Share the Garden Week One

Wednesday is now Share the Garden day here at the Starry Home.

One of the biggest influences in my quilting is nature. If you’ve seen my shops, for instance, you might notice I’m a little obsessed with flowers. I often make scrap quilts with many different colors and when I’m thinking I can’t possibly put two outrageous pieces of fabric together, I think of Nature and how many colors She puts together. I bravely ignore the rules and sew those two pieces. It always works out in the Grand Scheme of the quilt.

I’d like to say I live in a beautiful forest with a stream nearby, but I don’t. I live in the suburbs in a development where the houses are all alike. The development has been here long enough that a few of us have re-sided our houses with something other than beige, light beige or blue beige. There are trees and some beautiful gardens. Mine, sorry to say is one of those gardens that needs a little work. The good news is, I have time this year to do a little bit (I really mean a lot) of work. I want to create a space where I can enjoy Nature right here in my own little corner of the world. I have spent many years creating the beds, digging up thousands of stones, adding topsoil, weeding, most of the heavy work. Now I need to fill it all up. I  have some flowers. Daisies grow very well here. I do love daisies, but I’m looking for some color this year.

I spent my day Saturday ordering up plants for the garden. My first big lesson learned is how many colors, shapes, growing seasons, heights, sun exposures etc. there are in the flower world. After a good long time I decided on bee balm, (red and butterfly attracting) delphiniums, (tall and blue) and sunflowers (tall and yellow). Carnations just seemed like a good idea, and lilies, I love lilies. Something called vanilla butterfly was just too lovely a plant to pass up with its purply pink flowers and pretty name. I also ordered some red creeping phlox for the area right near the house that nothing seems to grow in. Oh and diamond grass because dew collects on its leaves and sparkles in the morning sun and because my husband loves tall grasses. It’s looking like I’ll have to dig up some more space for all of these plants!

This week I’ll be reading through my gardening books, so next week, maybe a review on my favorites.

This is an area where nothing will grow so I filled it up with all the stones I dug up over the years. Now it desperately needs some prettifying.

Definitely needs work, but remember it’s still very early Spring here in Central New York!