As I write this post, we are starting Advent, and yet, since I haven’t written for many long months, I want to go back to the last bits of summer to show the beauty of the flowers in our garden and the little projects I was able to work on this summer. I am determined to get back to regular posting, especially since I have so many Christmas projects to share with you!
We have been having a very challenging spring, summer, and now fall, I’ll not lie. I’ve been amazed at the human spirit of hope and how we can, in the midst of so many troubles, still find beauty in our days. There has been plenty of struggle and tears, but there have been surprise moments of laughter and awe-inspiring beauty mixed in as well. I suppose this is life, right?
This summer I experimented with growing my own kale, tomatoes, squash, potatoes, and herbs. We have a pretty small space in which to garden, and I wanted items that we would need and eat regularly. My flower garden seeded itself for the most part by depositing bunches of violas in various colors all over the yard. They were so sweet, quite literally! I love their delicious scent and already miss having tiny posies of these beauties around my house. I mean, look at these!
I love having a fragrant garden of herbs and salvia and sage that I can walk through with my fingers out, rubbing the leaves for the bursts of wonderful scent. During the hot summer, the fragrance fills the air in the morning—mmm! My favorite for the past two years has been pineapple sage. I bought two as tiny plants and they grew to be huge! The blooms remind me of bright red crocosmia and when you rub the leaves, they really do smell like pineapple.
My daughter has been collecting fairy figurines and furniture for several years, and I love seeing their little faces peeping out from the alyssum, snapdragons, violas, and thyme. It really is so magical. Even if she outgrows them, I’ll keep those sweet darlings!
As for other forms of creativity, I knitted several more socks and found them to be a perfect portable project. Since I’m a fairly new sock knitter, I just have to make sure I’m not at the point where I have to turn the heel or do any thinking, haha. As long as I’m knitting the leg or foot, it’s a great project to take with me. And I love how fast they knit up! I had several skeins of sock yarn in my stash, so I slowly but surely knit them all up. It was amusing to see how some of them created patterns I had not expected—now I know what to look for in a skein if I’m wanting a stripe. Who knew? I’m working on the last skein right now so I’ll have a pair of Christmas socks—lucky me!
I also kept my monthly happy journal entries up and spent time playing in my art journal. The bonus to keeping these practices up is they are so encouraging and inspiring to me when I pick them up and flip through them. The art journal in particular is my spot to try different mediums and styles and to paste in little bits that I’ve picked up along the way. It’s filled with pretty cards (and my attempted copies of them), drawings and paintings my daughter has made for me, and is a visual feast for me to return to again and again. I love that. We also made time for painting different scenes from favorite books. This one is from My Nine Lives by Clio, a book I bought for myself probably 20 years ago.
As the summer drew to a close, I made a list of Christmas and birthday ideas to make and began knitting, painting, writing, gluing, stitching…all the things! I’ll make another post to show you some of the items I’ve made. So much fun. My only regret is not taking more pictures of the cosmos in our garden. They grew to at least 10 feet tall and towered in the air with their light pink, white, and hot pink beauty. I took this picture at sunrise one morning, not realizing we were due for a frost.
I keenly felt this quote by Gladys Taber that says, “There is—there has to be—a moment the next morning after the killing frost, when the heart is saddened…This is good-bye to summer, flower and fruit and vegetable.” It’s so true. My heart hurt to see my flowers curl up and die or turn black from the frost. Poor dears. But they’ll be back next year.
Speaking of Gladys Taber, her book, The Best of Stillmeadow was a happy discovery this summer. I can’t believe I’ve never read her before, because though I’m not exactly a country woman like she became, I’m very inspired by those who are. 🙂 She and her sister and their families lived in New York City but they both wanted a place where they could go during the summer months and the weekends so their children could experience the country. They got a lot in the bargain and made quite a life. If you enjoy books like At Home in Mitford, you’ll likely enjoy this one, especially since it all really happened!
I’ll close with my sweet little cat, who follows me around and provides me with the perfect cat model for sketching. He’s quite a person, and I’m so grateful for him. He was quite sick this spring but rallied—good grief, I’m so glad because he’s such a sweetie. He’s also a bookworm like we are as you can see.
Well, I’ll sign off for now but I hope you had a wonderful summer and were able to find the beauty in all the little things too.
And have a lovely {and creative} day!
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