stuff about artstuff.

(Im)patiently Waiting for Spring.

Last month I got to spend an awesome day with my amazing artist friends Jane and Barb at the Northwest Flower and Garden Show.  The show is about my favorite thing every February, breaking up the cold, grey drudgery of winter and thinking about spring and summer gardening.

The smells - oh, man!  The smells!  I walk into that Display Garden area and just breathe as deeply as possible.  Smell that.

And that.

No, really, smell that.

The first thing I asked myself when I walked in was:
Why don't I have a hobbit house in my own backyard?

I mean, really.  It would just look like a little berm from the other side - and it wouldn't really take up any space with the rest of the yard just growing on top.
Right?

Oh, but wait - smell that.

While taking this picture I heard my favorite crowd/people-watching quote of the day, as a couple walked past the rest of these pinkalicious blooms:

"...yeah, but the deer would just eat those like lollipops in our yard."

Favorite, because I am now of course picturing cute deer enjoying pink lollipops, and will never look at a pink tulip quite the same again.  Sorry, all you gardeners who share their neighborhoods with ravenous, garden-munching deer.  I'm stuck this way now.

I'm not usually all about flowers the size and shape of my head, but just look at the adorable little pinks and greens in this hydrangea.

And this guy looks like he might be a relative of my little friend.

Too-cute sheds and greenhouses are always a favorite feature in the display gardens for me.
I think this one is a Bob Bowling Rustic - you might remember me going on about his uber-cool buildings last year.

And here's a lovely and clever fountain idea that adds height and structure, looks cool, has a small footprint, and might not lure the neighborhood raccoons away from their current favorite haunt: my neighbor's backyard pond.  I've always wanted a water feature and as much as I love me some raccoons, I love them much more in someone else's water!

And this, oh this.
This fence, this art-installment, this sculpture garden, this amazing field of orbs-on-a-stick.  I am in love.
I was somehow too spacy this year to keep track of the designers of the Display Gardens (my apologies!) and I can't tell you who is responsible for these beautiful balls of wonderfulness.  But I love them.  I really, really love them.

It's not just the fabulous Display Gardens that make the show, though - the Marketplace is always full of inspiration: stuff I need, stuff I covet . . . like gorgeous and solid hand-forged garden tools with warm, smooth wooden handles that felt like they were made especially for my own hands,  little rusty birds I want to fill my yard with,
and one-piece pitchforks made from esplaier-grown fruitwood.  How cool is that?!  I was actually tempted but was taking public transportation home and was afraid they might not let me on the bus.  "Oh look, dear, the angry mob is here."

More textures,

more colors...

...like these wild sculptures

and my favorite from last year, the most killer fountains on the planet

and how could I not get lost in this booth?

The biggest trend I noticed, throughout the Display Gardens and the Marketplace, was incorporating art made from junk - a personal favorite theme of mine.
My Granddad was just so way before his time...

Reuse, recycle, repurpose . . . down to every last rustilicous detail at Bob Bowling Rustics.

 Our favorite part of the Marketplace was the Funky Junk section: a little garden-themed flea market

overflowing with perfectly-chipped paint,

crackle,

and moss.

It was such a great day with friends, inspiration, hope for a new and warmer season coming soon (!) and I came home with a super fun bag full of irresistable (seriously, I could not walk away from these) goodies.
(Put a bird on it).

And, just like it does every year, it reminds me that spring is not that far away.

Wreath!

I used to buy pre-made wreaths and "doctor them up" with my own goodies (that's what my Granny used to call it when you add stuff to a hamburger or other sandwich).

At the end of the season I'd always strip the compostable stuff off the base, and save the ring and even the wires for making my own wreaths in the future.  I'd seen enough tutorials on craft and gardening shows and magazines to know that making my own was quite doable, but it always seemed like I was too busy with other things by the time I wanted one up, and store-bought wreaths weren't that expensive...

Then it seems like store-bought wreaths suddenly got super-expensive.  And a lot uglier.  So a few years ago I finally started making my own - and now I feel dumb that it took me so long to get around to it.

What I thought would be a time-consuming project that might look weird turned out to be an almost foolproof thing I can throw together in minutes.  It's handy that I still have so many old wire or plastic wreath-forms saved from years of storebought ones, but pretty much anything you find that's a circle (a hub-cap ring, machine part, picture frame, really if it's a lightweight-ish ringy-thing that can be covered up with greenery, you're golden.

If I've got a floppy or hangy area: wrap another chunk of wire around it.  Skinny/naked area: wire another glob of greenery to it.  Just like that.  After it's been up a while, something starts to sag?  Tuck it in, wrap more wire - really, you get the picture here.  It's not rocket science.

It also feels more meaningful when I hang something on the front door that came from my own back yard.  I find lots of unexpected things in the garden to add: stuff I usually overlook (weeds, pods, vines, twiggy and mossy branches that litter the ground after a storm) and when my yard's garbage makes something look pretty, I don't feel so bad for having not cleaned it up in the first place.

The last few years they've been perky little fir wreaths with lots of pine cones and other goodies

but this year I went super simple, monochromatic and sort of loose:

it's just cedar, fir, ivy and rosemary (it smells amazing when the door swings open!).

Really, you should make a wreath (or 2, or 3...).  It's totally satisfying!

November Harvest

Oops, I wrote this last week and forgot to post it.  A little scattered these days, I guess . . . here it is, in the better-late-than-never category!

A couple weeks ago, I finally gave in and picked the last of the tomatoes left on the vine.

I trawled around the Interwebs for new and interesting green-tomato recipes to try, and since I had also just harvested the last of the hot peppers, decided on a roasted green tomato salsa that would use both.  I looked at this one and this one which both look awesome, then just sort of made up my own, because that's how I roll.

It's yummy.

I covered the ones that seemed to still have hope of ripening

and all but 2 or 3 made it to a real-tomato red with no gross spots.  Yay!  Tonight's dinner:

I'm thinking a simple, fresh summery pasta - the last bit of real tomato flavor before next year's ripen in August or September . . . winter suddenly just got very real.

PS: (a week after writing this post and forgetting it!) the fresh-tomato pasta was dreamy.  Sigh . . . until next year.

PPS: don't forget to hop over to the next post and leave a comment to enter the drawing for one of 2 book panels from One Crazy Christmas Eve, I'll draw names this weekend!

From a December Garden

While working outside today I did a little end-of-season cleanup in some of the garden beds.  I was putting things away and pulling out spent plants, and was about to start hacking down the tall, dead daisies that I never got around to trimming after their second bloom this fall, when I noticed this.

Each little seed-head has sprouted a tiny baby daisy garden of its own.

They stand there in the flowerbed like Whovillian forests, miniature worlds of their own atop crazy pedestals.

I am in love with these amazing little works of nature.

Other treasures pocketed before the cold rain drove me indoors:

the last 2 unrotten green tomatoes and the miniaturiest miniature white pumpkin ever

and then there are the tomatillios.

This has been the weirdest plant ever.  Insanely sprawling and prolific, it must have grown - and is still growing - thousands of pretty yellow blossoms that turn to delicate little husks that, although they smelled like delicious tomatillios, never grew a single fruit inside.  All summer (and fall) I kept expecting fruit to magically appear within the husks, but it never did.  Maybe I needed a second plant to pollinate correctly?  If you have successfully grown tomatillios, please fill me in!

Octobery Gardeny Goodness

What a gorgeous Indian Summer we've been having here in the Northwest.  The days have been clear and blue, the mornings and evenings especially golden and pinkish, and the nights crisp and cool.  I'm not usually thinking about the garden this time of year, since pretty much the only thing that's happening is the last of the tomatoes and squash are ripening while the rest of the beds sit sort of neglected and dry, waiting patiently for someone to finally clean up spent blooms and do some pre-winter mulching.

I may not typically be thinking gardening in October, but for the past year my sister has been telling me about this amazing nursery over on the Kitsap Peninsula, and we've been saying we'll go.  It's closed during the winter and this month is our last chance for the year, so we finally scheduled a day and I hopped on a ferry to meet her there.
It couldn't have been a bluer morning out on Puget Sound.

Everyone was taking advantage of the warm October sunshine.
Gulls and cormorants at the ferry dock preened and sunned themselves.

As I pulled into the long driveway toward Dragonfly Farms Nursery for the first time, I knew it was going to be cool.  I parked my car under a fish in a tree
and started to soak in this late-season wonderfulness.
We wandered through the extensive paths and gardens before heading up to the retail area.

In October I expect to see dramatic grasses

interesting dried pods
and colorful foliage and berries

but I'm always surprised by what's actually blooming.  Around my neighborhood and in my own yard, the roses are all having a second (or third) go at it, but wait, there's more...

...and if these tall and fabulous blooms and giant showy leaves aren't enough, you could always plant flowers made of big rocks and rusty metal.  I am loving these and want a whole bed of them.

The beds at Dragonfly Farms are full of giant rusty machine parts turned garden sculptures; I can't get enough of that stuff.  I just love it.
And this one surprised me by being the coolest birdhouse ever.
There were a few of these great benches built into raised beds.
Note to self, find some gargantuan pipe sections and a giant slab of slate and make a bench out of it. Yeah, I'll get right on that...

More fun surprises that pop up this time of year: cute little baby perennials and spreading pansies that just show up at the edges or even right in the middle in the garden path
busy bees
bottle trees
and bottle borders.
I love bottle anything.  It's a hereditary thing for glass, my relatives and I can't help it - we just came this way.

I also love spheres in the garden.
Gazing balls, armillary sundials, giant sculptures, floats, old bowling balls, anything round just makes me happy when it's nestled into the landscape.  And there are plenty here.

Including
the mother of all garden spheres
and then that sphere's mother.
Yes, the mother of the mother of all garden spheres.  Really.  There are quite a few amazing sculptures by this local artist scattered throughout the grounds.
And if rusty metal isn't your thing, there's always mirror glass.

I am also a big fan of Seussian trees.  You know, ones that remind me of beloved characters from my childhood.
But I'm not sure I've ever seen a tree that reminded me so much of Snuffleupagus.
I sort of want one as a pet.
But this one lives here with his whole family, so I wouldn't want to break that up.

Everywhere you look around here there is personality
and more personality.

Just look at the shape of this planter.  I am afraid to build stuff because I think it will turn out this shape, but now that I see this, that wouldn't be so bad.  And see the broken pot behind it?  Placed as though that tree just busted out of it overnight.
There are hidden treasures everywhere,
many of them were once useful objects...

...hidden deep under this burst of growing goodies is a claw-foot bathtub used as a planter.

More paths wander through semi- to deeply-shaded areas

all filled with artisticly quirky treasures,
and growing ones.

Wandering through the subtle, dark, shady paths, you suddenly come across the most inviting doorway
to another little world, this one in technicolor.

An adorable old gingerbread-covered house peeked through the shrubs and trees telling us that we might have stumbled onto the owners' private space, so we headed back out through another path that meandered through more gardens and eventually brought us back to the nursery
filled with locally-sourced goodies
gorgeous fall color
and friendly and helpful planting advice.

I can't wait to go back in the spring and summer and enjoy a completely different kind of show of colors and textures.

After we had our fill of gardeny goodness, we enjoyed a delicious lunch outside on a deck overlooking the waterfront with a couple new friends who didn't seem to understand why we were both talking to them so nicely but not offering them food (it was way too good to share).

With my belly full of yummy food, my car full of new plants, and that warm nice feeling from spending a great day with someone I love
I headed home again across the amazingly blue Puget Sound.
What a great day!

If you are here in Western Washington and are into gardening, I suggest you head over to Dragonfly Farms Nursery between Kingston and Hansville and wander, discover, and stock up on great plants and unique garden art - you won't be sorry you did!  The owner is super nice and has cute dogs, it's a woman-owned small business supporting other local small businesses, and one of the neatest places around.

Indian Summer

...is my favorite time of year.

Because "real summer" like other people get doesn't really happen here in the Pacific Northwest until pretty late.  Late enough that once we finally get into the summer swing, my friends elsewhere are already looking forward to simmering pots of hearty soup, cozy sweaters, and of course sending the kids back to school.

Most years, we get a beautiful little summer in September; nights may be cooler and leaves starting to turn, but to me, it counts as summer - and I soak it in however I can.
This is also the time when the stars of my garden finally shine: the tomatoes are ripening!  11 plants, 8 varieties, a whole lot of yummy going on this year.
The season starts with meticulously-pruned stems, trained to single bamboo stakes.  As summer progresses and I get sloppier with pruning, unruly vines laden with heavy fruit require some creativity; here a holey-fingered garden glove gently props an unusually heavy vine atop a thick bamboo post.
Most of the rest of the garden is slowing down a bit, but there are still goodies to discover
even my little artichokes decided to give me a second round this year.
Given our cool, short summers, it's been a long time since I had even bothered with peppers, but I grew a couple this year.
The plants are tiny, but our recent warm stretch has given me some pretty little Black Czech hot-peppers and jalapenos.

Today's harvest seems to have a theme...
...so I followed its lead.
I'm usually a lime-in-my-salsa girl, but my sister sent me home the other day with a couple of gorgeous and super-juicy Meyer Lemons.  So pretty.  And yummy.
I added some garlic, cilantro, and salt...
oh man, this smells good.
No 2 batches of salsa are ever the same, especially when it's just made with whatever is ripe at the moment, but it's always better if it's given some time for the flavors to combine.  Let's see how long we can resist.
While cleaning up, I noticed that I'd left out one of the jalapenos that I'd picked.  And there was extra chopped cilantro.  And I had a huge ripe mango waiting to be eaten.  And my limes were feeling left out.
A couple chunks of leftover pineapple, another sweet little onion, and of course more garlic...
...and I was starting to get hungry for snacks.

A package of pita bread became crunchy chips
and we were all set for Happy Hour.  A treat usually reserved for vacation or special occasions, but then Indian Summer only comes once a year.

Green and Purple. It's What's for Dinner.

Hi there.

Nothing important, I was just out harvesting some stuff to eat tonight and had to take a minute to love on the colors before I wash it all and begin to prepare dinner.
Mmmm, green and purple.  You may not have known that they are the official favorite colors of the Logan Household.  Well, why would you?  Now you do.  This is the kind of important fact you can get only here.  Life-altering information, I'm sure.
They were wedding colors, they are house-paint colors, clothes colors, shoe colors, even guitar colors.  And tonight, they are dinner colors.  I'm not all the way sure what dinner will be yet, but it will include the loaf of bread that's about to go into the oven, and some combination of this stuff . . . I'm going to go figure that out now.
Have a lovely evening!

Fresh New Start.

Happy new year!
As I've mentioned here before, for me, New Year isn't when those numbers change in the dead of winter.  With my business revolving around a show like Surtex, my year builds toward that golden opportunity to show what I've been working on all these months, to start new and hopeful relationships, and to get that annual opportunity to sit down face to face and chat with my wonderful licensing partners and brainstorm and plan new projects I'll work on in the coming months.
For the past 12 years, every late-May I return home from New York to a house and yard that's been neglected for months, a garden that's just starting to thrive (and get really weedy!), a desk that's ready to be purged of the previous year's clutter, and a brain just bursting with new ideas for things I am dying to create after the long hard focus on show prep: portfolios, displays, travel, logistics . . .

This is my fresh start, when I feel like anything is possible in the next year.  My tomato seedlings have little blossoms, baby birds are fledging in my back yard, and my clients want new art and are also starting the process of manufacturing new products with last year's art.
I'll share more about Surtex in another post, but for now, I just wanted to take a minute to say "Happy New Year!"  I hope you are enjoying your own fresh start in this transition from spring into summer.

Oh, and . . . here's to having time to start trying more of those fun ideas and projects I've been collecting on Pinterest, like my useful little broken-rake tool-hanger!

Unexpected Gifts from the Garden.

That is, a terribly neglected garden.

I suppose before going any further I have to admit that somehow I never got around to the fall cleanup of my garden beds.  The typical stuff that respectable gardeners do automatically after their last satisfying harvest.  Cut down spent plants, mulch, tuck everything away for a neat and tidy winter so it will be composted, fresh and ready again in the springtime.

All I can say is that I was in denial when fall came.  We never really got summer around here. I was like a little kid who can't keep my eyes open or my head up but fights to the bloody end to avoid going to bed.  No, I'm not tired!  I'm not finished yet!  My 11 tomato plants are taller than me and I've only harvested 3 ripe fruits! 3!  It's not over, it's not!  It's not! Noooooooo!

Kicking and screaming and refusing to accept it, fall and winter happened anyway.  They always do.  I normally enjoy working in the yard in the wintertime, even in the cold rain I'll be out there planting bulbs or doing whatever needs to be done, muddy and soggy and happy.  But not this winter.  The disappointment that was The Summer That Never Camewas still too fresh.  I really seemed to take it personally and I simply couldn't deal with it.  So I put on my clutter-blinders and vowed to get out and do some early spring cleanup when I was feeling a smidge less bitter about big, dumb winter.

Alright, the beds are still quite sad looking.  I know, it's March.  And my first early plant sale is in a couple weeks.  But I returned home a few days ago after a week and a half away, and saw something interesting.

I had been noticing something leafing out the last month or so, maybe an old cabbage or something, I hadn't really focused on it before.  But as I hurried past to get back into the warm house the other day, there it was, practically glowing.

The Romanesco broccoli I never got last year.

I'd planted a couple varieties of cauliflower and broccoli early last year and was pretty excited about them.  Nothing seemed to be happening until tiny buds appeared the week before I went to New York for Surtex.  By the time I returned from the show, they had all bolted and gone to seed (must have been that one day of sunshine we had in May) along with all my other early-season greens.  Sad, tall, weird Seussian flowers, all of them.

I'm not sure when this one decided to sprout back up again.  I wasn't paying attention.  But it was a smart one, growing so vigorously while all the slugs and bugs and little green worms are asleep under their rocks.  The flawless, perfectly-intact leaves span a couple feet wide.  Even after a long warm saltwater soak, not a single tiny critter floated out of this.

And it was delicious.  Crunchy-tender, and so sweet it made my mouth water.

This funny little flower the size of my fist fills me with that pre-season hope that this will be the year.  The year that the sun shines, that things grow and thrive.  I will sprout, plant, and nurture - relying on faith and hard work.  Spring is coming soon, the season of new growth, rebirth, and hope.

Nice to be reminded that even in a neglected garden, we can find unexpected gifts.

Aaaaahhhh.

Smell that.

On a cold, damp February day here in the Pacific Northwest, that sweet, heady scent could pretty much only mean one thing. The Northwest Flower and Garden Show.  I hopped a bus downtown on Saturday and met my sister (who had hopped a ferry) for an absolutely perfect day of smelling, staring, soaking in, sharing, and all-in-all being inspired and rejuvenated.

As usual I came away with so many more ideas than I will realistically be able to incorporate into my own yard, but as usual I will try.

Each year it seems the display gardens feature more and more funky, repurposed, and recycled items - my own Granddad's quirky style has become mainstream - I often wonder what he would think of that.  He'd probably just shake his head and chuckle with that light, airy little contagious giggle he had - just imagining it makes me smile.

My very favorite thing I saw this year were these amazing fountains crafted of musical instruments and random objects.

They appeared in a booth in the marketplace and featured in display gardens.

It seems this guy shares a common artistic vision with my Granddad, shown here with his own amazing "Commotion Machine" back in the 1970s.

Another favorite funky feature I saw in multiple locations throughout the show were these little friends of mine.

I visit them (or rather, their friends and cousins?) on regular strolls through my favorite store in Seattle

and have vowed to bring home a carload of them someday to join the many other goodies that have followed me home from that place.

Found-objects-turned-art popped up over and over again, inspiring my hoarding side a little too easily.

I'm not sure if this entire "beneficial insect hotel" by Innovative Landscape Technologieswill someday appear as a stand-alone sculpture in my backyard but some of these cute little niches tucked away into fenceposts and corners do seem like a neat idea.

Other cool ideas from their garden included this neato musical deck and old picture frames used to highlight a specimen or provide support for plants.  Oh boy do I have a lot of raggedy old picture frames I could do this with...
Their garden also included a practical "rain garden" surrounding a ground drain that would sure be nicer than the old hose that currently drains my rainbarrel runoff down to the gravel alley.

I'm not sure if it this moves by wind or some kind of motor, but this "kinetic sculpture" in the WALP garden was particularly mesmerising and I have the sudden and unrealistic urge to try and build one myself

(she's right, you know - he would have).

Also in their garden: this fabulous giant rusty guitar and some nice stonework.

Cool, industrial metal parts decorated all corners, nooks and crannies

including this beautiful shape which I am guessing had been a scrap; just what was left between some real parts of some sort.

I end up with pieces of paper and cardboard all the time that suddenly become more interesting to me than the piece I had meant to cut out, and it makes me happy that someone else shares a similar appreciation for their own scraps.

Old wooden pallets have been having a great year.  They have been popping up on Pinterest as anything from clever wine storage and flat-files to narrow tiered planters (a variation of which I plan on constructing in my own yard this spring).  I even saw one in the marketplace built to the same specs as the one I saw in Apartment Therapy.  But this one, by Artistic Garden Concepts, is my new favorite use for a pallet:

Isn't this table fabulous?  The legs make it, but the pallet is cool!

Their romantic moonlit garden sat nestled under a twinkling, star-like canopy of vines and mini-lights twining through a pergola - this idea I love, too.

It set a perfect tone for the vignettes below.

 I am a real sucker for blue glass,

and they had me at "bottle tree"

but looking beyond the blue into Susan Browne Landscape Design's garden, I heard angels singing in the form of

a shed.

A magnificent little garden shed.

Just look inside.

No, really look in there.
And if that wasn't enough, later a bluegrass band played gently along right in front of it.  Awesome.

More of these fabulous little structures by Bob Bowling Rustics appeared around the show, be-still my junk-loving heart.

I could just live inside one.

I also like to think I could live inside this giant root...

...I believe Elandan Gardens may have used this amazing specimen in previous show displays, because I feel like I have photographed it before.

I'm always drawn to this kind of stuff; I can't get enough when it comes to twisty

curly

tangly

textury stuff like this.

Oh, hellow.

Fancy Plants Gardens created a magical moving "stream" with dry ice which I could have stared at all day.

All show gardens label their plants with the latin names but this was my favorite, also in their display, cute!

I'm going to have to copy this cute idea for marking plants.  I've tried it before with a sharpie but eventually the rock gets too dirty and wet to read and I lose it completely.  It appears they used a waterproof sealer on theirs.

Guess what?

Chicken butt.

Sorry.

I suppose natural forest-scapes are probably something you don't find so much in the other garden shows, but here in the woodsy Pacific Northwest we go nuts for this stuff.

I love this.

But that's not to say that we aren't all about our colorful, cultivated, magnificent and splendiferous florabundance that makes a garden show what it is.

What a great day I had.  I can't wait until spring.