Tough Week for Sunflowers

When we were driving back to Powell from Woodstock this morning, I was shocked to see the sunflower fields.  They had dried, were actually very brown and pretty well gone when we saw them last week, but today one of the fields looked as if it had been harvested.  No brown blossoms with the little crook at the top that held the drooping flower head.  Just tall, brown stalks, now.  It was the sort of thing that looks more like a bad dream than a harvest, so I didn't even ask Charles to stop so I could photograph it.  The stalks, several feet tall, no longer look crowded in the field, but stand there startled, as if they'd had their hats snatched off and they aren't quite sure whether they should continue to stand or is it time to sit, or lie down . . .?

I did manage to get a little "fun" work done last week, besides the never-ending tasks of sorting and putting away.  The only thing worse is having seen an item in a box and needing it, then wondering which box it was in.  I'll be so, so SO glad to get the cabinets here to hold these boxes.  Waiting for the Powell house to sell for that.

Anyway, I looked at my embroidery table and had to laugh-- what a mess!!!  I'm working on too many things at a time, and my table reflects this bad discipline.  Here are some of my little color books that I've been keeping for more than a year-- little mulberry paper albums with scraps and bits and pieces of ideas and miscellany and useless information about colors.  Anything at all is grist for this mill, so long as it is small and interesting and looks like the start of something sometime along the way.  I keep finding things for the book as I go through boxes, so they are stacked on the table rather than being on the shelf, where they would be no trouble at all.

In Knoxville:  Anne Stevenson and Beth Ralph are co-chairs of the EGA Fantasy of Trees project this year, and the theme is holiday postcards and ATCs.  I have been collecting ideas for postcards for a year, since I'm to teach a class in holiday postcards for the Campbell Folk School in December, but sitting down and turning the drawings into the real thing seems out of the realm of reason, right now.  But, I took the bull by the horns, or bit the bullet, or whatever it is you do when you have lost all excuses for gross procrastination, and I made an ATC.  It is a pear, from the "Twelve Days of Christmas" repeating line about the pear tree.  Now that I've gotten this first one done, there is hope for others to follow.

While On The Road

Traveling the road between Woodstock and Powell can be interesting, often an adventure.  We pass this sunflower field, about 45 minutes from Penny Lane.  It was in soy beans last year, but we were thrilled to see the sunflowers this summer.  They are droopy and brown, today, but this is the way we think of them, bright yellow and spreading across both sides of the highway, on and on . . .  It is easy to see how Vincent could have chosen them for portraits.

When we got back to Knoxville, the strawberry plants that grow in a concrete fountain were ready for rifling.  The three-tiered fountain was in the front yard of the house in Powell when we purchased it in 2001, and moving it around back was one of the first items of business.  A friend drilled drain holes in it for me, and we've planted it with a variety of things over the years-- wave petunias do especially well in the two deeper bowls.  But a couple of years ago we put strawberry plants there.  Raising the plants from the ground saves our backs and makes finding the fruit easier.  They're small, but really sweet.  Never enough for more than a bowl at breakfast or an afternoon snack-- but I'm not complaining!

The deer seem to prefer to nibble the blueberry bushes in the front yard, though I can sometimes get a handful before the deer come to graze.  I wonder if the bunnies who dance in the grass are waiting for us to plant something for them to snack on!