What is an “Agriculture Report”? Well I was inspired by @quiteayarnblog‘s ongoing series of posts titled “Agriculture Report” (and this title always cracks me up) that are actually updates of what is going on in her garden.I just had to adopt this same title for updates on what is going on in my garden/my “garden report“…
Some of my US based blogging buddies who are of a “certain age” might remember a series of awful late night infomercials selling videos of female college students making curious college and Spring-Break partying decisions called “Girls Gone Wild“.
I haven’t thought about these informercials for years and then it popped into my head when I was checking on my garden the other day because I have PLANTINGS GONE WILD!
Tomatoes, Tomatoes
I am on my 4th summer of growing tomatoes on my upstairs deck in Colorado. This year my tomato plants have GONE WILD and are the biggest they’ve ever been! I didn’t do anything different this season than previous seasons but the tomato plants are growing like crazy.
I hope I have a large enough tomato harvest this year to make a pasta sauce as well as salsa with my tomatoes!
Free Seeds Out of Control
In my April 2024 post Explored a new library, tried a new groupI shared that a local was giving out free packets of seeds (vegetables and flowers) – 3 packets per library patron per day.
Well after John built me a raised bed (see post John gets “ScrapHappy” too – new raised bed) in June, I planted most of the vegetable seeds in the raised bed to include cucumber, squash, carrots, spinach and onion. However I thought it was too late in the season in Colorado to get a decent harvest so I thought the seeds would help “seed” my new raised bed with organic material as a base for next year’s garden.
So I haphazardly planted my seeds and did not label what was planted in the different areas of the bed.
And now I am dealing with SEEDS GONE WILD! Every seed seems to have sprouted and some plants are exploding everywhere…and I don’t know what they are as they are crops I’ve never planted before!
Yikes! At least I recognize the marigolds I planted for pest control! We put netting over the bed to help keep birds and squirrels out of the garden and so far it appears to be working.
I tried early on to thin the bed once I realized the seeds were sprouting and growing like crazy but the new sprouts were too delicate and some did not survive the replanting. So I just left most of it as a “hot mess”.
I guess I will have to wait until it is time to harvest the vegetables to find out what some of them are! Oh how sloppy my raised bed garden looks!
In Other Agricultural News
Although it looks a bit crowded, my herb container gardens seem to be flourishing this year and I am continually enjoying fresh herbs for cooking this season. For example I’ve harvested all the parsley and basil twice and it keeps growing back!
I love when a recipe calls for “fresh parsley” and I can go grab it from my deck garden!
I’ll close out my Agriculture Report with this inspirational quote I found in a magazine that I put up in my studio:
As I mentioned in another recent post, I’ve had a very busy summer so far.
It feels like I’ve been traveling out town monthly since April 2024, sometimes several times a month. We are either flying somewhere to visit someone, go somewhere on a weekend getaway, or do a Colorado road trip (we’ve done at least 3 since May so far). Now we are at home for a while but we have a series of 3 different out-of-town guest visiting over the next 2 months.
Sounds insane, right? We didn’t actually plan for this, we just kept saying yes – ha!
So in early July 2024 John and I traveled to the Eastern Coast of the US to visit my brother and his family who lives outside of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (or “Philly” as us East Coaster call it); and went to the Bronx in New York to see a baseball game at Yankee Stadium. We also visited with my long-time blogging buddy some of you know – Claudia McGill of Claudia McGill and Her Art World who also lives outside of Philly.
In this post I share stories and photos from some of the highlights of our recent East Coast Adventures.
Trip to the Bronx to see the Yankees play at Yankee Stadium
The second day of our visit with my brother, he droves us to New York, to the Bronx to see the New York Yankees play baseball against theBoston Red Sox at Yankee Stadium. This is an iconic/legendary match up (not a lot of love between these two teams) and this was John and my first visit to Yankee Stadium. My sister-in-law did not attend as it was a swelteringly hot day (nearly 100 degrees F and humid) and she decided to stay cool at home!
Here we are outside waiting on line to enter the stadium:
And here we are inside the stadium as we tried to watch the game while melting from the heat!
My brother found a place near a set of concession stands that had air conditioning (sort of) and we moved to that area to finish watching the game as we were turning into piles of sweat! John took my nephew Austin to get Yankees hat so he could be an official looking Yankees fan!
John absolutely adores my nephews (my brother and my sister each have one son) like I do and we always have a wonderful time with them.
The Yankees beat the Red Sox so there were a lot of happy New Yorker fans in the stadium!
AVisit with Claudia
On the last day of our trip before heading to the airport, my brother dropped us off at the beautiful home (filled with so much amazing art) of my long time blogging buddy, Claudia McGill of Claudia McGill and Her Art World.
John and I spent the afternoon with Claudia and her wonderful husband. She gave us a tour of their home and her studio filled with her art and inspiration.
Here is a photo of a section of her studio that was in her recent blog post, Tiny House 24!.
We got to spend a lot of time talking about art and life while sitting around her living room having tasty snacks.
If you follow her blog, you might recognize this photo of Claudia as an image similar to her inspiration for one of her sketches or paintings (by the way she had fabulous lamps in her house, they all looked like they should be in her sketches/paintings).
And as a nearly overwhelming surprise, Claudia gave me one of her Tiny Houses art pieces that she made for me! Below are photos that do not do the piece justice. She will have a future blog post with much better photos about this house:
I couldn’t fit it in my suitcase so she is mailing it to me and I cannot wait for it to arrive!
Claudia in person was just as wonderful as I imagined she would be. She is the fourth person from “bloglandia” that I’ve now met in person.
Fiber Art in the Philadelphia Airport
I love the Philadelphia Airport. It isn’t more convenient or better laid out than most airports I’ve traveled in, but it always has fantastic art exhibits. When traveling alone to Philadelphia, I’ve spent an hour or more while awaiting my flight, wandering the concourses to see the different rotating art exhibits.
They have an ongoing (for a couple years at least) exhibit of fiber art, primarily crochet as well as new pieces that have been added. Thought I would share some of those cool works:
It was an awesome trip!
Postscript
Mike was at “Dog Camp” while we were traveling and here is a photo of him with his friends playing:
Well, I guess I better get a book written and published to keep up with my 11 year old nephew…
In 2018 my brother, Raoul Davis, Jr. who owns a Branding and PR firm, had his first book published with two colleagues – Firestarters (available on Amazon)
Image credit: Amazon.com
Then in May 2024, his son, Austin Davis, who is 11, had his first book published – Dogs vs Bears (also available on Amazon):
Image credit: Amazon.com
Per the book summary:
“…Austin Davis introduces a new way for kids to learn about diversity, appreciating differences, and teamwork.
Austin’s never known the truth—that his stuffed animals come to life whenever he leaves the house! Every time he goes to school, his bedroom becomes a brutal scene of battling teddy bears and stuffed dogs. Minion, leader of the bears, fights fiercely against Woof Woof, the dogs’ commander, over who will reign supreme.
But after years of fighting, the bears and dogs discover a new threat. Will they be wiped out by an invading species, or can these two groups put aside their differences and face it together? The future of the fortress—and Austin’s realm—depends upon it!”
There is a website set up for the book – www.dogsvsbears.com and this site has a more extensive blurb about Austin the Author than Amazon:
image credit: screen shot from dogsvsbears.com
Austin is very brilliant – he is nearly fluent in Mandarin Chinese and has been studying it since he was 5 years old in a special program in his school district. His parents figured out early on he needed something to occupy his big brain! (I remember when he was 6 years old or so and he was watching YouTube videos on human physiology and knew more than I remembered as a former clinical nurse!)
I was joking with my sister about feeling like an underachiever as my 11 year nephew has a book out before I do but seriously I am super proud Aunt! I of course bought a couple copies and have one displayed in my home library!
It’s a really fun book and it came out of all the stories Austin, an only child who really bonded from a young age with his huge collection of stuffed animals (and yes I contributed to his stash), would share about stuffed animals’ adventures.
I am glad my brother, who’s PR firm helps sports figures and company CEOs write and publish their stories, helped facilitate his son’s first book!
Okay I will start working on my first book, as soon as I clear up all these quilting unfinished projects – ha!
It’s the 15th of the month (ok it’s really the 17th but I have back dated this post, ha!) and time for my monthly “ScrapHappy” post as part of the ScrapHappy group I belong run by Kate and Gun. At the end of this post I have a link to the other blogs participating in this monthly event in case you’d like to check out their ScrapHappy posts.
I’ve had a very busy summer so far and I recently returned from a trip to the Philadelphia area to visit my brother (and I spent time with one of my long time blogging buddies that some of you know…but that is a separate post coming later this week). Currently we are hosting three different sets of out of town visitors over the next 2 months. So crafting is sort of on the back burner, but I didn’t want to miss out on the monthly ScrapHappy post.
I’m in my 11th year of blogging with lots of posts in my archives. I looked through my blog category Fabric Scraps Obsessionand found a couple of posts from early 2018 to share about a “Scrap Party” I had with a quilting friend, to celebrate the love of fabric scraps!
From the Archives:
Scrap Party!(03/30/2018)
It’s no secret, especially if you’ve followed my blog for a while, that I am obsessed with fabric scraps. I won’t try to link any of my numerous previous posts on fabric scraps. If you are new to my blog, you will have to just trust me 🙂
Well one of my quilting friends, actually the one who got me into appreciating the value and opportunity for unlimited creativity provided by using fabric scraps, is coming over tomorrow for a SCRAP PARTY!
She had a birthday a couple of weeks ago and we are going to do a belated celebration by going to out to lunch and then coming back to my house and spending the afternoon playing in my fabric scrap pile:
I did not post about it (as those of you who’ve followed me for a while may have grown weary of my constantly talking about fabric scraps) but last weekend I thinned out my scrap pile. I pulled out any remaining old lower quality fabric and donated more to a local charity thrift shop.
During a previous donation, a volunteer at one of our local charity thrift shops (for our local Humane Society shelter), told me that fabric scraps sell very well at the thrift shop. They cannot keep fabric scrap bags in stock, they sell out immediately! (See there are more weird obsessed people like myself in Central Oregon).
So what are we going to do at a so called “Scrap Party”? Well I am going to dump the whole box onto a plastic tarp on the floor of my master bedroom (as not to take up precious space in my tiny studio space that we will be sharing) and let my friend go wild playing with my fabric scrap collection. She is really into improvisational piecing (she is the one who helped me move from traditional quilting to art/improvisational quilting) so fabric scraps are one of her favorite textile mediums!
I’ve set up my travel sewing machine for her in my studio so we can sew together. I have two design walls (a small one on the closet door in my studio and then the big one in the hall way) so we won’t have to battle for design wall space!
I’m not sure what she is going to work on, but I plan to work on some paper piecing. I’m trying to spend more time with my extensive (ridiculous) craft book collection and rediscovered in my craft book collection – 50 Little Paper-Pieced Blocks by Carol Doak. Playing with fabric scraps seems like a great time to work on my paper-piecing skills.
My friend is bringing over her miniature schnauzer so Mike will have a furry friend visiting.
Terry the Quilting Husband (TTQH) made us chocolate chip cookies (to keep our sugar fueled energy level high for crafting!!!):
Of course I will share the outcomes of our Scrap Party!
Two Quilters and a Bed Full of Fabric Scraps (04/03/2018)
I know you’ve been waiting…and here is the follow up to my 03/30/18 post Scrap Party! , where I had a special birthday celebration play-date with my fabric-scrap-loving quilting friend.
It started with this plastic bin of my fabric scraps:
More fabric scraps crammed in here than I realized…
Dumped onto my bed (the bed has a plastic sheet from packaging material covering it):
A king size bed filled with fabric scraps (awesome or terrifying?)
Before we dove into this delicious (or suspicious) pile of fabrics, first we needed to fortify ourselves:
I might have a small studio but I can always make room for tea and cookies (made by TTQH!).
After a few minutes of frolicking in the fabric scraps, my quilting friend pulled her initial stack and got to work on making improvisational blocks. As a challenge, in addition to access to my crazy fabric scrap collection, I assigned my friend these pieced block discards/trimmings to try and incorporate into her improvisational blocks:
During our fabric scrappy play day I thought I would also take the opportunity to practice paper-piecing (Not the fun “English Paper Piecing” type but the “flip and stitch” type of paper-piecing that I suspect is what you have to do all day in the “Underworld” if you are bad in life and go there after you die…um, I would like to choose the “fire & brimstone” instead please…).
I signed up to participate in the Sisters Outdoor Quilt Show’s 2018 Wish Upon A Card Fundraiser & Fabric Challengesponsored by Robert Kaufman Fabrics. I needed to make a 4′” x 6″ fabric postcard to donate to the fundraiser, incorporating the two feature fabrics provided by Robert Kaufman Fabrics.
In general I love Robert Kaufman fabrics, but I was completely underwhelmed by the fabric pieces they sent me to make the postcard:
Um…what am I gonna make with these?!??!
Thank goodness my friend helped me pick out some coordinating fabric scraps for my postcard.
Here was my first (actually second, as the first was a legendary-paper-piecing-screw-up disaster) attempt at paper piecing a little house for the postcard:
Hated it!
Here is my second (okay actually third) attempt and the final version with my embellishments:
“Visitor Arrives” by tierneycreates 2018 (note the back of the postcard is fused blank muslin covering the stitching so that it can be used as a postcard)
I mailed it off yesterday to Wish Upon a Card and I will not be offended if they say they “never got it in the mail” or they accidentally let it slip into the trash can – ha!
Now I bet you are curious: Did we make a dent in the pile of fabric scraps? Not really. Here is the tub of fabric scraps cleaned up from the bed and put back into the closet after my friend left:
It appears I have enough for another Fabric Scrap Party (or 200+ Scrap Parties)!
Here are the other bloggers that participate in the ScrapHappy monthly posting event, check out their blogs linked below for their ScrapHappy posts:
John has lived in Colorado all his life and has never been on a gold mine tour. It was of course my first gold mine tour.
If you’d like to read the history of Colorado and the gold rush/gold mining, here is a link to a wonderful article – Colorado Gold Rush. Like parts of the Pacific NW where I used to live (Washington and Oregon), the hunt for gold help put Colorado on the map of the United States.
We went on an awesome tour guided by a 5th generation descendant of Colorado miners of the Mollie Kathleen Gold Mine, descending down 1000 feet in a mine elevator, packed in like sardines (the tour was not for the claustrophobic).
I’m just going to now share a bunch of photos from the tour without explanation but you all can figure it out (and you can see I just had to take some Black & White photos…)
We had a blast during the tour and the tour guide demonstrated some of the historic equipment that miners used in the 19th and 20th centuries to mine for gold. We only went down to 1000 feet underground but our understanding from the tour was the full gold mine goes to 3000 feet+ down under ground! Here are a couple more photos from the tour including the awful “restroom” that miners had to use of a bucket that got emptied out by the children that worked in the mine for 50 cents a day; and the large bucket that was used to transport miners up and down the mine!
The mine is no longer used as a mine; and according to John in Colorado they no longer do underground mining in Colorado, they only do surface mining as underground mining is now too expensive.
After our mine tour, we had a car picnic in the parking lot:
Here is a view of the Cripple Creek valley that I photographed before we headed back home:
It was a great little road trip exploring more of Colorado I haven’t seen!
Well I’ve been on more summer adventures than spending time crafting, so it’s another post about my travels.
Last weekend we did a road trip to Cripple Creek, Colorado. Out of the blue we received an invitation for a free hotel room, $75 dining credit, and $75 free slot play at the new Chamonix Hotel and Casino in Cripple Creek. So we took advantage of a free-ish weekend getaway and an excuse for me to see another part of Colorado I had not yet visited.
Chamonix Hotel & Casino, image from Casino Careers website
Cripple Creek is one of the historic Colorado mining towns that were granted gaming/casino building licenses to try and revive/save the old mining towns. The other mining towns in Colorado granted this special license are Central City and Black Hawk, Colorado where John goes to play poker tournaments. Gambling is only legal in these three towns in Colorado, except for two Native American run casinos in the Four Cornersarea of Colorado.
The Roadtrip
Driving from our home to Cripple Creek we passed by some beautiful and interesting sights, some of which we had to pull the car over to see better.
Of course I had to sneak in some Black & White photography…
We came across and old abandoned under the mountain passage that we think was once used for gold mining since we were in historic gold mining country:
Cripple Creek
When we arrived in Cripple Creek, ColoradoDonkey Derby Days was going on.
“People from all over the world descend on downtown to be inspired by the town’s resident donkey herd, who roam Cripple Creek in honor of the original Cripple Creek donkeys from the town’s Gold Rush days.“
They had lots of booths/vendors set up as well as donkey exhibits and we had fun wandering about. They also had a beer garden and food court with an United States Air Force cover band playing (they were really good!) playing good blues, rock and country music in their military uniforms.
After wandering the festival for a while and then checking into the hotel, we ate a nice buffet dinner at the casino with an amazing desert bar:
We tried not to be too naughty at the desert bar, agreeing to only one trip each to that magical section of the buffet!
Okay that’s enough for today and tomorrow I will share Part II with our adventures during our first underground gold mine tour 🙂
tierneycreates 