Fall Flowers

Chrysanthemums and Crepe Myrtle

Right This Moment

There is a beautiful wind sweeping cones from the pine trees and gathering early autumn leaves in fence corners. The grasses bend to it, the birds swirl and flock with it, and the moment seems to lift, curve, float in the arms of invisible happiness. I love wind. It reminds me of the force of things we cannot see. Evidence of this beautiful invisible wind collects around me, and I think of the strength of intangible emotions like love and joy, the power of thought, and faith, and prayer -- none of which can be seen. The clouds scurry, squirrels flap and chatter, and I sit here, hair blowing in my face, thanking the Lord for this proof that there is more to life than what our eyes can see.

Three Autumn Things

Cold weather is quilt weather. This week I've been working on designing a few new quilt blocks and a couple quilts using those blocks. The above potholder is one of the prototype blocks and I've just about finished writing the pattern for two quilts using this block.

Apples. Apple Crisps. Apple Cider. Autumn apple bounty from my Mom's organic orchard. YUM! I'm hoping to plant a couple antique apple varieties in my own yard. Who needs extra lawn to mow? Duchess Oldenburg, one of the trees on my wish list is a Russian variety from the 1600s. Is it weird to want historic apples?

My spinning wheel looks great cozied up to the funny little gas fireplace in the corner of the living room. I haven't spun anything since I was about 16, so I'm looking forward to seeing if I can even remember how. For now I've got rosemary hanging up to dry on my reel and I'm still knitting with commercial yarns. Either way, handspun or commercial spun, handknit woolly socks (and toasting your toes by the fire) belong to autumn weather.

Making an Entrance

Many of you know I've moved into my own house. I have big plans. I also have slightly more realistic plans. Part of that realism involves knowing I can't afford to buy a new front door simply because I don't like the color of the existing one.

The previous owner, for some inexplicable reason, put a brown door on a white house already sporting four (five?) shades of grey for roof, trim, sidewalk/stoop, and foundation. Black metal porch railings suggested to me that this could be, should be a black door. I did some research on painting fiberglass front doors. It's not as difficult as I once thought. It can't be sanded, but must be washed down with acetone instead. (Wear rubber gloves!) It needs to be primed with one of those primers that bonds to anything, and then you can use normal exterior paint. The panels get painted first and then the cross strips and last the edges -- just like a regular wooden door. And just like a regular wooden door the brush strokes should follow the "grain" of the "wood."

Here (above) is the door primed and ready for it's top coat. Already it looked better. The white primer would need two top coats of the exterior paint to get coverage.

Between coats of paint I was raking red rubber recycled tire mulch out of the flower beds. I think it defies logic that we should put shredded tires in our garden soil because we do not want old tires in the ground in landfills. Playground (protective) ground-cover? Okay. Recycled rubber roofing? Wonderful. Non-biodegradable shreds in my soil? Why? Why would anyone do this?

Anyway, back to the door -- the final coat of paint is finally dry. My front door is finished and I had to show you.

Now that's an attractive "new" door -- even if I do say so myself.

Magnet Magnification

For those of who asked... close-cropped photos to show individual magnets.

Magnetism

How much would you pay for decorative fridge magnets? It was not a question I had really ever considered before. The aisle display mocked me with pretty magnets stuck to big price tags. Well, bigger than I was going to pay anyway.

Then I saw the little clunk of 12 undecorated magnets selling for the same price as one of the fancy ones. SOLD. Magnets I needed. Decorative I could manage, I hoped, on my own.

Out came the button box with all the spare buttons in their little baggies, the random leftover beads, the scrapbooking glitter, and the super glue. I tried a few things.

For most of my magnets I decided on stacked buttons with a finishing bead or "rhinestone" to hide the button holes and a bit of glitter thrown in here or there. Anytime the superglue got drippy the magnet got glittered -- no sense wasting glue. :-)

I also made a "Clean" magnet for the dishwasher ... and I'll admit it took a couple times to get the printer to print in the same color as the centers of the daisies in the old lace I used, but I got it eventually. I think they turned out pretty well.

Half Done Hedge

Really the plants are all in, but I'm calling it half done because I haven't mulched it yet. I plan to order one large delivery of mulch after all the garden beds are finished and ready. I love discounted shrubs. I got some of these sad looking bushes for $3. !

The Hydrangea are "Little Lamb" and will bloom white next year though they have already faded to pink/tan due to heat stress (the reason they were on sale). In three places between the hydrangeas I have clumped:

A "Summer Wine" Ninebark with maroon leaves with white/pink spring bloom.

In front of that is a Cottoneaster (pronounced Co-tony-aster) a low growing shrub with pink spring blooms and big red fall berries.

And on either side of those are the badly root bound "Chardonay Pearl" Deutzias -- that's the chartreuse foliage with a white spring bloom.

Under the Deutzias I have also added in some pink double Tulip bulbs and some pink-cupped mixed daffs.

Long time readers will wonder at the sudden frenzy of pink blooms. It has quite a lot to do with what was already planted in the yard. There's a large Mimosa tree (pink puffy things mid-August) right next to the house on that side, and the front flower beds have a mixture of pink and red flowers and shrubs. I'm adding in plenty of white flowers, of course, but on a tight budget you can't just rip stuff out. So I'm working with the existing colors -- pink and red.

That's Just Rubbish

The cell phone photo doesn't do it justice. In the "compost pile" left by the previous owner I discovered 2 liter pop bottles, plant tags, and a multitude of clear plastic boxes sporting labels that said "Organic Baby Spinach" and "Organic Basil" and "Organic Broccoli Sprouts." The organic matter inside had composted down nicely, but the boxes were clearly having problems rotting.

Done properly compost creates a rich, fertile, nourishing garden soil. "Gardener's Gold" they call it. I am a fan of composting, so I know that egg shells should be washed and crushed before being added. I know that coffee grounds, leaves, and grass clippings will be good for a pile but cigarette butts, old t-shirts, and shopping bags will not. I know not to put meat in a compost pile. And I know -- no matter what it's labeled --that plastic doesn't compost.

Despite her very good intentions the previous owner was building a rubbish heap, not a compost pile. I know this because I've read and paid attention to more experienced gardeners when they talk about gardening and composting, but if I didn't know any better my compost pile might be rubbish also. Which makes me think...

As Christians -- even with the best of intentions -- if we haven't been paying attention to the teachings of Scripture and we aren't listening to those more mature in their faith, maybe the work we are doing is just rubbish...

A friend of mine recently stopped attending a church that she and her husband had attended for many (many many) years. The main reason they left was the new pastor. This pastor refused to listen to any advice from the older members of the congregation. Outreach programs that had failed in the past were revived to fail even more spectacularly and expensively. Matters which had been canvased and resolved prior to the new pastor's arrival were re-opened, feelings hurt, and decisions changed by the "executive removal" of dissenting voters from their positions in the church. The choir was disbanded in favor of the youth praise team (for a congregation mostly over age 60). Parishioners were rebuked for trying to maintain a standard of modest and appropriate dress in the sanctuary. Wednesday night Bible Studies were discontinued in favor of Friday night movie nights, supposedly to attract more people to the church, but the line-up of secular movies drove away existing members.

With the best of intentions, that pastor bought into the idea that she needed to fill the church pews and she wasn't very particular what she wanted to fill those pews with. Plastic was fine in the compost pile as long as it made the pile bigger. That church, a church that could have been a small but rich and nourishing group of Christians, is now failing. What you put into your compost pile matters, and what you put into a church matters. Preach the Truth, from the Bible. Anything else... well, that's just rubbish.

At the DMV

"We're going to have to take that photo again. You were smiling."
"Oh." My sister had told me they didn't allow second photos, you got what you got the first time and that was it. Evidently they do allow second photos if you looked too happy and pleasant in the first one.
"Neutral expression," he said "and tilt your head back." (Not my best angle.)

My new driver's licence photo, notoriously bad, offers the world a mug shot ID. This is what I look like when I'm grim, not smiling, unhappy. I resent looking like that photo... but it's a good reminder to keep smiling in this world of grim, neutral expressions.

A Hint of Color

I have begun writing myself notes on paint chips. All those leftover colors that will never be on my walls are becoming grocery lists, to-do lists, measurements, thoughts.

I need to pick up cinnamon, potatoes, paper towels, fresh dew...

Thursday I should call about estimates for fencing, go to bank, sun hat, mail birthday card, plant lavender...

The space I might put bookshelves is sailcloth 43" x ~74" x 14" deep (9" better)...

"How long until eternity?" is randomly scrawled across pine barrens...

... and filtered sunlight reminds me, "He is using the world's logic, so naturally he comes to the world's conclusions."

Filling In

Dry soil the consistency of powdered sugar puffed itself back into the hole. Half of every new shovelful I dug out of the hole was dirt I'd already dug out once before. The task seemed endless.

Inserting a few more flowers into the front bed to fill it out seemed like such a reasonable idea in theory. In practice it was proving frustrating. One end of the front flower bed proved to be compacted, rock-like clay and now at the other end of the front bed, finer grained than sand, the soil wouldn't hold together at all. The only thing the two sides of the bed had in common? They made the Sahara look moist by comparison.

I begin to understand why one of the foundation plantings is a cactus.

I wanted to fill in the flower beds, but I had failed to note the reason the existing plantings didn't flourish. They lacked water. Once watered the existing plants will start to perk up and fill in for themselves.

There are times when we charge ahead in life like that. We notice a deficiency in someone's life and we offer to correct that situation without looking for the underlying issue. We just charge in and start planting flowers, or offering advice, or trying to fill a need... forgetting that without the Water of Life -- Living Water -- nothing flourishes. We might be surprised to find how everything else fills itself in when that need is filled.

If you need me, I'll be watering the garden.