About the Garden

It's a smallish garden I suppose, by world standards, at 1350 square meters.  But the imagination, the creativity, and the hard work it has taken to get it to this place is an amazing achievment when you consider the whole thing started  7 years ago with 100 feet of garden along the newly built noise barrier separating a very busy Crowchild Trail from neighbourhood houses. It was a no man's land full of thistles, dandilions, quack grass and rocks - but Oh Baby look at it now!.
The other amazing thing about this garden is that it is designed and maintained entirely by hardworking volunteers - and I mean entirely!.  I know this because I signed on as one this year and I love it.  I love  every bit of the back breaking, dandilion pulling, deadhead clipping of it and I'm learning a lot about gardening in Calgary's unique micro climate.

So, yesterday, another milestone was met in the garden and the meditation Labyrinth was officially dedicated.

 A bit of history is in order here - some 6000 bricks were all laid by Duncan and his gang once the grass and weeds had been killed and cleaned out.   After the bricks came the creepingThyme, planted by Bev, Yoshiko, Mitzi and Gail this year and it is creeping nicely thank you.  The meditation circle itself  is a replica of the Chartres labyrinth and is entered through graceful wooden archways built by Rick, and past planters filled with cheerful red geraniums.  This particular project has taken 3 years to complete but the results are amazing. - Excuse the plastic chairs - they were lined up temporarily for the dedication ceremony

And so we celebrated yesterday and invited everyone to come and celebrate with us and walk the entire garden from bottom to top, up to the rose garden, and along the wall garden, into the Shakespeare garden full of quotations from his plays on bushes and flowers. 

If you want to read more about this lovely public garden you can click(here)   p.s. Dogs are welcome - isn't that lovely?
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Socks and Rocks

I am in a sort of frenzy at the moment, knitting samples, and preparing patterns for a couple of great sock classes I will be teaching at Stash Needlearts Lounge this fall.
First up is a boot sock in September, closely followed by a felted Christmas sock in November.

The studio looks like a yarn bomb hit it - well...it's controlled chaos really.  I know where everything is most of the time.

It's pretty hot here right now to be knitting worsted weight wool into a boot sock.  The thermometer is hovering around 29 -30 degrees by afternoon. That's when the knitting is carted downstairs and we plug in a film to knit by.  Yesterday Libby and I enjoyed "the Adventures of Robin Hood" starring Errol Flynn and Olivia De Havilland with Basil Rathbone and Claude Raines as the bad guys while I finished sock number one.   a great film...and a pretty good sock!
This product is a dream to knit with - Ella Rae classic superwash worsted is the name of it.

Work is started on the second sock. - I always tell my students you can't fly on one sock!  The goal here is to get the pair complete, and over to the shop so people can touch them and see what they are signing up for.  A three dimensional sample always helps sell a class.

The second project has been roughed out, and notes made.  I've also knit a small sample and felted the wool to see just how it shrinks.  the leg size will increase of course - Santa needs space to fit things.  And I'll alter the toe shape slightly too.

I wasn't sure the red would full properly - sometimes red doesn't.  But this product rocks!  It is Galway knittingWorsted.  I'm knitting two strands together to thicken up the final piece.Once the sock is knitted it will be fulled in the washing machine and then decorated for Christmas.  I'll keep you posted on this one.  It's a November class which will include the fulling. It should be lots of fun.

 A friend of mine going through Chemotherapy at the moment. I'm knitting her a shawl she can use to wrap up in when she feels like she needs a warm hug.  It is almost complete - a red, fuzzy tapered shawl with lots of fringe to make her smile- I hope.

And then there are the rocks

I found this crescent moon shaped rock the other day and I'm working on a pattern for it.  People love the rocks.  They love to touch the rocks, feel the rocks, talk about the rocks. They love the idea of the rocks - but they don't want to make them - so, I'm  making them and we'll see where it goes from here.

a Bee's eye view

What is a bee's most favourite colour, I wonder.  Right now it appears to be the showy red flowers on the hollyhock under the kitchen window which is full of the busy-ness and buzzy-ness of the bee population today.

The garden is in full bloom.  The clematis climbing its trellis on the front of the house is a vision of purple blossoms.  The bees are ignoring the clematis.  It doesn't appear to be a purple day for bees.

The front garden is a mass of blooms.  No bees there either.   Red hollyhock blossoms appear to be number one in bee world today.

August is a gentle time in the garden - well, apart from the mosquitos and the weeding, watering and mowing.  
   Hopefully Mother Nature will take pity and give us a stretch of sunny, summer weather and send the mosquitos somewhere else - anywhere else.  That would be nice. Sitting outside means a burning citronella candle at one's feet, and bug spray containing DEET on one's body. Mosquitos love stationery objects - i.e. woman with book and cold glass of lemonade.  Did you know that mosquitos have grey and black striped legs?  I'm not making this up.

I have now harvested all the potatoes out of the 4 x 4 gardens.  It's a tasty crop of Yukon Golds we're enjoying.  I've seeded more lettuce now that we have almost eaten our way through the first batch.  I haven't tested the potato barrel yet but I have high hopes. 

And in the studio, I'm testing yarn for felting in anticipation of a couple of sock classes scheduled for the fall season at "Stash Needle Art's Lounge" in Inglewood.  The first class will be the construction of boot socks, and the second class, to run in November will be a cheery Christmas sock to keep or give away.  I'll keep you posted as I develop the patterns.

I'm still mad about crocheting snoods on river rocks.   This is found art, temporary art, whimsical art that is dictated by the shape and size of said rock.   Rocks have taken on a whole new meaning and I have a basket of them waiting for decoration.  It's anybody's guess where this is going.

If you have thoughts on preventing scabs on potatoes - send it my way - I'll be very grateful.  In the meantime, have a good week.

One more road post

One more travel post here, and then it's business as usual but I had to share this bit.

I grew up near the Alberta Rockie Mountains - actually a bike ride away from the Porquipine foothills on a sunny day.
We swam in the icy water of the creek, and every summer moved our trailer into Waterton Lakes National Park.  we hiked and biked the trails,  and boated and swam in those frigid glacial lakes.   And every Saturday night we went to the dance hall and danced to whatever live band was playing.  The campground usually had a brown bear or two roaming, looking for tidbits.  The deer tiptoed daintily through nibbling on various shoots and leaves.  They liked ritz crackers too and were tame enough to take one from my hand if I stayed very still.  Lots of mountain memories.

This is Castle Rock.  Doesn't it look like a fortress?

The river here west of the great divide, flows toward the Pacific Ocean.  It really is that green and milky - runoff from the mountains I suspect.  No signs of flood damage on this side of the great divide - that water all flowed east and we are still picking up the pieces around here...

The Trans Canada Highway flows through the mountains like a river,  up through Banff National Park climbing higher and higher across the border into BC and into Yoho National park, past three Valley Gap, up through the Kicking Horse Pass and into the town of Golden - always a good place to gas up because you don't want to drive the Roger's pass between Golden and Revelstoke without a full tank of gas.
 And...might as well have have road food. Road food is fun - indulgant and full of stuff that probably isn't good for me but believe it or not a MacDonald hamberger, frys and coffee taste pretty good sitting on a bench in the sunshine  - I'm always surprised at how good the coffee is there - must be the mountain water.. 

Then it's back behind the wheel and on  up over the high Roger's Pass to the summit, down into Revelstoke and on into the lush Shushwap valley  and past Shushwap Lake with all its floating houseboats.  I listen to lots of music - good driving music - Elton John and Leon Russell rocking, Carol King and James Taylor crooning, Oscar Peterson and Stephan Grappelli jazzing up some standards.  And I sing along, permanently stamping the tunes in my brain and turning them into middle of the night ear worms. 

The signs are out - Elk on road, Moose on road, big horn sheep on road - except they weren't.  Still, it's good to keep a lookout, although it would have been fun to see some wildlife.

And now, I'm back, and in the garden weeding, as the garden literally exploded in the week I was gone.  We had our first feed of new potatoes last night and I'm racing the slugs for the lettuce.  And, so it goes.