Summer..... ah, summer

It was a long, hot summer.

It was full.  Full of painting and creating, keeping the garden watered and trying to keep a 7-year-old entertained when he wasn't in summer camp and I wasn't working.

The first sunflower bloomed in the garden in July.

These golden beauties were the inspiration of a lot of my canvases this summer. 

Meanwhile the garden has been a handful (as always), bursting forth with cucumbers and zucchini.... and -- anyone know what this is?

I'm venturing a guess that it will maybe turn yellow and it's the spaghetti squash I planted. But nothing surprises me out there. I have other mystery squash that have created their own breed and scare me a little. They are orange and bumpy. I'm not gutsy enough yet to cut them open, so I'm leaving them until I need something for a fall table decoration that doubles as a conversation piece. There are also green peppers (the best plants I've grown of that type. Ever.) And the tomatoes are slow to turn this summer.  Unless they are ripening, and my little chipmunk* inhabitants are scurrying away with them.  

*They will be relocated.  Soon.

My paintbrushes have fashioned all types of flowers this summer.  From very realistic to folksy to representational abstracts.  I had the opportunity to explain this during my very first painting class I taught on a Friday night in August.  It was a "Girls Night Out" BYOB concept and fun as hell!  And the time flew by... I'm looking forward to doing more.

I received a book as a gift on multi-media background techniques, which I have started to experiment with.  This technique is called "Scribing."

You expose parts of an underlying color by scratching the surface paint away.  (That's a smashed metal button in the center of the flower, surrounded by a remnant of sheer ribbon.)  When I start out, I never know where I'll end up, but usually I like the end product.

Another high point of my summer was having some much needed landscaping done on the old flower bed outside my back door.  The whole thing had started to erode into the driveway and it was just an eyesore. But no longer! It has been filled in now with the most lovely hydrangea bushes... but before that: on a very hot day, after playing in the sprinkler outside, my son decided to put his mark on the new landscaping stones.

Ever feel the need to leave an impression, even if it's with sidewalk chalk?

 He left me 52 smileys in all (and one heart).

You never know what that boy will do with sidewalk chalk.  Usually it's forming racetracks or maps to new galaxies.

And who doesn't love to turn to Pinterest for inspiration?

I have spent countless hours learning about new art techniques and crafts and DIYing and luscious food (gawd, it makes me hungry!) So I decided to artsy up a couple plain t-shirts using a bleach pen and permanent markers faded with rubbing alcohol.  You know the pins I'm talking about?  Yep.

Glad I got that out of my system.  Moving on....

Hope you are finding lots to keep you inspired and things that make your soul smile!

Caught You Bloomin'!

Spring-into-summer was a flurry of activity this year.  There was the usual rush to get the garden planted (my target is Memorial Day -- it rained so there was about a week delay while we waited for our ability to rototill).  Since we had such warm weather early in the spring, my perennial blooming favorites I usually see around the second week of June made an appearance early this year.

Wait!

STOP!!

Don't come and go while I'm looking the other direction!

Nanny's old fashioned roses.... one of the most delicate, recognizable scents on earth.

It all happened too fast.  Instead of having a few weeks to be surprised and delighted by the colors and textures, it was sort of a mash-up as the poor bloomers gave a confused performance.

While nature was busy on the outside, I was also bursting on the inside with ideas for new art canvases.  There were itty bitty canvases and 3"x5"s and 8"x10"s.  There were layers and layers of colors and brush strokes.  Sunflowers and wildflowers and zinnias and daisies with a few things to say.

"Be" itty bitty blooming canvas.

You know what happens when you water the flowers?

The same thing happens when you feed creativity, it seems.  Breeds more creativity, and yearning.  And decisions.  I could sleep..... or paint.  I could read a book, or watch an online video about learning a new mixed media technique I haven't tried yet.

Somewhere, sometime I will learn about balance.

The unabashed tiger lily.

Meanwhile, nature is so good.  I'm grateful for its reminders.  I was not going to plant pots this year because of my time crunch, but ......... nothing beats the shot of color that annuals provide.  They're so dang cheerful!  So I did it.  I caved in, blithely.

Annuals in pots, because I can't escape the color and like to move the pots around at whim.

The flowers are doing well under the care of my faithful waterers.  My helpers are generous with their time and eager participants, even in 104 degree weather and a drought that hit the midwest these past few weeks.

Dahlia:  fuchsia and purple on a turquoise backdrop.

I have turned my attention to a bit of artistic growth of my own this summer.  My challenge:  to paint larger canvases than I typically find comfortable.  There's a 12"x16" and a 10"x20" staring at me as I write this.  Blink.  Blink.

Just be patient.  I'm working up the nerve.
 

Summertime

During the summer, my garden takes up lots of my spare time (hence, the delay since my last post). But home grown tomatoes are a necessity of life, and so it goes.

It was a crazy summer of weather, with a storm in July that knocked out power to much of our county for DAYS. After all the rain, which came in bursts, the weeds arrived in full vengeance. Turn my back for a week, maybe 10 days, and... HOLY @#(&%^&#!!!!! The buggers have taken over!

I am thankful for the help with watering the garden in between bursts of torrential rain. (My watering buddy is mostly my son, who likes to water but gets most of it on himself rather than the tomato plants). And now, it's harvest time.



...and there are more coming.........



I have a little rabbit who has been a visitor since the spring. I'm thinking he is the one who has sampled many tomatoes but decides each time it's not for his palate. He (if he is indeed the culprit) takes one big bite out of the ripest tomato and leaves it hanging there, forlorn.

I also have "volunteers" in the garden. These are stray seeds that managed to flourish from being rototilled into the soil and sprung forth, encouraged by the hot midday sun. I'm usually so curious to see what will be produced on the vine that I don't pull them like those darn weed invaders. This year I have some weird cross-pollination between a gourd and what I think is a yellow crookneck squash.



Could be that the yellow squash, if left alone, gets a hard exterior and BECOMES an ornamental gourd..... or it's just completely a mutant. Most of them have become a blazing orange color with a hard and bumpy exterior. They will be fun guests in Halloween and Thanksgiving décor. I also have mini pumpkins and the usual dill weed that came back this year.

But back to the tomatoes. After a few days of being preoccupied with other things, I surveyed the garden to see that there was about a half bushel of ripe tomatoes. Not just ripe, but bursting with juice and hanging there like overfilled water balloons. Some had even let loose and dropped to the earth before I could pick them.



An abundance of tomatoes leads to 27 versions of tomato salad, tomato pie, marinara sauce, BLTs, etc., etc., etc. One of the simplest ways to present tomatoes to the dinner table, right out of the garden, is layered with fresh buffalo mozzarella, drizzled with a good olive oil, and sprinkled with fresh basil, salt and pepper. (Sometimes I also use balsamic vinaigrette, but not this time.)

And then there are the low maintenance, lovely-to-see-you sunflowers.



So unassuming.

So cheerful.

So tall and stately.

I imagine they have little gossipy conversations about me behind my back.