PART ONE
Garden, garden, garden---all through the sticky 90-plus degree weather. Usually I worked in the evenings from 6-8:30 PM when at least there was shade. The only real discomfort was the many insects experimentally biting me for blood, as I usually eschewed the hated repellant. Anyway, there was much work to be done.
Once outside, we gardeners always know what to do, because the plants scream at us:
"Weed around my roots!"
"Get rid of this vine crawling on me."
"Spray the white fly off of me!"
"If you don't harvest me soon, I'm going to produce big tough disgusting okra/string beans/ squash."
"The finches are giving me fungus infections. The harlequin bugs are eating me alive."
Et cetera.
I did as I was told, the garden grew itself, and we ate fresh produce every day. Still, there was enough to freeze to last us through next year.
A new turn of events: I have decided to rest my vegetable plots in the coming year, and enrich them with "green compost:" crops of nutrient-rich legumes and grasses that I will dig into the soil after a few months. And then plant some more and repeat the process. After ten years of production, all of those beds need to take a year off, and so do I.
Here are some photos:
A typical garden meal: "green soup," fresh cucumbers, and blackberries. Only the peaches are not from the garden.
Panorama shot of the garden at the end of August. If you see this on a phone, you can enlarge it, and swipe across the photo to see many details!
PART TWO
Sewing! My identity as a bona fide seamstress is gradually forming with a leap of inspirational help: a teacher and a class with other sewists. Our local fabric store, G Street Fabrics, provides many classes, so I joined an open sewing studio. Eight other women meet once a week to work independently on their own projects, as the teacher moves from one to the other to help things along. Most of my classmates have been together for 3-10 years; I am the new kid, but warmly welcomed by all. They sew with skillful aplomb, and their creations astound me. Before this, I learned everything from online classes, so this was a big change.
The best part? Our teacher is elegant, graceful, kind, and expertly artistic. She took one look at the practice garment for a blouse I wanted to make, and spotted each area where the fit was off, or my technique was flawed. She took my pattern and drafted the corrections instinctively, surely, quickly. "How can you do that?" I asked. "Sweetheart," she said, "I have been doing this all my life."
I became smitten with such charmingly effortless expertise. The atmosphere of an atelier! I breathed it in, willing it become part of me, too. I want to construct exquisite garments, wear them, and create more and more and more! It is so NOT like setting up my iPad to watch an online instructor show me how to sew on a button correctly. I felt that I had gone from a beginning intermediate level to the misty summits of "the artiste." Oh---not me: I'm not the "artiste." But you know what? My imagination tells me I will be!
Please enjoy the pictures below.
Then I tried to sew a blouse which looked easy, but even by this second muslin, the fit was terrible. The pattern is by an independent designer: Sewaholic 1502, the "Oakridge Blouse."
THE END!!!!