filigree...
"An intricate, delicate, or fanciful ornamentation."
(The Free Dictionary)

The Filigree Garden Home

"Whoever loves and understands a garden will find contentment."
          --Chinese Proverb

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The Filigree Garden.
All Rights Reserved.

I welcome links to my site and blog. However, please don't use or copy any of my photos, design or written content without my permission. Thank you!

Friday, November 14, 2008

Handmade for the Holidays


Here's a special opportunity for all of you online shoppers who want to save gas and shop from your keyboard instead. Check out It's a Wonderful Sale this holiday season when you shop the BBEST Limited Time Sale and find handmade and vintage treasures for everyone on your list, quickly, easily, and at remarkable values. So pull up a chair, get comfy and find the joy that the BBEST (Boomers and Beyond Etsy Street Team) has to offer! BBEST artists are talented individuals who sell their products in the homemade goods marketplace known as Etsy.com.

Here's how this special event works. First, if you have not yet registered as an Etsy visitor, go to http://www.etsy.com, and click on Register. Now you're ready to begin!

Check out the BBEST HoLiDaY HuNt for registered Etsy buyers. THREE WONDERFUL PRIZE PACKAGES will be given away.

These BBEST Team members have generously donated the fabulous holiday gift item collections seen in the above photo.


TWO ways to enter. NO PURCHASE REQUIRED.

RULES:

Play this way . . . Holiday Hide & Seek:

Simply hunt through the shops below and look for the BBEST avatar seen to the right. It is randomly placed in one listing item photo slot in some of our shops.

Find the avatar. Copy the listing ID of each item. When you've found 10, convo (contact) the BBEST shop with that list, AND come to the sale discussion on Etsy (click on link to get there) and post that you've done so. Do not reveal any hidden avatar locations to any eligible players. Your name will be entered into our random prize drawing! Limit: one entry per Etsian.

EXEMPT from this method of entry are those team members who have a hidden avatar in their shops. EXEMPT from both methods of entry are joonbeam, chauncey and sixsisters, who are the team leaders and organizers of this sale and game.

Play this way . . . Support Handmade.

Save money. For every $1 you spend in our participating shops, listed below, your name will be entered into the random prize drawing. All three prize packages will be given away.
  1. You must enter BBEST in the notes to seller upon checkout.
  2. Only complete dollar amounts (i.e., $7.65 = 7 entries) from each shop count. No amounts less than $1 will be combined between or among multiple shop purchases.
  3. The final sale price dollar amounts coincide with your entries. In other words, regardless of when the discounted price is finalized, the discounted total dollars determine the number of entries. (For example, some sale transactions are handled via convo / reserved listing with the sale price, others purchase and get a revised invoice.) If a shop has a mix of sale (reduced price) items and non sale items, all purchases do count toward your dollar amounts.
  4. Excludes shipping/handling costs. Item costs only.
  5. Only purchase dollars from transactions with the shops in this list and made between 12:01 a.m. Etsy Time, November 12, 2008 and 11:59 p.m. Etsy time, November 17, 2008 qualify.
Winners will be announced on our team blog: http://boomersandbeyond.blogspot.com on Thursday, November 20, 2008 at NOON Etsy Time. You must come by and look for the winner's Etsy ID names listed there. Winners have 3 (three) days to convo (contact) the teambbest shop with their mailing address, or they will forfeit their prize and subsequent names will be drawn.

You can play either or both ways. Odds of winning depend on number of entries received.

Each shop owner has their own sale style and terms, which you will find in their shop announcement.

We are all convo friendly. Do not hesitate to contact us with your questions or requests! Thank you for shopping with us and HaPpY HoLiDaYs!

Participating BBEST Team Shops for It's A Wonderful Sale 2008:

ART:

CRAFT SUPPLIES & CREATIONS:

FABRIC & YARN ARTS:

GLASS:

HOME DECOR ART:

JEWELRY:

PHOTOGRAPHY:

POLYMER CLAY ART:

posted by The Filigree Garden at 10:59 AM 0 Comments

Sunday, September 7, 2008

Harvesting

The end of summer comes faster each year it seems, and with it comes the bittersweet flood of freshly harvested garden vegetables. Though I adore the taste of sweet yellow pear tomatoes straight from the vine and the crisp crunch of home-grown cucumbers, this last mad influx of produce means that the long winter and a time of fallow fields is not far behind. Already the squash vines are browning and fading away, the herbs are setting seeds, and the sunflowers are bowing their heads to the ever-shortening hours of sunlight. I will surely miss the wonderful flavors of summer when the greenery is gone and the garden is bathed in frost.

Yet there are many ways to preserve the pleasures of the harvest long into the winter. For the moment, my crafting life must take a back seat to food preservation. Hours and hours spent now skinning, seeding and simmering fresh tomatoes means having a taste of summer in January in the form of spaghetti sauce kept fresh in a chest freezer. I have been busy putting up dozens of pints of freezer pickles, sweet relish, tomato sauce, and quarts of mashed potatoes made with red and white potatoes from our bountiful crop. Some things are dried with a dehydrator and packed in glass jars, such as oregano, basil, chocolate mint, and sage. Other vegetables can be kept for weeks in a cool section of the basement; the balance of our potatoes is stored in perforated brown paper bags sitting on top of an unused air hockey table. Not the ideal root cellar arrangement, but it will have to do until we can build a more proper storage area.

So how did the garden grow this year and what is still left to be harvested? It was a strange summer in terms of weather. Early warmth was followed by weeks of rain. Then a cool August was followed by a hot and humid first week of September. Mid-summer rains caused the tomatoes to stay green until late in August meaning a relentless number of red fruits are now coming in. Green and wax beans were plentiful again this year. The sage grew like weeds. Our two-year-old peach tree produced a dozen delicious fruits. The cucumbers flourished on trellises, a method we will use next year as well. Radishes happily germinated and almost all the garlic plants produced healthy bulbs. The new asparagus bed is now well populated by lacy asparagus ferns. On the downside, the squashes were attacked by vine borers yet again, causing a reduced winter squash yield, although a few new summer squash bush varieties were very productive. In the future we'll plant only the bush type to save space and make the borers more manageable. Unfortunately beetles and grasshoppers feasted on the basil and kale, making the crop mostly unusable, and the broccoli never produced heads for the second year in a row.

There were a few wonderful surprises in the garden this summer. After a poor showing by potatoes planted in containers in 2007, we planted several in-ground rows of plants this year. Having survived an early attack of Colorado potato beetles, the plants went on to surpass our wildest expectations by yielding over 110 pounds of potatoes! And before you ask, no, we don't have a farm! We live in a suburban neighborhood and have a back yard garden that comprises only about 3% of our land. It is amazing how much food can be produced in a small area if the popular focus on large expanses of green lawn is traded for a love of well-placed, intensive gardens.


One other interesting twist occurred in a last minute raised bed we created in our south-facing front yard. Running out of space and time, we tossed some watermelon seeds and the extra home-grown tomato seedlings into this new bed. We waited and waited and yet no little watermelon seedlings appeared. Then, one day, seemingly overnight, watermelon vines began covering the bare soil at an incredible rate. The prolonged heat in the front yard apparently fueled their growth spurt and soon several green melons were forming under the lush foliage. One of these green beauties is now over 18 inches long! We are anxiously waiting for the day that this giant surprise baby can be opened. Will the center be sweet, red and juicy? Or will it be pale and lacking flavor? Only time will tell.

Like the hidden and mysterious interior of the watermelon, one never knows what will grow in the garden each year; its progress cannot be rushed and the outcome is always unpredictable. Sometimes waiting for the harvest can be a stressful and tedious process. Those long, quiet days when nothing seems to be happening are masking the intense changes taking place underneath the surface. Watching a garden grow builds patience and forces our acceptance of things beyond our control. It develops our appreciation of success and failure as two sides of the same coin; the flourishing of one thing balances the shortcomings of another. Gardening encourages us to be unafraid of trying something new for the results may lead us in an entirely unexpected and rewarding direction. Of course these lessons are more acceptable in hindsight at the end of the season. I am sure I will need to relearn them again next year as I curse at the bugs and wait impatiently for fruit to ripen. Hindsight may be 20/20 but it has a short memory. Luckily Mother Nature is always willing to repeat the lesson.

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posted by The Filigree Garden at 11:17 PM 12 Comments

Blog Love

Some days start off the same old way, and then a few start off with very pleasant surprises. This morning I was greeted with a little bit of blog love in the form of a nomination for the award pictured here, "Brillante Weblog-Primo 2008". My wonderful BBEST (Boomers and Beyond Etsy Street Team) team mate and fellow blogger Pamela of Magdalene Jewels has included my blog in her list of seven favorite artisan blogs. Pam's great blog and the original nomination can be read at http://magdalenejewelspjk.blogspot.com
Pam creates beautiful jewelry which is offered in her Etsy shop, www.MagdaleneJewels.etsy.com. I am greatly honored to be included in her list! Thank you Pam!

In turn, I am to nominate seven creative bloggers to join this list of blogs to love. Narrowing down this list to only seven will not be an easy task! Here are a few of the worthy blogs I frequent. I am sorry I can't include more!

1. http://joonbeam.blogspot.com
2. http://wordwalks.blogspot.com
3. http://scottieacres.blogspot.com
4. http://suebleiweiss.typepad.com/sueb
5. http://sandfibers.blogspot.com
6. http://www.vanfleetstreetdesign.blogspot.com
7. http://lizplummer.com/blog

Now that I have passed the "Brilliante Weblog-Primo 2008" onto each of these artists, they, in turn, must do the same by following the instructions below:

1. Add the logo of the Award to your blog.
2. Add a link to the Person who nominated you for the Award.
3. Nominate 7 other blog members.
4. Add links to their blogs on your blog.
5. Leave a message (or convo) for those you nominated on their blog.

Please do take a look at each of the blogs that I nominated. You will find interesting reading, beautiful artwork, and creative inspiration at each stop. Enjoy!

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posted by The Filigree Garden at 8:33 PM 2 Comments