Mary Mary Quite Contrary

How does your garden grow?  Not very quickly, I can tell you that! Saturday morning I picked up a couple of my prints from the studio to work on here at the house and I got caught up by a sign that said Plant Sale, so like Hansel and Gretel, I followed the signs until I arrived at this residence about a mile from our house.  I put up no resistance.

The plants are hearty and local and sold for $6 per gallon plants.  I bought six and came home to plant them.

They sure look a lot smaller when they're in the ground.  It's been overcast and in the mid-60s for most of June, with yesterday being the first nice day.  It's now in the 80s as though someone turned a temperature knob.  I said I was done planting, but this time I mean it.

This is my favorite outside sitting area and where I like to drink my morning coffee.

My work is beginning to pay off though most of the summer color is from annuals.  The perennials have some more growing to do before they'll flash their pretty colors.  I'm hoping for a showy display next summer.

We have a lot of overgrown junipers that I've decided to turn my attention to now.  They dominate four areas and I've going to just focus on one at time, this being the first.

This is all the further I got after about an hour of hand trimming this morning. Ian is going to have to make quite a few dump runs and it's a good thing it's only a mile from here.  I think if I work a bit each morning that I can make this an attractive plant.

This is what I don't want to have happen.  Our subdivision was built and planted about 1990 and we're not the only house struggling with overgrown junipers.  This is ugly!

I was anxious to finish these two scarves and in my hurry gave no thought to beat.  Never has "haste makes waste" but more appropriate.  I beat these much to hard, and while they're pretty to look at, they're stiff.  I've decided to take a break from weaving for a couple months this summer.  I'm feeling pulled in too many directions.

I think rather I'll focus on printmaking for a while, especially since I can do my relief block carving at home.  The right is a wood block I did a couple of months ago and I did it again in linoleum last week, so Friday took both blocks into the studio to print and proof.  Linocut is much easier to cut but I clearly don't have a feel yet for removing background chatter.  I'll clean up the block and print again.

I've been experimenting with my monoprints and at the present I prefer nonrepresentational abstractionism.  I'm spending about eight hours a week at the studio between my volunteer shift and studio time and feel a lot of relief from my decision to take a weaving break.  I had gotten into a mindset that I "should" weave instead of I "want" to weave.  I have enough inventory that picking back up at the end of summer I'll still have time to weave for the holiday sales.  Weaving pays for my arts supplies on top of the yarn!  I'll be back.