What Have I Been Up To?

The summer was almost perfect with lots of heat and sunny days and it has made for a pretty autumn with all the bright reds, pinks, lovely oranges, and golden yellow colors in the leaves.

Yard and garden work has been taking up much of my time on the most recent weekends but my gardens are now all cut back and "almost" ready for that "white stuff". The leaves have been falling and I have managed to vacuum up lots of leaves to use as a winter mulch on parts of the hosta and fern shade garden. My friend Eileen's son, Costa, helped me with raking and bagging the leaves last weekend and he will have to come back when more leaves have fallen. He will help me cage some of the delicate Japanese maples and hydrangea and fill the cages with leaves to help insulate the plants.

My former "disappointment garden" has been dug up and in its place is a new ornamental grass garden. It was a lot of work but it is a good feeling to have created my new garden. I can't wait to see what it looks like in a few years when the grasses mature in size. Some will get up to six feet high others only four feet to three feet. I've pruned several trees and shrubs and even cut down some major limbs from the dying Russian Olive. I extended the brick edgers all around the gardens and have only about twenty more to put in place next spring. They each weigh 13 lbs and I have had to move them from place to place so it has been a good workout.

This was the view from my second floor window a few weeks ago. Look at all the leaves.
Another upstairs view to the north.
An upstairs view of the ornamental grass garden.

A ground view of my new ornamental grass garden from a few weeks ago.

The first big bunch of leaves that fell a few weeks ago. Most of these were vacuumed up and chopped to become mulch in the shade garden.

What a pretty autumn we have had this year.

A recent view from the second floor of my house. The leaves are now golden yellow.
An arborist has deep root fertilized the big Sugar Maple and will return soon to prune it. It is expensive but worth it to keep my beautiful shade tree healthy.

This is the view from my kitchen sink window. What a view!!!
My big Sugar Maple has turned bright golden yellow this year.
A good overall view of my backyard from the big patio.
Another view.

A view of the smaller patio and my garage garden which is all cut down and ready for winter.

The garden this side of the retaining wall is my "sun garden". It is a mess with grasses and weeds and I will tackle that garden next Spring and Summer. It currently has yellow and orange day lilies, Russian Sage, a Buddlia and two tall yellow flowered plants, as well as California Poppies that love to reseed every year. I tried to stick with Orange, Yellow and Purple in the "Sun Garden". This is my newly created "Ornamental Grass" garden. You can kind of see the eleven grasses that I planted. They are small but should mature to a good height in a few years. The one on the far right near the back is reddish and has gotten darker as the temperatures dropped in the last few weeks. I mostly added Miscanthus and made sure they are all clumping grasses.
This is the north east corner of the back garden.
The center of my back garden. The weather vane marks the spot where my Blue Bottle Tree will be installed. I have collected lots of blue wine bottles and am just waiting for my friend Marty to get time to install the "tree trunk" and branches.

A view of the south east corner and the hosta and fern shade garden. It is all mulched and ready for winter. I placed all the brick edger blocks this past Spring.

The south east corner of my yard and the beginning of the brick edge where the rock edge ends.

Facing east at the hosta and fern shade garden. The crunched up leaves have been spread to mulch and protect the ferns and hosts roots from the cold winter.
Another look at the south and east corner of my back yard.

These hydrangea turned a dark reddish color in the fall. Next Spring I will attempt to make them true blue.

Same plant as above but this one turned pale green and pink. I just love hydrangea.

I have been spending quality time with my sewing machine too.

I have been wanting to make a clothes line wrapped bowl ever since I saw this craft demonstrated at the Sauder Village Quilt Show a few years ago. I purchased some special 100% cotton clothes line at the West Michigan Quilt Show and voila! I might just be hooked on this!

My first attempt wasn't perfect but, not bad. It uses lots of thread but not a lot of fabric.

A view of the inside. You can see I had a bit of a problem with the beginning in the center. I just needed to tweak the tension a bit to get it right.

You wrap the clothes line with a strip of fabric cut between 1/2 and 3/4 inches wide and then you stitch it together round and round and round with zigzag stitches. What do you think?