Cure for the Hungry Groundhog Blues

I 'm so grateful to my friend Marta for installing a deer fence all around her garden. And that she really is a neighbor. I could actually walk to her house in under an hour if necessary. These are important facts to consider these days.

At home there are bunnies nibbling Pamela's beloved athyrium ferns. Deer are rubbing themselves against one of the new willows and wreaking havoc to their lovely shapes. We won't even mention what Petunia has been up to except that he now greets visitors as they pull into our driveway.

So can you blame me for inviting myself and my camera over to M's when she let's it drop that the Nigella (Love-in-a-Mist) are blooming?

Here are just of few of her the blooms currently in her garden. No reason why only the bees, birds and butterflies should have the privilege of such views. In order of appearance: Bee Balm, Love-in-a-Mist closed, Love-in-a-Mist unfurled, Nicotiana (... and a blue-nosed watering can... sighted in a previous visit. Very lovely too.)

Garden Dreaming Deep

Took the Midtown Direct to Manhattan this week to see the strike-offs for my new fabric collection. It is due out in Houston for Fall International Quilt Market. I'm with a new manufacturer and very much enjoying the creative but quiet exhilaration of working again with a seasoned, talented design director.

When shown the strike-offs I realized I had before me another case of longing-driven design.

In my neighborhood there are two lovely wisterias whose flowering each spring is a source of recurrent pleasure for me. One grows over the roof of an old well. I'm sure when the original well was built, it was more central to the property it stands on. Conveniently for me it is now at curbside and I get to see it every spring in full bloom as I drive to the supermarket and back.

The other wisteria is a truly unruly one! It grows up a telephone pole and twists and drapes its way across the road on the phone wires. I keep my fingers crossed that the weight of the vine never becomes too heavy to cause a maintenance-crew-alert to chop it down and take it away.

Wisterias are sturdy and tough and can bring down undeserving support systems. This has made me wary of actually inviting it into my own garden. At least until I can figure out a suitable support for it AWAY from my own phone and internet connections or the side of my porch for that matter.

My admiration for it is deep and abiding however so until that day my passion will need to be satisfied with the varieties that can safely "grow" in anyone's fabric stash.

The first image is the repeat of the Wisteria pattern in my favorite colorway.
The second picture show the strike -offs of the 3 colorways with coordinates. The collection is called Dream Garden, by the way. If you click on the pictures you can see them bigger. (This goes for all of the pictures in my blog. )