Garden Etiquette

My garden, normally a place of great enjoyment has proved to be a place which has been giving me a bad hair day for the last couple of days. I guess it must be the Mercury in Taurus retrograde....at least my horrorscope said that it was going to be a rough several days.

I took a little break from struggling with my tax issue (which is really making my head spin) to kill some thistle and dandelions which are making their way at a gallop from my neighbor's yard.

While there, my other neighbor, who really is a sweet soul, hailed me. "Hey Lis! Can I borrow some of your vegetable garden? I've planted too much and need to have a little ground."

What do you have in mind?

"Oh, well, I have 8 zucchini plants, some lizard tongue beans, some black beans, peppers and stuff. Can I just put them in your garden?"

Hmm. Sounds like you need to open a patch. That's a lot of stuff!

"Well, that's one of the disadvantages of living on a corner lot. I don't want people to have to look at my vegetable garden."

!!!!!

My vegetable garden, dear readers, is all of 18' x 25'. I have been trying to figure out how I am going to get the amount of beans, carrots, beets (for me), garlic, onions, peppers and lots of tomatoes, lettuce and squash in for me....not counting gardenzilla's stock.


Being in my garden also made me see how the warm weather has made everything bound....and if I'm going to move, divide and transplant some of these things, it needs to be done now.

Now, I spend a lot of time and energy in my garden. I have things most people don't have, and I have had to break ground here for it all...the vegetable garden was a patch of sod. My multitudinous flower beds, not much more than that.

Since much of my material has now been in since 2005, I need to make some divisions. Last summer, I gave away quite a bit of plant material to a couple of people. Dividing and sharing is good. It's good for the plants, and it's good for the garden. If something happens and you lose something, then it is possible to borrow back a slip or two. Plus, it's just good garden manners.


Which brings me to a couple of items of garden etiquette. I don't know why it is, but I seem to have a lot of people asking me for starts. I'm happy to oblige, but it seems like some people have to have some gardening dos and don'ts pointed out.

I'm sure that none of you would do this, but don't ask a gardener for a division and then, after they have made the division and potted it up (which takes time and I have to say in my garden, anything but clay is a hardship to give up....as my soil is so heavy), don't show up to pick it up. I snarled today as I looked at 7 pots of plants that someone "had to have" and they never came to get them.

Please, if you want divisions, come when it is good for the plant and good for the garden giver. That is to say, some things should be divided now. If you wait until June, then it will create holes in the gardeners beds, and it might not be the best time to move them. Three weeks ago, I told a woman "come now. Don't wait." I have yet to see her darken my garden gate.

Come prepared to wrap and take away your plants yourself. Don't expect delivery. Let the gardener dig them for you as they know what they want to give and how much they can spare. In my garden, what you think might be a weed, might just be a rare plant, so watch where you step. Be prepared with pots and damp newspaper. Soil is something which here is hard to replace. While I have lots of pots at present, it isn't always that way so make sure you know what you need.

Teach the small fry how to appreciate flowers. Don't let them pick them. Have them ask the gardener first, and have the gardener show them how to pick the flowers. I've had heuchera ripped from the ground from over zealous kids. Not all gardeners want their flowers picked...My friend Martha often repeats the story of the gardener who when asked why he didn't pick the flowers to take them into the house responded "I like children, but I don't cut their heads off and put them in a vase inside."

Come to my garden, enjoy it...but please have some sensitivity to the gardener.

The plants shown here are P asque flowers (Pulsatilla vulgaris). True to their name, they usually bloom right around Easter. I have them in white, deep purple, and magenta. There is a soft pink, but I'm not really a pink person. I love the seed heads which you see as the first image here--they remind me of some sort of plant which Doctor Seuss would draw.

Health Care Bills and Health Care

I mentioned that I have been chasing my tail in my previous post. Part of this has been struggling with my health insurance. My husband works for a "small" company which employs approximately 250 people.

This year, we switched to a HSA, next year, the HSA will be mandatory for all employees. This is a cost saving move for his company as the rising costs of insurance have hit them even though they are doing a lot of things to reward people who try to safeguard their health by not smoking, keeping a good body weight and encouraging visits to the doctors office before things become problematic. Even so, I've been finding that the coverage isn't what it used to be.

Recently, I was switched to another drug and put on quarterly IV doses of Zometa to try to control my cancer as my tumor markers have been rising after 13 years of stability. The experience has been breath taking.

A three month supply of Aromasin costs me $937--that's with a co-pay. My cost for one infusion of the Zometa was $1,15.68 with the insurance deduction. I don't want to think about my upcoming P.E.T. scan as last year my portion was $1,000, and I'll likely need to have 2 this year as there is an area of interest. My daughter has to have a tonsilectomy.

When the mail order pharmacy called me to approve those high co-pays (and yes, I use a mail order pharmacy as part of the insurance in order to keep the costs down), I was stunned. I said to the intake person "Of course I'm going to approve it. What else can I do?" Her response? "Call your doctor and have him prescribe something else. " There is nothing else. This is an anti-cancer drug and this is the next level up--there is actually one above it, but they are holding this for the future if this doesn't work. I was disgusted that the assumption is that there is always a cheaper alternative. I suppose death is a cheaper alternative. I am also disgusted with the fact that the insurance company is playing the doctor. After all, the insurance company is a for-profit entity, it doesn't really care about my health and well being--it's primary concern is making money.

Shortly after this conversation, I got another call from the pharmacy. It seems that my daughter's asthma medications (she has a light case of exercise induced asthma, easily controlled and not a serious case) were going to cost a total of $600.00. This time, the conversation was a rather snotty one. Me: "Hello?" She: "This is the mail order pharmacy. I'm calling about your recent prescription. You're going to have to call the insurance company and see why your co-pays are so high." Huh? They are the ones working directly with the insurance company...I have no control over what they pay or what they don't. I am responsible for making my payment and keeping my daughter healthy.


Thus, when I got a Facebook invitation from one of my high school friends to join "I Bet I Can find 1,000,000 people who oppose the Health Care Bill," I really wondered. First, I support some kind of health care reform and a change in the way we take care of ourselves (and others). Is this bill the only way? I doubt it, but it is a start. Besides, I wonder exactly what all the provisions are. At 1,000 pages, I haven't read it, just the snapshots provided by the media. I doubt most of the congresspeople have read it front to back either. If anything, I am one of the people who believe that it doesn't go far enough, if what I have read is accurate.

First, ours system is one of the few, if not the only, which ties health insurance and health care to employment. If you have no health problems, then you don't realize the problems inherent in the system. In addition, the cost of the company providing health coverage is factored into the cost of the product. Since most of the other countries producing items have nationalized health care instead of requiring companies to kick in, they don't factor this cost in, potentially causing our goods to cost higher and therefore not making us competitive in the global market.

While some people complain about not wanting the Government to provide our health care, I'm guessing that most of those same people would complain if we took away their, or their parent's, Medicare and Medicaid--both programs sponsored by the Government.

I can also tell you that I was terrified when my husband lost his job. I was terrified that we would run out of Cobra before he was able to get a new job. If that happened, and our insurance coverage lapsed, I would not be able to get coverage or would have to pay astronomical amounts in premiums because of my pre-existing condition. I also know of people who were diagnosed with breast cancer only to have their husbands divorce them leaving them with no coverage (as they were not working at the time but were dependents either because they quit to handle the cancer or that they were at-home moms). I know of women who have stayed with abusive husbands because to leave them would mean leaving the insurance. These situations are intolerable and shouldn't exist.

I also know that there is nothing that I could have done to prevent getting cancer. I was sideswiped by this disease. I was a vegetarian for 7 years and even after that point, I didn't eat much meat and certainly ate more fruits and vegetables than most mid-western farm girls. I never smoked. I never used birth control pills. I was slender and active, riding my bike more than 150 miles a week during the summer months and swimming and running year round. I am lucky in that my husband has a good job. If I had remained in the museum field, I probably would only now be making in the vicinity of $45,000 per year if I were lucky and to be able to handle the co-pays etc. which I am facing now would be a stretch after paying for food, housing and transportation.

We also pay presently for the un-insured and under-insured, although most of us don't realize it as the costs are written into our insurance premiums. I was faced with this first hand when I lived in Connecticut and underwent my first cancer surgery. About six months after my lumpectomy, I received a bill for over $2,000 from the hospital. When I called they said that it was my portion of what I owed to cover the un/under-insured based on a percentage of my hospital stay. Evidently, insurance companies have agreements or exclusions with some states in order to cover this. Since I had my surgery in Connecticut where I lived, but my husbands insurance was with Blue Cross of Ohio (he worked for Goodrich at their Connecticut facility but the insurance was out of their home office in Ohio).

What do I want? I want a comprehensive, affordable plan which covers all Americans. I want us to have as good as a plan at the same price as our Congressmen are able to get through their position as Congressmen (they pay premiums to private companies--it isn't provided free of costs according to the website I looked at, but it is apparently affordable). I don't want to be excluded for pre-existing conditions.

I don't think that direct advertising for drugs should be allowed. This drives up the cost of the drugs (think about how much all the E.D. advertising during the Super Bowl cost, and how much the never-ending commercials must cost about the blood pressure, depression and ED drugs are over the course of a day). After all, why should I "ask (my) doctor if this drug is right" for me when ostensibly he/she IS prescribing the best possible for me without me having to ask?

It is said that a country is only as great as how it cares for it's poor and unfortunate. I don't know what the answer is, but it would seem that doing as much as we can to make it easy for people to find out when a problem is small and take care of it would be the best for all of us. I also know that if we don't take steps to take care of the cost and method by which we take care of our health, it will implode on its own and then we won't be able to make pro-active decisions with care and consideration, we will be re-acting and just trying to stop the deluge.

In the mean time, I'll be looking into getting drugs from out of country pharmacies and looking for another job.

Pancakes, flapjacks, crepes

I've been chasing my tail lately....several things have been occupying my time. I've been thinking about posting, and just don't find the time. One of the blogs I follow, partly because I adore her illustrations and photographs is Jackie Morris' Drawing a Line in Time. Jackie makes lists of what she plans on doing, then crosses out what she accomplishes. I thought about doing this just to keep posting, but I know I would get carried away with it and I also have a tendency to think I'm Super Woman and can do more than humanly possible.


I still have a ton of stuff to catch up on, but I do have a little breathing room, and today I thought I'd share a little piece of the Midwest which I adored as a child.

About three years ago, I was looking through the newspaper and realized how many fund-raising events occur in Troy with dinners and breakfasts. I don't remember them happening so much in Connecticut, but I do remember growing up in Bronson, Michigan and going down to the Firehouse where some group was putting on a pancake dinner.



You could have all the pancakes you wanted. Thick, luscious buttermilk pancakes, served with ham, sausage or bacon, your choice of milk or coffee and orange juice. Back in those days, before I, or anyone else, was very health conscious, I would slather butter, first on the bottom layer next to the plate, then in between each pancake and the top. Life was good...until if you were unlucky enough to be there at about noon or if there was a fire called in as the fire siren would blast you into the next county.











Shortly after I was thinking about this, my neighbor Jim called and asked us if we wanted to go to the Kiwanis Pancake Breakfast. My eyes lighted up.

This morning was the yearly event, and I'm happy to say that it was the best attended, at least during the times we've been there. The top is my plate....Just a little butter, I splurged and put two pats on, usually I don't butter it at all. And yes...those cherries are red sour cherries with sugar added to make them sweet, but not cloying...and not much, if any thickener.
You can see that this WAS an event to attend...

Good thing too, as when I got home, my backyard neighbor had rented a rototiller and offered me the use of it....I wasn't planning on doing that today, I was planning on trying to clean the fishpond and find the leak as well as fixing my amended Tax return (OH WOE is Me! I made a mistake on my taxes which I discovered on April 15, AFTER I had submitted them on April 12....I will get more money back, but at present, I have spent 7 hours on the telephone with Turbo-Tax with a glitch I discovered in their program. I needed that extra large breakfast, even if that also meant I skipped lunch!

Spring sown seeds the painless way

Nutty as usual...that's how things are going. I'm madly trying to get the garden tidied up and the dandelions out before everything starts germinating. I'm also trying to get my daughter's quilt done and two smaller projects done before April 15. The ides of April are also tax time, and I have to have ours (including my Amazon business) done and in...and we're doing college visits for my daughter .

Time and tide wait for no man. Nature has a habit of coming along even if you don't have time to do what you want to do. I love the spring "minor bulbs" of scilla siberica, chinodoxa, and pushkinia. These little blue beauties are often overlooked but should be planted more frequently. They may even be planted in the grass as usually they are done blooming and die back before the grass needs to be mowed. We've had such warm weather here, however, that this year it would not be the case. The blue beauties are blooming and we've had to cut the grass this weekend.

When I was a child, my mother used to start plants in milk cartons and other things. I hated it as it seemed like the pots were taking over the house.

Through the wonders of the internet, I discovered a wonderful way to start seeds. This is "winter sowing" . Trudi Davidoff has a wonderful site which explains her method. I discovered Trudi on the Garden Web's winter sowing forum. It is the only method I have discovered that I am successful with poppy seeds and other plants which if I direct winter sow doesn't seem to work. Basically you take a container which is about 2 1/2" - 3" deep (the length of your thumb). Gallon milk cartons work well...but any clear or translucent container this deep will do. Juice bottles, containers which have had spring mix greens or whatever are great.


Cut the bottom of the container off. You can start it easily with a serrated knife, and finish it off with a pair of scissors...or whatever your favorite cutting implement is.









Put drainage holes in the bottom of the container. I use an exacto knife or a box cutter to stab it in. Usually about 16 slices works well. Be very careful not to stab your hand. This part can be really dangerous.




Fill the bottom of the container with soil-less mix, pro-mix or seed starting mix. Water it. Then sow the seeds on top. Follow the instructions for the depth at which to plant them.
















Use a sharpie pen to mark name of the seeds on a piece of duct tape. Tape the label on the bottom of the container.









Tape around the sides of the container to hold it on. Do not put the lid back on the jug as it is how the hot air is vented out. Place the jug outside. If you live in an area where there are high winds, put it in a spot where they won't blow away. Some people put them in one of the hard kiddie swimming pools. Others tie several jugs together.

This is cheap, effective and has no need of lights, special stands, heating mats or anything.

In a couple of weeks, you'll see the baby plants start to come. Keep an eye on them. You can un-tape the container when the plants become larger, but don't forget, they are still at the mercy of mother nature and you could have a frost.

As long as the plants are in the jug, they are safe from frost. In essence, you've made a miniature cold frame. This is far better than having them in the house and the plants are sturdy little things.

You can start almost anything this way...The colder loving plants and perennials you can start planting in the winter. The warmer things you can plant later in the season. I'm madly trying to plant marigolds, zinnias, tomatoes and other plants which will need to go in the ground in mid-May. I've had great luck with this. You'll get a little forest of plants and you can break off a clump of them and re-pot them, or plant them directly in. I've been doing this for 5 years, and just love it. I hope you can take advantage of it too.

The Garden web's forum on this method may be found here .

Beautiful Surprises

It's been a busy week at Casa Quintana. My sister-in-law from Montana was visiting her relatives in Dayton and spent some time with us. My daughter got a horrible case of tonsilitis and things just didn't go when and where they were supposed to.

The garden is popping out all over the place, even though we were hit by a 1 1/2 - 2" layer of snow on Friday. That's ok...most of the peach/cherry/apple blossoms aren't far enough along to be damaged I don't think.

I took these pictures last Friday....the last day I had to work in the garden before being deluged with other distractions. Above is a bunch of common milkweed pods I found at the back of the garden. I gathered these as one of my friends wants to start a patch on her property to provide food for Monarch butterflies which prefer it. The fluffy fibers, meant to provide a parachute for the seeds to travel with, provide nesting material for goldfinches, one of my favorite birds and extremely common in my yard.

I was dumbfounded to find this iris blooming away, even before the Dutch crocus were in full bloom. Situated on the eastern side of my back yard garden, well away from any structure, I didn't think to find even the earliest of iris in bloom. This is a complete surprise to me as I don't remember planting it and I have no idea what it is. Perhaps some of your savvy gardening types can help me out.

The thin leaves, and the tall crests make me think that this is a Dutch iris....I am a tad flummoxed. It is quite possible that it is a mystery plant purchased at Spring Hill Gardens clearance sales....I'm forever haunting it and dragging home all sorts of roots, rhyzomes, seeds and half dead plants from that place. Sometimes I feel like I am a wise woman from ages gone by as I carefully gather all the rejects--bits and pieces of wizened plants and carefully put them in the ground.



The dark maroon sort of colored leaves are the leaves of Dianthus barbatus "sooty"--Sweet William. I love sweet william and sooty has dark leaves and lovely deep maroon blossoms. I don't remember if it has the sweet scent of some of the older strains, but it seeds itself in which is a good thing as it is a short lived biennial. Well worth growing in your garden. Growing it from seed is easy.





One of the other happy surprises I relieved is a Beautiful Blogger award from Ruth Anne . I am terribly embarrassed to say that I had been nominated for an award by Jessica back in November I think... I wasn't really clued in and while I meant to participate...especially because I loved the signage for it...I never got around to doing it. So, thanks, Ruth Anne...and thank you too Jessica, even if I am really late and didn't really participate (blush).

Some people I know don't like these things. I think they are sort of neat as you get to explore blogs you might not find otherwise. I do look at the blogs my followers follow and often I stumble upon some real beauties. Having the blog awards are not so much "me, me, me" as Jessica once described them, but a way to explore and find joy elsewhere. Basically, if you don't like them, then you don't have to follow them.

The rules (golly, there are always rules aren't there????)

Here are the rules:

1. Thank the person who gave you this award.
2. Share 7 things about yourself.
3. Pass the award along to 5 bloggers who you have recently discovered and you think are fantastic!
4. Contact the bloggers you've picked and let them know about the award.

Seven things about me:

1. I'm left handed...but am semi-ambidextrous (I bat in cricket left-handed, I bat in baseball right handed for example....and I can't use left handed scissors.)

2. I am, unfortunately, a procrastinator....I think largely because I want to do the best I can do...not from perfection, but to do the best I think on it....yet sometimes I don't dive right in because I dread doing it......I'm working on it, but it isn't pretty.

3. Like Ruth Anne, I'm a collector of stuff....and I'm trying hard to de-clutter and simplify. Must be the age. ;)

4. I've had fish (tropical and goldfish) since I was 8 years old...yes, continuously although in college it was merely a goldfish in a bowl.

5. I love goldfish. I built my first pond (fiberglass molded and made by me) when I was 13. I dug another one when I lived in Connecticut when I was in my 30s. Fish from that pond moved down here with me and my neighbor Ellen helped me dig a bigger pond than the one I had in CT here...(GO WOMAN POWER!!!).

6. I am part elf...I have a pointed ear. Seriously. I've only met one other person who had this.

7. I adore learning--reading is a passion. I guess that means I'm not yet dead.

Hmm... now is the hard part. Bloggers:

1. Ok...this is sort of a cheat, because I know that she doesn't participate, but you need to take a look at her blog anyway, so go look at Ardea's Nest.

2. Not that she would ever participate in this....but if you want an unusual and sort of irreverent take on life (and this is my view of this blog) take a gander here at Life at Willow Manor. Way cool.

3. Now this is a cheat too....as this isn't a "recent" find of a blog...this is one I've followed for a while as I've "known" Shady in the internet sense for...hmmm....about 8 years?

4. The same goes for Sunita...who has several blogs...check them out, but the Urban Gardener is probably the prettiest and the one she posts to the most. Chai n spice is also simply wonderful.

5. I found Carole's blog I think in November, so for me, it is a recent find.....and I have to say I have had several finds which compete for this one, but definitely this is one of the more recent. Carole is very upbeat in her blogs and is a quilter...and like most of us needlewomen who foray into the fiber art world has a wonderful eye for color, texture, form...and life!

Decisions, decisions....choosing was difficult, sharing is great fun!

Out of Ashes

The last weekend in February brought our annual Batty Binder's retreat. Each year, we haul our quilting supplies, more food than an army can eat (although we were MUCH better this year and had lots of healthy snacks), our bedding and various supplies to the local Girl Scout camp. There, we settle ourselves in for a weekend of sewing, talking, having fun, sharing, quilting...and general fun. About 25 of us were here this year and once again, it coincided with an area Quilt Shop-Hop.

I, however, had resolved to settle myself in and just quilt. No shopping for me as I have far too many yards to use up. Here, you can see Gwen working away. I loved that she has yellow quilting gloves which matched the piece she was working on almost perfectly.


Here, you can see some of our projects hanging behind us as we finished pieces. The two purple projects on each end (a stack and whack dahlia and a Turning-Twenty Simply Sashed) are both mine. The dahlia is going to be a gift for my mom and the turning-twenty is an Easter gift for my daughter--grandmother and grand-daughter share a favorite color.

While most of the weekend is usually full of lots of fun, we did have a pretty gut wrenching occurrence this time. One of our members, Debbie, has a "hobby farm"--in other words, the main source of income is from working off the farm. Debbie's husband wants to try to maintain the farm life. This means that Debbie is the one who provides most of the livestock care. She has pigs, chickens, cattle (primarily her daughter's 4-H projects) and sheep. I usually talk to her about the sheep as we used to raise them when I was growing up. Lambs and piglets are usually born in the first months of the year. I asked Debbie how things were going as I assumed lambing would be in full swing. She told me that she had a sow (mama pig) who had just given birth to 13 piglets (normal litters are about 6-9) but that one of them was stillborn and two died soon after birth. Evidently, the sow had been in labor for a couple of days but it wasn't obvious that she was, nor that she was in trouble.

The sow developed and infection and had to have antibiotics. The last week of February had been snowy, sleety and slippery. Debbie had fallen while going out to the barn to give the injection one night and as she has arthritis in one of her shoulders (at the ripe old age of about 50) she was afraid she wasn't going to get back up. I sympathized with her and with the fact that the piglets now needed special care.

At about 12:30 am (yes, A.M), Debbie got a horrifying call from her daughter who is the same age as mine. Their barn was on fire, and that's where the $750 calf for her daughter's 4-H project was along with other livestock. It was sleeting and we knew that there was black ice out. One of Debbie's friends drove her the hour back home. Meanwhile, we were all stunned and terrified for her. We were unsure if her husband was home. All I could think about was the barn fire I had witnessed as a child. In the country, obtaining water is often difficult and pumpers usually have to haul it to the location of the fire. In addition, volunteer fire departments can be at some distance from the farms. Barns are filled with highly flammable hay and straw and when animals are involved the consequences are horrifying.

I was worried about her daughter, because I knew that when I was 17, I would go into the fire to try to save the animals with no thought to any personal danger. We prayed. We were subdued. We waited. At about 2:00, Debbie called us. One third of the barn had burned, and they only lost one piglet. None of the other animals were injured. We all breathed a sigh of relief. Debbie then said "Tell Lisa that we now have six piglets staying in the bathtub." Because the temperatures were about freezing, they piglets had to be kept warm somehow. Debbie's solution was to take them inside and keep them in the bathtub.

I was worn out and said to one of the women, "Now piglets in a bathtub. That needs to have an art quilt." I then went to bed. At about 4:30, I awakened and heard the sound of a sewing machine running like crazy. I wondered about it, but went back to sleep. When I finally got up, I discovered that a group of these talented ladies had made Debbie a special quilt to remember this all by.
Here is the new little wall-hanging of the piggies in the tub. We goofed and put one too many in, so I put a halo around it which you can't see here. The curtain is actually a loose piece of fabric which sways out.

What's on the shelf?





But of course! Hog wash!



Several of the ladies stayed up all night to finish this in the hope that Debbie would come back to pick up her things. She didn't and so we are going to give her her present at our next meeting.








Here's Deb Neff who spearheaded it and stayed up the entire night. Never ever sit down and fall asleep in a chair when you are at a quilting retreat as you just might end up decorated.

Even if one has a "hobby farm", the loss of a barn and its contents sets one back quite a bit. Debbie had to find temporary homes for the livestock she couldn't squeeze in her other outbuildings. Rebuilding will take some time. We hope that maybe this fun little quilt will help take the sting out.

Back from the Land of the Lost

Wow. What a month. Just after my last post, I managed to get the dreaded "Windows XP 2010 Antivirus" virus. WHAT a nasty thing. A pop-up appears (how it got around my pop-up blocker I don't know), which LOOKS like it is from Microsoft. If you click ANYWHERE on the box (the "x", in the body, or on the "yes" or "no" boxes, it downloads an executable file which wreaks havoc on your computer. If you should get this, shut your computer down and run a malware check and you may be able to get it off...or you can restore to an earlier restoration date.

I have spend almost a month removing it, restoring files (and not all of them are back) and programs...as well as dealing with other stuff.... Now, to add insult to injury, my husband had forwarded me a warning from his workplace IT warning me about this in November....and I forgot it.

Also, at the end of February, I finished this little piece, "Take off your sandals for you are standing on holy ground." It really is little, only 12" square. I made a drawing of my daughter's feet and then painted it on cotton with acrylic paints. I appliqued it onto the background (a spring green) and then fused little slivers of green onto the surface for the grass. My daughter complained that I didn't actually use her nail polish color on the toenails....hers was a deep maroon....a little clashy I thought.

This particular piece is going to be on display at the Marianist Environmental Education Center's Gallery St. John in Dayton, OH. This is a mixed media show. The theme this year was "Sacred Ground."

I really had fun with this piece and realized once again how much I enjoy using painted elements in my quilting.