Vastlands

Ahh, the feel of some heat last weekend while in Pasco was a pleasant alternative to the recently dank Puget Sound. Driving solo for four hours, listening to great music, and traveling through the gorgeous wide expanse of Eastern Washington was so meditative. I love the open treeless landscape, the rolling grasslands, and the regular patterns of sagebrush dotting terrain punctuated by deep gorges. I feel so at ease in that vast landscape where the sky is uninterrupted and clouds, in all their variety, are more dramatic. I've never been to Montana but I appreciate Big Sky Country. That transition from sageland to Ponderosa Pine forests, more noticeable on the way back, is so dramatic and compressed while climbing up to the Cascade range. The photo above was taken out the car window while driving upwards of the speed limit just outside of Pasco. I stopped in Prosser to visit The Sewing Basket, a tiny very old house that is packed from floor to ceiling, in room after room, with the greatest collection of quilting fabrics anywhere that I have seen in Washington. I wish I could stop in there all the time for my projects. Here's what I picked while in this sweet shop.

My Lovelies, Well Just a Couple

Tulip 'Marietta'

Syringa 'Maiden's Blush'

This baby opossum has been hanging out in our garden
for the past couple of days.
He's quite tiny.
No sign of his mother around anywhere.
I'm not happy about him taking up residence
since 'possums are not known to be friendly to bunnies.

New Dress

One meter of four different fabrics were brought back from Shanghai from the famed fabric market for me to do with what I wished. I would have loved to have seen the floor after floor of fabrics! The market is famous for silks, cashmeres and wools. This filmy embroidered cotton fabric was a lovely choice. Thank you dear! I squeezed a dress out of the meter and lined it with a plaid cotton to give it some body. I used an invisible zipper, which I didn't realize I was buying at the time, and don't think I will ever buy one again. It was much harder to install than a regular zipper. I haven't hemmed the dress yet, but I'm thinking I will have a two tiered hem, with the plaid lining showing a little bit below the embroidered fabric.

New

I'm feeling a kinship to this Polystichum munitum as it reveals new growth a little bit at a time. I too am feeling renewed with a rigorous exercise routine that seems to be chipping away little by little at my maladies. Yeay. I am seeing light at the end of the tunnel at last!
Such sweet goodness in my woodland border!

bracelet

I finished this linen embroidered bracelet for my sister, who is quite ill, and hope that she likes it.

Yesterday while on my routine walk a bald eagle flew about 30 feet above me and while he glided by i watched as he turned his head back to look at me. It was a magical moment to have a connection with such a gorgeous and powerful bird. I love how eagles are so common here. Last week three of them were circling high above while my cat walked among the thickets in our garden. I feared that they would swoop down and snatch her. Eagles, peregrines (probably too small to take out a cat), red-tail hawks, coopers hawks, coyotes, dogs, raccoons, you've got to be a pretty smart or lucky cat to survive around here.

Flowers

Oh the joy of spring flowers, but to add fragrance on top of that (v. carlesii!) is divine.
bergenia

viburnum carlesii

scilla
Some day I will make a scilla meadow like at Kew.
Vast blueness.
That dreamy image is a source of meditative contentment when needed from time to time.

Happy Earth Day!

I've been green even before there ever was an Earth Day. In a drought ridden childhood natural resource conservation was de rigueur. If you were a water waster you were worse than the devil. My favorite and most rewarding work as a landscape architect has been land restoration (reintroducing native plants into disturbed sites), and effectively planting thousands of trees, through my plans, throughout the world. Those trees will far outlive me, hopefully, and keep pumping out oxygen that someday my grandchildren will inhale. Creating habitat for wildlife has been a priority of mine since making warrens for jackrabbits to hide in from the red-tailed hawks long long ago. Now the vast array of song birds, pheasants, insects, snakes, deer (not always welcome!), raccoons (get out of here you tree branch smashing nasty critters!), and mice (I'd rather not invite them!) enjoy our planted thickets, abundant nectar, pollen, fruit and seed sources. I became a non-red-meat eater in college after reading Diet for a Small Planet, and have never ever wanted red meat ever since. It's funny how the reason for this decision was discussed on NPR today as something new, as a way to help the global warming problem, but global warming/pollution/resource depletion are not new concepts. Eating home grown food has been something I've done since childhood too, but now the eat local movement is taking off. I'm pleased that these sort of notions are getting more attention, but gosh it has taken way too much time to reach this moment of widespread consideration.
Here atop our porch column's capital is a Stellar's Jay nest. Mama sits there all day long, usually only her tail visible. She has built quite a fortress for her babies. She resided here last year, yet atop another capital. Maybe this year's site has a better view. Change can be good, as long as it is headed in the right direction.

Coyote

Dashing across the lawn and through the shrubs at a full clip was a fluffy tailed coyote this morning. I bounded off to the north window to take another look and sure enough there he was standing around looking for his next victim (usually a neighborhood cat). He was big and lithe with a tail that looked like attire that my grandmother wore around here neck.

What date is it?

I know it's April 18th, but looking out the window is a vision of December! It's snowing very heavily. The latest recorded snowfall for this region is happening right now! My serviceberry tree, magnolias, rhodies, columbine are all bursting with bloom and probably yelling out, "what the heck is going on here?!" It's amazing.
Here's a little felt project that I worked on recently.

Revealed

While trying to de-stash I come across lots of little reminders of sparks of inspiration. Here's a doodle of whaling ship flags that I sketched while in a museum on Nantucket. I love flags/burgees and have always wanted to make lots of flags. We fly the Maryland flag in the backyard not because we love Maryland, although a fine state, but the graphic is so splendid.

hope

I don't want to be a whiner so I won't describe why my posts are less frequent other than using a word that haunts me from dawn until dusk and from dusk until dawn: pain. But there is hope. Daisy chain making, a meditation so idyllic, offers a dive into the pool of momentary pleasure that far surpasses any manufactured drug. Perspective is relative to a sibling of far more dire consequences. So fret not and see the hope. Enjoy the little daisies in life.

happy birthday my sweetie pie!

the cookies are from our local bakery that is always an inspiration for cookie decorating. they are the masters of cookies!

Grafting

4-H is cool not only for kids but for adults too. Last night at our monthly club meeting the Peninsula Fruit Growers Association came by with root stock and scion wood to demonstrate how to graft fruit trees. I think it was pretty boring for most of the kids but the adults were enraptured.
We have a monster pear tree in our back yard that is a remnant of the old strawberry farm days. It seeded a baby pear nearby and that was the tree of choice to sandwich my four pieces of scion wood. Apparently there is one type of apple, Winter Banana, that can be grafted onto pear trees, so I grabbed one of those branches from the pile that the fruit guys/gals brought. The others were pears: Orcas, Concord, and something Angeline (I'll have to go check the name again). This morning off I went with my fishing knife, some electrical tape, a knife guard I made out of cardboard (so I wouldn't slice up my hand during the whittling process) to the little pear seedling by the fence.
In the past half dozen years I have been using that little tree as a source for chew branches for the bunnies. I was never intending for the tree to be anything more ornamental or structured. So today I had to look at the tree anew and prune it to a somewhat fruit tree shape before I started the grafting process.
Taking the scion wood out of my hunting jacket pocket I scanned the tree branches for the right diameter that would match that of the scion pieces. Finding pretty good matches I started the whittling on the scion and the tree branches (after trimming the tree branches back quite a ways). The cardboard guard was utilized once I needed to make that crucial slice partway through each branch and scion piece. Then these pieces slide together like a dovetail joint (not exactly, but more like puzzle pieces) so the layers of exposed biological matter lined up and became a new branch.
To seal the wound electrical tape was wrapped tight around the joint. Apparently in July I am supposed to slice through the tape and let it fall off on its own, assuming that the graft takes and the branch starts to grow. We'll see.
It should be fun to see if any of the grafts succeed. Then I will have lots of new varieties of fruit in a few years. That's nice, especially since I chopped down my huge Gravenstein apple tree last week. So sorry tree, but it was getting so huge, and I planted it in the wrong spot, where I needed easier access to the gate in the fence. The wood from that lovely tree is so buttery beautiful. It will be used to flavor barbecues this summer.

Acupuncture

Thank goodness for acupuncture!!!
Pain that can't be reeled in by conventional medication is tamed with slender needles placed in the most unusual multiple locations. Sometimes it hurts and sometimes I can't feel a thing as the needles slip into contorted muscle structures. Today I was desperate for my appointment and it did not disappoint. It is a life altering hour from constant pain to a release from pain's grip. Medication is useless, ineffectual, causes horrid side effects for this patient and yet prescribed with abandon by doctors. No MD prescribed acupuncture to me. My physical therapist convinced me to give it a try, and thank you to her!

Doodling with Petals

These are fallen petals of Viburnum bodnantense 'Dawn' from a recent bouquet on the kitchen table.
On a visit to one of my favorite nurseries today I ran across a plant that seemed too good to be true. It is a climbing butter yellow bleeding heart called Dicentra scandens. It grows up to seven feet tall and blooms during the summer. I love bleeding hearts. I have a white one and used to have a pink one. Their delicate blooms are so charming in early spring but to find one that blooms in the summer on a climber, wow! This will be fun to try out, maybe climbing up my snowbell tree. Oh, the image conjured up is dreamy!

bloomerific

a couple of my lovelies
that bring such happiness
corelopsis pauciflora

ribes sanguineum

New Toys

Flower Paper Punches!
Fun!
What will come of these new toys?

The song Anyone Else But You from Juno makes me long for my old guitar (that I gave away years ago...what an idiot!). I'll have to restring my son's guitar and give it a try. Only two chords, C + G, for the whole song so I think I can handle that.
I was so excited when Diablo Cody won for best screenplay for Juno. I loved the wildly original dialog.
Here's the song:


later...
left hand nails clipped. right hand nails long. guitar restrung and tuned. wrote down the lyrics. now i'm strumming away. it's the antidote to news of death threats to Wangari Maathai, Bush's threat of vetoing a water-boarding torture bill passed by the Senate, news of high concentrations of mercury and flame retardant chemicals in fish in the most isolated reaches of National Parks, record profits for Exxon as they whine about a settlement for Prince William Sound at the Supreme Court, and much much more. a sweet song goes a long way to soothe an otherwise crazy world.

A New Apron for Spring

My old apron was getting pretty tired looking so it was time

to infuse the kitchen with some new vitality.
The old one made for a good pattern to cut out the new one.
I just looooovvvvve crocus,
and this one has to be one of my favorites.

New Sheets

I love new sheets!
Here are the latest,
after their first bath,
in front of one of my oil paintings
in the fading afternoon light.

bursting

My sweet plants are emerging from their winter rest with color, texture and fragrance. I love the just emerging buds of the Cornus mas. Such delicate bloom has to be appreciated up close with the blue sky of a crisp cool day as the backdrop. These beauties (Viburnum bodnantense Dawn, Crocus, Cornus mas, Hamamelis Arnold's Promise) exhilarate me to no end.
Thank you lovely beauties for the happiness you exude.

xo

Bias Tape

With ready made bias tape in short supply this handy tool makes bias tape construction a breeze. Yards and yards of tape used up a bit of that fabric stash that i am trying to whittle away. I'll show you what i used it for later.

pam

© All rights reserved
my own pattern
cotton crochet, needlefelting + couching
lining from an outgrown oilily dress
dedicated to a friend that was a crochet expert

Latest Birdie Basket

When it's cold outside the sweet little birdies are hunting all over for bits to keep them going. I like to see them close-up, so I put up my wire birdie baskets, full of black oil sunflower seed, to keep them happy. This birdie basket took all day to make. But it is a very meditative process to make a basket. In my father's opinion the lowest occupation on the totem pole was the basket-maker, and there were threats that if we didn't do well in school we would turn into a basket-maker. I however think it is a beautiful avocation to sink hours into, and wouldn't he laugh to see me now enjoying it so much.

Yesterday there was a line-up on the tree branches while each birdie took their turn in the basket. Spotted towhees, house finches, Oregon juncos, chickadees, nuthatches and sparrows take to the queue. Some days the nasties come by: pine siskins. They are meanies. They fight with each other and scare the other birds away. But none clear the basket faster than the stellars jays. With their size and squawk all others scramble to get out of their way.

Today marked a new level I will go to to try and rid myself of pain: acupuncture. Only one of the needles hurt (in my neck) going in. I was surprised that the one right into my forehead didn't hurt. Towards the end of the season the bottom of my feet felt all tingly like they were electrified. Maybe it was the chi flowing through my body at last. It seems that acupuncture allows your body's energy flow to be restored. When I lived in San Francisco I always wanted to join in on the early morning tai chi that was practiced by the dozens in many city parks each day. But off to work I would go watching the rhythmic flow of synchronized bodies from my seat on the Muni bus. After my kids were born I did enroll in a tai chi class for a year and felt great after each session. I should have kept with it. But there was something fundamentally genuine about those groups in the park, back in San Francisco, through the fog or drizzle, no matter what, those older people, wrapped in black Mandarin jackets, would get themselves out and together each and every day, as opposed to a second story community center room under florescent lighting in Oregon.

Tussie Mussie

Just a tiny bouquet to say thank you.
I just love finding little jewels in the garden this time of the year.
The witchhazel smells sooooo good.
And what a happy yellow it is!

Sun Seeker

No matter how small the space, if there is sun to soak up then that is the place to be.

Watching the Snow Melt

I love having a bit of springtime inside this time of the year.
The forced narcissus bring a sweet air to the kitchen.
They seem to be looking out the window thinking,
"I'm glad I'm inside today!"

Decorated

Of the 243 rabbits entered at the 4-H show today who would have ever guessed
that the little visitor to our garden, that we nourished back to health would, in just one month from when he was found him in our vegetable garden as simply skin + bones, would today win Best of Breed (receiving lots of praise from the judge!) and be in the final 15 rabbits in the Best in Show. Our sweetie deserves lots of cheers for visiting us that fateful day knowing full well of his potential in our loving embrace.

Free Rice

While exploring on my son's computer I ran across a cool site that he had bookmarked. It's called Free Rice. It's a vocabulary game that earns donations of rice to the United Nations World Food Program. Take a look and expand your vocabulary through various difficulty levels and help others at the same time. Sounds almost too good to be true.

Happy New Year!

Still Blooming

After hard freezes, snow, pounding rain and wind these tough gals just want to keep blooming at the end of the year: camellia sasanqua 'setsugekka', viburnum bodnantense 'dawn', kerria japonica, rosa 'the fairy', jasminum nudifolium, prunus 'accolade'. They're inspiring for their fortitude, and a welcome foreshadowing of spring.

Wishing You A Wonderful New Year

Go out and get some exercise, eat well, laugh lots, tell people you love them, give to the less fortunate, teach someone something that you are passionate about, plant a tree, kiss a bunny and smile because you know you are beautiful. Peace.

Brule

Each year I make a new catnip mousie for the wild one. She chomps on that thing like it is a real critter. Then she gets worn out and tucks in for a long winter's nap.
What a lovely holiday! Snow falling all day long adding that extra touch of holiday cheer to our day. We finished our high caloric intake day with creme brule. I don't think I will be hungry again for three days.

Fluff

Ahhhh, it feels good to sit down after baking all day. First up were dinner rolls, then creme brule, then I needed to use up all those egg whites so meringues followed in the oven. The house is nice and toasty with the oven going all day. Time to sit down for some tea.
Cheers.

Ho Ho Ho

This cookie baking season I had a revelation. In the past my sugar cookies never held the cookie cutter shape very well after baking. They always seemed to ooze out of their shape and get quite flat. I always wondered how my favorite bakery made cookies that had such crisp edges compared to mine. Thank goodness for grocery sales, because one brand of butter was ridiculously inexpensive compared to my usual brand and so I purchased this other brand for my holiday baking. Well, what to my wondering eyes should appear but perfectly intact shaped sugar cookies so happy and dear. Yay! I'll never go back to my old brand of butter.

Blocked

Early this morning a big bang was heard at the front of the house. Birds crash into our windows often, so I looked for tell tale feathers on the windows, and a body on the ground. But nothing could be seen until I looked out over the porch roof where an immature goshawk was splayed out on the roof. Alive but stunned, its legs were horizontal on the roof. I watched as he gathered his composure and after several minutes he hoped up onto the talons of one foot, the other tucked up under his body. Did he break a foot? His cadmium yellow leg beamed in the morning light against the black roof. His head pivoted back and forth to gage his surroundings. Such a range of motion for that majestic profile! I retrieved my binoculars to get an amazingly close view of the creature. His banded feathers, that beak, the tail feathers helping to prop up his body, oh so beautiful in his unfortunate state. Then it was time for Nini to head out the front door for the school bus and the sound of the front door slamming and her presence gave him such a start that he mustered all of his strength and took to flight right above her. Glad he was able to fly again she gave me a big smile. Good luck birdie and look out for windows!

This is the first year I haven't made linoleum cut holiday cards in probably twenty five years. I had a design all created and purchased a block to carve, but I just didn't have the energy to expend on the carving. Pain has just zapped my inner resources to create. I feel so weak and a shell of my former self. Am I a hundred years old? It feels like it. Tomorrow marks the solstice and is an important marker for my psyche. It means the return of light. No more sliding further into darkness. Perhaps my pain is amplified by the season of cold, damp and dark. Tomorrow it should be better.

Fresh off the Sewing Table

Sometimes I'll find a scrap of fabric and it talks to me. It tells me what it wants to be. This furry scrap wanted to be a bear with a pretty scarf. So off I went to fulfill the scrap's destiny. The pillow behind the bear was recently made from fabric that my mom brought back from China maybe twenty-five years ago or more. Could there be a truer red?