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Looking for Plant Sales and Other Treasures

Posted on April 26, 2010January 16, 2015 by Helen

plant-sale-sign1

Saturday found us getting up late and dithering about whether or not the weather would hold out for garage sailing. But I found an ad for a plant sale or two so off we went. And you really couldn’t miss this sign.

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And although I loved the way they’d planted things up in these lovely red cups, we didn’t find anything we really needed at this one. Although we did spend a few minutes trying to justify a couple of things.

But that’s not to say we didn’t find anything. I found these Cleome starts at a flea market later

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and Bill found this Firetail at another sale. Ok it had a latin name on the tag too but I can’t make it out. The bloom is a sort of thistle like flower in magenta.

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As you can see, Bill has been very efficient and planted his find already, right next to the Cardoon. I, on the other hand haven’t got around to quite a few things that need planting. But I will, I will…..

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Couldn’t resist a photo of the seller’s cat sitting in the sunlight.

The next garage sale was overlooking the ocean on Dallas Road and I had to catch a photo of the very ocean flavoured fence of driftwood. I might borrow this idea, I like it so much.

driftwood-fence1

Then, as we made our way to another sale we passed Beacon Hill Park and practically screeched to a stop for this photo. Lovely, isn’t it?

Here’s a close up to see what produced this car stopping scene.

Then on to have lunch in front of this pond where we could enjoy not only the view of the pond with it’s geese but a glimpse of the ocean beyond.

geese-in-pond1

The find for the day were these pillows, especially this one with the Japanese scene. Love it and I may even have to totally redo the decor in the living room to accommodate it. There was another good find but I’ll have to keep it secret for now, it’s going to be birthday present for Hart and I don’t want him to see it yet.

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Earth Day – Optimism Required!

Posted on April 19, 2010January 16, 2015 by Helen

saxe-point

Earth Day has been on my mind a lot. My last post was about Earth Day from a Gardening Artist’s perspective. But today I realized that I’m not done with Earth Day yet.

Our sons are all grown up now, but I can remember a particularly black day back in the early 80’s when one our sons came home from elementary school very upset and very depressed. When we tried to find out what was the matter he finally answered.

He said, and I paraphrase here, but you’ll get the gist, “What is the use of anything? We are all going to die in a polluted stinking world, with no water, and food full of pesticides. The air is going to be unbreathable and there will be too many people to be able to feed them all. Why am I even going to school? What is the point of going on?”

To say that I was appalled and shocked, would be an understatement. I knew I had to think fast. This son of mine was truly in a state of deep despair and very very pessimistic for his future. The schools and the teachers, having finally latched onto ecology had pushed all the negatives way too hard. But they had forgotten to temper all that bad news with some good news. I had to suddenly come up with as many things as I could to convince him that all was not lost. I had to think of things where pollution had been turned around, like the fact that the Thames had been cleaned up from a stinking cesspool to a pretty respectable river. That people like Green Peace were out there fighting for the ecology and making a difference. That a lot of people were conserving water and not polluting in all sorts of ways. I won’t go into all the things I had to come up with that day but hopefully you get the point.

I know why he felt this way. I get pretty down about the future just watching Nature shows. In fact, no disrespect to David Suzuki, but I quit watching his shows years ago. I renamed those shows, Guilt with Suzuki. Each show made me feel so sad, hopeless, guilty and despairing. And that is what my son faced, complete despair. And with that was a sense that all was lost and why bother? Keep in mind that this exchange with my son happened in the early 80’s. There was a lot less going on out there to show that we could turn it all around.

That day I had to convince my son that there was hope for the future. Although I also had to tell him that while the future of the Earth might not be perfect, we could each of us make a difference by doing little things. And all those little things would in the end make a huge difference.

And I look around today and I see lots of little things to be positive about. Like the fact that we have Blue Boxes here as part of the municipal services. We even have a garden waste compost program for our municipality. Ok, these are actually, in my mind, BIG things.

We and lots of other people recycle. We carry our own bags to shop. Lots of people buy second hand like we do. We are not the only people who don’t flush for every use and turn off the tap when we brush our teeth. Ok, all little things but everything counts when more and more join in. We even spend a lot of time making sure our cast stone sculptures are as green as possible. So I’m not going to list all the little things we can do and try to do. Besides I like to keep my posts to around 500 words. It’s a blog after all, not a book or an essay.

Nowadays, I look for positive signs. I look for optimism for the future. I have not seen Al Gore’s movie, feeling that it will probably be more of the same old pessimism and will also not add to my sometimes tenuous feelings that there is actually hope for the earth. And with that, I’m not saying, put your head in the sand and forget about the bad things. If anything, my plea is to see the bad things but balance them with remembering and celebrating the good things we are doing for the Earth.

The point I want to make here is that by remembering the good things that we can do and have done, and by being optimistic, we redress the balance of hope and despair. Like my son back there in the 80’s, totally blown away by a black and polluted future, if we concentrate only on the bad and the negative, we will lose one of the most important things that we need for change and that is hope. And if we lose HOPE we will lose the most important thing of all, the WILL to make it better.

So this Earth Day I hope, there’s that hope word again, that you will tell your children or grandchildren (if you are a boomer like me) about all the little things that are making a big difference. And also think of and celebrate all those who have helped to make significant changes to our thinking about ecology. Ok I’m going to get off this soap box now. I’m going to end with two photos taken here in Victoria, my own personal symbols of Earth Day.

Happy and Hopeful Earth Day Everybody!

Time Traveling on a Saturday Morning

Posted on April 10, 2010January 16, 2015 by Helen

It was really too early for garage sale season. But the column in the paper did have a couple of possibilities. One, a “Giant Jumble and Plant sale” looked promising. Just say plant sale and I’m there. It was at Point Ellice House, and was a fundraising sale for this little gem surrounded by what is now an industrial area.

We were so lucky to arrive, just as a woman dressed in a long black dress and a black straw hat with feathers, invited anyone interested, on a free tour of the house. Bill and I gave each other a glance and both quickly fell in behind the lady in black, the tour guide by the name of Gail.

Now hopefully I’ve got my facts right. Ellice House was originally built by the Warks for their son and his wife as a wedding present. Later, in 1867, it became the property of Gold Rush magnate and Commissioner, Peter O’Reilly.

ellicehouse

In 1974 the house and all its contents were sold to the BC government. When they said all its contents, they meant it. From the dishes and cutlery, linens, the stove, the games and even letters. According to the brochure, “it is now one of the largest collections of Victoriana in its original privileged Victorian home.”

We entered by the back door, just off the verandah and were lead into the scullery and then the kitchen. We weren’t allowed to use a flash, so could only take photos and keep our fingers crossed that they would turn out.

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All the pots waiting on the work table by the window, glowed in the morning light.
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I’m kind of proud of the this photo, taken in the butler’s room, of the silver service catching and bending reflections of the curtains in the window. Sometimes you can get lucky.
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Imagine the staff scurrying off at the sound of the bells, to wait on one of the O’Reillys.

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The dining room, a Victorian period piece, all set for a gracious meal, perhaps with the Prime Minister or some other members of the elite of Victoria at the time.

dining-room

If we were to follow this path it would take us to a set of stairs that would lead to the Gorge Waterway dock below where visitors embarked on boats to take them back to the Victoria harbour.

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After the tour, we shopped the Jumble and found a few treasures, a little rag rug for the kitchen floor, a bright yellow throw for the couch or a daybed. No plants though. Nothing there that we didn’t already have. Ah well.

Then on to a flee market in Esquimalt. Tables and tables of treasures. And we found a treasure too, an album by Joni Mitchell, called “Wild Things Run Fast”, one that we had somehow missed! From 1982! I’m listening to it as I write. All new songs to me. Sorry Joni, don’t know how we missed this one.

And then back to the car and what did we see? Goats! Baby goats! In a little impromptu petting zoo set up in the parking lot.
baby-goats

So there was a morning’s travels in time, from Victorian times and the privileged classes and their servants, to 1982 and jazz with Joni, to the present full of exuberantly bouncing baby goats or should I say kids?
Now I’m off to pick more Spring rhubarb, a Crisp with oatmeal this time I think…

Inspiration, Pique Assiette Mosaics and A Quote by Picasso

Posted on April 5, 2010June 14, 2015 by Helen

Picasso quote on studio door, summerhouseart.com

I found this quote the other day in my internet wanderings and immediately copied it and attached it to my studio door. A little reminder to find some time, no let me rephrase that, make some time to let inspiration find me working. My time is so precious, there is just not enough of it and sometimes I feel like I squander it. Oh, I really do need, somehow, to find a way to do it all, all the things I need and want to do.

Right now I’ve got all my bits of ocean tumbled pottery spread out on what little space is left on my studio work table. I’m creating a new mosaic with them. The first mirror I made with them is in a previous post, The Beach Shard Pottery Experiment. The plants are crowding out the work space because I had to move them to the table, so I could put the starter seeds in the window instead, but that’s another story and another place I’ve spent my time.

in progress, Pattern Beach Pottery mosaic Helen Bushell, summerhouseart.com

But I have made some time, put some music on and started to move the bits around to find the right composition. At first, I looked for the odd bits with pattern on them and made them the focus.
in progress, Pattern Beach Pottery mosaic Helen Bushell, summerhouseart.com Later I realized that I was enjoying the off white bits, the bits that had curves of the plate rims on them and started to see that I could use them as the focus and create an interesting surface with those.

I’m trying to create a sense of movement with these curves.

in progress, Pattern Beach Pottery mosaic Helen Bushell, summerhouseart.com

So there it is, that’s as far as I got. Only a little time and then I went off to help with Easter dinner and make a Rhubarb Cobbler with fresh spring rhubarb from the garden. Delicious, by the way. My mosaic will have to wait for me, but I will get back to it, now that inspiration has found me working.

If you find mosaics intriguing I hope you’ll spend a little time yourself on my posts about my pique assiette mosaics.

Of Bunny Ornaments and a Painted Russian Egg

Posted on April 3, 2010January 16, 2015 by Helen

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Because I sometimes use ornaments in my mosaics, I have rather a good collection. And of course I had some lovely lovely bunnies.

Plus I also have a rather gorgeous painted Russian egg, which my beautiful Russian daughter-in-law, Olya, brought back all the way from Russia. Then another painted egg from Chinatown completed the idea forming in my minds eye, of creating a little Easter composition.

So after happily traipsing all over the garden collecting flowers for the bouquet, then setting up Easter bunny vignettes, Will and I had a little fun creating today’s post.

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Hope you enjoy the holiday and eat lots and lots of chocolate eggs!

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Blossoms, Blossoms and the Accidental Gift

Posted on March 31, 2010January 16, 2015 by Helen

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Realizing that I’ve been stuck in front of the computer for far too long, I pushed my chair away yesterday and grabbed my little camera and set out for a walk. I was looking for photos for a photo essay I’m working on, but that is for another day. I didn’t go far. Just a block or two from my home. But there was much to see and savour. Blossoms, blossoms everywhere. The gorgeous ones above were on some trees on the boulevard by the Medical Clinic.

In a front garden, a heather’s fuchsia color was set off so well by the bright green of the leaves of the bush next to it.

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A magnolia in full bloom outside an apartment building.

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Grape hyacinths in another front yard, periwinkle-purple color so saturated and full.

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And as I wandered by, my eye was caught by a little vignette not planted lovingly by anyone at all, just a lucky scattering of seeds that grew where they were cast, maybe by the birds or a breeze. Clustered around a hydro meter, of all places. A little gift of accidental color, complimentary on the color wheel. Orange and purple, calendula and bluebells.

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Then turning back, these cheery pale yellow tulips in my own flower bed welcomed me home.

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Stained Glass Mosaics and Synchronicity

Posted on March 24, 2010December 10, 2016 by Helen

I like the idea of synchronicity, which in the dictionary is defined “as the coincidence of events that seem to be meaningfully related, conceived in Jungian theory as an explanatory principle on the same order as causality.” My foray into stained glass was definitely a “coincidence of events”.

I also like the idea of serendipity which is our motto in our studio. Serendipity is “the gift of being able to make delightful discoveries by pure accident ” which was coined by Horace Walpole after the “Three Princes of Serendip” , a fairy tale.

And so it was that synchronicity and serendipity both worked for me in my latest mosaic endeavors. One day Silva from Mosaic Road blog visited my blog and left a comment. I, of course zoomed over to her site and discovered her wonderful stained glass mosaics. Silva not only covers old guitars and stair risers in stained glass but she does wonderful vase sculptures using stained glass. Thank you Silva for the inspiration!

Then, while investigating Flickr I found to my delight groups of mosaic artists to lose myself in for hours. And in one group, I serendipitously found another glass mosaic artist who totally caught my eye, Rebecca Collins. She made mosaics from glass glued over compositions that she’d created in Photoshop. Plus, she made videos on how to do it! Thank you Rebecca! Ok, now I was getting interested thanks to both of these artists who were wonderfully generous with info and now all I needed was glass.

And here again synchronicity worked for me. One day soon after making this decision to try stained glass mosaics, I got an email from a close friend that her friend’s daughter was getting rid of her mosaic supplies. Would I like them? Well, I said, I’ll be happy to have a look. And what should these supplies be but all sorts of stained glass bits and pieces! Baggies and boxes of gorgeous colorful stained glass, jars of glass in lovely, luscious color! I greedily scooped it all up and with help from Bill, hauled it home to the studio.

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Soon I was experimenting and creating my own stained glass mosaics. And learning that with glass there is such a thing as “grout creep” where the grout creeps under the glass and looks sort of messy.

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But this next piece turned out quite well, I thought. The collage underneath is based on some of my writing and also some photos of amaryllis and slices of windmill palm photos My daughter-in-law, who is also a very accomplished mosaic artist, liked it. So I couldn’t resist giving it to her for her birthday.

grn-glass-mosaicwm1 I’ve still got lots to learn and still more equipment to get. For one I need a tumbler to soften the edges of the glass if I want to try using it on vases like Silva does. And I need to get a grinding stone to grind down the sharp edges for future pieces.

This last one is still ungrouted, but I’m liking the abstract composition. Now all I need is to find more time……

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Here it is grouted….

Abstract glass mosaic, Helen Bushell, summerhouseart.com

(BTW if you’d like to comment, and we do appreciate comments, please just click on the title to bring up the post with a spot for comments at the bottom.)

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First Day of Spring Resolutions

Posted on March 20, 2010January 16, 2015 by Helen

It occurred to me today, as I went out to do some garden clean up, that in some ways, the first day of spring can be much like New Years Day. Both days can be full of resolutions. Granted, for some, there is still snow on the first day of spring, so for those who still waiting, replace first day of Spring with First-day-of-Real-gardening-after-the-snow-is-gone.

So what are the similarities? Well,on New Years Day, I sometimes think I really must change my ways, have a fresh start. I decide I must get more exercise, really must get into shape, must stop eating all those lovely chocolate goodies. Or I decide I really should try to have a really tidy house, all the time, not just before company comes. Or I decide that this year I will be calm, contemplative, meditative and stress free. Of course, more exercise just becomes more walks and I don’t stop eating goodies but do try to eat less of them. Having a tidy house all the time lasts for about a week. But I have stuck with trying to meditate more. So, what about my first day of Spring resolutions?

Well, come the first day of Spring, I tell myself that this year when it comes to gardening, I will not over do it and will instead pace myself, take lots of breaks and for once, avoid giving myself a nasty case of muscle spasms. I even thought maybe this year I would only allow myself one hour of weeding per day. I always hope to have a much nicer garden, maintained, weeded, not such a hodge podge. But instead of trying to do it all right away, I will remind myself that I have all spring and summer and I can take my time.

Of course, all that goes out the window on the first day of Spring. Gone is the plan to go slow, not spend the whole day bent over, not to try to do too much. Of course, more than one bed got weeded, more than one area got cleaned up. The little green wagon filled with weeds and also 2 big garbage buckets filled with garden waste to take to the garden recycle. We just couldn’t STOP!

weed-wagon

But on a positive note, I did take care of my knees. You may laugh at my little stool with the old pillow wrapped in plastic bags but me “sitting and weeding my way around the garden”, instead of kneeling my way around the garden really saved my knees.

weeding-bench

But oddly enough, I was reminded of one of my New Year’s resolutions to try to be calm and more contemplative while I was slowly and methodically weeding the paths in the herb garden. It came to me as I worked that I needed to think about the mood I’m in when I garden. Am I combative, ready to wage war with the weeds, a control freak who needs everything in its place, every bed edged? Or am I calm and accepting, ready to just enjoy the day and the feeling of accomplishment as I slowly get something done, ready to accept the little surprises that grow where I didn’t plant them? One way is stressful, full of anger sometimes, and often disappointment. The other contemplative, meditative, generally happier and stressfree. I think this will be one thought and perhaps a new resolution, that I will try to carry with me from now on, when I venture out to tend to the garden.

An in the end, resolutions kept or not, as Will put it, after a day out in the garden you always do feel great mentally, although the physical part, the sore muscles, the aching back don’t always feel quite so good as we pop an anti-inflammatory and finally relax by vegging on the couch for the evening.

Garden Bloggers Bloom Day March 2010

Posted on March 17, 2010January 16, 2015 by Helen

mystery-plant

Well, imagine my surprise when, this morning as I was checking into Blotanical, I realized that everyone was posting what was blooming in their gardens today. What followed was a flurry of getting out of my housecoat, getting dressed and running around the garden, camera in hand, looking for blooms. And I was not disappointed. In fact, I found some new blooms on my Mystery plant. It’s never bloomed before. I got it from a very good gardener at a garage sale a couple of summers ago and yes, it did have a tag, but I’ve lost it. If you know, please tell me. It’s the one at the top of the post.

I have just joined Blotanical, inspired by Karen at An Artist’s Garden and it’s been fun. And I must add that Karen has done a wonderful job of her photos as usual, and also it’s worth it to check out her last years photos too. Trust me on this. Garden Bloggers Bloom Day is hosted by May Dreams Garden and as soon as I’ve got this posted I’ll be zooming over there to add my blog to the day. And then, I suppose, spend more time checking out everyone else’s garden blooms for March. So here they are, with names,(just hover over with your mouse) if I know them, my blooms for March. Now, I must admit the magnolia is in my garden, but not yet planted. She is a gift from my sister Shirl, for my recent birthday. I am spoiled you know.

daffodil-2

daphne1

bluebell

magonolia

helebore

purple-hyacinth

Something Silly and Fun – Weather Rocks

Posted on March 15, 2010January 16, 2015 by Helen

Oh I know it’s an old joke. Weather rocks to tell you the weather, if they’re wet, it’s raining, If they’re dry and hot, well then, it’s sunny. Today the rocks are very very wet. Luckily, since I live on the Wet Coast, I happen to like rain.

And I also like rocks, collect them sometimes. So for fun, here are my “Weather Rocks” in context, with part of the rain-washed garden in the background.

rocks-in-context