Seeds and beads

Every year I battle the dream. The dream of having a vegetable garden versus the knowledge that our backyard is about the worst place for veggies there is. Deep north shade, shallow acidic soil, and a gardener with a wandering attention span if things go wrong. Every year they do. But I love the idea of a lush productive garden. Brain storm....

seeds for flowers. I can grow a number of annuals in the small pockets of sun and have hopes for a couple of veg that like cool situations. I watch a gardening blog (The hort channel tv) and laugh at how scruffy the garden, green house and shed are. Even the blogger, Sean, is pretty scruffy. But I get a kick out of it. This mess, my new 'greenhouse' is very tidy compared to Sean.

This spot is at the bottom of our basement steps where we have stored my computer and writing desk station, our son's computer station, worms, pantry items, a working loom, empty jars and jam and now...seed trays. I've seeded allysum, lobelia, red leaf lettuce, japanese turnips, nasturtiums, basil and parsley. I have 6 more seed packets to seed up, but have to figure out where the trays will go so that the cat doesn't eat all the new shoots. I set up my small device (how do people keep track of which computer device is which) and watched Sean do his March Allotment tour while I puttered. It was great fun.

I have used beads in my latest stitching sample. Not seed beads, although that would have been serendipitous.

The white woven bit is a small bridge shape.

Other samples include cheesecloth bobbles and layered applique circles.

When I finished fooling around with dirt and seeds, I used the sewing machine to make this free motion scrap. I appliqued tiny scraps onto the surface, going over it with the machine stitching. Then I went back over it all with a dark pink and made spots. Mending patches and adding button hole stitch is keeping me occupied as I think about what to say on an application for an adventure. Secret.