Desert landscaping in Tempe, AZ. This is one of four metal boxes that are standing on legs. They look like old kitchen ranges except for the name of an artist embossed on the front and a representation of that artists work. This is a small apartment complex.

A month has come and gone since my last post. I've had a wonderful time in Arizona with my daughter, son-in-law and grandkids. I love desert landscaping, it's so austere in it's beauty, but I wouldn't want to live with it. Once it's in and on a watering system there's not much to do with it. I do get ideas for the bones in my garden from it.

Today is my 67th birthday and I thought I'd share some photos my granddaughter Elissa took. You know, one of the truths about gardening is that the best way to get an overall watering done is to turn a couple of grandkids loose with a sprinker for each of them turned on full blast. By the time they finish soaking each other, everything is watered.

It's raining lions and wolves today, and more coming. This is the gate my granddaughter Janna made for me in one of her art classes in college. I really like being the beneficiary of all her creations.

This is one of my daylilies. See the small insects on the top. Don't know what they are. Today it's 88.9 degrees outside with a high of 98 expected and it's very overcast and humid. It's hard to make yourself get out and work when your eyes are so full of sweat you can't see. But if you don't at least make the rounds of the beds every day you miss seeing some things bloom or ripen.

This rose is Oklahoma, a gift from Cindy on Mother's day.

It's 82 degrees in the shade with sunny skies. We've got a prediction of 96 degrees. Boy, I hope that's wrong. Obviously the nearly 4 inches of rain has made a drastic difference. Lots of things need pruning. It seems contraindicated to work so hard to grow things, only to have to prune them back again. But, growth is life and that's what it takes.

Well, we got almost 4 inches of rain over the last 36 hours. That should hold things for a little while. Sometimes odd things happen to plants and then they make interesting pictures. Here's a horsetale reed that Elissa bent back. This was it's response to the bending. Today I need to get out and prune and deadhead. Hope it gets done.

Here's Kim's quilt. I finished it last year. The green square in the middle is a small tablecloth that was my mother's. I think she got it while she and Dad were living in England.

Yesterday I went to the Antique Rose Emporium at Independence. I bought a new(for me) variety of Rosemary , some Lemon Grass to replace the one that didn't make it through the winter, a Tick Seed, and a new Dianthus called Spooky. I made a new bed for them out next to the new rose by the garden shed. We'll see how they all do there. I'm running out of sunny spots to put stuff. Soon, I'll have to start cutting down trees.

It's getting to be that time of year here when the spring flowers are showing their last hurrah. It's time to prune them back and wait for a new round of blooming in the next few weeks for those plants that will do that. Some are only once a year and some will go several times. It helps to put some more Miracle-gro for blooming flowers on again.

I spent the day working in the yard today. I accomplished a lot; filled one compost heap full, built 2 new ones, took down an old one and sorted out what was viable to go into the flower beds, pruned several big roses and transplanted some plants.

One of the things that is important in my garden is having a safe, healthy habitat for all the critters that come around. For years now I've fed the birds and squirrels on my front deck. My grandkids like to feed them when they come to see me and then watch the animals come. They take turns getting myriad pictures of birds and squirrels that come to eat. I get a trade off with the animals. They eat things I don't want here and they help my plants by nesting and hiding in them, and they are such a pleasure to watch.

Sometimes when you're deep in the garden working away, you forget how much it changes and what it looked like before. The top picture is now and the bottom picture is when it all started. I had a bare spot where a swimming pool had been and I decided to use the opportunity of no grass to establish a bed. It looks like to me that the one plant that has done the best is the purple verbena. The garden has now grown to encompass the white Lady Banks rose and a volunteer willow tree has erupted out of the earth. Since I have a granddaughter named Willow I just left it to grow. I really think there's an underground stream there somewhere. This year I added the pathway for ease of working the bed. The grandkids love running through it. Let's see what next year brings.

Sometimes I find myself blending my hobbies together. For instance this is a quilt I made for my daughter Sarah. It's called "The language of flowers"(I like to name my quilts). In it I have rosemary for remembrance, rose is for love, thyme is for daring, beebalm is for virtue, and sage is for wisdom. The only thing I have not figured out is how to work the fragrance of these plants in to it.

Many years ago, I visited a botanical garden in San Antonio with my daughter. I came across an old plant that I think was a native plant. It was called Mealy Blue Sage. Many of the pioneers traveled across out country taking the seeds from this plant to put in their new homes. I fell in love with both the color and the name. After awhile I could no longer find the plant, but I could find newer hybrids or "improvements" on the plant. I would plant them and I loved the colors, but knowing they had names like Salvia Victoria, I just never bonded to them. When I recently found it again in a nursery, actually labeled Mealy Blue Sage, I just had to have it again. I like my plants to be historical and have long roots in the past. Just like me.

I love the way Indian Blanket(Gallardia) recreates itself everytime it comes up from self sown seed. You just never know what you'll get. It's the quickest way in the world to get an accomplished looking garden year after year. I just pull the seed stems at the end and scatter them to the wind and up they come, under David's boat, in my neighbors flower garden, in the driveway. It's just a matter of learning to recognize the beginning leaves and leave them alone to do their thing.

Several years ago my sister Betsy gave me a giant coneflower plant. It's been moved a couple of times and is now in my vegetable garden. It's just been sitting there being a food source for snails until this year when it's finally blooming. I had no idea that this was what they meant by GIANT. It's almost as tall as the eave of the house. It looks like the petals are a yellow color instead of the usual purple-pink of a regular coneflower. I am quite impressed with it. Another thing I think I can attribute to the colder than usual winter here. Although I think last summer's drought and then the late fall's torrential rains had a hand in it to.

I finally have an iris blooming. It seems to not be the right climate here for iris to do well. But, I keep trying. I really think the extra cold winter we had made a huge difference in everything this year. What survived the winter seems to have a new lease on life with lots of color and growth. The pink in the background is prairie verbena and the silver in the bottom left corner is gray santolina. It only survives because it's growing in half dirt and half rocky road fill at the very edge of the curb. Lots of good drainage. However, it's never bloomed here. Up north it was rampant and bloomed every year.

Today, I'm working on a quilt. Maybe soon, some pictures of it in progress.

Brighten Your Corner

This is the first of a new blog about gardening and quilting and sewing. Mostly it will be pictures of what's going on in my garden.

We've had 4 inches or better of rain the last few days and the lawn is finally looking better.