Turks cap Lilly

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

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

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.

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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

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

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 Robert 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

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

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!