Earth Works by Nancy R. Hugo - A Review

I love to read gardening books during the winter;  they remind me of gardens of summers past and give me hope for gardens of summers future.   I don't read how-to gardening books, but rather books about gardens written by gardeners about the good, the bad and the ugly experiences in their gardens. 

Old books about gardens are the best - another winter read was  Garden Open Today by Beverly Nichols ,  published in 1963.  How else would I know that in the 1960s  the Fire Department  (at least in charming old England) would come and hose out the gunk from your garden water feature?   Pretty sure even in England this charming service is no longer available.   Mr. Nichols thinks that every garden should have a "water feature"- maybe our back 40 swamp can be re-branded !

Back to  Earth Works by Nancy Hugo - what a delight!    The book is a month-by-month treasure of gardening insights, opinions, and just great writing.    She starts by recommending old gardening books, beginning with my favorite,  Onward and Upward in the Garden by Katherine White that I talked about here.

I like people with opinions and this book is full of them.  On hollyhocks: " Grow the single- flowered ones, not the doubles.  A double-flowered hollyhock is like a 7-foot man who's changed his hairstyle to attract attention".    For July :  "What most gardeners want in July are flowers that need no attention.  They want flowers they can smile at on the way to the air-conditioned car".  Her go-to flower for July is Echinacea, one of my all-time favorites. 

From our back garden - sans water feature!

It's not all snappy comments - I learned that toads don't drink water, they absorb it through their skin. And that the American lawn is the largest crop in the world, using more fertilizer than all of India and Africa do.  Any one who has seen our lawns knows we are most definitely NOT contributing to that scary stat!    I also got a recommendation for a plant for our problematic front slope,  Fire Pink,  that apparently isn't fussy about its growing conditions.   It does have the downside of being red  (I have opinions, and one of them is that most red flowers are hideous), but since I can't really see the slope from the house, I may give them a whirl.

I'm going to go though Ms Hugo's list of "must-reads', looking for her  sure-sign of a great one - a dried pressed flower between the pages.

It's (Finally) Spring!

This week I've been able to do things that I haven't done for months:
 
   1.  Open the front door
   2.  Walk outside without wearing a coat and boots
   3.  See green things pushing out of the ground
   4.  Hear peepers
   5.  Hear birds singing

Halle- frickin'- lujah !! It is spring in New England!

Just to recap, this is the view from our kitchen door a mere six weeks ago:

But, we have moved on.  Most of the snow has melted, although there is still this patch out back.

For those of you who live where it already looks like this ( taken in New Orleans a couple of weeks ago),

you may not understand why this is making me deliriously happy.

I've been raking away the winter debris and uncovering  green shoots.   I have a strategy for raking - I start with the places I can see from inside the house - outside the kitchen windows, the view from my chair and the bedroom windows.    That way when I look out I see cleared beds and green stuff - yippee!

Little sedum rosettes.

And baby stars of Lady's Mantle.

Perennial Bachelor Buttons.

There is more raking to be done, lots more, and it sure beats shoveling snow..

Newly Discovered Endangered Species - the Mailbox

You may be tired of hearing about the brutal winter we've had here in the frozen tundra that is the Northeast.   We've had several feet of snow, most of it in February, and we are still trying to dig out .  Roofs are leaking or have collapsed,  backing out of the driveway is a death-sport, and roads are at about two-thirds their normal width.

And mailboxes - oh, lord, they have taken a beating.   Behold the sad state of local mailboxes:

Our sad box.  Two weeks ago it was firmly lodged in a snowbank, with only the black box visible and totally inaccessible.  Now the final blow -  a fatal snowplow injury.

Bashed box,  ripped from its base and minus the door,  doing the popular downward facing dog.

The double box is a popular look, first seen this season.  When the top box is out of reach and/or demolished, folks have been digging into the snow bank and cramming in an auxiliary box that maybe the mail delivery person can reach.

Another double-decker sighting.   Note the metal poles around the new box.  These folks are delusional if they think those flimsy poles are any match for the mighty plow .

This one is the new upward facing dog position.

No closure is pretty common, as it the leaning, leaning look.   These people have great faith in that puny stick and the rope lashing.

 At least the post is still standing.

Forget it - we've just given up.

And so have we.

The Post Office and mail carriers have been so patient with this situation.  Mail carriers do the full-body out the window to try and reach mailboxes.  The PO staff has been flooded with mail held because of buried, broken and missing boxes.   Expect to see an unusual spike in mailbox sales within the next month.

But it was 60 degrees today, birds are returning, and it is light until after 6 p.m.   Maybe there is hope, but not for the mailboxes - they are doomed.

Stamped Celery Roses

I really need something to remind me that spring will come.  Clearly this view on our deck is not helping.

Flowers - that's what would make me hopeful that this winter might actually end.   These Valentine roses from The Captain inspired me to make some.

I've seen some cool roses made by stamping celery.  It's pretty simple; hack off the end of a celery heart,  brush with paint and stamp away.  I pulled off a stalk or two to get the look of a tighter petal grouping.  

I brushed the paint on to the celery,  tamped it off a bit on a paper towel , and started creating bouquets.

I have a rose stamp that I've never used, so I cut off the leaves and stamped some around my roses.  I've just recently been brave enough to chop up some of my stamps that just aren't working for me anymore.  Sometimes I like parts of the stamp and   I don't feel badly about chopping out the parts I want and horrors - throwing out the rest.

The cards seemed a bit bare, so I added some dots made with Smooch Inks.   A tiny applicator brush  comes in the bottle - perfect for making dots or coloring in small areas.

It's still winter outside, but at least spring has come to my studio.

2013 DIY Calendar Pages

Here are a few more of my calendar pages.  I've been making calendars for family and friends for years.  I started out with pretty simple stamping techniques and it's fun to look back and see how my style has changed over time. One thing's for sure - I'm much more adventurous.   This year I played more with backgrounds and collage techniques and used stamping more as part of the background and less as the main event.  I'm having fun playing with bits of paper and composition this year.

 

I used pieces of blue and green scraps for this page with a bird stamped and cut out of grunge paper.  I love how grunge paper just soaks up color.  

 

 

This page started with one of those artist papers in The Somerset Studio magazines.  I added some scraps, a strip of Tim Holtz tape and the stamped bird. 

 

 

The Pink Page was inspired by Randel Plowman's book, The Collage Workbook.  I love this book - full of ideas to jump-start the process and technical help without overwhelming detail for those of us with limited attention spans.  As a bonus, there are great images you can use in your own work.

 

One of the book's ideas is to make a collage using only one color.  Pink isn't one of my go-to colors, but while you're stretching yourself, might as well go all out! Once the scraps were glued down, I washed  diluted white acrylic paint over the pages to and then splattered  dark pink ink over them.  Added some bottle-cap circles stamped with white acrylic paint and the flower image cut out of  a gadening book.

 

 

 

I'm not a fan of winter, so this is my "Hopeful" page for spring.  I glued bits of paper around the border of a painted and stamped page, then washed over them with some diluted green acrylic paint.  I swiped the edges with a white paint dauber to make a border.  I stamped the tulip onto tissue paper, colored it with pencils and then glued it to the background.

 

Happy 2013!

 

(I'm not sure what's going on with Blogger and highlighting random words that link to annoying ads!   I've tried going back and retyping them, but can't remove all the links.The only link I added was to the collage book.    If anyone knows how to stop this "feature", please let me know.  I'll be checking in with Blogger again !)

 

** PSA Update - According to Blogger help, these pesky links are the work of nasty add ons.  They suggested disabling any suspicious add ons by opening Internet Explorer, click on tools, click manage add - ons, select see-all and then disable any that look suspicious.  I only had two that looked suspicious and both were for links that had shown up in my posts.  I didn't (and don't recommend) disabling anything with recognizable site names - like Microsoft, Adobe, etc.).  Hope this fixes this annoying intrusion into my posting.

Indulged

Despite my best efforts at embracing winter with love, I came perilously close to pitching a major nuttie a couple of weeks ago. Back-to-back snow storms, close to zero temperatures and darkened ski lights (covered with snow) nearly sent me over. The Captain became concerned and found a great weekend get-away at the Biltmore in Coral Gables. He had these lovely flowers sent to our room - what a guy!!

Afternoon tea

Breakfast by the pool. Sun, warm breezes and great food. Afternoon by the pool with waiters delivering drinks and cool towels - a girl could really get used to all that pampering!

We took a trip out to Miami Beach to people -watch and check out some of the art deco neighborhoods. I also drove up to see my good friend Shiela for some art fun and catching up.

What a wonderful weekend - thank you, thank you to The Captain!

Hoping and wishing and thinking of spring!

Like everyone living where winter loves to linger, I'm so very ready for spring. I'm trying to follow this advice: "It is better to find joy in every season than to be hopelessly in love with spring." This view from our deck makes that a bit difficult:

Here is a page I made for my 2010 calendars that speaks to my hate-hate relationship with winter. I stamped the flourishes with acrylic paint, then added the text (distressed a bit) from a wonderful French flower book. I cut out the flowers from the same book, sanded and added a bit of Rock Candy Stickles from Tim Holtz. I love the sentiment - a Kay Foley stamp from River City Rubberworks. I love this stamp and all of Kay Foley's stamps!

Check out those beauties from Hello Naomi. Until spring actually makes an appearance, enjoy these lovely treats and remember, " No winter lasts forever; no spring skips its turn."