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. )

Butterfly Dreams

I have a serious love-hate relationship going on at the moment. It is to the point of being all-consuming as such passionate relationships tend to be. A groundhog, affectionately known as Petunia (last year that seemed to be his main diet), has moved right into the middle of my cottage garden. Petunia used to live in the area of our property known as Amazonia which we left purposely wild so he and others like him could find refuge. Perhaps underground family accommodations got tight and Petunia this year moved to the suburbs.

When Petunia lived in Amazonia, sure he would nibble occassionally in my perennial beds, but there was a respectful restrain to his munching. My coneflowers and bachelor buttons and Petunia all co-existed at the expense of a basket or 2 of petunias. And when I caught a glimpse through the kitchen window of Petunia sunning himself belly-up on the hot asphalt of the driveway, I could only smile.

I really miss my coneflowers and the visitors they attracted. I got to see some of the most beautiful butterflies because of their presence in my garden. I had no idea how much I missed them until this morning when I finally finished a textile design that has been pestering me to emerge. When I finally leaned back and took in what I had been working, I realized what was the nature of the longing that had fuel it.

I'm calling this fabric design "Butterfly Dreams" because that is precisely what it is. And I must thank Petunia also, I guess.

Pasque Flower

In January 2008, I bought a 105mm micro-Nikkor lens for macro photography. Marta McDowell and I had embarked on a new exciting but what seems at times quixotic project: Orchidaceous. I do not live with many orchids. Not for lack of desire. Rather for lack of real estate and suitable conditions to nurture them. So when given the chance to be in the company of blooming orchids I was finding it imperative to have my photographic skills sharply honed.
This lens turned out to be quite challenging, more in the nature of point-and-reshoot-and-reshoot-and-reshoot. I'm by no means yet able to say in all honesty that I know how to use this lens but I'm a bit less baffled than 6 months ago.
And I have had a few delightful visual rewards along the way. Like today's close-up of the seed head of the pasque flower. The pasque is one of the earliest bloomers in my garden. In 2007 it even managed to have its' first bloom appear on Easter Sunday. (This year it gave no heed whatsoever to the liturgical calendar appearing a few weeks later than the Easter bonnets.)
So I find it fitting that it too will be the first to bloom (and seed!) in my newly planted garden blog.