After over a year of absolutely no posts (the garden 2011 did fine), I've committed to posting a Halloween project every day in October. Not sure if this is called a challenge or a game, but it's sponsored by Smeared Ink, an online stamp company that specializes in alternative, vintage and Gothic art rubber stamping. Pam introduced me to their companion forum Smeared and Smudged and this project was one of the first things I read about there. Since Halloween themes are one of my favorite things to stamp, I decided (not without a lot of wavering) to participate. Online challenges are quite the thing in the stamping community but this will be my first experience.

There is a list of links to all of the participants on the sidebar for the 31 Days of Halloween so if you've gotten here looking for garden news (HaHa) and you're as crazy about Halloween as I am, check them out.

So this is my introduction to the stamped projects I will be posting starting Saturday, October 1, 2011. Enjoy!!

Garden News Part Two

First, I want to explain all of the straw bales in the last post. We had been trying to come up with a compost system for the whole last year and nothing was coming together. I saw a system described in Eliot Coleman's "Four Season Harvest" based on straw bales that end up being part of the compost in a few years. We had priced the bales at $5 at the nurseries and ended up being at the right place at the right time to find a farmer who sold them for $2. We hadn't thought far enough ahead of the situation to realize we only needed half of the bales to start with so ended up with half of them in the garage. That's OK for now because the cats love them. Cats? Cats???? We haven't given a cat the time of day for 40 some years but Ken wanted some barn cats and happened to mention it to the goat folks and pretty soon somebody showed up with cats. I liked them immediately because they matched the dogs in color so we kept them. Juniper tried herding them for a week or two but has resigned herself to their wild ways.

The garlic that we replanted last fall, after learning that garlic pretty much likes to be planted in the fall, was ready to dig last week so Ken dug it up for us and Kei Chi and I braided it three days later. So authentic!! Now we just have to get used to using fresh garlic instead of those handy jars of pre-chopped stuff. The asparagus spouts are getting bigger and bigger and are starting to look like asparagus for gerbils instead of asparagus for crickets. Next year for people we hope. The cucumbers are planted along a chicken wire support and just starting to bloom as I got them in so late. Next year, I'll try something similar for the peas which were going gangbusters until a really hard rain just washed most of them up out of the dirt. The tomatillos we planted for fun and for salsa and they are just pretty, like little lanterns hanging on the plants. Inside the bonnets they are about the size of small cherry tomatoes so I guess they grow until they fill them up. I may put some more photos up on Picasa where I don't have to explain and you don't have to "listen."

Garden News

I've been very negligent about garden posts because the weather, rain, rain, more rain and mud, had me pretty depressed for some time. Ken kept telling me to accept what I couldn't do anything about but it took me quite a while to get into that state of mind. We had gotten a really early start and perhaps bit off more than we could chew: an enclosure around the septic tanks, a second herb bed, sodding around both of those beds plus the front yard, setting up our tiny greenhouse, making a compost pile, building an asparagus bed and building a second raised bed for carrots and celeriac. May was gorgeous and we were getting lots done and then it was time to get all those lovely hardened off plants plus all the seeds into the ground and it wouldn't stop raining. By about the middle of June we had had 5 inches of rain and counting. The green bean seeds and the lima bean seeds rotted in the ground and when I reseeded them it started to rain again. I got the viney stuff in very late in June and had to reseed most of it plus the okra. Today, the middle of July, things finally feel like they are coming together. We have green beans and limas and most of the squash up, and although the rows aren't full we will get all that we need. I'll put more current photos in the next post.

Birthday Present for Kate

Birthdays are such fun!! I made this fabric book with the theme of Insomnia for my sister's birthday. Parts of the collages were made in Photoshop and printed onto fabric. Other parts were printed first and sewed onto the substate later. This is the first time I've printed onto fabric although I've had the materials to do it for a while. It was so wonderful that I vowed again not to always be afraid to try something new.

The idea for the pieced spiral on the front cover was "borrowed" from a photo I had saved for years from a quilt magazine. The photo was so small I couldn't tell how the spiral developed so I scanned it into Photoshop at a 600 dpi resolution and then zoomed in on it to see how it worked. It goes together very slowly and I kept getting confused and thinking I had messed it up. I'm definitely going to make more of those. Got a whole quilt planned for them.

Paducah AQS Quilt Show - The Second Year (For Me)

My friend, Jean, invited me along on her annual excursion to the Paducah quilt show again this year. I think I remember Jean saying that the first year she went had the most exquisite quilts and that other years haven't lived up to it. If so, I think it must just be the wonder of it all the first time you see it. Because I wasn't as blown away by the quilts as last year.

Again my favorite quilts were the smaller wall hanging size. They seem more innovative, less repetitive than the bed size ones. The first one is "To Market" by Mary Diamond. I included it here because I know how much Kate is going to like it. The second, my favorite, is "Incommunicado" by Esterita Austin. Not only is it beautifully done but the theme made me laugh out loud. How often have you found yourself with absolutely nothing to say at the most inappropriate times? I have no information on the third quilt but love the colors and the motion of the quilting lines.
Most of my fabrics I got at the enormous Hancocks of Paducah; a bit of it from show vendors. I had just finished Kate's birthday book (next post) and had used a lot of black and white and was still in the mood for that. The other pile is mostly stuff I will use for landscape quilts. Whether I'm quilting or stamping, that seems to be one of my favorite themes.
Jean and I also set ourselves a challenge to make a Paducah quilt ala Judith Montano's cottage quilts. So we took one morning and traipsed around Paducah's "lower town" taking pictures of houses, yard sculptures and whatever else caught our interest. Lower town is an inner city area of lovely houses that the city bought up as they were starting to go to seed. They resold them, mostly to artists, on the condition that they renovate them and run studios or galleries out of them. This wasn't supposed to be a tourist ad for Paducah but I have to add that there are also some delightful restaurants in the quaint little downtown area.

Starting Seed #2

Our seed starting went exceptionally well. I lost most of the celeriac I started because I forgot to water it one weekend we were leaving. However, these four trays of asparagus, tomatoes, peppers, basil, dill and artichokes have been under the lights in the basement or in sunny windows in the breezeway for weeks now. Early this week they expanded to six trays as we repotted and split the tomatoes that had been started in tiny plastic pots. We had to hang another plant light and find another table for them. We still need to split and repot multiple tomatillos of out their tiny starting cells, but then in a week or two it will be time to start hardening them off. We've been told that is a crucial time to do it right, but Ken has done it many times before with "store bought" tomato plants so I'm confident he'll do a great job.

For most of these plants, we have almost twice as many as we plan to use. That may take care of hardening off mistakes. Otherwise, we are going to see if the new Ashland community garden program can use the extras for some of their participants.

Starting Seeds in the Basement #1

On March 8, we put one asparagus seed in each of 16 peat pots. The seeds were a year old with a 70% germination rate for 2009. Since we had made no effort to take care of the seeds properly, I lobbied to use 2 seeds per pot but Ken thought we would possibly get more out of our 32 seeds this way. They started emerging March 19 but for one reason or another we weren't ready with the lights. Those were hung and ready to go late Monday, the 22nd, so we left it for the next morning. The early emergers are probably leggier than they should be at this stage so I blow hard on them when I'm checking on them to strengthen them up as Steve Solomon suggests. (Actually he suggests a fan but they are so tiny.)

As of this morning we have 11 of the 16 up which is 69% germination. I know lots of things can still happen to them, but it is so exciting that we are going to have asparagus started from seed. In a year or two, anyway.