Fall Color Garden Favorites!

Hi there! I just thought I'd share some of my favorite, tried-and-true perennials that really shine in the garden in Fall. My yard has been really aglow with color lately! Sometimes we forget that many flowers keep on blooming waaay into Fall.

Here are my enormous Japanese anemone. They are NOISY with the buzzing of bees, and pretty much take over their patch of garden bed -- and a lot of my pathway. But they are FANTASTIC. I'll try to remember to post a photo of them once they go to seed and get their cloud-puff seed heads! A random pink gladiolus has snuck into the background of this photo (and the garden bed?!). Dried up bee balm is in the foreground -- I'm going to collect some seeds soon.

Oh, this is a new path (and beds) I made. I moved the stones (and will soon move the gravel) from my blueberry area, where the path was only serving to host crab grass. :( I'm waiting for the cardboard to break down, and then I'll move some other plants into the beds! I love my garden cardboard projects. ^_^

Asters! I didn't realize there were so many native asters. My house came with a bunch of different kinds! These bumble bees are ASLEEP in the morning, still too cold to move! C. told me that they sleep in flowers overnight! Aren't they the cutest insects you've ever seen? They look like little dogs, or teddy bears, or Pokemon, or something.

A gradient of cherry tomatoes! I think this was a volunteer plant from last year's scattered dropped tomatoes. I had too many of those this year (they don't come up true to type), so next year I'll be better at weeding them out.

Here's a view of some of those asters, plus zinnia, brown eyed Susan, old crocosmia in the background, mint everywhere, and strawberries in the raised bed. I need to move that raised bed . . .

More zinnias! I decided after their success last summer, that State Fair zinnias were the winner, and best type*! Last year I started them from seed, but this year I was too late so I got them as seedlings.

They are TALL and hardy/sturdy, and come up as all different colors! The pink in the last photo is this same type (as the red above).

Zinnia: State Fair! Orange this time

This is the same orange zinnia; I love the variety of shapes in the same plant

I took this pic right after a rain. Delicious thornless raspberries! They're easy to grow; do yourself a favor and plant some! Mine fruit in early summer and then again in Fall. I don't prune them properly (or at all), but what I get is good enough for me!

My new favorite, salvia uliginosa. I've put it in several spots in my yard. GORGEOUS!

Here's another new favorite: Gomphrena "Fireworks"! It's an annual, but look how pretty! And it really sprouted right up and bloomed a lot!

Closeup of gomphrena. I also got a red one, but it's mostly done blooming now.

Beautyberry bush. I didn't even realize it was a native plant! I fell in love with this plant back in WA, when we'd pass one off an alleyway during our long neighborhood walks. It keeps its purple berries all winter! Long after the leaves fall off, you have this lovely BRIGHT PURPLE "winter interest".

I'm really proud of this salvia "Black and Blue" that I OVERWINTERED!! That's right, I piled a ton of mulch on it last fall, and not only did it stay alive, LOOK AT IT! All of my salvias made it, and they are huge!!! (And that's more red zinnia next to it.)

I know it's just boring old sedum, but every fall I do enjoy seeing how nice it looks. Yep, it's "Autumn Joy", it's super simple to grow, my house came with a ton of it, and in my mind it's very "old lady", but guess what? . . . I'm basically an old lady myself, so maybe that's why it's growing on me! HA!!

Finally we have blue mistflower -- which looks exactly like ageratum (don't you think??!), BUT: 1) it's a perennial; 2) it's a native plant! 3) it grows into this REALLY NICE medium-sized shrub, and 4) the flowers have lasted ALL SUMMER and continue now! I got one early in summer, and recently got another, I liked it so much. Hooray!

That's all for now! Maybe I'll pop in again soon with later-fall plants or some winter interest. ;) Happy gardening!

*I've always loved the little, pompom type zinnias, too, like Lilliput. But State Fair is BIG, BRIGHT, BOLD!

2024 Garden 5: seedlings and growth!

The veggie garden just grew a lot -- because I put in all my seedlings/starts! It's finally consistently 50 and above at night, so I think they'll be okay. Last year I lost all my tomatoes to a late freeze, so this year I'm appropriately paranoid about paying attention to such things.

I rearranged the bricks of the overall garden to form some steps in the paths between beds. I still don't have enough bricks, but I don't care enough to go buy any. I'm sure I'll find some this summer. (I got all these bricks from a neighbor a few years ago when she redid her front walkway!)

On the far left outside the fence, I put in some perennials that I moved from elsewhere in the yard. The fall leaves had already blown over and piled up there over the winter (handily killing the grass in about a 1-foot-wide strip), and I thought it was a good way to encourage pollinators to the area! So I've got multiples of Shasta daisy, bee balm, rose campion, and okay okay I bought a nice native echinacea and native lobelia cardinal flower. OOH, it's going to look so GOOD and be HUMMING with activity!! I hope.

On the right near the fence, you can see my two Cavendish strawberry beds. I plan to move some of the new runners over to a different bed this summer (start a NEW strawberry bed with fresh plants), and take out these old plants (they do have a life span, after which they don't produce as much) -- making way to rotate other veggies into these two beds next summer.

(Can I just add, it makes me happy to think of Cavendish strawberries because the variety was developed in Nova Scotia and I've been to Cavendish, PEI! So they remind me of the Maritimes, hee hee! A bunch of strawberry varieties originated in Nova Scotia.)

The snap peas are coming along nicely. I don't have much to add other than this year I'm also trying to be better about weeding the weeds right away.

More homegrown goodness after the jump!

A puzzling week or so

We've been doing puzzles lately! Thanks to an informal puzzle exchange at yoga (gotta love yoga), I swapped out a couple puzzles. Everyone's been working on them on our big dining table. I love how it becomes this mini-obsession for all of us as we walk by. ^_^

This one was FANTASTIC because we could all claim a little box section to do, put it together, then slowly join them. For once, I didn't mandate that the edge had to be done first. ;)

More happenings after the jump!

Sewing is going to the Dorybird sewing blog

Hey everybody! Just a quick announcement: I'll be posting new SEWING PROJECTS back on my Dorybird sewing blog! Why? Because I want to! :D

I still have lots of sewing backlog from 2022-2023 to post over there, but I'll do it as I'm able, so it will be a fun occasional surprise of yesteryear for you. You can always click the year tag in the right sidebar to see everything I've made that year.

I just posted a shirt I finished today, and if you've been clever and awesome and wonderful enough to sign up for my newsletter (again, blue box in the sidebar on either blog, just do it!!), you should have gotten that post in your email along with the one from this blog.

This Creative Path Blog will continue to be the home for all the other creative things I'm up to! Yay!

2024 Garden 4: Peas, lettuce, fruits!

Well well well! We've had a lot of rain and both warm and freezing weather, and my little crops are coming along!

Look look! I think these are lettuce starts! (Or was that arugula? I forget what I put where, oops.) My carrot seeds don't seem to be doing anything (yet?).

I removed the (very low) netting from the snap peas, and put the cages back for them to grow up. It seems to me that critters and birds like to eat the pea seeds, but once they sprout, they leave them alone. Maybe? I'm still glad to grow everything in my (mostly) protected new garden area this year!

Pretty! My existing raspberries have leafed out (and some transplanted ones in the new garden) -- last year's canes -- and in the background is my lovely peach tree! We've gotten peaches in the past, but they don't ever get to the edible stage before something happens to them. Hopefully this year?!

I'm tending some Seascape strawberries that I successfully dug up (to make way for a new type, Mara de Bois!). Some are in a pot on the deck, some are in pots in the front yard, some are around the edge of the upcoming tomato bed, some are packed up to give away. Yeah, I don't have that much of a plan, but I'm keeping everything alive! :)

2024 Garden 3: Black Raspberry Bed (and More)!

This week has been both a) school break week, which means a vacation from routine, and b) super nice weather!!! Which means: GARDENING! I've done a lot of yard tasks while enjoying the sunshine and it is finally starting to feel like Spring. :D

I've had a very chill week, including lots of relaxed outside time with Kelly while our kids hung out together. Yay! Sometimes school break has felt like it drags on, but this year it's rolling along quite nicely. I had a few ideas and goals of things to do this week, and while I've done some of those (baking, volunteering, yoga), most days the weather has drawn me out into the yard instead. Since it's back to clouds and cold outside today, I'm going to do a little sewing. Which, yes, was on my list. ;)

Anyway, the garden! I've been meaning to rethink a bed in the front yard and prepare it for THORNLESS black raspberries when they arrive in the mail next month. SO, yesterday, I worked hard on it!

See below for key

I initially created this bed out of my empty lawn (woot!) not long after we moved in. It used to house a giant azalea that I then moved, mostly because voles got under it :( and it wasn't thriving. After that, last summer I had a raised bed of snap peas in it (yes, within the bed, perpendicular to the raised bed in the photo), and while those did okay, it was an annoying configuration for harvest. Too many perennials in the way! Plus it was pretty shaded.

When I impulse-bought the black raspberries a few months ago, I decided to try them in this area, but the whole bed needed a redesign. So I think I have it now! Check out the photo and follow along:

1. This is parsley that has come back from last summer! I kinda wish the cilantro had come back, but I'm not that picky; I'll just put in more.

2. Some rogue strawberries that I put in way before I had plans for "actual strawberry production". They sometimes fruit, sometimes get eaten by critters; I don't really care and I'm leaving them. I can always propagate them and move elsewhere!

3. OK, the middle area is where I plan to move my RHUBARB in the fall, and add a couple more rhubarb plants soon if possible. I have one rhubarb planted in shade (oh well, my mistake) and it's very meager, so even though THIS bed gets partially shaded, it's less shade than where the rhubarb is now.

4. Little narcissus daffodils! And some coral bells. Just some general perennials that I can always move if I feel like it.

5. A lovely peony lives here! It had come with the house and I plopped it in when I first made the bed. Keeping it!

6. This rock (and the white rectangle paver) are my step-stones to make future raspberry picking easier.

7. I was going to make the raised bed wider, but then remembered/discovered that a really nice, variegated, pastel cool tone blue-green fern lives here!! (I say "discovered" because I knew it was in that general area, but when I set up the empty raised bed boards weeks ago, it wasn't coming up yet. Yesterday, all the fronds were coming up inside the raised bed!) So I'm keeping the raised bed out of the fern zone.

8. You will laugh at me, but in the fall, I had a big pile of nice compost-y dirt here, left over from where the raised bed had been. While gardening, I pulled out a start of some shrub -- and not really having a place to plant it, I stuck it in this dirt. Well, it's growing! I'm not even sure what it is, but clearly I thought it was worth saving, so I'll see what it is when it leafs out, and deal with it then.

9. These are some volunteer "wild Rhode Island onions", some chive type thing that's everywhere.

10. This pot is holding up some of the raised bed for now. It's an old dead houseplant fern.

11. The black raspberry bed! It was going to be the full width of the boards, but then I remembered that the row really doesn't have to be that wide. And then I had the fern pop up (see #7). So I narrowed it (in a hopefully temporary way since it looks pretty dumb, ha ha!) and actually that was good because I didn't have a lot of the excess compost-y dirt. What I had, fit nicely in this bed! At some point I'll adjust the boards and make it look better. I've just been moving and re-using this same compressed plastic raised bed for yeeeeears now! It makes my crazy projects quick and easy. :)

April happenings

This has been a busy month so far! We just got back from a random trip to Texas with A's family to see the total solar eclipse. Was the 4 minutes of total eclipse cool? Yes! Was it overhyped? Also yes! Was the trip worth it? . . . not really! I'm still in recovery mode and adjusting back to regular life -- yoga helped immensely this morning!!

First, to relax and soothe everyone, here is my cat. He's been super cuddly since we got back.

2024 Backyard Garden 2: pea shoots!

Here is a look at the pea shoots starting to come up! When they're all up and get a bit taller, I'll take off the netting and put in the tomato cages for them to grow up. I initially planted them around the cages and then removed them.

I think I saw some of the arugula and lettuce sprouts coming up, too, although those might have just been weeds. I'll let you know!

2024 Backyard Garden 1: planting seeds

Hi! Welcome to my gardening series, where I'm going to document the progress in my new backyard veggie beds!

I made these "no dig" beds last year with lots of CARDBOARD to kill the grass and several cubic yards of compost on top, mulched over the winter with fall leaves. I took this photo a few weeks ago, before I had cleared some of those leaves away. I still need to figure out my paths between beds a little better. I don't have enough brick to go around all the beds, and I don't really want to buy more. Anybody know of any free brick or pavers in town? You can drop them off at my house, heh heh!

Those two beds in the back, mulched with pine shavings, are strawberries!

Anyway, here is my plan:

Cookies, books, turkeys . . .

Good morning!

One of my favorite places to go on Tuesdays!

I've been busy lately! E was in the middle school production of Mean Girls (Jr) -- a lead role, Janis! -- so there was a lot of energy expenditure around that, both with her and with me. I went to all 4 performances because that's what I like to do. :) She was AWESOME!!

I've begun some initial gardening, which I'll describe in the next post!

I've been fiddling around testing recipes to try and recreate Osmania biscuits! They're a shortbread cookie that I really enjoy, and I buy a box or two every time I'm at the Indian grocery. (They're made by Karachi Bakery and apparently are a Hyderabad specialty!) I figured I could make them myself, so I've been trying!

Multi Muffins, or Lemon Power Muffins Recipe: high fiber, high protein!!

Using a crazy-creative, innovative muffin recipe I found on the internet (here) as a starting point, I made up a really fun, healthy muffin recipe full of fiber and protein!! Yeah!!! I call them Multi Muffins, or Lemon Power Muffins. (Note: Karen's other muffin recipes look equally crazy-creative and innovative, so I'll be back to try more!)

They're very lemony, not too sweet unless you add the lemon glaze (included in recipe), and they're the BEST for a mid-morning or after-school snack. My recipe makes two dozen muffins, because what is the point of making only one dozen muffins for a family of four?? Can anyone relate? They will be all gone in mere hours. SO, these should last a bit longer than that.

Let's get to it. I wrote it out, so it's a picture! Easy!

Homemade Seven Stars Granola copycat recipe!

I was given this bag of yummy Seven Stars Bakery granola (happens to be vegan, though I don't really care), and I knew I could make it myself! I have a go-to granola recipe that a friend gave me from New York Times a few years ago, and it's easy to adapt.

Without further ado, here is my recipe!

I've been busy! New Dorybird website updates and offerings!

(This is my cozy afternoon recently)

Hi there! It's been a little while, because I've been working on a little of this, and a little of that. The big thing I did was to update my website! So if you click on over to Dorybird.com, you'll find A LOT of new photos, info (my art process! And more!), and . . .

I made two "envelope" style pouches with hang tags and snaps!

I mentioned that I made some pennants as a birthday gift, and as I looked at the folded and tied flags, I decided to also whip up a little pouch to put them in, as wrapping paper!

Ta-da!

Then as I was assembling all kinds of fabric combos and trying to choose, I decided to also make a bag as another birthday gift (for K's daughter) and also two new bags for the Dorybird shop! :D

the lighting is exceptionally weird in this photo

More pics this way>>>

Making Reversible Rainbow Bunting/Pennants/Festive Flags!

I made a fun birthday gift for Kelly! Rainbow party pennants! I found this tutorial online, which links to a pattern piece. The pattern is neat because you can make a front and a back of a flag from one 10" layer cake square. When I saw this, a) I knew I wanted the flags smaller; and b) I knew I wanted to have the split side split between different prints.

More fantastic rainbows after the jump!

Cake!!!! and stuff

First of all, thanks to my newsletter readers who answered my poll about my art! I've only gotten 12 responses so far, so if you haven't filled out the poll yet, go ahead and submit it! I'm getting some interesting answers and I'd love to have a larger sample. Maybe I'll send out these types of polls every so often. :)

I have no idea who said what in this poll, and I guess it would have been smart of me to somehow set it up so I know whose answers are whose. (Probably by making you enter your email address, I'm guessing?) Well, I wanted a very low barrier for participation so I made it as simple as possible. Like I said, I'd never made one before! I kind of like not knowing who said what, actually; it's sort of a mysterious feeling of support from everyone. :)

Isn't this a beautiful gift bag?!

C. picked out these birthday bouquets at the grocery store, to combine into her "fireworks"! I don't really like fake-colored flowers, but these sure look AWESOME!! The pink ones also have glitter!

You've gotta click to see all the cakes!!!>>>

I made a Koalabird plush doll!

For C's birthday, I made her a koalabird plush doll! I had made her one before -- her koalabird toy Cheerful, 2 years ago -- and now Cheerful has a friend! Newsletter subscribers may remember the photos of Cheerful I shared awhile back, but I will have to take more of both stuffed animal friends together. :)

Isn't he sweet??

C. named him Blizzard. :) Appropriate because we were in the midst of a fair amount of snow last week!

More process after the jump!>>

Birthday Month in full swing!!

Since January is birthday month, this week I've been prepping and enjoying all kinds of goodies!

Look at these nice bouquets at the grocery store! I was too frazzled by my list at the time to actually make another decision, but I may go back and buy one. :)

Who doesn't like birthday sushi?? E's special request!

My latest creation after the jump!>>

I made an Alolan Vulpix Pokemon plush!

Finally I can share the Alolan Vulpix Pokemon plush stuffed animal I made for E! This project was a birthday surprise, so I wasn't taking any process photos. But I did make it, I promise! :) She loves it and at first didn't even realize it was handmade!

More photos this way>>>>

January Beginnings!

 This is the last "life news" post in this series as I get back on track for blogging in the new year! (Be sure to read Part One and Part Two and see my hand drawn Pokemon art cards!)

Here is my sleepy, smooshy cat.

More stories this way!