they’re back!

I love so many flowers and plants, but my all time favorite has always been the Hydrangea.  They were the flowers I had for my wedding, I have always had at least one in a pot on my deck or in a flower bed at the house I was living at.  Periwinkle blue ones are my perfection.

Some neighbours have a full display already

I love that you can change the colour, depending on what you feed it.  Often very deep pink Hydrangeas have been given a very rich acidic fertilizer.  Blue for basic, so if you use lime, or coffee grounds, you can get pretty blue flowers.  I have one plant in the flower bed in the front yard, which has been given lots of fertilizer in the form of Alpaca poop.  This one is pretty strong pink, although it has only begun it’s show this year. This photo looks a lot more purple than the flowers do in real life!

And my smaller plant in a pot in the back yard is showing signs of less nutrients, pretty pot bound, I think.

Last year it had amazing variety…

we shall see what comes.

I found another plant with two different colour variations, cool.

not sure how that happens on the same plant.

Spent a lot of time wrapping up the school year and watching baseball and doing my annual summer cleaning.  I tend to get in the mood at the end of June, rather than doing spring cleaning. Maybe because the house has survived on a lick and a promise since baseball season began back in April.  Eek!  But when you let things go, the change when it does get cleaned is really noticeable and satisfying! So there’s that going for me.

And I really tried to get My Canada finished, but it is still in progress.  Didn’t want to rush for July 1 and have it less than what I wanted it to be.  It will be done soon though. Lots of detailed Free motion.  Lots of thread! Results soon.

Have a good week ahead, thanks for visiting my little part of the internet.

Sunday Night

Even at the end of the season I can find some amazing colour in my hydrangea.

I spent a lovely Friday evening sewing with 4 other ladies from my quilt guild.  4 hours flies by when you are cutting and sewing slabs of colour.  We are working on a group challenge for Quiltcon. It’s funny, I have sewn and quilted for years, and am pretty confident in my skills, but when working in a group with some people who I know are super quilters and varying levels of perfectionists, I start to feel self-conscious about how good my piecing is.  And then I somehow volunteered to quilt this one.  Silly girl!  Now I am lying awake trying to plan how I will quilt this to perfection, not my usual “done is better than perfect”.  Rise to the challenge, right?

Wordless Wednesday

Local colour, crazy colour, and just a hint of colour

What’s a girl to do when there is a ton of housework to do? get inspired to post on her blog instead!!

I am so lucky to live near the Saanich Peninsula on the south end of Vancouver Island. A large part of the peninsula is and agricultural land reserve, and hopefully will remain that way so we can continue to have an abundance of farms. Yay farmers! Sometimes I can’t get out to the farm stands and hop from one to the next, so again I am lucky to have places like The Root Cellar very close by. They have local stuff all year round, and some of the farms that don’t have their own stands sell there.  In this world of globalization, I feel that supporting our local farmers is so important.

This week there was an abundance of lovely local stuff in such vivid colours. That makes me happy. Sometimes a visual feast can be a good treat. Plus, the more colour the better it tastes. Don’t you agree.

On a totally different note, I came across some intense but “too crazy for my natural loving eyes” colour.

I was stunned by this rose. This photo has NOT been edited, this was in a bouquet at a florists. It’s amazing, but just wrong to my senses. But bright colour none the less.

Now for the more subdued colours. I have a hydrangea in the front yard, and another in the back.  They are one of my favorite flowers. Very cool that the blossoms start out green and then flush out in colour from the tip, inwards. I had probably noticed this other years, but hadn’t really thought about it being different from most flowers until taking these photos with the purpose of finding colour.

Can’t wait for these happy plants to be in full colour

I am trying to play with the colours of the blossoms, so old coffee grounds are put in the soil around the pink one to make it more towards the blue tones next year. I make sure to keep the ph level from getting too basic in the blue plant’s pot, so that it stays closer to periwinkle blue, rather than pale blue. How cool that they are changeable.