Floral texture design fun

I have been watching the squash flower each morning and then drop the blooms without setting fruit.
Startling to be sure but a quick check with Google educated me on the roles of the male and female flowers and assured me everthing is fine. The male flower spends only one morning in full bloom and always falls off so no worries. One squash plant sends out both male and female flowers but the female flower needs the pollen from the male flower. Amazing bees! Still, I'm worried that I won't get any squash this year.

Once I snapped these pics I wondered why I had never noticed squash in bloom before. They are surprisingly beautiful.

An interesting point of departure for a new round of sewing! How about an outfit or two based on yellow, turquoise, green and white? A cute jacket with drawstring waist and white pants? Or a bright yellow jacket? A few green tops. Endless inspiration here.

I was also inspired to update the old blog design since I love the texture of the flower. It was time to freshen up the place... because every rose has it's thorns!

One pic of my lovely garden and then off to sew for a bit before the night gets away from me.

This is the Northeast corner of my garden. Here I have squash, zucchini, onion, carrots, buttercrunch lettuce and broccoli growing.

I love watching everything grow.

Gardening for the Soul

I'll tell you, over these past 12 months, give or take a few, I've been nothing more than set up, beat up, chewed on and spit out for the dogs to finish off. Quite literally, without going into details, it has been tough. We relocated, moved across country, and I should be happier to be in this beautiful place.

But alas, having no luck righting my outlook, and only half-hearted sewing mojo, I have completed a few nice garments but still haven't found my happy place.

So, I turned to my garden. Weeding really felt good. Pulling out all the bad and chucking it into a bin.

My boys helped me start a bunch of yucky veggies like broccoli and tomatoes from seed (in April) and we've now set almost all the seedlings in the garden. It has been really fun to teach the boys about gardening and work on this project as a family. We still need to get the peppers in the ground (oooh! and the cilantro) but here's what we've started and planted so far:

6 romas, 6 beefsteak, 4 green pepper, 4 banana pepper, 2 habenero, 5 broccoli, 5 cabbage, 4 bok choi, 6 buttercrunch lettuce, 12 spinach, 3 bush beans, 6 pole beans, 4 peas, 10 Walla Walla onion, 12 Spanish onion, 3 yellow squash, 3 zucchini, 8 cilantro and strawberries.

Only half of the space is used so far. I still need to start basil and oregano. Maybe some petunias and marigolds to keep pests away from my darling broccoli babies. I guess I will go ahead and start planning a flower bed for shaded perennials and figure out what edibles I can intersperse in the landscape for fun and more good eating, and to use up the rest of the flower beds.

I'm too lazy to get out the camera today. I would like to show you my tomato experiment... soon I'll do just that. It actually involves a sewing notion!

I can't believe Cennetta still comes by although there is nothing here to see. I'm sending out a huge thanks and just want to say it cheered me up quite a bit!!

HUGS, Leah