As if I don't have Enough to do

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

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

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

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 Mary'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

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

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

Sign up soon.......Class Starts January 7th. Enjoy!

Silence is Golden

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!