The other passion

I LOVE my fibre art! I Love to sew and draw and paint and design- BUT- I also love the garden! As a result of having done so MUCH art, the garden has suffered this year. First the winter took its toll, then the neglect by the "Chief Gardeness". However, Nature is very forgiving. Looking out the window the other day, I felt like there was really nothing in the garden yet. Not so!

The first thing I found was just by following my nose. DROP DEAD GORGEOUS FRAGRANCE!!!

A spinosissima rose, Kakwa. It positively drips bloom and perfumes the whole neighbourhood.

Not a spectacular bloom

.. but very pretty in a vase in the house for a short time. The entire house is fragrant while the petals remain intact.

Continuing in the white department, I found the pretty , crisp white Bleeding Hearts growing in semi oblivion at the side of the house, almost inundated by a deep morass of dead English Ivy- winter killed! Many stiff, aching muscles and six containers full later, the ivy is GONE and the dicentra shimmers in its glory!

Still in white, dicentra alba, White Bleeding Heart!

.. no fragrance, but such a clean freshness to the whole plant!




There IS colour in the garden too. There are lots of pink and purple tints in spring. Peonies are JUST breaking buds with the help? of the ants.( the jury is out on the ant story!)

Great promise of pink peony Sarah Bernhardt here .

Early pink peony Catherine Fonteyn

Deep in the heart of Ms Fonteyn! I may have plans for her later!

Allium in full explosion 

Allium Christophii

Dame's Rocket

The rest of the current pinks are in the back garden. I guess there ARE a few things in bloom! There is a scattering of purples-

Columbines- pink, purple and white

And a few early Iris Siberica

White columbine

At the front of the house, I have used Sunshine Impatiens in with Hosta Albo Marginata and I splurged on a big mixed basket of calibrachoa, Million Bells, for the big urn. As an avowed perennial gardener, it grieves me to plant annuals but I have always used shade Impatiens to fill in the blanks. The gardeners among us though will know that shade Impatiens is still on the disabled list with a fungal problem. VERY few places are selling it this year, NONE were last year. So, Million Bells and Sunshine Impatiens it is! Looks cheery and bright.

Calibrachoa and an unnamed little yellow daisy- very primary colours in an otherwise pastel garden! And last, but not least is my favourite little corner of the back garden. There is not much going on there just yet but it will soon be awash in Sarah Bernhardt Peony!

An old Amelanchier on the left, Hakonechloa  Aurea with an urn and a basket behind it and Sarah B, about to burst in the background!

I DO love gardening and MUST make more time for it. After all, half of my subjects for art quilts come from the garden!

Even though this is not needlework, it inspires my needlework so I will post this on the needleandthreadnetwork.blogspot.com but I am also adding another post that IS the start of a new piece, so check that out too. It is based on my little Poppies Aglow but is version 2 - bigger.

Happy Canada Day

One corner of our garden last night- 30 June, 2013, about 8:30 PM

My view while I was enjoying a cup of tea

LOVE these pale little Columbines . They are almost finished for this year. We have deep blue and bright pink ones and one, not very prolific pure white one. Very old fashioned and pretty! The hummingbird likes them!

I hope you are all enjoying a very happy Canada Day? I especially wish some joy to our friends in Alberta and hope that they are soon well past this current sadness and agony.

We have a cool, grey day today but , true to form, it is not raining- YET! Today is our 47th wedding anniversary and , having celebrated so many times, we realize that 01 July is rarely rainy! There is a fact for you :-)

I have been gainfully employed, ( see below) although hampered by a splint on my right ring finger! Not TOO sure it is helping as when I remove the splint, the finger "triggers" VERY tightly now and is hard to open up! Guess who is NOT a "nappy camper"????? Anyway, I have some work to do on a bit more of the detail, more work on the carpels and then the bit of background. Then.... clear sailing to the blocking, the facing and the hanging sleeve. I WANT to do some more this summer but I am not sure with this stupid finger. There are so many ideas burning in my head. I may just have to bite the proverbial bullet and get on with making arrangements for the surgery and have done with it. I dread the long recuperation time though.

Getting very close

The peony to date


I wish you all a very happy Canada Day. Enjoy family and friends and return home safely .

Little experiment

I have been having a beastly time photographing red flowers with my digital cameras! I am not alone! Red flowers come out very often looking like red blobs, no contrast, no nothing, just red blobs! Anyway, tonight is overcast and good light for photography in the garden and I was interested to try to get a few pictures of the martagon lilies which are in full, magnificent bloom right now. I may post a couple of red blobs later but the pink martagons are well worth showing you and we will just put the blobs out of our minds!

The experiment consists of photographing the blooms with two cameras to see what the difference is , if any. Very interesting! I use a Canon S 100 and a Panasonic Lumix DMC ZS7. Here are the pics! Canon first-

Both of these were taken with the Canon .

The next ones were taken with the Panasonic Lumix.

Do YOU see a difference? My white balance maybe needs coordinating  but I forget how to change it on the Panasonic. I think this colour is truer.

Anyway, are they not lovely flowers! They were given to me by my very dear, long departed friend, Anita, a superb gardener.  Enjoy.

More gardening

Still not got the energy to get back to work but will start a bit this afternoon. However, I HAVE played in the garden a little, especially with my camera. It is a funny year! Some things are gorgeous while others are verdant and lush but flowerless . Maybe it is all the rain?

Allium christophii- it is having NO trouble blooming! This one will get cut off before it seeds or it will be everywhere!!

...like the normal Alliums! They are rampant. The colour is a bit crazy here but I do like them at this stage.

A wild coloured geranium (pelargonium) 

...and a very quiet, but VERY promising stalk of pink Martagon lily

Same lily. I'll try to get a pic when it finally opens. The bottom few lower buds are showing pink now.

Kind of delicious as a result of incorrect White Balance !  

The same peony with correct WB , surrounded by a wild white rose.

And here is the true colour-it is peony Sarah Bernhardt, a pink geranium and Little Gold Edger hosta.

I like Sarah! I have bowlsful  of her lush blooms in the house!

Antique Damask rose, rosa Celsiana

She blooms only once but soo prolifically and such wonderful fragrance!

A lush, green corner with Variegated Solomon's Seal. I adore this plant!

The flowers of Thalictrum Aquilegifolium

Love the fluffy flowers and the foliage remains green and pretty all summer. It is a nice filler for a shady spot!

So, if I cannot find the energy to quilt, I can always stare at the garden and take pictures to work from when I DO have the energy! Hope you enjoyed this little tour of our garden, June, 2013. More pictures to follow but hopefully, AFTER some quilting :-) When needleandthreadnetwork.blogspot.com is open later today, I will post this and apologize for lack of needle and thread!

Back to reality

Our long awaited visit is over. The family has returned safely to Tennessee after a number of adventures including the sad and unexpected death of our daughter's car on the trip north !!! All worked out in the end, but .... We had a great visit but are really tired now. Our normally tiny family of two ( since we lost our Babe to the southland) was increased to eight for the week so it was a shock in some ways. We normally lead a VERY quiet existence. The gaiety and busy- ness was fun though. I hope they all enjoyed it!

The garden is bursting at the moment. It has some really lovely bits in it but other parts are spoiled from the excessive rain we have had recently. More forecast tomorrow!

Peonies at peak!

Morden Centennial rose and the new path

Dipladenia- never grew it before !

Another hanging basket coming along nicely

We are very pleased with our new path. It nearly killed DH and I making it!!

Closer shot of Morden Centennial. It is lovely this year.

My favourite corner :-)

I have a lot of work to do outside but also am DYING to get back to my work. I am , in fact , dying to get DYEING! Time to finish the big peony. Hope you are all enjoying families too and the nice summer weather.

More Garden- a very special night

There is a day or two every spring which is my FAVOURITE day or two in the year. It is that magical time when the tiny leaf and flower buds on the trees burst just enough to show colour. At sunset, the world is draped in gold, chartreuse and bronze lace , all backlit by the setting sun. Our friend, elle, in Manitoba, craving spring asked me to try to get a picture of this if I could. It is almost too late tonight , but I did go out and get a shot across the back yards north of us with the sun shining through that lace. As well, I got a couple more hellebore pictures that show the colour of my two favourites, even though it was hard to get good focus. Bear with my , for the sake of elle and maybe Margaret in AB who likely  has little spring too.

Better colour for red hellebore

Better colour for black hellebore

Not the best picture but I shall try to remember to do it again tomorrow night at a better time

Still no creativity, but something nice to enjoy

We are still soldiering on with our cleanup, redecorating etc so the creativity normal in this house has been put on the back burner. I am VERY frustrated but am VERY happy to be getting some of these things done. As today was such a gorgeous day and as DH had indoor work to do- one man work, no wifey required, I went out into the garden to work . It is a HUGE job every spring, cleaning up after the winter. It seems to get harder every year. The garden is no bigger. Wonder what the problem is ? ;-) Surely I am not the problem!! Anyway, there are lots of nice things coming in the garden so in lieu of art, here is garden. Enjoy! (Especially elle in MB because I suspect she has very little spring yet!)

A little renegade anemone blanda in the lawn!!!

My prized "black hellebore"- looking very blue. It is blue black.

Daffies above and below 

The squirrels still bite the tops off even though the daffy are SUPPOSED to be poisonous. Someone should tell the squirrels!

Forsythia. It is on our neighbour's side of the fence but we get the benefit

Magnolia Soulangeana HAS to be THE hardest flower to photograph- especially in a stiff breeze!

A spotted pink hellebore

Nice deeper spotted pink one

This plant is magnificent, VERY hard to get the colour right though. It is silly to take garden pics in the brilliant sun.

Tarda tulips and Muscari and Scilla- perfect spring picture, too bad it is not better focussed :-(

I went out again to try to get a better shot of the Tardas but they were closed for the evening as they were out of the sunshine. I will try to get a good pic of them tomorrow. There are millions in a huge swathe!