bee creative

preserve

From the farmer's market:

The temperature is cooler so I loaded up the dehydrator:  cherry tomatoes, plums, strawberries, red peppers and a couple of ears of corn. I also got cucumbers for pickles. 

There will be more things to preserve. Hopefully tomatoes from the garden, they are finally starting to ripen.  I picked about 10 apples off my Gravenstein (it's a small tree and not that old) and am about ready to pick pears (also a small tree...dwarf). I have an excellent crop of beans for drying.

I will probably be posting just a couple times a week for awhile.  It's busy time at work. 

garden connections

Yesterday I picked my first fig.

This is the third or fourth fig tree I've planted, the first to make it through a cold winter and then fruit... Just two figs this year but now I have hope. The right tree, in the right space.

And then there is this:

The shoulder seams and about 12 inches are stitched.  Just enough to know I will be happy with the fit.  I am not sure if I am going to leave it at this length (about knee level) or add fabric along the bottom to make it longer. I am going to start adding some applique over the top of the worst of the holes.  There will be time to decide and time to play with over dyeing some of the yellow. 

I do want some of this yellow to remain, it is such a sweet color.  Color from the garden.

While reading Grace's blog post this morning, where she shares her local  Master Gardener's demonstration Garden, I started thinking about my garden and what it provides.  Here... two examples, food and color.  Today I am hoping to make salve with rose petals from the garden; and so another use. 

And this...listening this morning to Ross Gay, On Being:

"For one, it’s just fun to be in a garden, for me, dreaming about what could happen: that kind of mystical space, actually, of trying to figure out what this thing that I do here could be in five years, that kind of strange dreaming space that it is.

There’s also something really moving about putting a seed in the ground and it turning into something really different, and a lot of something really different and, potentially, on and on and on, a lot of something very different."

I went to check out the garden he talks about in the interview, the Bloomington Community Orchard.

Community gardens, people coming together to create shared spaces...there is hope. 

Thinking about this today.

 

 

 

 

next steps

Out on the porch this morning.  It's cooler, but still so warm.  It barely dipped bellow 70 degrees last night and it's humid.  A small chance of a sprinkle this morning. 

I collected the fabric that had been curing in the shade. It's now heading for a wash.  I am going to do a couple more experiments with some of the yellow but will also start stitching and cutting a dress with most of it.

(Buddelia, indigo, and indigo/buddelia/black hollyhock)

 

 

 

dinner

zucchini + tomatoes + garlic + onions + homemade tomato sauce (mostly made for later, frozen in an ice cube tray) + provolone + basil = yummy summer dinner

quiet

maybe

Three yards or so of hemp/cotton knit soaking in Buddleia. It's been there overnight.

This is the second soaking, the first in soy milk.

I will wring it out and hang it to dry today.

And then, perhaps, a dip in my almost exhausted indigo vat? Or maybe iron water?  I have some made but have yet to try it. Or maybe a bit of both for comparison? Or maybe a stencil with the iron?

I want to make a dress with this but it will need some mending or strategic cutting.  I was using it on my bed as a sheet. 

Knit is not a great choice for kneading kittens.

And, shared before but coming to me often right now:

Crepuscular midnight stands by the road,

Where the stars have spilled from it's purse.

You can not go over the road past the fence

Without trampling on the universe.

Boris Pasternak, "The Steppe"

gently down the stream (or across the ocean)

 

The pieces were there...things happen. 

The purple cloth is holly hock, the blue is indigo, and the yellow is buddleia (butterfly bush).

And once again, the lily pollen/coffee moon or sun.

It could be either and I like that.

summer in a bowl and other considerations

Couldn't sleep...and so very early this morning I saw a glorious full moon.

I listen to Frank Wilczek being interview on On Being.  It was a random choice, picked when I caught "beauty" and "compass" in the title. Half asleep I heard:

That’s what I think may be the most poetic way of stating this conclusion that the world, in large part, does embody beautiful ideas; that if you regard the world as a work of art — first of all, it helps you understand things, and secondly, it’s a pretty good work of art. It has tremendous beauty. It has tremendous creative power in using a few principles to make elaborate structures. Yeah, it’s a wonderful thing.

 

row row

 

I've been thinking about Jude's definition of art... Do I make anything I would define as art or is it all craft?

I do draw a line between the two.  For me craft is making something useful.  Knitting a useful pair of socks to wear is a craft.  Weaving net for fishing is a craft. Making a basket...

And all this can be art too.  A work of art can be useful, can have purpose.  Purpose is what separates the two for me.  Is there a purpose to what is being made. 

And then there is decoration, perhaps better called beauty. Some things might just be beautiful (although that can be very subjective).

We need craft, beauty and art. Art as communication, as consideration, as perspective.  Craft, and people who are makers, to make useful things...things for shelter, for food.  Beauty feeds us, makes us fall in love, become caregivers... 

Where we get in trouble with all this is when value is assigned. 

And...can how we live our life, our lifestyle, be a form of art? Don't we all present a perspective to the world by how we go about living? Is there craft? Where do we add beauty?

How we define words, how we are defining self...

endlessly fascinating.

daisy, daisy...

and part of a recipe.

(pollen paint and coffee)