Although I have many categories listed on my blog, you will ,no doubt, notice that I do not claim any expertise in the category of FOOD! (other than eating). Today, however, I am happy to “gift” you with a new link on my blog that will take you to someone who is, indeed, an expert with food. Her name is Katie Marquiss of “On Your Plate” and I predict that this up and coming Chef on the Philadelphia scene will soon be much sought after in the social life of the city and it’s busy suburbs! So if you want to be the first of your social circle to serve the best Crab Rangoon you have ever tasted, better get on the phone today and book the services of this very talented young Chef! Enjoy the tour of her website by clicking on the link I provided. And I hope you all have a tasty day!
Archive for July, 2009
A visit to the garden..
A visit to the garden always starts with the proper attire and tools!!
Okay, let’s go! Up the garden path…
This path of red gravel, bordered on one side by Hostas and the other by the bank of Creeping Myrtle, was one of my first landscaping marvels! I was so proud of myself when I dug this path into a dusty clay bank at the “birth” of our back garden!
The Bee Balm is at the very top of my loosey goosey back garden. This garden is home to anything that won’t grow anywhere else or the “over flow” from other beds and has become a wild profusion of Coreopsis, Trumpet Vine that escaped from the trellis, Vinca vines, Italian Basil run- amuck, Siberian Iris, Wild Strawberries and Bearded Iris..just to name a few!!
At the back of the patio, I have this wonderful old wagon that my Step-Dad gave to me just before he died. My husband has faithfully restored it for me and I love to fill it with flower pots each summer. This year, with all the early rain, a lot of the old fashioned variety of Snap Dragons didn’t make it but as you can see I still have Snap Dragon hybrids, Bocopa, Nicotania, Lantana, Petunias and my favorite…Verbena. It’s a nice backdrop for patio dining.
As I said, Verbena is one of my all time favorite annuals and I couldn’t resist hanging this big one next to the shed.
Here we are back at the front garden. Here I have three kinds of Coreopsis. The tall gold one, the meduim yellow and a pretty pink one that grows close to the ground. The Purple Cone Flower (Echinacea purpurea) grows like crazy here and I have to keep it in check! The Rhododendrons like this location as well.
To end our walk in the garden today, here is a honey bee working busily at a cone flower. Hope you enjoyed the gardens!
Edgewood in Summer…
Edgewood in Summer
I am a lover of English and Scottish Authors. That’s the closest I get to reading a romance novel. The stories themselves are romantic just because of the settings and I love that they name their houses or estates. THAT is a romantic notion to me! Sooo… when we built our home in ’96, I decided I would give it a suitible name. I thought about it carefully and mulled over a few possibilities and then, because there are woods behind the house and across the road from our house, I decided on “Edgewood” and it suits this house just fine. I had a wooden sign made up for the front porch next to the door and one of these days, I will put one at the bottom of the driveway on a signpost.
What the heck, the neighbors already think of me as “artsy strange” anyway, right?! Maybe I’ll start a trend. Our former home, which is right next door, and now owned by my son & his wife, I had named “Knotty Pine Place” for the beautiful, golden knotty pine interior walls. That home had been a Speak Easy during prohibition and so, having such historical significance in the community, deserved at least a name! So I challenge you to come up with a name for your house, estate, farm or wherever you live and share it with the rest of us!! Come on….let’s hear it! I know I have readers every day because I can see my “Stats” but you are certainly a bashful bunch!! This blog is a place to voice your opinion on any post you see so please let me hear from you. It would make my day….=) And I hope your day will be wonderful….
God, the Gardener
Queen Annes Lace and Tiger Lilies
On our road, we are lucky to have many varieties of wild flowers. Among them are the beautiful Queen Annes Lace, which is an herb of the parsley family. It’s a common weed but widely naturalized in North America and the Eternal Gardener has seen fit to team it up with the hardy orange Tiger Lily on our road. It’s as lovely an arrangement as Martha Stewart herself could come up with! Some other wild flowers on our road are the very fragrant and multi hued Honesuckle, Mock Orange (again, very fragrant), Creeping Myrtle, a wonderful ground cover with shiny dark foliage and purple flowers in spring, Crown Vetch (which I hate as it is very invasive if it gets into your gardens) , Daisies, Buttercups and a host of others as well. We also have rasberries, blackberries and strawberries growing wild along the road. The strawberries were especially abundant this year. One summer when my son was very young, we looked up wildflowers in the library and with books in hand, we set out to discover what we could identify in our area. I wish I could remember the names of all those flowers we studied back then! There is a major brook flowing near our home that is fed by a big dam and there is abundant flora and fauna along it’s banks to study. Guess I should revisit those banks and see what is still there and what may have taken root since those long ago summer days…..
Visitors to to the studio
Wednesday evenings, our Grandchildren stay over. We pick them up at camp, have a nice evening with them and return them to camp the next morning. Gives Mommy & Daddy a break and gives us some time with them in the summer that we might not otherwise get as they are such busy little people! So this week was a little hectic because the Princess is involved in cheer leading. This is a big commitment of time and effort on the part of the child as well as the parents! I think it’s 4 nights a week for 2 hours at a clip. So while she was at practice, the crowned Prince and I went to the grocery store and then he & Gramps had Matchbox car races on Gussies ramp on the front porch while I went to fetch his sister. Well, by the time they had a snack and got washed and ready for bed, it was well past their bedtime so all we could do Wed. night was a few bedtime stories. Thursday morning however, they were up early, ate breakfast and took their baths. I had their backpacks ready to go with dry bathing suits & towels and the lunches ready in the refrigerator and we still had an hour to spare! So of course they came up with the idea to go to Grammie’s studio and do some art!! What could I say…we did have that hour to spare!! =)
Covered with their painting aprons and armed with the supplies I had laid out for them, they each set to work on a painting/collage. My Grandson took an immediate liking to the rubber stamps..especially the bird ones and he set to work, never lifting his head, as he laid down a symmetrical pattern on his page. He is very artistic and can draw extremely well for a 6 year old but this was something different and he was being “cautious” I noticed as he stamped almost in rows…huh! Interesting. His sister, on the other hand, had spied one of my recent collages that appealed to her senses and she set to work emulating that particular piece with her own twist. She is usually more sloppy and loose with her art than her brother is and so it was interesting to see her “planning” what she would do next! I must say, that I was impressed with both finished paintings and I know they will proud to present them to Mommy and Daddy at a future date. (They were still on the drafting board drying when they had to leave for camp) I just love watching them create and it was so interesting to see how they had both changed their usual art style to tackle something with a different set of supplies and inspiration. If we could all tap into that unrestrained child in each of us, we’d never have a creative “block”. What’s the lesson here? Try doing something in a different way…use different materials. Stretch your imaginations!
Just another day in paradise
Some interesting things happen to me frequently when I am walking my dogs on our road. Just last week, for instance, Maggie directed me to a twenty dollar bill laying along the road. Now THAT walk paid off! lol And yesterday, as we set off in the opposite direction, a big deer bounded out of the brush and proceeded to white tail it up the road just ahead of us! Maggie was pulling Gus & I along at a brisk pace behind that deer! I don’t know what she was planning to do with it if she caught up with it!!
Another doggie incident happened last night although it was not while we out strolling (thank goodness). I went to bed around 11 which is fairly late for me as I am an early bird…early to bed and early to rise. I was in a sound sleep when Miss Maggie started growling and jumping on & off the bed. I figured Mr. Skunk was around so I tossed a little throw pillow at her and rolled over. Pretty soon, I heard our very heavy metal bird feeder hit the ground with a loud thud. It’s not that far from our (open) bedroom window. I called out to my hubby, who was still watching TV in the living room and he turned on the patio lights and the back flood light, illuminating a very large black bear having a midnight snack out of our bird feeder. I came out and curled up in my chair by the patio doors and watched that bear for an hour. When it was finished with the seeds, it sauntered behind our shed and I moved my vantage point to the master bathroom for a better view. I could see it through the trees behind our little shade garden. It had discovered the little enclosure that our neighbors keep their garbage bags in until garbage pick up day. It opened the door and ripped through the bag in there for another tasty snack. It was at this point…I am now standing in the jacuzzi tub peering out the window above it…that the bear steps out of the shadows and there behind it are two little bear cubs! They played around under the neighbor’s tree for a while and I could see them well as the porch light was on over there. Then they sashayed off into the shadows in search of the next yard and perhaps another treat!!! Now THAT is what we country folks call entertainment!! And how was your evening?
Angus...a handsome brute!
Gussie has been having some arthritis problems lately. When our first Scottie, MacTavish, got older we had to construct a ramp for him to get on & off the front porch and I think we are at that point with Gus as we have been having to lift him onto the porch lately. Those very short Scottie legs do not help nor does the fact that his sight is not what it used to be. At 10 years of age, he is otherwise in very good health. Tomorrow we go see the Vet for a rabies booster and to set up a teeth cleaning. Gus does NOT like that visit!! Poor guy!
Aboard the Mary Patten
Aboard the Mary Patten
I found these black and white photos in with a bunch of old photos from an elderly relative who was throwing them away. I have no idea who the folks pictured are except that they may be distant relatives. What I found interesting was that they were obviously on a ship and upon closer examination, I read an inscription someone had added which said “Aboard the Mary Patten”. The date was Sept. 9, 1925. I was curious so I went on line and found that Mary Patten was a famous ship Captain’s wife back in the 1800’s so the ship these folks were sailing on must have been named after her. I believe they were sailing to Scotland. I copied a map of North and South America in black and white for the background and clipped a few articles about Captain Patten & his wife Mary and inserted snippets of those on the pages. Fun to sit and dream of who these folks were and how long they would be sailing for!!
Country Picnic
Country Picnic
I had so much fun doing this mixed media piece! The background “landscape” was an oil painting I had started eons ago..so long that the oil was actually dry! Instead of proceeding with a boring landscape painting, I decided to do some layers with paper napkins, rubber stamps and a sepia toned photo copied picture of my Dad and his little white dog! I overlaid the top of the darker tree with leaves from a paper napkin design for a textured effect and the trunk of the tree is overlaid with pieces of brown from a napkin. I love that the bottom of the trunk can actually be seen “through” the stone pillar!! Those boulders on the right were just the perfect spot to perch a contented bicycler and his dog. The big gold sun and the French writing stamped in blue across the tops of the white birch trees added some glitz to an otherwise bland sky scape. This is one you really must see to appreciate!
Dinner at Soriano’s
Dinner at Soriano's
This is an acrylic painting done on canvas board. The fun colors were inspired by a recent outing with friends at a wonderfully eclectic local eatery. Okay, fellow “partiers”…you know who you are…what do you think? Aptly named?!
Grammie’s Chair by Maron Craig Bielovitz
Grammie's Chair
The big chair sits by the patio door
With room for Grammie, a Grandchild and more
A seat that’s cushy and extra wide
For a Winter’s nap, it’s a cozy ride
Grammie’s books are piled up here
Good thoughts for today and the Bible to cheer
Words of wisdom to enrich the mind
A mystery, a romance or the self-help kind
It’s a morning haven to savor a cup
Snug in the chair…with a quilt and a pup
To look out the window and watch the snow
Content and warm with no place to go
It’s a place to pray and talk to God
To watch the sun rise and feel so awed
Yes, just inside the patio door
Is a chair for dreaming and reading and more…
theartfulcodger
The Artful Codger 