DIY: Autumn Hydrangea Wreath

Hydrangea, also known as Hortensia, is a flowering shrub native to eastern Asia and the Americas. It is very easy to grow and produces large pom-pom flowers which bloom from spring through autumn. If you have hydrangeas in your garden, you may notice that the stems of the flowers are starting to dry at this time of the year. Now is a good time to take your cuttings and prepare them for this very easy autumn wreath.

First, gather your flowers. Cut long stems and place them in a container in which you've added just a few inches of water. Place your container in a cool shady spot:  

The idea here is to give them just enough water to keep them moist while the water slowly evaporates.  What happens is the flowers will dry but the petals will stay fresh looking.  My cut flowers sat in this watering can for about two weeks before I made my wreath.  

Once your flowers are dry, gather your supplies:  a wreath form of your choosing, some junky scissors, and some florist wire:

I purchased a grapevine wreath at a craft store, and it's about 22" in diameter.

The next step is to start placing the flowers around the wreath form to get an idea of how many you need and decide on placement:

Once you know how many flowers you will be using, cut a length of wire for each flower head. I used 12 flower heads and cut my wire into about 8 inch lengths.  

Next cut the stems from your flower heads, leaving about 2-3 inches:

I let the size of the flower heads dictate the placement on my wreath, putting the four largest flowers at the top, bottom, and sides, and then filling in the other areas of the wreath with the smaller flowers.  I also paid attention to color and weight balance with the remaining flowers.

Now simply place a piece of wire through the dried stem of each flower like this:

Then place the flower on top of the wreath and carefully lift the wreath and wrap the wire around it and twist it in the back to secure it onto the wreath:

Do this until all your flowers are fastened to the wreath.  

An afterthought I had was to use a hot glue gun and glue some of the dried leaves in various places around the wreath, tucking them here and there.

And now your wreath is ready to hang and enjoy!  I added a blue ribbon to mine.  I love blue!

I hung this wreath on my front porch, and over time the colors of the flowers will continue to fade.  So if you want your flowers to become 'antiqued' or 'shabby-chic' looking, that would be how to affect it.  I can say though, that if you want the colors to remain as they are, then keep your wreath inside and away from direct light.   

Do you enjoy wreath making?  What materials do you use?  

Thanks for reading!

Summer Garden In Shadow And Light

Now that the autumnal equinox has arrived here in the northern hemisphere, I am beginning to lament my summer garden. Although there are still plenty of flowers to enjoy, the slow change into fall has begun, and the various plants, bushes and trees are turning from the many shades of summer green to the reds, yellows and oranges of autumn.

Throughout the summer I had fun taking photos of my garden on various days during the magic hour. The magic hour is that time of day when the sun is near the horizon, (roughly the first or last hour of daylight), and the light from the sun travels through a greater depth of atmosphere, creating brilliant colors and long shadows which add texture and depth to your photos. The intensity of direct light is diffused, and the result is an illuminated indirect light. These conditions, and the fact that I have a very small backyard and many trees in the neighborhood, make for a lot of variety in the kinds of light in my garden.  

Let's have a bit of fun here! See if you can guess which time of day each of my photos were taken - morning or evening - and at the end, I'll tell you. For example, the iris photo above was taken at 6:06 p.m.  Ready?

Almost everyone's favorite flower - at least on Instagram - a hydrangea:

Delicious strawberries:

This potted plant of an unknown variety:

Here's one of my echinacea plants with some sweet peas behind it:

Next are some blackberries:

Then the same blackberries in a more distant shot with some Shasta daisies and another kind of iris:

How about some roses?

Then those Shasta daisies again, on a different day and from a different perspective:

We're back to the blackberries again, this time just some of the leaves, and a week later than the last shot of them:

And now a blueberry branch that has happily snuck under the fence:

Here are those sweet peas again, a couple of weeks later:

I think this is the same hydrangea, about a month later:

I love this yellow daisy - in the autumn the birds, such as warblers and finches, come and eat the seed clusters:

And who can resist the intoxicating scent of a Summer Wine lily?  Not me!

And last but not least - a dahlia:

So, starting from the top - the first hydrangea, the strawberries and the unknown potted plant were all photographed on the same June evening between 5:57 and 6:20 p.m.

Moving into the month of July, the echinacea was photographed at 6:55 p.m.

Then both of those blackberry pictures were taken in the morning at 7:31 and 7:33 a.m. 

The roses and the Shasta daisies - 9:15 and 9:16 p.m.! Can you sense that warm pinkish-orange ambience? This was one of those evenings when the sky was glowing those colors and when you looked out at the light, all you would see is an amazing orange glow - a phenomena I've never seen anywhere else I've ever lived, except right here in Oregon. See the sky, below:

We're in the middle of July now with the blackberry leaves and the blueberry branch - both 7:32 and 7:39 p.m.  

The pea vines with bursting pods were photographed at 6:39 p.m.

The second hydrangea photo, along with the yellow daisies and Summer Wine lily - were all taken on July 24th at 7:42, 8:10, and 8:17 a.m.

And finally, moving into August, I photographed the dahlia at 5:53 p.m.

I hope you've enjoyed this exercise in shadow and light.  Do you enjoy photography? What are your experiences in capturing interesting light conditions?

Summer Bike Ride, Through The Lens

Last weekend's bike ride began slow and easy, coasting downhill from the house to a nearby park...

Where we laid out a blanket, napped, watched the wildflowers sway in the warm breeze...

Noticed the play of shadow and light:

Then the ride back uphill; blood flowing, hearts pounding. Fifteen minutes of pure hard exercise. Done!

All photos taken with an iPhone.

Home Is Where The HeART Is: Thoughts On Art And Home

Our home is a place where artistic expression flourishes. As parents, and as individuals, James and I strive for a supportive home environment that encourages active learning, quiet contemplation, and a healthy imagination. For it is these activities, carried out in the refuge of home, that help to develop our creativity and are what connects our family's hearts and minds to each other and to the outside world.  

All that being said, our home is a constant flurry of daily activity (school, work, shopping, errands, and the never ending 'to-do' list), with the added confusion of various creative 'works in progress' occupying the dining room table, the living room floor, and don't even ask about the garage! Guests may notice that our house is small and cluttered, that it is a bit disorganized and the floors probably need sweeping. But frankly, we are too busy to be thoroughly organized and dust free. After all, there are magazines that need to be cut up for collage projects, guitars that need to be hot rodded, and paint that needs to be splattered. Not to mention a garden that needs tending, teenagers (and birds!) to feed, and well, fifteen mile bike rides or paddles up the millrace in the canoe for the requisite exercise.

In spite of never having enough time, each of the four members of our family has found ways to enjoy following our passions: developing our skills, actively experimenting in our chosen mediums and forms of expression, and becoming comfortable working within our own unique styles.

For example our young adult daughter Audrey enjoys working in mixed mediums, incorporating paints, paper and fine-point drawing pens in her art. Besides being a self taught artist, she also loves to knit, is an avid reader of literature and still finds time to go traveling, camping, and hiking. Audrey is on her own now, and although she is quite outgoing and social, I can see that she still values time well spent at home in creative endeavors.

Our teenage son Takeō is also a self taught artist. In his younger years, Takeō drew mostly in pencil, but these days he draws using a stylus on a Wacom tablet:

Like many teens, he spends the majority of his time while at home in his bedroom creating his art and thumping on his electric bass or strumming his ukulele, and yes, playing video games! Like his sister before him, 'alone-time' in your room at this season of life is all about exploring, learning, and practicing.

James is what I call a Renaissance man. When I met him, James was already an accomplished musician, sound engineer and producer. He also wrote songs, played in several bands, and in his spare time enjoyed customizing his guitars and amplifiers. I was impressed that he was a math whiz, read widely about a lot of subjects, and could repair anything - cars, computers, plumbing, appliances, and turned his basic bicycle maintenance into a full fledged bike rebuilding operation.

Besides taking on the role of running our household and all that entails, you'll still find him rummaging through boxes of guitar parts, pulling the back off some speaker cabinet he just found at a yard sale, or hunkered over his soldering iron intently rewiring a circuit. He also enjoys what he calls "amateur low-fidelity photography".

This next photo shows a sampling of some of James' custom work:

In his own words: "Playing a jazz standard or a cover of an old rock song can be a lot of fun, but what's really satisfying is performing an original composition. In much the same way, there's a lot of satisfaction to be had picking up an instrument you've put together from various parts, and playing that through a home-brew amp. In the picture above is a "Parts-O-Caster" or "Franken-Caster" guitar created with random components both new and vintage; an ampifier head made by removing the electronic parts from an old tube-style paging amplifier, and rewiring the empty chassis according to a circuit schematic I drew up beforehand; and an early '60s Hammond organ speaker cabinet that was converted for electric guitar use. Between the guitar and the amplifier is a hand-built distortion booster pedal made by my friend David, a luthier and electronics genius."

You can find James on his blog Origami Night Lamp, where he's posted detailed descriptions of the processes involved in some of the creative activities he loves.

Finding time to explore and make art is one of my biggest struggles.  Between work, my kids, an elderly mom, and the general business of home and family, I have a very limited amount of time left to pursue my interests.I find myself seeking out those fringe hours where I can spend some time doing what I'm passionate about. As my kids get older and need me less, a window of time has opened up, and I've been able to follow my dream of living a creative life. Having a home studio is a big contributing factor toward making that happen. It's only a small space, half of what used to be the garage (remember that mess I was telling you about?), and yet it is the place where I can gather my ideas and materials and get to work; I also do a lot of my work at the kitchen table, next to the large patio doors, when I want a lot of natural light.

As you can see, like Audrey, I enjoy working in collage. These interests of ours developed independently over the last several years, although I guess you can say that we have always been somewhat of the same mind.

Another interest I have is collecting vintage 1950s and '60s furniture and household goods and displaying them in my home. I have been a crazy collector of these items for some years.

Many of the books I like to collect are also from that era.  They provide great insight into how the vintage items I have were used in the home back when they were made.  I also like books about art, art history, design, and gardening, and use these books for inspiration, often supplementing them with regular trips to the public library.

You could say that the expression, through art, of what home means to me began with photography and memory keeping. Ever since I can remember, I have always loved taking photographs and documenting family and life events. When I found scrapbooking, it provided a context for all of the photos and memories I had been gathering over the years. One of my favorite bedtime rituals as of late has been taking the time to journal. A personal, private journal, where I tell the stories of our family, became a part of my scrapbook journaling, and now is a part of our family's history - a history about life, family, and yes, home.

For no matter where we go, we inevitably carry what we've learned at home with us. Home is where the roots of our beginnings lie, where our first memories are made, and where our story begins.  

Thanks for reading!

Owen Rose Garden

On a recent very overcast summer day, we spent some time at the Owen Rose Garden. This eight and a half acre park is located along a bike path which runs beside the Willamette River in Eugene.  The land was donated to the city by former city councilor George E. Owen in 1951, and at that time, the Eugene Rose Society donated the original 750 rose bushes. Today, the park boasts more than 4,500 roses of over 400 varieties.

Along with the brilliant red 'Fourth Of July' shown in the first photo above, here are a few other varieties of roses that I took note of:

Hot Cocoa:

Julia Child:

Cinco de Mayo:

Golden Holstein:

The park also takes pride in an Oregon Heritage Tree, a cherry which is about 150 years old. This tree is so large that its heavy gnarled branches are supported by several support beams, and there are signs posted advising against climbing the brittle old limbs.

There were some other roses along one border of the park that were not identified, however James became smitten with these pink beauties and took a few photos: 

And who can resist some fascinating friends from the insect world?  Here are a dragonfly taking a rest, a ladybug most likely looking for aphids, and a busy buzzing bee gathering pollen:

Thanks for coming along with me on this tour through a little gem of a park in my town.