Garden Tour #3 05-08-10

Sign on the corner directing visitors to entrance.\

Vista through the pergola loaded with wisteria.

Vista into sunny garden with pools, fountains and Iceland poppies in bloom.


Liz at a garden gate at one of the houses we visited.

Rose growing between a SW facing house wall and the walkway. I believe this is "Stars and Stripes" rather than "Fourth of July" - mostly because of the small space it fills.

One color of the many different colored ephiphyllums growing at Sherman Gardens.

"Mistletoe Cactus" Rhipsalis cassutha This specimen is about six feet tall (? long?). The same family as the Christmas and Easter cactus - but it looks like thick hair.

Ocotillo in full leaf. Neither of us realized that there are so many varieties of Ocotillo.

Gorgeous cut flower arrangement in Sherman Library office. Sedums around the bottom and also the donkey tail variety hanging over the edge of the vase. Note the Sansieveria leaves stuck down into the vase to cover the stems of the Amaryllis. The Amaryllis are grown in pots and moved around as needed to fill in different areas - however, they are a perennial bulb here and are just grown in the soil. They will multiply and fill in large planting beds.

Sherman Gardens grows many different hanging baskets. This one composed of variegated ivy and impatiens.

A Jelly Palm planted with impatiens. This is a delightful accent to this graceful blue-grey palm with long arching fronds,

Chinese Silk Fringe tree.......

.... is covered with bunches of elegant white blossoms. No fragrance.

Sherman Gardens are comprised of only 2.2 acres, but they cover a variety of climates and have something in bloom throughout the year. The Research Library is a repository of information about the Pacific Southwest which includes books, maps, newspapers, land grant records - just about anything you can name. There were California Impressionist paintings on display in the Library, part of the collection that are not normally seen by the public.

Liz and I think we'll try to do this again next year.

Kangaroo Paw 05-07-10

Yes, I did go overboard with pictures of Kangaroo Paws! I have always found them fascinating and am entranced with the red variety that I saw for the first time just a few years ago. Before that the standard yellow blossoms were just coming into popularity with gardeners in SCalifornia. I had a pot when we lived in Fullerton, but managed to kill it when they are not all that easy to expire! From the green thumb of my early adulthood I have turned into the kiss of death for almost everything I try. Not paying enough attention, I expect.

At this Corona del Mar house on the Sherman Gardens' Annual Garden Tour the landscaper had planted red Kangaroo Paws along the sidewalk in a rather narrow space in front of a white painted wall. They are quite spectacular. This view is from the front yard of the house.

Planted close together they help to hold each other upright so the branches don't bar the walk and while they are in bloom they create a thick mass of fuzzy blooms.

Here is Liz standing on the sidewalk to give you a street side view. Notice the elegant shadows.

The blooms are in bunches at the ends of the stalks and branches - just like paws on the ends of a kangaroo's legs.

The ends of the buds open into these colorful stars.

And the edges of the chartreuse flowers show from the back of the 'paws'.

See how fuzzy the blooms are - as if they have actual kangaroo fur!

By the time we arrived at this house it was 4pm, so the light was changing and the volunteer ladies sitting under their beige umbrellas on the sidewalk were more than ready to go home. We missed one house because it was just too late. The map they provided had one error that had us going around in circles until I dug out the Orange County Thomas Bros. book map and we were able to figure it out. This is not an area I am familiar with now, although I worked at a facility nearby - about forty years ago when it was mostly just open land with some cattle ranching. Now it is all upscale housing and upscale boutiques and upscale restaurants and... well, you get the idea, it is entirely new-to-me territory. More garden pictures tomorrow.

Garden Tour #1 05-06-10

This Trumpet Vine flower is about three inches across and hangs from an arbor in the Sherman Library entrance way. It came at about the end of our driving tour of seven gardens in the Corona del Mar/Newport Beach area. Liz and I had a lovely day and the weather was just about perfect. The ocean view was a little hazy, but we didn't see much ocean anyway. We arrived back in Placentia about 5pm and I had a dinner date for Fish in a Bottle at 6pm; so, just time to 'freshen up', check the mail and be on my way again. It had already been a long, tiring day, so when I returned from dining with Carol and Dick Bednar I just had to have a "little nap". It turned into the first half of the night and now it is after 2am and I cannot get my brain out of sleep mode. I will work on the photos later today and post some flower images tonight. I am exhausted, but it is a good exhausted and I had pleasant dreams.

Wordless Wednesday 05-05-10

I-15 California/Nevada border May 31, 2005

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Pitiful experiments 05-04-10

I've tried so many ideas with Rayna Gillman's "challenge" and few have worked as I thought they might. One thing I had hoped to do is modify the fabrics in the block with some kind of paint. I have a small selection of things I have tried over the years, including Shiva paint sticks, but I haven't used any of them for a very long time. I have only used the metallic sticks in the past. But I got them out, peeled them, found a rubber stamp design to make a rubbing and rubbed away. But the metallic seems sort of 'over the top'. Today I stopped at a shop that has a nice selection of items for the art quilt maker - Soft Expressions is an online business that also welcomes walk-in customers and their office/warehouse is only about a mile from my house. http://www.softexpressions.com/index.html

And I bought some non-metallic Shivas. After I had experimented a bit I remembered what I had heard about them being more difficult to use than the metallic ones. The putrid green on the right is actually supposed to be yellow and it has a pattern from the rubber stamp I rubbed it on. The white is a little grainy, but the black went on smoothly. At any rate, I don't think Shivas are what I need on this project. But I will keep working at the challenge. I do feel bad about missing the deadline, but sometimes life gets in the way of what we might prefer to be doing.

I still have Corky and will need to get him to his grooming appointment in LBeach by 8:30am. When his parents arrived at Dulles Airport this morning they discovered that JetBlue had screwed up their reservations and the first flight they could get out on is tomorrow morning at 7am Eastern time. So, I had better get some sleep.

Corky blends in 05-03-10

Sometimes I lose Corky, although I know there is no way he can get out of the house unless I let him out and then I must always go with him (because of the coyotes in the area).

He has two beds at my house, both with white/cream plush insides - one red outside and the other dark blue. When he curls up like this he just disappears. I still think it is funny that he loves having a pillow, but other dog lovers say that is not unusual. Sometimes he has his head so far under the pillow I wonder how he can breath. He has been with me since Thursday and I am REALLY going to miss him after I take him back to his parents tomorrow evening.

TCQC adds quilt from Germany 05-02-10

Creative in her art and in her fund raising, Virginia Spiegel presented "Tuesday Tote" earlier this year to raise funds for the American Cancer Society. For several Tuesday in a row she offered tote bags filled by individuals and groups of quilt artists. I bid on one of Karey Bresenhan's totes with international donations and my bid won. I received a box of great fabrics and 'goodies' which included this quilt donated by German quilter Irene Kahmann. I haven't been able to find a website or a blog for her, but when I Google her name there are a number of sites that include winning quilts she has shown in various venues. And there is an interview on the Alliance for American Quilts site: www.allianceforamericanquilts.org/qsos/

This is the first quilt from Germany in the TCQC

"Korallenriff" Irene Kahmann 2010 60cm square (22" square)

Marbled cotton, hand dyed silk, PW, applique, machine sewn, hand quilted.

(Perhaps the PW stands for patchwork. The name translates "Coral Reef")

The border is machine pieced from silks in different neutral colors.

The swirls are machine appliqued using a fine satin stitch.

Irene has used this lovely seashell print in cotton for the backing.

Incidentally, the May newsletter from Surfside Quilters Guild is posted at: http://tinyurl.com/2c7eqel