been done in the last ten years and are acrylics on stretched canvas or canvas panels.

There's still a matter of arranging and spacing the paintings but at this point we're just working on sorting them so that we can make a really nice display of them.

15 years ago I arrived here with 95 paintings. Only one of these made that first trip.

As I finish this post I will try to find some of those " moving day" photos. 

I haven't been able to find that first photo I was talking about but here are some from about 10 years ago to show you which sorts of things I was painting back then.

One Sprouty Potato

There are always so many things I'd love to grow in the garden and never any money to do them with so while cleaning the dining room I discovered one last, forgotten potato that had rolled off from the rest and sprouted in the back of the cabinet. of course the first thought is "gross! it's about time I start cleaning this place" but as you've guessed by now. I hate housework and would much rather go out in the garden and play in the dirt so I cut it in sections (each with a sprout on it) and went out to plant that in the garden.

It's frustrating that times are so lean that something like that is cause for celebration while at the same time reminding me that groceries would be really welcome about now. I guess all that stuff you hear about starving artists may have some basis in fact after all. Thank goodness there's still rice until we get potatoes again.

I even think the flowers on a potato are pretty, don't you? Here's a look at the plant on July 8th:

I got a half dozen plants from that one potato and am looking forward to what sort of a harvest that I will get from those.

By mid July I was getting some good size on the new plants and enjoying watching the flowers. They don't stay long but they're as pretty as any ornamental.

Anyway, back to the garden. There are scads of things that could be transplanted to fix the place up but since I'm chair bound that's not happening unless I find someone willing to help me.

What I'd like to do is find people that usually rent a garden plot and let them set up a garden plot of any size they'd like in exchange for doing the digging and transplanting work on mine.

Are there organizations in place for something like that? If not, I wonder how I'd go about starting my own.

While I wait for veggies to plant I've been enjoying the flowers, photographing, drawing and painting them and as far as the other gardening. some of my chives are about ready to flower and provide a bit of color in the yard and add a bit of pleasure to meals as well.

More Painted Posts for the Wheelchair Ramp

I painted this post from a flower picked in my garden but thought it was a bit pale so I added some black outlines with a paint pen.

Summing up the Sunflowers

I was just playing in my paints one day when I realized it was starting to look like sunflowers so I pulled out some old photos and decided to paint them like the ones I grow here.

I got carried away with the idea and pulled out the sunflower on red and decided to make it match.

This pair of small paintings will make a nice arrangement with the large one I've got and may make it easier to sell them to someone decorating a room on a Sunflower theme.

Whether they sell or not it's been fun to sum up all of the years that I've grown sunflowers in such a fun way...and I really enjoy looking at them.

Lilacs from Garden to Canvas

Gnomes Around the Garden

It's funny how Gnomes multiply, you start with one and before you know people bring more and more of them around.

 Now they've even got pets and friends of their own.

I can hardly wait to see where they'll turn up next.

Some of them are even acquiring little pets of their own.

It wasn't long before they got painted too and began to blend in with other art projects around the garden.

I call this little guy "trippy" with his hippy/flower child inspired shirt.