Fernmountain

Art and Whimsy on Clothing

2011-12-22T14:29:00.000-05:00

I have spent the last few months playing with color wash dyes, and having a lot of fun with it. (Once I learned how not to make the colors turn to mud LOL!)

I have so far found no video on using them on fabric, but I have been playing with dyes for years, and this product allows me to get the colors I want to be wearing these days.

Finding a batik method on fabric with them has been a learning experience, as the water based resists melt if you don't cure them long enough. With the color wash, melting resist can create some cool effects, if not the one I was hoping for. For this rib knit shirt, I added color wash dye to the resist before painting the moon flower and the leaves.

I was getting so frustrated trying to use wax and such over the years, especially since I paint botanicals and want good detail! I was also getting tired of painting on white Tee Shirts. I want color!

The colorwash sprays on in brilliant colors, that blend and mingle in the moistened fabric. After it cures for at least three days, I rinse out the extra dye and reveal the design I painted into the fabric. The colors are muted after rinsing, just the way I like them! I did use a purple sharpie to outline and add details. I also blended in some green on the leaves with copic markers for more detail. Once the fabric is ironed the colors are washer safe.

It's a long process, but one I am happy with. I can't show more photo's right now, because I am giving them away for Christmas! I did take photo's and will post more after the holidays.

Sending holiday wishes to all for a magic and colorful winter season!

Hacking out the overgrowth

2011-08-03T22:09:00.000-04:00

It has been a year with abundant rainfall and heat here in the High Country. Many of the gardens I have been caring for and creating in the last 3-5 years are feeling overgrown & chaotic. I am spending my days cutting back Iris, daylillies, and huge tarp loads of perennial & woody growth. I am making a list of everything that needs to be transplanted come a break in the weather. Tree's are being trimmed and inspected for overall health. Invasive weeds are being hauled out by the multi tarp load as well. Despite the excruciating demand of energy to accomplish garden health in so many gardens..., I keep going. Be it repelling ever increasing deer destruction, fungus, aggressive weeds, poison ivy, kudzu, and overcrowding, I conclude that it all needs to be rearranged!

Perennials are funny that way....every 3-5 years, it all needs to be dug up and rearranged. Otherwise there is no definition between plantings.

I love this opportunity to redesign and rebuild and regain some symmetry and balance. Overgrown gardens are suffocating and repel entrance by the sane in any attempt to venture into areas that threaten to leave your ankles vulnerable by those mysterious & silent legless, venomous creatures that are hiding with in. There is beauty in the void.

When everything grows together as one giant blob of over planting by those innocent beings that think it is cute in the pot at the nursery...it results in a nightmare for those of us that design for the genetic mature size of the plant. A great deal of this over planting I inherited. Air circulation is important, otherwise, everything rots....

The more aggressive plants take over valuable space.

In this heat, every gardener and outdoor servant of nature seems to have hit the wall of pretty much total exhaustion, myself included. So, forgive us for stumbling around in a heat and forgetful stupor....we are really making plans, and envisioning a better way.....come a break in the weather and a new season.

In the meantime, I am eating all the garden produce I can devour, drinking gallons of water and doing the best I can to enjoy the beauty of beautifully groomed perennials, bountiful gardens and healthy trimmed trees.

Have I mentioned lately...I love my Job!

2011-06-23T22:07:00.000-04:00

This is a 16 acre estate in Wilkesboro I nurture. The spring madness of getting everything in order is in a bit of a reprieve. The summer solstice has come and gone and now I can take a deep breath and enjoy the effort it has taken to manifest such beauty.

Not that there wasn't an overwhelming amount of work to do. Instead of taking a lunch break, I photographed the views I was enjoying, amazed, on this drippy rainy day, at the lush gardens I have been nurturing through deer and drought these last few years.....It is beautiful. Note the twisted ancient trunk of the Oak in the foreground.

Finn loves working here, it has 5 ponds he can dunk and drink from.

One even has rubber duckies floating in it for his enjoyment. It is a whimsical garden. The kind of history and antiquity I am so attracted to in this world. The house was built after WWI, and was built to survive any disaster whatsoever...The original gardens were designed by a landscape architect from Charlotte.

On days like this, Finn & I have the place to ourselves. The owners come in for lunch, briefly. We wave Hi, and they are gone. One of the owners is an antiques dealer and found this buddha statue in a carriage house in England. He created much of these gardens during a few year long sabbatical. It is a huge and well done plan.

Though, I think the deer are pruning the Japanese Maple.....

I feel at home here in the English boxwood hedges, under the ancient oaks,. with the sweeping lawn , giant magnolia, and a lush understory of hosta's, liriope, lilacs, peonies and roses. Old gardens smell so good in the rain....The gardens are filled with lions, griffins, voluptuous virgins, and even a peeing boy.....

There is plenty of room for Finn to chase sticks and balls while I work.

I am in love with this hosta border...I took half dead, dear nibbled hosta's from another bed and arranged them around this Oak and English boxwood....it is so lush, the photo really doesn't do it justice. It is a challenge keeping the huge resident herd of deer from devouring the hosta's as if they were burrito's, but so far, in spite of the rain, I am succeeding.

What is it about colonial brick architecture and boxwood hedges that makes me feel as though I am in heaven?

I took a lot more photo's of this garden, but I don't want to bore you.....Enjoy!

Garden Whimsy in Kodachrome

2011-01-14T10:19:00.000-05:00

I have been digitizing Kodachrome slides. Hundreds of garden photo's from my past.

A fun winter thing to do.

This is a photo I had completely forgotten taking.

This is a garden I maintained for many many years in Hillsboro, VA for sculpture artist Laney Oxman.

Her husband Michael is an architect.

For their daughters wedding they designed and built this pergola, in their meadow along Goose Creek.

Each figure holding up the roof represents a member of the family with their pet pugs at the base.

On this particular day she had placed a statue of a ballerina in the pergola.

Pergola on Goose Creek

Laney's garden was the perfect garden for me. It had a walled in formal boxwood garden with ancient statuary and formal bed lines.

Laney always found ways to add her whimsical art into the garden that always made you do a double take. It was as though while we worked we were being observed by whimsical alien beings....

I had known the Oxmans while growing up in Reston, VA. Their daughter was a dance student of my mother. I had taken her pottery classes as a child. I loved her pottery, fascinating whimsical characters even then.

I grew up and moved to Loudoun and many years later I was helping the folks next door to Laney's with their landscape plan. While there, I was standing on Laney's wall and admiring her garden bones, but it a was really, an overgrown mess full of dying roses. All of a sudden Laney (Probably wondering why I was staring at her garden) Came out to talk to me.

We quickly realized we knew each other and I described what I was doing there. She asked if I could help her in her garden and I quickly agreed. It was a bit of amazing syncronicity, but things work that way quite often in my world. The garden really needed me.

From then on even after I moved to North Carolina, Laney, Michael and I would manage the garden. Along with artistic insight, it was Michael's job to grumble about the cost.
Laney and Michael had no time to do a thing in their own gardens because they were incredibly busy doing their talents in the world.

They loved their garden, but were easily overwhelmed by it. Every year or so she would call with an emergency request asking if we could get the garden ready for a photo shoot for Middle Atlantic Magazine or other publications that were featuring her work. I love nothing more that staging a garden for a photo shoot. I am sure that is how the ballerina got placed in the gazebo.

I can't seem to find the photos of her swimming pool, with the patina pug dog lifting it's leg in the tall grasses by the diving board. But this was the privacy fence she created.

Art and gardens show each other off in such delightful ways!

Happy Thanksgiving

2010-11-27T21:40:00.000-05:00

This year, I think, more than ever before,

I realize just how very fortunate I am...

A Very Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

Visiting Ayrshire

2010-06-27T11:31:00.000-04:00

I had a special treat last weekend. My daughter brought me out to see Ayrshire Farms in Upperville, VA.

She is the landscape gardener for the farm, and I was delighted to get to see her daily world and handy work.

First she took me to see the produce fields, greenhouse, hoop houses and her herb beds. Most of the vegetable production is done by another woman, who's growing skills were impressive.

Airynee's herb boxes were in beautiful shape.

I loved seeing the espaliered cucumbers and tomato's growing in the hoop houses.

Ayrshire is a beautiful historic property, the barns, outbuildings and service areas are lovely. Espalier is everywhere you look....

I have toured this Farm in the past during the Loudoun County Farm tour. It was newly planted then. Is was amazing to see it a decade later and how it had developed. Airynee has much to do. The gardens are not intended to be manicured. Mowing is only done occasionally. I like the effect. It is relaxed and natural. But, I can see it easily gets out of hand. The gardeners before my daughters arrival have planted a lot of invasive species. She taking this year to access the situation and come up with a plan for how to deal.

Airynee spent the winter getting many the espaliered tree's back under control. I was amazed at the size of the wood she had to cut to restore them. They are beautiful now. She has also worked on the orchards. I am so proud of her. Pruning is such an art. She gets it! You can't be wimpy when it comes to espaliered fruit tree's. The growth in the above photo's had extended way out from the wall when she arrived. Now they are flat against the wall and bearing fruit in sweet clusters, as they should be.

I love the antique watering trough on this outbuilding.

And this view of the lake.

We ended the tour with a feast at the Hunters Head Tavern also a part of Ayrshire Farm.

Airynee tends the gardens and planters there as well. All of the food served at the tavern comes from the farm. I was delighted to meet the owner of Ayrshire and Airynee's employer.It was clear they are glad to have her on their staff.

There is nothing I like more than spending a day with my daughter, touring beautiful estates and eating wonderful food. What a perfect day!

Reality...It's not always what you think it is.....

2010-05-30T11:43:00.000-04:00

Matt's little daughter Sita is still young enough to think that if her mother is not in sight, it is because she is sleeping. She uses sign language to express that factoid to her Dad.

I think my clients think of me the same way. If I am not working for them at the moment I must be doing nothing, therefore I can stop what ever I am doing and take care of their needs. This means that I can be called and emailed on weekends...( I usually work on weekends too....) and be asked to do just a few things that are feeling urgent to them. I suppose I have allowed them to think this, because I always respond, and get the job done. This energy peaks for Memorial Day weekend. It's really pretty funny. I am in recovery mode....it all got done, it's beautiful, and for one weekend people can relax in their beautiful gardens, enjoy their families and leave me alone to gather my strength for two days. Not three....a client called yesterday to make sure I was showing up on Monday for her.

On Friday, I had to get one of my favorite gardens ready for a family to move in after the holiday. Normally, I do the mulching and such before all the foliage emerges. This year, the client didn't want me to do that, so I took on other projects to fill the void. When she gets into town and realized how behind things are she goes into a panic. She is surprised that my schedule is so full. Like, I can hold her spot, and not need groceries.

A large area where an old aphid infested hemlocks once stood had sprouted a carpet of jewel weed. She asked me to spray it with round up. Under pressure I said OK, but that I hadn't used that product but maybe 3 times in the last 30 years, and this is why I won't use this product or others like it. She called me a 'bleeding heart liberal'. Now, I have to say, I love this woman, and in context, we have had a few discussions on politics, and I knew she was saying it with affection and humor. But, I do get tired of being called a tree hugger and such, for just using my own common sense. The choice to not use harmful toxic chemicals in a garden is not an ideology. It is sane and practical.

So, two weeks pass, due to huge rainstorms the Friday before, that kept me from her job, and the jewel weed had grown to be a foot high. I stared at that roughly 600 sq ft patch of the remedy for poison ivy, and calculated the cost of the round up, the time it would take me to drive to the hardware store, buy the stuff, and a new plastic sprayer, that can never be used for anything else, and considered that I would have to store or dispose of that product after only needing a few tablespoons of the herbicide, at my home, or hers, etc....

I also thought about my own health, and my dogs's as he lay in that cool green patch in the shade. His father died of lymphoma when he was the same age Finn is now.

At the age of 5, I watched my grandmother spray her roses with Ortho Rose Spray, and then she would eat the petals, happily telling me they were good for your skin. I didn't eat the petals...I still vividly remember the Ortho label on her sprayer and the chemical smell. She died of cancer when I was 12.

Eating rose Petals Painting by John Singer Sargent, 1885/1886

I also thought of the time it would take to watch the Jewel weed turn brown and die, how it would look all brown and ugly as she drove up her driveway, and that I would still have to remove the brown dead growth anyway. We would then have to wait two weeks before anything could be planted in that spot.

Bottom line, these people will not pay for my chemo if needed and they do not pay me enough money to poison myself or others. In truth, no one could pay me enough money to spray poison on the earth. That's why I never got my pesticide license., I weeded it. It took less than an hour and I pruned the hydrangea's along the drive at the same time. Job done. Cost, $35.00, less than the cost of the round up, sprayer and mess clean up. I still had plenty of time to get the rest of her garden into shape.

It is a typical misconception people have who don't weed for a living, that it is easier, faster and cheaper to spray.

I can almost bet, she will never notice, because her garden is so beautiful.

Oil Spills and the Angel of Grief

2010-05-11T10:39:00.003-04:00

Sometime's all we can do is pray....

Prayer by Dr. John (5.6.2010)
Recite at Sundown

Great Spirit, Mother God, Father God
Surround your people with white light
To protect them from harm.
Send your spirit guides to keep the earth strong;
Angels to protect the land from the oil;
The waters from pollution;
The animals from the storm.

Surround us with your holy light,
Smile upon us to keep us strong,
Preserve the land.
Spare your children and enlighten the masses.
Give us a solution.

Four winds blow; swirl to the sea.
While the white light shines and protects the sacred center.
Remove the earth from the path of harm.
Forgive the transgressors.
Let the light remove the dark.
&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&

I found this prayer here A Creative Response to the Gulf Oil Spill

Listen to Dr. Johns 'Clean Water' here

Angel of Grief is an 1894 sculpture by William Wetmore Story which serves as the grave stone of the artist and his wife at the Protestant Cemetery, Rome.

As if I don't have Enough to do

2010-04-25T09:43:00.000-04:00

There are times when there are a thousand things I should be doing, like making the mulch pile in my driveway disappear, billing and accounting, spring cleaning, enjoying the mountains and local creeks....the list could go on....

But, my garden is mulched and mowed and beautiful in this mornings spring rain, and I have so wanted to paint the flowers of my garden, but with a twist.

The last few weekends, I have been obsessed with painting my spring garden onto every old white T shirt I have. I have always loved hand painted clothing. I have collected the supplies needed for years, as well as the art skills. I have also become completely bored with painting on rectangular squares of paper.

My daughter, Morgan, knows of my love for hand painted clothing and gave me a beautiful, simple sun dress with one morning glory painted on it that she found in St Croix. Little did she know how that simple, white sun dress had inspired me to try again.

It had become clear, looking into my closet that I had not really bought any new clothes in about a decade. That was when all the good cotton seemed to disappear from the clothing stores. I hated the idea of having to go to a mall and buy clothes I hated. So, I invested in an assortment of good cotton blanks, short sleeved tee shirts and tank tops. Even some bamboo socks!

While I waited for the blanks to arrive in the mail, I dug out my old Procion dyes, beeswax, and the chemicals needed to fix the dye on the cloth, and thicken it for painting. I had to search for instructions, and information I had on the techniques I wanted to use.

I felt like a mad scientist, mixing Urea, soda ash and dye in my kitchen, while my mind had about 20 or so ideas for what I wanted to paint. Peonies, poppies, bleeding hearts, all soooo beautiful and in full bloom right now!

My house is on the market, by the way, and who in their right mind would turn their kitchen into chemical chaos on a weekend, where by some miracle, someone would want to view my home?

After spending lot's of time watching you tube instructional video's, I pulled every piece of white cotton used clothing I had in my closet and began experimenting, knowing I didn't want to learn on my new cotton blanks, knowing the potential for mistakes at first try. After two weekends of experimenting I have four shirts I would be delighted to wear in public.

I feel as though a whole new world has opened up for me! So many ideas, so little time.

I'll be wearing one of these to a picnic today, and now I know what everyone is getting for Christmas this year.

Spring Blooms and Abundant Beauty

2010-04-06T21:18:00.010-04:00

Spring has arrived in a hurry, with abnormally warm temperatures it is all happening fast!

It is as though I left for Easter weekend in Virginia at the beginning of Spring bloom time, and returned 3 days later to the end of spring.

Fortunately, I went out with my camera last evening in my half acre wood and photographed the blooms. When I returned from work today, the 4th day of the heat wave.....most of the early spring bulbs were spent and browning in the heat.

The upside of this warm spell is sleeping with the windows open. I love hearing the birds waking up at dawn, and feeling the chilly morning air move through my room.

These photographs were taken in the evening light. Even though I had the setting on automatic....I held the flash lens down, and wanted to capture the true light. I did a quick edit and enhanced the photo's a bit, and I feel they represent very well energy of the pulsating and light filled spring season.

My garden is now 3 years old. It is maturing and fairly lush. Though, over the Easter weekend I visited my dear friend Carol, and her garden. Carol has had at least 20 years to naturalize her garden. I wish I had taken photographs of that!

Her Forget Me Not's are the offspring of seeds her son Shaughan scattered about when he was a 5 year old boy. They now bloom in drifts along her stone terraced walls. There are so many memories in her garden, of our children, our clients and gardening adventures lived over the last 30 years.

Here is a link to a slideshow of my blooming beauties this Easter week.

It has been a fun and family oriented Easter celebration with Easter egg hunts on Long Branch Farm with the grand children....with silliness and joy abounding.

I am most grateful for this magical spring and my amazing family.

Rain Gardens

2010-03-22T17:42:00.005-04:00

I am brushing up on my understanding of rain gardens today. It is raining, and I am preparing the information for a garden club meeting later this week.

A rain garden can improve local water quality while creating a beautiful natural area that will attract birds and butterflies to the garden. Rain gardens allow rain and snowmelt to seep naturally into the ground, filtering the water before it reaches the water table.

This helps recharge the groundwater supply, and prevents the water quality problem of pollution runoff.

It is a simple process and so beneficial. Basically you dig a shallow depression that collects water from your downspouts and plant the area with native shrubs and perennials, see the links below for links to some good rain garden native plants.

I see so much erosion everyday on the mountain and in the foothills. I know of at least 5 drain pipes emptying out under the roads and running down hills. It would be so easy to plant a rain garden under them to make good use of all that water. In the spring rains, I am watching muddy water flow down my street. Rain gardens can do so much to keep our beautiful North Carolina rivers clean.

I look forward to introducing this simple garden concept to my neighbors in the Garden Club this week, as well as the yummy desserts they serve for us at the meeting.

This video is very helpful for understanding how important Rain Gardens can be for our natural water systems to keep them clean. Enjoy Learning!

Follow these links for more information and how to create your own. Enjoy!

---- Rain Gardens ----

Gardening with Water Quality in Mind

Rain gardens of East Michigan

Rain Gardens A How to Manual

The Heart of an Art Collector

2010-02-26T08:31:00.008-05:00

Yesterday, I attended the monthly meeting of the Hibriten Garden Club. The topic was a study of the genus Helleborus.

The meeting was held at the home of Mary. Mary's gardens are just beginning to explode with hundreds of Helleborus blooms. Mary's lives in a woodland setting and over the years her helleborus have cross pollinated and self seeded in mass all the way down to her neighbors driveway.

Helleborus orientalis cross pollinate easily, in the right conditions, and the blooms colors range from dark purple to apricot to pink to white.

When we finished the chocolate torte with fresh raspberries and cream, and discusssed all the attributes of the best woodland perennial ever....we were then given a tour of Janet's beautiful art collection.

For me it was an eye opening moment into the heart of an art collector. Mary has a fondness for the artwork of a group of women artists known as the Philadelphia Ten. A unique and progressive group of women painters and sculptors who broke the rules of society and the art world by working and exhibiting together. The Philadelphia Ten exhibited together between 1917 and 1945, at first annually in Philadelphia and later, with traveling exhibitions at major museums and galleries on the east coast and in the Midwest. All members had studied art in the schools of Philadelphia and all but three of the original ten were graduates of the Philadelphia School of Design for Women (now Moore College of Art and Design). Relatively unknown today, this group of a total of 23 painters and 7 sculptors was critically acclaimed, aggressively shown, and widely patronized during the twenty-eight years they formally exhibited together.

For Mary, the significance and range of these artists was great, because at the beginning of their era, they did not have the right to vote, and the artwork of women artists more often than not, was not counted as significant in the art world, because they were women. At this time in our history, women were expected to raise babies and stay out of sight.

Forming a group of artists to exhibit their work, some of the women were students of the influential PSDW teacher Elliott Daingerfield, who painted mystical, visionary landscapes, as well as poetic genre scenes and academic figural compositions. Beyond the studios of PSDW, Daingerfield conducted summer classes in Blowing Rock, North Carolina. Thus another link to Mary's heart with this group of artists.

So, not only did I enjoy a great group of southern women gardeners, I so enjoyed the art, the history of the artwork, and insight into why people collect the work of certain artists.

Cora Smalley Brooks, Nasturtiums, c. 1920, oil on canvas, Collection of Michael Chutko

Poppies in February

2010-02-05T09:22:00.004-05:00

Here is a bouquet of poppies and nasturtiums (my favorites) to enjoy on yet another snowy day.

Alas, the Landscape class didn't fill, we came close this time, and will offer it again in another semester this year.

Truthfully, I am grateful to not have to drive over the mountain two nights a week, considering the never ending ice and snow we are experiencing this season. I did get into Boone this week, and everyone was wondering when their children would ever go back to school.

I haven't posted in such a long time! It is as though my mind had been emptied of any meaningful thought. I read, and take in information, but nothing comes out! At least I am painting. Poor Finn, being a snow and rain wimp, just sits at the sliding glass door and sighs.....What kind of Lab doesn't love the snow? It is so funny to watch this huge brown bear dog tippy toe through the fluffy white stuff....I know he is strange.

I will mention an incident we had driving up interstate 81 on the way to Virginia for Christmas.

Finn had a seizure in the car while I was passing a line of trucks at 80 mph. When it began he jumped into the front seat, wanting to get into my lap, and seized into the steering wheel, turning off the car. His head sank down to the gas pedal near my foot and I had to yank on his collar to keep him from sliding down and affecting my control of the gas. I was afraid I was going to strangle him. His 90 lb body was stiff as a board and he was foaming at the mouth. I kept shouting at him 'Come on Finn you can do it!' I quickly turned the car back on and kept passing the trucks. Amazed that no one had plowed into me from behind. I realized, I am really good in a crisis! This is why I claim that everyday of my life is an adventure, and after this incident, I am grateful to still have one.

He came out of it and I exited off a ramp and right into a hotel parking lot. He was terrified, I was as well. I walked him on the leash in the parking lot until we both stopped shaking. He didn't want to get back in the car.

I realized the trip was worth it when my grand daughter wrapped her little arms around his thick fuzzy brown neck and whispered 'Oh Finn...I do love him! ' after he dropped her rubber ducky into the tub for her. He loves bath time with Barrie and all her toys!

When Finn & I got home to NC, I realized how much that incident affected me. We were exhausted! Thus January was for resting and recuperating. We have had one warm day where I could get to Blowing Rock and clean up from the Christmas day ice storm. Blowing Rock looks like a war zone.

There will be much to do come spring...devastating!

Cultivate your Future

2009-11-11T09:21:00.005-05:00

Cultivate your future through landscape planning and design.

CCCT&I will begin offering Hort 112- Landscape design 1

January 7th-May 6th Tues. and Thurs. 5:00-7:45 pm

Watauga High School -Room 123

This is the essential course for learning to produce scaled drawings and landscape plans for your home, business, or farm operation. The class will teach the elements of professional garden design and its historic past. You will develop drafting skills, learn how to conduct site surveys, create site plans using the principles and practices of landscape design. Plant identification and selection will be emphasized. Time will be spent learning to estimate the cost of the design, and professional standards for installation of a project.

The instructor, Andrea Watson, is now a certified North Carolina landscape contractor and business owner in Blowing Rock. Andrea has 30 years of hands on experience as a landscape designer, contractor and nursery owner. She has an A.A.S. degree in Horticulture Technology and Design. She was assistant horticulturist for The National Trust for Historic Preservation during the 1980’s restoring the 200 year old boxwood gardens of Oatlands Plantation. This experience put her on the path of designing and restoring the gardens for historic estates all over the Washington DC metro area. Traveling to the great gardens of Italy and England, Andrea has studied the bones of ancient gardens and farms in history and has given her a sense of being taught by the masters. She has a passion for creating beautiful, natural, sustainable, outdoor spaces.

Cultivate your future by expressing your creativity and love of nature through landscape planning and design.

For Registration Contact Debbie Mitchell, Director Landscape Gardening

828-726-2330 dmitchell@cccti.edu

Silence is Golden

2009-10-03T13:20:00.009-04:00

I have been silent as the season turned toward Fall. I figure there is so much being said in the world at any given time, I thought I would just shut my pie hole for a while and paint some of the seasons flowers. I also have had to rebuild my computer and get all the printer/scanner things working again.

I have some neighbors with four Belgian Shepherds who bark all day long at anything that moves. It was getting difficult to relax at home ever....I requested that they find a way to train their dogs not to bark for 8 hours a day while the family was away at work. They finally got barking collars that are working beautifully. My garden is peaceful once again, and I am loving the silence. So os Finn, he never participated in all that barking, I think it was wearing him down as well.

This is a little Japanese anemone flowering away in my fall garden. We had a huge windstorm in Blowing Rock this week, what the deer haven't eaten the wind demolished. Everything is being cut back. The nights have been chilly and the blooms don't like it.

The season of leaf raking has begun, and little fall color to boot. Because of our wet and cool growing season, half the leaves have just dropped due to fungal disease.

Gratefully, the Roses love the cooler weather and they are putting out another round of bloom in golden fall sunshine. I had to paint one.

I don't feel as though this rose portrait is finished, but I thought I would share it since I got my scanner functioning again.

I have been fussing with the software all day! Now I can shut the computer down and go paint on this fine Fall afternoon.

Enjoy!

Community and Design

2009-08-30T09:02:00.009-04:00

My family moved to Reston, Virginia in 1969. It was called a new town, and my mother attracted to the exiting new community that was forming around Lake Ann Plaza. They realized it was an ideal place to raise children.

Because Reston was designed by Robert E. Simon to be a walking community, my mother was thrilled that she would not have to drive us everywhere we went. As young adolescents, my sister and I covered a lot of ground. It was a win/win...freedom for my mother, freedom for us. I spent my childhood, mostly unsupervised, meandering through nature with walking trails that lead to Lake Anne Plaza, the community pools, lakes, community centers, horse barns, schools and clusters of beautiful, modern town homes.

Thanks to Wikipedia, I just now learned Lake Anne Plaza was designed by James Rossant to emulate the Italian coastal town of Portofino. A little factoid I did not know about my hometown, but when I visited the villages of Cinque Terra, Italy, as I sat in the piazze eating wonderful food, I watched the children playing wildly about the piazza on a Friday night, while the parents sat at the tables of the outdoor cafes, sipping wine and visiting with friends. I was reminded of my own childhood, so similar on any given Friday night on Lake Anne Plaza. We were wide open and allowed to roam while our parents ate and drank at the cafe.

In 2003 as result of finding each other through classmates.com a spontaneous reunion happened on Lake Ann Plaza with the now, scattered across the planet, group of souls that bonded on that plaza during all the revolutionary changes of the 60's and 70's.

I grew up in a well designed town. It developed my interest in nature, design, art and architecture. Today I found a great slide show on another planned city called Forest Hills Gardens, in Queens, New York. Forest Hills Gardens introduced the British garden City movement to the United States and is now 100 years old.

I was listening to a local radio program last week about a new sustainable living model being developed called agriburbia .

The idea is that the homeowners association provides the infrastructure for the farmers. So, the town itself would build the greenhouse, irrigation, barns, and equipment needed while building a community around farming. It makes good sense to me. Developers love to build communities around golf courses, which don't really appeal to me. I grew up with fields and rivers and streams and barns. I would love to see a community developed that centered itself around such things.

Yesterday I was going over a landscape plan with a couple who live on Heavenly Mountain. Heavenly Mountain is a beautiful meditation community and spiritual retreat. As soon as you enter the gate, you can sense the peaceful energies of the area. Yet another example of intention for community.

These things are on my mind as I dream of my next home. I spent a few afternoons this week sketching designs for a Cob House I would love to build.

On my 49th birthday I treated my self to a week long Cob Building workshop in Tennessee. There is a magical quality that draws me to the sculptured earth friendly home. I don't know how it could all come together yet, but obviously my soul is talking to me about community and home. I have learned to follow my soul wherever it leads me, though I do get distracted from time to time, usually via having to earn a living.....and if the perfect wee cottage shows up in my life that I don't have to pat together from mud, I may take that instead....just sayin....

I am enjoying the winged insects and thier late summer songs. They inspire me to day dream, and vision for what I want to create next in my wee little gardeners life.

Harvest Season

2009-08-23T08:42:00.004-04:00

The August light has returned and I am enjoying the late summer sounds of crickets and other winged creatures.

This morning I watched the butterflies work over my Joe Pye weed, which towers above the garden at almost 9 feet tall.

We have been experiencing the effects of Tomato and Potato Late Blight this summer. It is devastating. One day your plants are healthy looking and lush, the next day the entire plant is black and rotting. In a rainy year like we are having here in the mountains of Noth Carolina late blight has devastated the entire harvest. I have bought tomato's from Zydeco Moon Farm at the Blowing Rock Farmers Market and asked them how they managed thier tomato's organically.

They use a biological fungicide called Serenade early in the growing season and copper sulfate as the season progresses. The main ingredient in Serenade is Bacillus subtilis strain QST 713. B. subtilis strain QST 713 (marketed as QST 713 or Serenade) has a natural fungicidal activity. Not a dangerous to humans compund....in other words. Copper is a mineral useful to plants, and is used effectively in the grape production to control fungal disease.

Next year I will be armed and ready for the blight. I was able to pick several boxes of my favorite tomato's from the patch I planted at the dairy farm this spring. I made sauce from the Black Plum, and dried the little oxheart tomato Princepe Borghese So I have been busy and eating well!

I have noticed that Finn has quite a weekly routine going on at work. On Monday's, his friend Daisy cleans out the fridge, and Finn gets snacks of the leftovers from the weekend barbecues. Sometimes he stands at the door and barks, like he is expecting a meatball to arrive. There is a nice pond on that job for his swimming entertainment and liquid requirements.

On Tuesdays, as soon as we arrive to the job, he is off to Debbie's garage next door. He is friends with her black lab 'Abbie'. Finn likes to borrow some of Abbie's toys for the day. We always return them when our work is done and head for home. If the garage is closed, he will sit there and bark until Debbie opens the door and gives him a treat, which Finn knows are kept on the shelf with the toys. He always seems to get back to the job in time for his treat from his buddy Welbourn.

There is now a construction job going on across the street, and Finn loves construction workers...they always have sticks and snacks, so he heads over there for a while. I can hear them playing and talking with Finn while I work. Sometimes he proudly brings me back a chunk of 2 x 4 so we can play while we work. If he gets a little hot, he heads over to Dean's next door where we built the pond and goes for a dip.

Dean has two Shar-pei dogs that have a big pottery crock of toys on their back porch, so when ever we water the planters there, Finn sticks his head in the crock and takes out every single toy....which we have to put back before we leave.

Sometimes on Thursdays we head over to the Farm Market to help Matt Cooper keep his little girl Sita entertained while he sells his produce. Finn with the little ones is a dear sight, they all love him, and he attracts a lot of dog loving customers to his table. It is a very dog friendly market. And Blowing Rock is a very dog friendly town.

On Fridays we start out the day on Wonderland trail, where a new home is being built right next to the garden we manage there. The construction workers there feed Finn bologna sandwiches and throw sticks over the cliff of the gorge for Finn to haul back up the mountain. He loves this, and is shortly exhausted from the fun. When we finish there, we head over to Margaret and Franks who are big lab lovers. They sometimes share a bit of peanut butter sandwich, or last week a turkey burger, much to his delight. They even let Finn in the house at times, and last week Finn tried to climb into Margaret's lap while she was petting him on the porch.

By the end of the day we are over by the elementary school, just in time for recess. As soon as hear hears the voices of children he is off running, ears flapping in the wind to go to the playground where hundreds of kids happen to think he is a really cool dog.

What a life he lives. Most in Blowing Rock know Finn by name now.

Turks cap Lilly

2009-07-26T12:20:00.007-04:00

The Turks-cap Lilllies are beginning to bloom. This orange native Lilly is taller than I am on this misty mountain morning.

I know this is the Turkscap, Lillium superbum by the green star on the inside of the bloom.

The smaller flowers of the Carolina lilly (L. michauxii) do not have the green stripe on each petal that forms the star.

They are blooming with the Black Cohosh (Cimicifuga racemosa) in this summer woodland garden.

A Dutch woman I knew in Virginia called the black cohosh 'Fairy Candles', like they are called in her country. They do seem to light up the dark woods in their bloom season.

The mist of the clouds gives the garden such an enchanted look and feel. Though it is not that comfortable working in the drippy wet fog.

I have been feasting on the summer harvest. Blowing Rock now has a farmers Market on Thursday evenings. This makes food shopping so easy for me, I can easily go after work. Plus, I get to see my friend Matt and his daughter Sita for a change while he sells his produce, I can help out with keeping Sita occupied while her Mom is at work.

Last weekend I attended a watercolor workshop with Sterling Edwards at the monthly meeting of the High Country Watermedia Society. Please take a look at his art Gallery linked above.

Needless to say, I have done nothing but paint ever since trying to ground my body into acting on what I learned. Such an inspiring artist he is. I appreciated that he took the time to show me a few things. He was really interested in making sure we got it. I am now concentrating more than ever on discerning good combinations of mid tones, & darks, while leaving more room for white spaces, as well as practicing negative painting techniques and the brush stokes he so deflty uses. Very fun and challenging stuff. My stuff looks nothing like his, but I guess it is not suppposed to.

I want so badly to paint scenes like from my misty gardens well.....

Enough typing, I am heading back to the paints for the day!

Summer Still Life

2009-07-12T12:07:00.007-04:00

I took a holiday for the 4th of July weekend and painted this teapot. It even rained on Monday so I had 3 whole days all to myself, while the rest of the world celebrated births, deaths and Independence.

It was a sweet gift from a friend years ago, I have always wanted to paint it.

I got the white fleshed nectarines from the farmers market in Boone, the daylilly is from my garden.

I seldom paint still life well, but this one turned out OK. Well, it turned out OK the second time I painted it. On the first try I ruined the background.

I am back to watercolors after playing with acrylic paint this last month. The paintings were alright, but when I tried to scan them into the computer they looked awful. I still have so much to learn. When I straightened up my house last month I got the chance to review the work I have painted over the last year, and I am making progress. It is challenging though, to do the kind of physical labor I do every day and still find time to paint. I am grateful for holiday weekends.

With the dog days of summer setting in, Finn & I are moving a little slower now. I can't believe how much that big brown dog can sleep when the weather outside does not suit him! I love that the phone is not ringing so much, and that I can feel a bit cloistered and unreachable, at peace in my own little world, painting vignettes that catch my eye. I think I will go rummage through the house and start composing another still life. There is not much flowering in the garden right now that I haven't already painted at least once.

I do want to get started on a painting of a dear clients garden. She has not been feeling well lately, and I want to see if I can paint a portrait of her sweet garden for her.

In fact, now that the laundry is done, the house is cleaned as well as the car, and the lawn is mowed....I am free for the day to do just that!

Enjoy!

Peaky Top

2009-07-05T07:16:00.001-04:00

This is the view from the porch of 'Peaky Top' where we worked last week. Peaky Top is a private family retreat, right on the edge of the gorge. The home was designed by a student of Frank Lloyd Wright. We are upgrading a few steps, adding some stone walls, upgrading the patio and clearing some views.

I got there before Mike that morning and snapped some photo's. In this photo, Finn is watching intently as Mike pulls into the property. He loves his buddy Mike. Within a second after snapping this photo, Finn made a mad dash for Mikes truck to say good morning.

As always, the two boy's are excited to see each other in the mornings, and had a moment of playtime on the wall. On the other side of that wall, it is about 3,500 feet to the bottom of the gorge. We are pretty much standing on the continental divide here.

Last week, the weather was cool and dry, much better for working

in the gardens. Perfect weather for the 4th of July holiday.

The Town of Blowing Rock was filled with happy visitors for the Holiday weekend. The American flags were waving in the breeze, often hitting me in the head while I worked, the families were visiting and the party atmosphere was all around. All the gardens are ready for visitor's.

Mike's wife Jennifer, and his baby son Malone came by for lunch, so we had little picnic on the porch. Babies do love Finn. When my granddaughter talks to me on the phone, she always mentions Finn.

Earlier in the week we were working on upgrading the entrance beds at the Chestnut Hill Condos. There was a little girl toddler out playing, and Finn played with her so gently, giving her his paw to shake. Malone enjoyed riding on Finns back at our picnic.

Malone also got to do a little bouldering with his dad before we had to get back to work.

I am always amazed with the properties I get to work on here. Each one is so unique.

I just never know what I am going to find at the end of the lane, the first time I drive in.

Like I say...everyday is an adventure.

Seasonal Shifts and Changes

2009-06-28T11:27:00.014-04:00

The Summer heat intensified with the Solstice last weekend....it's official. We have shifted from being too wet all spring, losing much in the vegetable gardens to slugs and drowning, to an intense and dry heat wave. Working in Happy Valley is like doing hard labor in a sauna.

Up in Blowing Rock, there is always, gratefully, a breeze. OK, well Friday there was a windstorm right along the ridge where I was working, but the air is almost always in movement in Blowing Rock. The town is full of visitors escaping the heat from down below.

If I correlate the heat of summer, to the emotional temperature of the world, it is heating up as well. So much is shifting on the world stage it is hard to keep up.

In the dog days of summer I like to stay away from intensely colored flowers. Hot colors in the garden tend to make you feel hot and agitated. Of course, this is the time that nature puts out all it's orange and red daylillies, Black Eyed Susan's, and Coreopsis....all hot and intense colors. I drive by gardens filled with Stella D'oro daylillies, and magenta petunia's...I call it technicolor madness. Summer is intense enough in my opinion with out adding more heat to the pallet.

In my own gardens I tend to plant colors that soothe the emotional state if possible. I will usually pick a softer color of the native species if I can find it, Like The soft ivory colored day lilly 'Joan Senior' , or the variety of coreopsis 'Moonbeam'. I love the 'Jade' Sunflower, and the 'Green Envy' Zinnia for that reason. I also tend to hang out in my garden at night. So the lighter colors tend to light up the garden longer in the evenings.

These blooms are fun to sketch as well.

I love this pot of creamy yellow tuberous begonia's mixed with Veronica reptans alba, tucked into the boxwood.

The best part of the hot summer evenings is the fragrance. I love the spicy scent of my nicotiana alata greeting me at the end of the day. That is when I can say Ahhhh, I love summer.

I had a little giggle over finding these sweet potato's growing in my compost bin.....what a nice surprise. Summer is so full of bounty. I am watching the blueberries ripening this week, it will be a great crop this year, just in time for the Fourth of July. Perfect, it is all so perfect, but we could use a little rainstorm right about now.

There is something about Hydrangea's

2009-06-17T07:54:00.011-04:00

Someday, I want to settle into a spot of land and stay there until I keel over in the gardens and become fertilizer. Then I could actually collect and save all the plants I love.

I have collected hydrangea's for years. Other people are enjoying the rare Japanese lace caps I planted years ago in various places. This white lace cap is now blooming in my current home garden.

I am working on a painting of it to see if I can get it on paper in a lovely way. After attending a workshop last weekend with Robe rt Burridge I decided to try painting with acrylic paint instead of my usual watercolors....a whole new medium to me...I doubt I will do it justice.

Here are some photo's of the Japanese Lace caps I have planted in my various gardens and no longer have. I do miss them and they would grow well here in the foothills of North Carolina no doubt.

This delicate Pink hydrangea is called Hydrangea macrophylla 'Izu No Hana'

I do not know Japanese, but I believe most of these are named after waterfalls and Islands in Japan.

Hydrangea serrata
'Midoriboshi-Temari'

I love this Hydrangea

macrophylla 'Jogasaki' bearing the magical silvery blue florets!

There are more than a few orchards bearing fruit long after I get them started... I have had a very nomadic life. Sometimes I feel like the Johhny Appleseed of gardens...... I collect, plant, and as soon as things mature a bit I move on to the next geographical location that calls me. When I think about leaving my rare Martagon Lillies, after years of looking for the mauve ones....I wonder if the next person living in the garden realizes their rarity and hopefully hasn't weeded them out accidentally.....as the gardener goes, so does the garden.

My white Siberian Iris are blooming this week as well. As is the Annabell Hydrangea with it's greenish white blooms.

With all the rain we are still having, all the white flowers are so beautiful set off by the green lush foliage surrounding them, creating a wonderful luminous effect in the gray foggy gardens.

All this rain does allow me a little more indoor time for sketching and painting, but not much.....there are designs and estimates to do...and the billing and book keeping......such is the life of a wee busy gardener, Finn is finding me to be terribly boring. Must get back to business now...Enjoy!

White Iris sketch....June 09

Full Strawberry Moon

2009-06-07T08:13:00.007-04:00

On this full moon Sunday I am feeling a sense of completion. We finished up the last of major spring planting jobs this week. The vegetable gardens are mostly in and mulched. I finished my own spring cleaning and overhaul of my house and have put it on the market for sale. I love my house very much, but it is simply too large for me. I don't have an exact plan for what is next, but a smaller home and bigger garden are calling me.

Not that things will let up one bit, but a corner has been turned and all the things on my to do list are accomplished, just in time for the full moon. I love how the rhythm of life works! Now, I get to savor my ripening strawberries and look around a bit...it is beautiful.

We are still having rains and storms, hail hit some spots in Blowing Rock last week, meaning we were grooming lots of hosta's. This garden wasn't hit, as we just put a lot of energy into re working the perennial gardens surrounding beautiful stonework terraces and patio's.

In between storms, it is getting hot and humid when the sun appears. Finn is taking cover in the cool lush foliage. This week we were working in a huge bed of daylillies, it felt like we were working in a hot oven. I hadn't seen Finn in a while and called his name. Not three feet from where we were working, a little fuzzy brown brown dog head popped out of a clump of daylilly foliage where he had been sleeping, invisible to us. I gave us quite a giggle, and I wish I had my camera ready in that moment.

Michael took him for a lunchtime swim for relief, while I spoke to the Blowing Rock Garden Club on Wednesday. I think it was the garden along main street in Blowing Rock that these ladies created that led me to move here. I am looking forward to their 'Miles of Flowers' tour on August 29th that will be featuring nationally renowned horticulturalist Chip Calloway, ASLA..

Finn did pose for me under the rhododendron that was proving him shade while we worked to finish up.

In the heat, we have reached a shift from the spring blooms, to waiting for the summer color to begin. A resting moment, before the Solstice, and the beginning of the celebration of summer and the enjoyment of the bounty that the efforts and challenges of spring make worthwhile.

There is much to do still, but for this one day I am going to enjoy my beautiful clean and spacious home, my private woodland garden, my strawberries and my silly sweet dog.

Happy Valley

2009-05-31T15:43:00.008-04:00

When I was visioning moving away from Virginia, I told a friend that I wanted to live somewhere with a happy wonderful name. Now I find I am gardening in a place called Happy Valley, North Carolina. It is a happy little farming area between two mountain ridges. It is so green and lush and beautiful.

I have been putting in a vegetable garden at the Ripshin Dairy Farm there. Liza and her family make goat cheese and sell to the local restaurants and farmers markets. And...after looking at the above link, I find out they make Truffles as well in the fall. I can't wait to try them~

Liza and William are so precise and thoughtful in the way they work the farm. It is a joy to be there and see how it all works. They don't have time for a garden, and I don't have any sun on my wooded 1/2 acre. They kindly let me use their tiller and garden space. It is wonderful soil to work in, and all around me are piles of old straw mixed with goat droppings to mulch with. I am in heaven.

Liza's flower gardens are pretty extensive as well. Mike and I have been helping to get them into better shape, as well as some college students from Appalachian State University. Things are looking so good there.

When I arrived last fall after the death of her longtime gardener, the gardens were a solid mass of chickweed. We have been diligent about mulching with chopped up leaves from last fall and they are doing the job so well. We just had 5 days in a row with inches of rain everyday, and today...no weeds in the beds we have done. The sun is out this weekend and it is so fulfilling to see the result of months of tough work. The butterfly's were having a wonderful time dancing from flower to flower to Finn.... sometimes they take a little rest on my shoulder.

I spent the day planting red okra, melons, sweet potato's and squash. By the time I had mulched all the rows I was way overheated, as was Finn. I felt bad for Finn, panting in the heat. Every weekend last year I took him swimming in Wilson's creek. Between the Leola street community garden plot I also keep in Boone, work and keeping up a large home, I have had no time to do this for Finn.

I was considering how long it would take me to get to Wilson's Creek and give him some fun time when I asked Liza, as she brought out an ice cold glass of sweet tea, if they could build a pond for Finn to swim in. We decided instead to take him to the beach at the end of her property on the Yadkin River. Heaven~ Everywhere I go around here I am in my own personal heaven...

The River was really moving fast around the bend after recieving 7 or so inches of rain this week.

It didn't take Finn but a minute to figure out how to work with the current to grab the sticks. He got a good workout and I snapped a few photo's and talked to the butterfly on my shoulder. Finn was at last, in his own personal heaven after waiting so patiently for me to get the gardening done.

I had an opportunity to go to Myrtle Beach and meet my daughter for a spur of the moment weekend. After getting rained out all week, I had to finish a job on Friday that was half done. Then, I realized it is the end of the month, I need to send out bills for the work that was done all month, and I hadn't put my veggies in the ground. It was a tough choice, but I took the responsible route and stayed home and motored on.....I would have loved some girl time laying on a beach with my oldest gardener daughter. I am sure there will be other opportunities for playing together soon.

Meeting the Yadkin River for the first time today helped a lot, as did being in a place called Happy Valley. Just like I wanted when I moved here. Things like that make it so much easier, when I realize how far away from my family I am. I have a really great family, they are my favorite people in the whole world. But, I am also loving the people and places I am discovering here. Now, I can't wait till all those veggies are ready to eat!

Crazy Giant Morels

2009-05-21T10:36:00.009-04:00

We have been finding morel mushrooms in the gardens of Blowing Rock for the last month. Last year we found a few, but this year there has been an explosion. We came to work on Ski Mountain on Monday and found the largest morels I have ever seen growing under the deck of house in some pea gravel...so much for theories about where they like to grow.

I suppose, in a cool wet year like this they will grow just about anywhere, and will swell up to huge proportions over a rainy weekend like we just experienced.

I collected two to take home before the blackberry frost due to arrive turned them into mush.

The Morchella, a genus of edible mushrooms, are very difficult to spot in the woods. They are the color of dried leaves, and disguise themselves well. But one you find one, your eyes then learn to spot them more easily.

Morel hunters are secretive about their favorite spots to find them.

They are yummy. I generally cook them in garlic and butter and use them as a topping on Pasta Alfredo. It is not recommended to eat a morel without cooking it first.

I'll never forget being approached by a woman coming outside from her office where I was working to ask me very secretively...'So...have you found any yet?' I had no idea what she was asking about. When I realized she was whispering about morels, I had in fact been hunting and found them a few days earlier. So, apparently Morel hunters tend to recognize each other for some odd reason. I tend to share spots with people if they ask for any info on how to find them.

Morel hunting is a great motivator for getting out into the woods to see all the spring ephemerals, like Trillium, Lady's Slipper and the terrestrial orchids in bloom. Though here in Blowing Rock, these showed up after the trillium tried to bloom but froze in an earlier spring frost.

I brought a few home and sketched one while dinner cooked. They are now drying on the counter. These seemed too big to me to eat.

If they dry well, I can always rehydrate them later. I think morels sell for about 15.00 /pound.

I should have picked them all sold these fella's!

I left the rest for the chef, who I noticed wasn't all that interested. Nether were a few other people I showed them too. Not morel people I guess.

I suppose I really love morels for the hikes, walks, memories, treasure hunts and delicious meals they provide me. Not to mention trippy sketches......Nature is so cool that way, and mushrooms are very trippy beings psychedelic or not.

Poppy Week

2009-05-17T09:12:00.010-04:00

With all the rain the May flowers are in their prime. This week was poppy week. All kinds. They are so delicate looking, but tough little plants in reality. They self seed easily, and need no special pampering or conditions to colonize quickly.

Poppies have captured the imagination of gardeners and artists for eternity. They have a narcotic effect, even in just gazing at the crepe blooms.

The California poppy has always been a favorite of mine. Years ago, when I was discovering the Doctrine of Signatures I read that taking the flower essence of the California poppy works on the rods and cones of the eye and can assist one with the ability to see fairies.

Now, the descriptions of it's healing qualities are associated with helping us to "find spirituality within our hearts and to develop an inner center of knowing versus seeking outside of ourselves for a false sense of higher or altered consciousness as through addictions or the lure of glamour. When you think of how and why the Gold Rush drew so many people to California, the razzle-dazzle of Hollywood, and the height of drug activity during the Haight Ashbury days, I think it is only fitting that the California Poppy be our state emblem, encouraging people to go within and seek out that “inner gold” that is of most value for ourselves and for humanity. Isn’t it lovely that our state flower provides the medicine for people who are star-struck (I’m talking Britney not the Big Dipper!), into cults or fleeting fads to be able to strengthen and develop a solid inner life that leads to self-responsibility and quiet inner development? May we all truly appreciate the healing gifts of our lovely state flower, the California Poppy."

This little Iceland poppy color was new to me. I am not sure the camera got the color quite right. But it has scattered itself about Liza's garden here and there and was such a sweet little visitor for the week.

Then, the Papaver somniferum were in full glory.....my longtime favorites for two decades....

This is a low toxicity form of the opium poppy. I used to use this plant to train my new gardeners on how to research a plants medicinal qualities. They would find articles about making opium, and soon enough I would see carved X's in the milky buds in our clients yards. I used to giggle as they loaded their cars with the harvested plants, only to report a few days later of a nauseous feeling and headaches as a result of their experiments. To me, these are definately not the poppies that grow in afghanistan, but they do have some potency, but not enough to cause dreams or visions by any stretch. Just a mild headache.

But it was fun and the young folk that worked with me learned to love to explore old herbals for information.

Though,ignorance is bliss as far as this plant is concerned according to Michael Pollan.

When I worked at Oatlands Plantation, Alfredo scattered these seeds everywhere and was our mothers day showstopper with thousands of poppy blooms exploding in the 4 acre garden. Originally they were orange in color, but I noticed a few lavender ones in the garden. Over the years I would pull out all the orange ones and eventually the Oatlands garden poppies were mostly lavender. Occasionally they morph into a double bloom.

Like this one on the right.

For a great article on growing baby greens Airynee has posted her tips for growing them on her wonderflul blog at Goodstone Farm. I was going to post on all the wonderful baby greens I have been enjoying all month, but she beat me to it, and did a much better job!

Next week....Peonies! Enjoy!

2009-05-10T14:50:00.005-04:00

My friend Carol's father gave her a Gardening Encyclopedia many years ago. It was one of those Better Homes and Garden type books that were written in the 1950's and it had all the information you would ever need to know concerning gardening. We reffered to it often. It was called 'The Garden Marches On' We used to laugh so hard at that title, and we still use the phrase often with giggles still. So even though it is Mother's Day, I am thinking of 'Papa' and the gardening knowledge we gleaned from his book.

This year, with all the rain, the garden is surely marching on...

The Cinnamon Ferns have been emerging and they are so interesting I had to photograph them.

They only look like this for a moment. If you blink they are unfurled. The ferns should be very happy with all the rain we are having. Things are lush and

beautiful everywhere. The ferns are marching on....

I was late getting started today gratefully, both daughters called for a long Mothers Day chat. Little Barrie was trying to show me over the phone how to make a man in a boat out of the Bleeding Heart Flowers.

Morgan says her plants have been stripped of the pink heart shaped blooms.

I am spending the weekend getting the veggie gardens ready for tomatoes and warm weather crops. But first I had to prune away at some overgrown azalea, forsythia and maple limbs.

I have designs to do but nature is not letting me sit inside and contemplate such things.

I decided to post these photo's after a big pruning and cleaning of my huge azalea's. Rehydrate......then I will head out to the goat farm veggie plot and till.

I have several paintings of my spring bouquet's started, they end up in half done phases and then the bouquet fades and gets tossed before I can find a moment to paint! So frustrating. But such is spring, and things are growing so fast they soon get out of hand if you ignore them.

Kind of like the sprig of Virginia Creeper that covered my bathroom window last summer. I loved it, but this year it had to go or would it truly invade , smother the window and try to creep inside the room.

I never worry about what will happen when we humans leave the planet. I watch nature smothering abandoned homes and buildings along highway 321 on the way to work. It doesn't take long at all.

Some garden things have to be done now, before the next Rain!

So I must keep marching on!

Enjoy and Happy Mother's Day!

Blowing Hot and Cold

2009-04-26T12:18:00.017-04:00

So much new energy arrived with the chilly Easter holiday. I traveled to Virginia for an Easter egg hunt in the bluebell fields with Barrie Ann and my family. She is such a treat!

She loves to paint too. So we had ourselves a painting day in her playroom at the nursery. While her Mom helped all the customers get introduced to all her new offerings for the season. The nursery is so beautiful right now. It was hard not to stuff my truck full, but by the time I made it home I had it filled with Dee Runk Boxwoods, scented geraniums and other things I had to gather for clients here at home.

I will spare you the hundreds of photo's I took of this funny little angel over the entire weekend. Everything she says and does is hysterically funny.

The Dee Runk Boxwood is a conical form of boxwood, a beautiful dark green evergreen that can take the Blowing Rock winters. I think it should replace all the Dwarf Alberta Spruce that yellows in the winter and gets spider mites in the summer. So I am trying to introduce them to the gardens here.

We also took Barrie for her first visit to Oatlands Plantation for the Point to Point horse races, and a romp through the boxwood gardens. I am so happy to be there with her as she saw them for the first time. There is no more magical place for a child to explore. She kept trying to tell the other children the Teahouse was her house.

It has been a challenge knowing how to dress for work these days. I am a month ahead into spring in the foothills, where as, on the top of the world, 18 miles away in Blowing Rock, we had snow on Monday. My Geurnsey Cream Clematis is in full bloom, but up top, things are just breaking dormancy. I get a very long spring as I travel between the two geographical locations.

Last week, my little friend Lindsey came around for the first time since Thanksgiving. She said, in her sweet little Carolina accent..... "I'm sorry I haven't come by for so long, but it's just been so cold! It really ought to be be summer by now." I had a giggle about that statement all week.

Today the lawnmowers are buzzing away in the foothills neighborhood. Managing our landscapes takes precedence now over anything that involves idol laziness, or we will be eaten alive by honeysuckle, weed trees and tall tall grass. It all smells so good! My tomato seedlings are finally starting to grow in their little pots on the sunny deck, instead of shivering in the cold.

I have a lot of transplanting to do this evening, as everything needs a bigger root space than the seed trays offer.

We feel a month behind on our jobs, but are catching up quickly, now that we aren't being rained out daily. Now, we have to patiently wait for the last frost date, as clients call and say can we plant the annuals yet? We are accomplishing much. I have been good about taking the before photo's of projects, but by the end of the day I forget to take the after photo's. Such is the life of a busy gardener.

There has been no time for painting. I stare nightly at a half finished portrait of a bouquet I picked weeks ago. My camera stays busy though, photographing the family fun and all the gorgeous blooms I find for future paintings.

One of the weeks most exciting moments was the emergence of Patty's Crown Imperial Fritillaria.

She had traveled to Amsterdam about a year ago and ordered some bulbs. We planted them last fall, and forgot about them. She saw them this spring and was delighted to find these exotic creatures blooming in her cut flower garden. They will be interesting to paint one day so I took a lot of photographs for her and future reference. I think just about every gardener in town has been invited to see them. The Fritillaria have a very strong odor. Helpful for repelling moles.

Last evening, after a day of major spring cleaning, I began tending to my own garden. Just as the sun was going down, I grabbed the camera once again. In this heat, all the spring beauties will soon be gone. The cool colors of the moss phlox, Phlox divaricata, white flowering Vinca minor, Tree peony, Thalia Narcissus, Trillium, Solomons Seal, Ferns and the helleborus blend so beautifully. After two years the garden is filling out some and looking more like I want it to. My neighbors dog Buck likes my garden too.

Enjoy!

Gentle Rains

2009-03-28T19:21:00.003-04:00

We have just finished up five days in a row of rain.

This morning the sun is shining brightly and the dogs are having a play party outside to celebrate.

During the gray gentle days, I painted a sprig of my helleborus, cut from the garden. I think we got quite a few inches of badly needed rainfall. Yay! All the spring flowers are so happy and bright this morning.

I also planted the seeds for May planting in the garden. Heirloom tomato's, peppers, parsley....I am so missing the clumps of fresh parsley from the kitchen garden. Normally I have some all winter, but not this one, for some reason, they all root rotted.

Before the rains came in I sprinkled grass seed on the patchy dog trodden lawn. I had to laugh at myself staring at it the last five days, just watching the grass grow. Perfect timing...What a simple life I lead.

Not for much longer though, the rains have caused us to feel behind at work, there will be much catching up to do indeed. Fortunately, Matthew is available to help us 3 days a week most of this month, so we are one person stronger than we were last year at this time. Thanks Matt!

I had a great time with the Highbrighten garden club on Thursday. Such a nice group of women they are. I spoke about night blooming plants and fragrance in the garden. My favorite subject!

I won't dribble on in this post...the sun is shining and I need to go outside and play~

Enjoy!

Blooming Abundance

2009-03-22T09:16:00.006-04:00

It's official, Spring has sprung. So many species are in full bloom. The spring bulbs, the saucer magnolia, forsythia, the fruiting trees and hellebore's. Inside, my green Goddess Amaryllis is in her greenish white glory.

Of course, we got frost last night...

It has been a chilly windy week, I wimped on working in the community garden yesterday. I should be digging and prepping the beds and planting potatoes this weekend, but the need to rest after working in the cold wind all week seemed more important. All day long, I told myself I should be sketching that amaryllis while it is so fresh. But the amount of dirty laundry from a busy dirty week took precedence. I also told myself I should be cleaning and hauling stuff to the salvation army, on & on I beat myself up with shoulds, took a long deep sleep and got very little done, just the basics. What is it with me? It is spring, I should be all gung ho and ready to rock and roll...My taxes are done, why don't I print them out and mail them, I should do the invoicing too. I should be writing a book.

I just don't feel like it!

I want to watch the flowers bloom, I want to close my eyes and feel the warm sun streaming through the window while I dream. I want to snuggle in the bed with my big brown warm dog and listen to his comforting snores and grunts as he burrows in next to me. I want to be aware of what my dreams are trying to tell me. I want to lose myself in a movie about a beautiful road trip....I want to get rid of all my possessions, that I should be taking care of and go on an indefinite road trip myself.

I finally shut my mind up towards evening and did sketch the beautiful Green Goddess, in between making dinner (which I burnt) and with Finn insisting I play ball till 9 pm. So it was not the most focused of sketching time, but I got it onto paper and a photograph, so I can work on it later and paint it someday. One less should on the list~

I feel like my attitude adjustment will come with the warm weather, when it truly arrives. Patience, patience.....It is only two days into spring. My attitude mirrors the collective grumbling with the new administration...that we are only two months into! What is up with our collective energy?

In truth, all this blooming is telling me to just be, and enjoy the brief moment of celebration going on in nature. It is truly a wonder, and so short lived. I am surrounded by it's abundance and light. The work will get done. In the meantime all around me, blossoms are nodding in the sunshine and wind. Just wishing I would smile at them. I do, and as I stare and smile, the name of a fairy comes to me...she wants to be in my book, we converse about how the story will be told. So, as I do nothing, much is getting done.

Full Moon Bloom

2009-03-12T17:22:00.006-04:00

The Full Worm moon was full on March 10th.

The day after it was full, all the Flowering Cherry, Bradford Pear and Saucer Magnolias were in full bloom. I had never in my life noticed that the spring blooms opened for the moon!

We are now expecting snow...how frustrating. I am glad I photographed my camellia a few days ago. I planted it in front of my propane tank. I predict the camellia will cover it well in a few years.

Until today, I have been able to keep all the windows and doors open at last! Finn has loved having the back door open so he can come and go. I cleaned up the gardens and his sandbox. Finn loves to sleep in the sandbox I inherited when I moved here. I haven't had the heart to tear it out, ugly as it is. My granddaughter may want to play in it next time she visits.

The spring cleanup has begun in Blowing Rock as well. Though spring really comes a few weeks later there. Everyone is happy to be back outside. Finn is happy to be back to work with us.

Tuesday, I was working in a small fenced in garden. A neighbor of one of our clients was walking her lab, Abbey. Finn always goes next door and 'borrows' Abbey's toys. He knows where the biscuits are hidden in her garage. Since Finn was cooped up, she offered to take Finn with her and Abbey to Lovers Leap. He came back with her an hour later, hot and tired and sooo happy. That's what I love about being in Blowing Rock. Friendly people.

Saturday we worked in the community garden. Lot's of people are participating this year.

A group of women had a yoga circle before starting their work. It was lovely energy to work in. After such a cold and hermit like winter it was good to see people again! I love the sound of voices of all ages, laughing and giggling in the gardens on a warm spring day.

I now have salad greens and peas in the ground. The soil work I did last year really made a difference in the richness of this years plots. I added all my beautiful leaf compost to my kitchen garden here at home. It was like brown velvet. It is newly planted with arugula and greens. The snow melting on the beds will be great for germination. I have Japanese red onions sprouting up from those I did not harvest last fall. Perfect!

From here on out, snow or not...spring is coming on rapidly....

Pruning Season

2009-02-27T07:25:00.007-05:00

We have been pruning this week, a task that is much easier to do when the leaves are off the trees and shrubs and the structure of the plant can be seen. Time to clear out the deadwood. Cut out crossing branches, last years spent flowers, and strengthen the structure and form of the branching for future growth and abundance.

It can be painful work. We tackled a flowering quince this week that was generations old and never been pruned. We removed more than half of the older stems from the base, so crowded, it was difficult to get a saw or pruners in to cut! Quince have painful thorns. this is probably why the gangly species so seldom get any pruning attention from gardeners, even though it is recommended to thin every year. But once the task was done, an open vase shaped appearance was so much improved! Just in time for flowering.

Sometimes I think that good pruning is the most ignored part of maintaining a garden. It is a thankless task, usually done at a bleak and gloomy time of year. Most would rather stay inside with a good book, if given a choice.... it is just easier to clip the tops on a warm spring day and turn something into a meatball or a square. Clearing out the old and unproductive from the inside out can make all the difference in the world.

Since I use gardening as a metaphor for life, it is interesting to watch our government begin the process of trying to prune and shape budgets, cut out the deadwood and that which does not bear fruit. It will be a tough and thankless job there as well.

On a personal level what in our own life needs pruning, restructuring and cleaning up? I am sure there is plenty...I am going to start with a good spring cleaning of my house and garden. I have only lived here for 2 years and I can not believe how much stuff accumulates...and I don't even buy stuff, I asked people not to give me knick knacks a long time ago~

So clear out and clean up is my mantra these days.

I have been observing this strange little bud swelling on my slope. I have no idea what it is. It doesn't look like any other narcissus bud in the garden, but the leaves are similar.

Last Easter I brought home a lot of bulbs, from friends, and the offspring from an old bed at the nursery.

It will fun to see what shows up from the strays I brought home. As you can see I still have a lot of leaf raking to do.

We have also started restoring a walkway in Wilkesboro, as it was eroding and actually dangerous to walk on it was so disrupted. We improved the grade by adding two steps. We are reusing the original stone, which is a bit too thin for a solid walkway, but now the stones are packed in stone dust and will be much more stable. We may plant Roman Chamomile in a few of the cracks.

It is good to back at work with Finn. He has spent the last month at a building site over the hill where the construction workers throw the stick and ball for him all day. He needed a crew of boys for sure, all I did was paint, so boring for the brown fuzzy lab. I go pick him up at 4:00 when the crew quits for the day, or when ever I have to go somewhere. He comes home happy and exhausted. The crew knows who I am and we share Finn well. I have no heart to confine him to our wee half acre wood with the electric fence. Big plus...he did not get fat this winter~

They did bring him home one evening when they stayed late to pour concrete, no lab paw prints on the new churches front stoop please. Now that the building is enclosed, they even let him in to follow the crews inside. I notice they don't do that with the other 3 neighborhood dogs who are there everyday as well.

Everybody loves Finn. He loves everybody. He has a very good life. So do I, even if I come hope hands bleeding, sore muscles, and chilled to the bone, I love my job.

Wednesday, we worked on the Ripshin Dairy farm, pruning. All the baby goats are being born. We got to play with 40 little newborns, all dressed in little sweatshirts to keep them warm. I tried to get some photo's but by the time I finished work for the day, they were all napping. I didn't want to disturb them or the nervous moms.

Like I said....I love my job. Everyday is an adventure.

Narcissus are Budding

2009-02-14T16:17:00.001-05:00

Happy Valentines Day!

Sacred Geometry

2009-02-13T08:58:00.008-05:00

You know I've been couped up too much inside when I begin studying sacred geometry again.

This winter I have found myself struggling with composition.

As a gardener and a learning painter I am aware of the use of golden proportions in nature, art, architecture and landscaping. It is something I intuitively use all the time, and have studied it for years, but recently I had a light bulb moment when I heard someone explaining the geometry in terms of quantum physics.

The light bulb went on when I heard the words "Geometry creates resonance....60 degree angles represent the hyper dimension, where things are perceived beyond this dimension."

I immediately related to my thesis in college entitled 'What Makes a Garden Beautiful".

In my paper, I researched the use of sacred geometry in the creation of histories most well known and timeless gardens. I wrote this paper because when I visit a garden designed from these principles I am instantly transported out of now modern urban time and float in the beauty of all time and no time. You can feel the shift in these ancient places, when you enter, something divine is going on and you know it.

I know I've hit the mark in my own garden creations when people zip into a dimension of delight, relax, giggle, play or just wander around in awe.

Here is a snip from my term paper relating to the use of sacred geometry in the English Landscape gardens of the early 1700's.

This paper covered the whole history of sacred geometry from the Parthenon to the US Air Force Academy, but I won't bore you with all that.

The landscape garden was conceived in England between 1710 and 1730—that is, during the period of the European Enlightenment, which coincides with the role of Freemasonry in England and Europe. Many landlords and intellectuals of the eighteenth century were freemasons. Among them were famous people of the period. The writer Alexander Pope, Edward Harley, the Earl of Chesterfield, James Addison, Richard Steele, Jonathan Swift, James Thomson, Lord Burlington, Lord Cobham, William Stuckley, Lord Montague, and Voltair. It is at this point in its history that Freemasonry develops as a focus for intellectuals, politicians, the gentry, artists and architects, and fosters a continuous exchange of ideas, aesthetic values and beliefs between English and European intellectuals. Freemasons believed in virtue, progress, equality, and they contributed to the ideology for the late eighteenth century democratic revolutions.

These Enlightenment ideals (tolerance, equality, universalism, civic duty, natural religion, and morality) were also reflected in the use of iconography and design in the early English landscape garden. During that time the intellectuals who belonged to or had links with this secret society were also responsible for the developments in the arts including landscape architecture, so it is important to understand the relationship between Freemasonry and the early 18^th century English landscape garden. Freemasonry carried mystical overtones and origins dating back to the Middle Ages. Medieval stonemasons were called "freemasons" since they were not bound to a guild in any specific city but were forced to wander from place to place where churches were erected. Thus the design principles of the freemasons spread far and wide across Europe and into America.
Two common elements of these works on Masonic history are the reference to God as the Great Architect of the Universe and the definition of the seven liberal arts which are grammar, dialectic, rhetoric, arithmetic, astronomy, harmony and geometry, with a heavy emphasis on geometry, which was considered to be the source of knowledge, an art which had the potential to re-create the Divine in building.

[1] http://www.esoteric.msu.edu/VolumeV/Freemasonill.html

I love that recreating the divine stuff! I also love the words virtue, progress, equality, tolerance, universalism, civic duty, natural religion, and morality. I think I will meditate on these as I putter and paint and practice the art of re creating the divine.

Light Changing

2009-02-01T08:41:00.008-05:00

I normally paint botanicals, but in February nothing is blooming and I have no desire to sketch bouquets of store bought roses and carnations. So I have been sketching and painting birds, dogs and children. A stretch for me...but fun to try.

I do a little better with birds than dogs and children. The body proportions are difficult for a dork like me, but I want to be able to paint my grandchildren as they come along.

I took a photo of Finn last summer, laying on the porch with his ball in the hope that I would stop gardening long enough to throw it for him. He is so beautiful I wish I could do him justice. I am painting this sketch as well, but not thrilled with it. Painting dog fur in watercolor is a big challenge. There is so much going on in that pile of brown fluff.

I am also feeling the need to get my kitty on the white paper too before he heads over the rainbow. He is over 20 years old, and the most beautifully marked Siamese tabby mix I have ever seen. I love his blue eyes, pink nose and raccoon striped tail. He doesn't photograph well, and even in his sleep he moves constantly....so that will be a challenge.

Yesterdays challenge was this sketch of my granddaughter toodling near a garden bench.

I will work on this some more today, I want so badly to get the right look of busy curiosity in her face.

In the meantime I am watching the old world crumble and the new world gestate with hope and joy at the transformation that is taking place. I know transition is always uncomfortable, but transformation always follows. It is the constant spiral of Ascension. We just made a leap from tradition, the world watched as a new President was inaugurated, millions gathered in peace to celebrate and sing a song of joy. Now, a time of transition, depending on how long we drag our feet in fear until we manifest transformation. How exciting!

Personally I am visioning a financial system that is not based on debt. That would truly be freedom from slavery wouldn't it? I have been seeing future paintings of mine of crumbling super malls, with magical trees sprouting from the ruins. I sure wish I had the capabilities now to paint some of these images as beautifully as I see them in my minds eye.....but I am working on it daily, in small ways with small things.

Veggie Doodles

2009-01-15T08:22:00.006-05:00

As the US collectively shivers in the arctic chill of what is being called the coldest winter in decades, we are heading for the deep freeze here in NC as well.

Nothing much to do except paint and putter. I am working on my statue paintings in the studio, but I am having more fun painting the veggies when I take a break from the larger projects I am attempting. I keep the moleskin notebook and a travel box of Sennelier watercolors on the kitchen counter for my doodles. This means I only have a few colors to work with and have to really think about mixing the colors I want. I used this travel set when I traveled to Italy, the cappuccino's I indulged in after a delicious meal kept me awake at night, so I painted two paintings that I ended up framing and showing. I am realizing I have good luck with Sennelier paints. Maybe it is because they use honey as part of the formula for their paints. They do look yummy enough to eat.

I had a lot of fun with this cabbage. It is great practice. I am getting better with mixing greens. For years I was struggling with how to mix colorful, but muted, green foliage. I may keep working on this one a bit more. So far, I have doodled in short spurts on this cabbage for a week. I am also painting a very bright red pepper. I suppose painting the vegetables is keeping me from getting too lonely for the summer garden....it will be here soon enough. In the meantime it is fun to dream about those beautiful vegetables on paper, and take long wintertime naps with the 97lb brown fuzzy Finn dog.

Dreaming and Doodling

2009-01-05T08:18:00.006-05:00

While recovering from the family flu bug passed around over Christmas I had little energy for anything but a few doodles recently. That, and the yearly bookkeeping for the business has kept me busy. Better to get that over with now.

Besides, I was sneezing and coughing so much that any attempt at a stoke with a brush could be sidelined by a sneeze.

The seed catalogues are coming in daily. The photographs are so enticing. I thought I would see how they looked in watercolor. The bean pods were very fun. Though I would like to do more of this type of botanical on bigger sheets of paper so I can get more details on the ribs, seeds and flowers.

While visiting my daughter over the holidays I saw that she had framed a painting I did of my tomatoes and peppers a few years ago. I thought, wow, I could do that so much better now, I have learned so much in the meantime.

When I came home I painted a Costoluto Genovese tomato from the catalogue, the same tomato growing in my garden when I did my first tomato painting. I doodled these in my moleskin notebook during the worst of the body aches and fevered exhaustion. This batch is much improved over my first for sure. I have more colors to play with now as well, like Opera, Mineral violet, and Poppy, which I did not discover until this year.

The benefits of being sick for a week was all the sleeping and dreaming I got to do. Yesterday morning, while in the dream state, I was was hanging out with angels, working on a painting in the studio. I was consulting with one of them about the next step, the angel suggested another layer or two of turquoise on a portion of the painting to enhance the change in values. I had a feeling in my dream of awe, that angels would be actively working with me on my elementary attempts at self taught art. I thought, Oh! I am finally hanging out with angels.

This is really amazing.

I woke up with a Wow feeling. I do get seasonal dreams often near the solstice and equinox, this was definitely one of them...laying out the next phase for the journey. I get the feeling that what ever I end up doing this year, it will be inspired.

I also got the message about the 'Change in Values' as the planet Pluto begins to transit my 2nd house....of things we value......yes, angels, I caught that.....a thousand thanks for the heads up.

Beauty and magic takes a lot of work

2008-12-18T11:19:00.007-05:00

Finn & I are packing up the sleigh for a Christmas road trip.

The weather has warmed up just in time for me to clean out the car, rake the last of the leaves from the yard and carport, pack and drive to Virginia.

I love the timing of a sixty degree, dry day right when I really need it.

I stayed on top of the maple leaves all fall, but the oak leaves fell with the cold snap a month ago, and pretty much buried my lawn. I was beginning to get real depressed about the garden view from my window.

It was so delightful to get outside and hear the birds tweeting happily while I raked. Finn was glad to get out too. We have had three days in a row of rain and fog. I always feel better when leaving home if these things are done. Now I am freed up to feast and play.

I did get a start on a series of garden paintings I want to do this winter. I have been wanting to paint this scene for a long time.

I couldn't get the true colors to come through the scan. In real life it does not look quite the same. It is really a bit more greenish than it looks here. It looks like I was hoping it would, though I may fuss with it a bit more after the holidays.

It makes me want to write and illustrate a story book for my granddaughter. Maybe that will be one of her Christmas presents next year.

I just had a giggle over that last line I wrote..........

I have always said I wanted to grow up and live like Tasha Tudor. I read her books to my daughters when they were little. The link takes you to Tova Martins book with all the beautiful photo's of Tasha's garden in Vermont. Ms. Tudor finally let go of her garden last summer, I was sad to hear when she went over the rainbow.

I never even thought about illustrating children's books until I did this painting. My father always gave my sister and I beautifully and whimsically illustrated fairy tale books. He encouraged us to believe in Unicorns and such. He imprinted in me a love of magic and beauty. Just by investing in some great books. I used to spend hours staring into those images of the beauties and the beasties. The beasts were so beautiful and horrific at the same time. The beauties were so enchanting and tragic.

My parents sent my sister to art school. Every line she ever drew was frame worthy. Some people have that gift. I don't. They sent me to gymnastics. I was not born with a green thumb either. My mother never even kept a houseplant. The only garden I remember planting with her was when I was two and she let me poke some zinnia seeds into the little holes she made in the earth. We moved around too much to ever garden as children.

But, I did have this love of beauty. When I figured out I could create natural beauty in gardens, that was it....I studied everything I could about garden design. I tore up and re birthed hundreds of yards learning my craft.

When I was thirteen I loved the beauty of harmony in music, so I made myself learn how to play a guitar and sing harmony. It didn't come naturally, I begged friends to teach me. I locked my self in the bedroom for several years, fingers raw on the ever plucked strings, until I finally did not sound like a cat in heat. It turns out, I could make people emotional when I sang. Even grooms at weddings.

I gave it up professionally when I was being asked to sing at too many funerals. I didn't want to make people sad with my music. I was young and didn't want to be around all that grief. But I had found a sense of beauty that spoke to my soul.

It is the same with my new love of painting. I hasn't happened naturally. But I am getting better at it all the time. I do know, that when I watch the colors spread out on a piece of white paper and form a flower or a landscape, I get that sense of the soulful harmony in the act of creating and I know when I hit a perfect tone, or note. Something magical is trying to happen.

Speaking of magical, Christmas is always magic! Morgan and Barrie were trimming the Christmas tree together the other night. Every now and then Morgan would step back and look at the tree and ask little Barrie, 'Isn't it beautiful'? Barrie would step back, hands on her hips, just like her Mom, and said 'Jus gorejess". Who knows how she picked up such a big word, she won't be two until spring. Must be magic.

Finally

2008-12-10T09:01:00.004-05:00

For two years I have ignored my old website. It was still tied to the nursery in Virginia and just soooo out of date. Finally this week I dove into the land of website building and powered through the resizing of photo's to be Internet friendly for your easy loading...and learning to use the software. So, no painting this week, but I did manage a new creation after all. Gardensofdelight.info has been reborn. Take a look if you like and let me know of improvements I can make.

It is a joy to have this off of my to do list.....now I can get ready for Christmas. Amen

Hibernating

2008-12-05T14:48:00.004-05:00

We have had quite a cold season for the end of Fall. So we are hibernating. Days are now spent feasting on Thanksgiving leftovers, reading and being generally lazy. I have enjoyed cleaning up the house, rearranging things and finally, I have a studio in the basement.

Finn is getting used to the stay at home routine now after a brief confusion over our new schedule. Instead of packing lunch and leaving the house at the same time every day to go outside and play, we are now unscheduled for a brief while and I am soaking it up for all it's worth. He is bored and follows me all over the house. He loves to ride with me to the store, and patiently waits for me in the drivers seat while I shop. He loves his afternoon naps, the big old fuzzy brown dog that looks like a bear. I find him on the bed, with his head on my pillow, snoring away, often. I do owe him some good hikes when we get a warm spell. He is so patient with me and my quiet hours of painting.

I have been painting winter trees with India Ink. I think I'll use this one for my Christmas cards.

It is a quiet thoughtful time as the year draws toward it's ending. I love my peaceful winter days with so few interruptions. It his heaven. I am truly in the painting mode, so many things I want to try now that I have some room to spread out and work. I have things I need to frame for gifts as well. December will go by quickly no doubt.

Snowing and Blowing

2008-11-22T15:41:00.005-05:00

It is unbelievably cold this last week or two. We have been dashing out to do last minute plantings and pond cleanings on the warmest of the days, but those have been few. The Ski resorts are thrilled with at least six inches of snow falling just in time for Thanksgiving. I am thrilled to be winding up the planting season and starting on the painting season.

I spent last weekend looking through and organizing hundreds of old photo's of the historic gardens I have worked in or visited over the last thirty years. I was getting ready to speak at the Highbriten Garden Club about my experiences working at Oatlands Plantation restoring the gardens with Alfredo Siani during the late 1980"s.

I found a photo I had taken of the orangery at Dumbarton Oaks. I decided to paint the scene. It was my last watercolor project for class. It makes a wonderful vignette of the corner of the room with the creeping fig scaling the walls and growing through the window. Garden scenes like this have always thrilled me. Much like the fairy tale books my father brought me filled with enchanted paintings of fairy tale gardens. I am sure I had a painting in mind when I shot the photo way back when. Art and gardens combine so beautifully. I love the vines growing around the oriental wood carvings along the walls of this building.

I used to spend a lot of time at Dumbarton gardens, visiting at all times of the year. It was designed by a woman, very rare in the USA, Beatrix Ferrand from 1922-1947. It is one of the most beautiful gardens I have ever explored. Please enjoy the photo tour of the garden at the link above.

When I finished this painting I started reclaiming my kitchen, which has been an art studio mess for about a year. I moved all my art stuff into the basement I prepared last summer for a studio. It's amazing to have such a cozy painting space, I don't know why I clung to the kitchen counter for so long, except that that is where the sun shines into my dining room, and I get to look at my garden from the big glass doors. I have many garden scenes I want to paint this winter. It is so nice to be able to see my dining room table again. It is also amazing how much I have painted in the last year. But that is what I set out to do, just about a year ago...I wanted to practice the discipline of painting everyday.

What a difference it has made. Last winter, the last painting I did was frame able, after three months of disasters and experiments. It hung in an art show this summer. Today I realized my first painting done this winter is worth putting a frame on. I can't wait to see what I am creating by the end of this winters painting marathon.

2008-11-08T07:45:00.026-05:00

It is peak fall color here in the foothills of western North Carolina. It is so radiantly red and gold around here that I am feeling light headed from all the beauty! North Carolina is also now a blue state!

This painting is my homework for my

Monday evening art class. I have little experience with landscapes and water, but I do kind of like this one. Practice, practice....

It is fun to be painting the fall colors in the evenings that I am working in every day. Peak season has passed in Blowing Rock, but I did hit the peak season in Virginia on Halloween weekend. My fall color season has been wonderfully long. The leaf raking is continuous. Yesterday, I cheated and borrowed Michael's leaf blower.

Working is the word...we have started landscaping some of the apartment

buildings in Boone this fall. Some big and badly needed projects. Students living in the buildings kept thanking us for the transformation of beds full of cigarette butts and beer cans into living gardens. The weather was beautiful and cool,

which we were grateful for because we had to fill raised beds with amended topsoil, one wheelbarrow at a time, maneuvering around all the parked cars in

front of the beds. We are sore....but a great work out.

Michael was down after jumping out of his truck bed and badly spraining his ankle. So it was up to Matt and I to get the heavy work done in good time. One student, Thomas, did play the banjo for us one afternoon from his third floor balcony. We really loved that.

Finn had to spend the week tied to a tree while we worked in the center of town. He was bummed, so many garbage dumpsters, full of remains from the tailgate parties at ASU, so little freedom.

The first project was done by Thursday, a great week, and we have a new President elect!

I visited friends and family for Halloween weekend, taking Miss Barrie Ann trick or treating in Waterford made for some great laughs and memories. I loved Airynee's glow in the dark horns....and once Barrie got a taste of an M&M she wouldn't let go of her little pumpkin bucket full of treats even though her hands were about frozen by the end of the evening.

The gardens in Waterford were transformed by the elementary school classes into Halloween celebrated around the world. Neil Keller's gazebo, became a Greek setting with people

in robes with lightening bolts in their hands. The barn was a Mexican celebration of the day of the dead with a mariachi band. Another garden depicted Halloween in Japan, another had an Egyptian pyramid. It was awesome. I got to celebrate with so many of our clients in town, so great to see them all again. Lot's of hugging.

Saturday we girls picnicked in Middleburg, and toured Goodstone farm in the gators so Barrie could see the new baby cows and sheep. It has been a long time since Airynee, Morgan and I spent an entire day together, just being.

Barrie fits right in, with our giggles and stuff. We played in piles of leaves and on Barrie's new playground.

I do love fall, and my family.

My daughters both called, after they voted and after the election. It feels so good to talk to them at such an important moment. We all just hopped onto another timeline, in the history of things.

Barrie is just the happiest and busiest little thing.

She knows it's all good.

2008-10-19T13:54:00.026-04:00

Although she died when my mother was thirteen, Winnifred Vermilion was a big part of my family oral and preserved history. I have spent the cold Sunday morning leafing through her journal written in the 1920's. On the first page, dated Nov.4th, 1920, Sherman, Texas, she has written the alphabet with symbols underneath each letter. 'A Written - 'code' she notes underneath.

It is an accountants journal with its charts of weight per bushel of grain, and it lists the quantity of seed required to plant an acre of parsnips and any other vegetable. Also charted is the carrying capacity of a freight car and so much more, typed on the inside binding, front and back, loaded with business information. Each page is numbered. The pages are crisp and yellowed and it looks as though many have been ripped out. It smells musty, she wrote in pencil only. On page 11 is her first entry.

'Hope'
But there should be -love-hope-faith-honor and chastity.
Truth like a white winged dove-should reign supreme.
Love next-faith and faithfulness; walk hand in hand.
Beauty and  contentment_ in close communion.
If unselfishness were the ruling Monarch, the whole earth and the people on it_ the beauty of it would completely out rival the brightness of the sun_ where no cloud could ever hide.
But Selfishness has blackened the whole world.

Winnie, as folks seemed to have called her in her younger years
was a radical in her day. She wasn't a baptist. My mother recalled having rocks thrown at them as they walked down the street because of this. There are many rants in her journal on this subject, especially after  a minister stops by unannounced hoping for dinner, for whom she killed and cooked a chicken, though he was behaving strangely.
She wonders if he has some deep trouble which is the cause of his peculiar manner, writing 'No matter_the world is full of people in trouble. I wanted to be kind but I fear I failed.'
She didn't think much of organized religion. Though most of her writing is spiritual in nature.

She questioned whether he was a landmark baptist, or a convention man. Whatever he told her, she was not convinced. "He left just like he came_without warning", she writes.

I look at her photo, yellowed, she is sitting on the floor listening to the Victrola. Hair gone wild. Of the hundreds of photo's I have seen  of her, this is her only hippie shot. My sister Vanna inherited her hair for sure.

She looks much more together in this one with her daughter, my grandmother, Aubrey.

They weren't popular in town because there were no permanent men in the household for many of their years in Texas, she rented out to boarders. I think her maiden name was Craig, due to letters from old friends that are tucked into the journal addressing her in quotes as 'Winnie Craig'.

Foster was her married name, a son died very young in that marriage, I saw his birth/death certificate in an old box a long time ago with a very scary looking Klu Klux Klan ID card. I don't remember the name on the card, it is long gone.

I was told by my mother that during the depression she married a man she hated. She had a young daughter, was widowed and felt she had no other choice. She couldn't stand to bear his children, and gave herself two abortions with knitting needles.

He eventually shot himself in the foot and died of gangrene. (I get a glimpse of her on that run down farm, refusing to use her healing skills as well as she should have at the time)

They were not too popular either, due to his temperament. He was always threatening to shoot people. There is a receipt for a memorial stone for Robert E. Vermillion tucked into the Journal dated Jan, 22, 1940.

Apparently the horror stories she told the neighborhood children who sat at her feet, captivated, while she quilted and chain smoked on the front porch, came from that time. They were stories of murders, suicide and disappearances. My mother also told variations of these stories to roomfuls of little girls tucked into sleeping bags at the slumber parties my sister and I had often when we were young. We loved to hear them, huddling together for comfort, as she recounted the bizarre in the darkness of candlelight for us.

Aubrey, my grandmother grew into a graceful beauty,

did some modeling and soon married a tall handsome wildcat oilman, but he was gone soon after my mother was born. It was up to Winnifred, Aubrey and Barbara to raise each other, this was during the war when money was scarce and most things were rationed. Whatever memories Aubrey carried of her childhood she kept to herself. But at times, bursts of anger and rage erupted out of this gentle, peaceful woman that did tell a story of feeling overwhelmed at times. Growing sweet smelling roses brought out her gentle beauty.

My mother called Barbie Jean, spent her pre teen years, watching the Hardy boys, Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. She taught herself to dance from these movie stars so she could go on to become something other than a fatherless, poor and somewhat lonely little girl in El Paso.

She formed big dreams while working in the gardens with her grandmother playing with her chickens and kitties while her mother was away working as a traveling saleswoman who peddled brassieres between Tulsa and Dallas. Her dreams were in bright living color too.

My mother sent a letter to the seed company asking for some baby seeds. They sent her a pack of baby pea seeds instead. She had been wanting to grow a sister. She thought the seed company was so stupid they didn't know what baby seeds were.

My mother loved her chickens and kitties. They even had a pet pig that rode in the convertible with them into town.

They quilted a lot. I still have a few lace doilies my great grandmother created, though all of the quilts have worn to dust.(My sister Vanna has just taken up quilting with a frenzy!)

I don't get that Winnifred was an outgoing, affectionate woman. She seemed to have high standards and integrity. She did hold great love, poetry and beauty in her soul. That is evident in her journal.

Later as a dancer, my mother sewed all her costumes, and fought hard for abortion rights. Our family has never gotten over the knitting needle story. One thing is clear in the journal, when facing difficulty and hard choices, she based her decisions on the inner energy of love and from a higher perspective.

Three pages of Winnifred's Journal have all her trees shrubs and flowers listed. In another section she has listed all of her tools. It was her garden that fed them in the tough years.

There are loving letters to Aubrey tucked in there, pamphlets and receipts. There are sketches of dress patterns and a few sketches of faces as well. The photo;s of her standing in front of the morning glories resemble my houses and gardens before I ever found these lists and photo's. When I discovered the journal I realized the same exact plants were growing in my garden that year.

I have always felt a connection this woman who I never met. It is evident in her journal that she was sensitive and brilliant. An intellectual and a thinking woman. Her heart had definitely been broken somewhere along the line. She knew a lot of trials. There is a recurring theme of feeling an outsider in her writing over the years, few personal or daily details. She mostly pondered a big bright picture of the what the world could be.

Winnifred always said she was just going to die in her sleep one day, and she did, the same year Aubrey married again, and life got much, much better in many ways for both Aubrey and Barbara. It is clear in their letters the three women loved each other deeply. None ever felt they married a true love. These women married for survival. Which is funny, because they all worked for a living, everyone of them, even when they didn't have to.

Miss Barrie Ann Walker has the ancestry of some very interesting, and loving women in her DNA. At times my daughters and I have to overwrite a belief system that life is a struggle due to some sort of cellular memory in our blood. But, that is only because we also know that sometimes, not having a lot of monetary resources doesn't mean that we aren't with out the talent, wit, grace, beauty,brains and common sense that we inherited from her as well.

I have her woven native american basket on my dresser, I always have.

It is filled with little trinkets from her lifetime and now mine. Someday Barrie may want to root through the basket as she learns to empower herself by learning who she is and hears the stories about the women who paved the way before her. I have added her mothers baby bracelet and other such things.

She enters a world that is so different, so much improved, yet still so much the same, as the one her great, great, great grandmother traversed. She raised her daughter and granddaughter as a single woman amongst religious intolerance, during two world wars, the dust bowl and and the great depression. Dang!

In spite of their dire circumstances there is much evidence of beauty, passion and joy that accompanied them on their journey as well. I am grateful for knowingabout her, even a little.