Savoring Summer

"Earth's crammed with heaven, And every common bush afire with God; But only he who sees, takes off his shoes - The rest sit round it and pluck blackberries.”
Elizabeth Barrett Browning

There are certain things that take me back to my childhood. One of those is sitting outside breaking homegrown green beans. My grandmothers and aunts would sit outside on the porch where it was cool and break beans while we children would swing in the porch swing or stand around begging them to take us down to the creek to wade. Doing the work outside just makes a mundane task into something special. Dinner tonight is mostly from the garden. Even my husband, the carnivore, doesn't complain about a vegetarian meal when the garden is coming in.

A little something colorful in honor of summer...polymer clay with a mosaic of lampworked glass, turquoise, millefiore, and dichroic glass in a copper bezel sent to me by Steph.

Summer Diversions

Paris Flea Market Pendant

It's time for this month's Gallery Friday at Artisans in Downtown Columbia, Tennessee. This month we will have several new artisans.

The festivities are Friday, June 25, from 5:00 until 9:00.

3 Metal Swirls

Copper and Brass Dangles



My mind has been mostly on food and gardening. I've been getting inspiration from one of my favorite raw food websites, RawLife.com. Check it out.

Cucumbers, Tomatoes, Avocado, Sweet Peppers, and Kelp Powder

Totally Raw Chocolate Tarts for Father's Day

Totally Raw California Rolls

Prickly Soyu Cucumbers

Uncle David's Dessert Squash

Milo Smelling the Herbs

Canning Time

I just checked a new book out of the library called Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, by Barbara Kinsolver. It is about how her family lived off of the fruit of their land plus locally grown produce for a whole year. I'm just in the second chapter but I'm inspired.

My own garden is winding down for the year, but I just picked the last of the green tomatoes and turned them into green tomato relish. This is something that my relatives have made for generations and my aunt and uncle came to my house one summer and showed me how to make it. Mine will probably never be as good as theirs but it will do. They would save a bit from the previous years for a taste comparison so that it would be consistent. The relish is the only thing that I canned this year besides the pickles in a previous post. We usually freeze corn and pears and make fig preserves and blackberry jelly, but this was a drought year so the corn didn't make it and the late freeze got the pears and most of the figs.

Maybe next year will be a better gardening year and the freezer will be full. For this year we will have to make do with the farm stands and the grocery store. Homegrown tastes best.

Spring at Stillwaters Farm

The weather has been so beautiful that I haven't gotten to do as much art as I would like. It's hard to stay indoors. The garden is calling. This is a montage of photos that I took on Saturday. I would love to take you on a wildflower walk through our woods. They are a colorful carpet for spring. Each one, an old friend that I haven't seen in a year. I looked to see if there were any morel mushrooms, but it has been too dry for them. Maybe with a little rain we will find them before the deer do.