Poor Sad Garden

While I was over at Serenity recently it nearly broke my heart to see my lovely garden as it is now so neglected.  Some of the plants have died from lack of care and water.  

Because the remaining  rose bushes were so bad I decided to cut them out as well.  One was a beautiful Red, and the other a Yellow.  The Peace rose was just a gnarled stump in the ground with a small twig so that went too.  I just didnt want to see them die lingering deaths.

The top two photos of the collage are of the rock wall garden on the left when my son first made it, and the other photo was taken from the top as it is now.  You can still see a bit of sad rosemary bush among the grass and weeds.

The bottom two photos are of the rose garden, on the left in its glory, and on the right as it is now.   Among the grass are the remains of my shasta daisies, and a cactus.

Unfortunately himself is just a stubborn old git and has decided because he failed at growing a few beans when he was a boy he does not want anything to do with looking after gardens.  r.i.p. my garden...all those years I tended to you were for nothing, but gave me pleasure.

Top left the original garden with lavenders and rosemary . Top right looking down onto this garden from the top.    Bottom Left the rose garden how it looked when I was there.  Bottom right now full of weeds and grass.

I will just finish off with some old photos of the garden flowers.

till next time  enjoy

Fabric Book and Tast

Good Afternoon, my friends.  Despite my promises to myself to blog more often, I keep getting distractions.  II only hope that I still have some friends out there in Blogland.  I have only gone missing temporarily.

I dont know if anyone remembers the butterfly cushion I was working on eons ago, but I finally made it into a cushion cover...

 At long last the pages for my fabric book are being stitched together.  I finished all the individual pages and stitched them back to back.  Now I feel I am on the home run.  I thought if I did one page a day it would not take me long to get them together, but there have been other distractions.  I was going to stitch the pages together with herringbone stitch but my shaky hands will not allow me to slide the needle along the inside of the seam so I resorted to an easier way, which although not as tidy will work ok and will be covered up when the front cover goes on.  I have started by attaching the pages to the back cover which is made from the purple/blue fabric, and this is continued to cover the spine.

sewing the pages together

this is the pile of pages ready to stitch together

In 2013I started on a band sampler for something to do.  Nothing as efficient or wonderful as Sharon's, but just random stitching to keep my hand in to remembering the stitches.   I have joined the new Tast challenge for this year, and this sampler will be perfect to add the new stitches to.  Here are some photos of what I had done so far.

I have even taught myself to do a reasonable long and short stitch

While I was at Nanango I had a lovely coffee, chat and stitching morning with my friend and neighbour Julie.  She is working on a white on white schwalm cushion cover and this is when I started sewing the pages together.  I get more done when I have company.

Till next time enjoy your day wherever you are.