Chuck and I saw this piece at an Exhibition at the Weatherspoon at UNC-G in February. It’s an interactive piece that offers the viewer to participate by removing a page. We each took a piece. He folded his to carry it out to the car. I did not. I wasn’t sure what I would do with it and taped it over a a framed poster in my bedroom.
My friend, Caitlyn, has had the habit of folding paper cranes for as long as I’ve known her (around 18 years). Anytime she is somewhere that there are bits of paper lying around, she folds cranes. She said it started when she read that if you fold 1,000 cranes, a wish will come true. She figures she should have gotten more than one by now. But, she lost count ages ago.
(Last night, we went out for dinner and she was making tiny ones with the chopstick wrappers on the table without even looking at her hands.)
A couple of months ago, I asked her if she would take my sheet and fold me a crane. I had to cut the edges down before I delivered it, because it needed to be square instead of rectangular.
She learned something by using this bicolored sheet that wasn’t obvious otherwise. Theres a point in the folding where you have 4 triangles that become the actual bird. No matter which way she folded it, there were always 3 and one. It was always going to be colored diagonally. Never tail/head and the wings. Always each wing a different color. She could only choose which color she wanted to be the head and which the tail,
Remember that I told you I want to try to bonsai a swamp cypress so that it makes knees?
Last Fall I asked my BIL (who lives in Mt. Pleasant, SC) if he would pick one up for me. I meant buy one in a pot. That lovely man went out in the woods and dug me the only one he could find that still had leaves on it so that he could be sure what it was. It’s really small and since that last leaf had dropped off, he was a little concerned that it might actually be dead. But, it was not. It is, however quite small, which also means not hard for him to dig up for me.
I have mostly been keeping it in the water garden to encourage that knee growth and a LOT of wild grass came up in the native soil that it has been living in. Today, I got the grass out and resituated the pot.
The irises haven’t been particularly happy about being pulled up and transplanted. But, I believe they’ll be fine. The cypress is an almost invisible stick to the left of the elephant ear.
My MG friend, Terry, had offered me a pink-and-white camellia. She has them growing abundantly from seeds dropped under her very large bush. I was happy to take one, so she brought me 4. They were bare-root when she got them to me and I’ve had them in a bucket of water until today. Now, 2 are in separate pots to take to my cousin and 2 are in a single pot to get healthy before I plant them at the western tip of the shade garden, at the left corner of the house.
Here’s the picture Terry sent me of her bush. I’m probably decades from this profusion.The cypress
One of my MG mentors roadtripped to Texas with her husband to visit his family. She sent us pictures of flowers almost every day of her trip and she brought us all a package of blue bonnet seeds (L. texensis). I cleaned up the zinnia stalks what were leftover around the well from last year and planted blue bonnets.
They are native to TX. But, it looks like they’ll just be annuals here. And I might have done better to wait to plant them in the Fall to have flowers next year. We’ll see how it goes.
Did I tell you about my grapes? I don’ t think I did. My friend, Ann, thought she ordered 2 seedless white grape vines. She ordered 2 pairs and they came bare root.
She gave me a pair.
I have put one by the south fence and one on the northside west fence. I have a Task on my calendar to water them every 3 days. Today’s the day. I’ve been filling a bucket and pouring it slowly into the ground where they’re planted. And I have leaves!
This may be another “takes decades.” But, time’s going to pass whether I have something growing or not.
I went out to take pictures to show them to you and it looks like Southside Johnny is already trying to produce a cluster of grapes. *boggle!*
A couple of other nice things I saw while I was out: it looks like one of the caladiums that I put in a pot after overwintering in a bag inside is sprouting, one of the gloriousa vines appears to be sprouting and one of the bleeding hearts has started poking some leaves out.
I’m gross and sweaty and I need more water and a shower. I’m going to finish the water I have and this bowl of kettle corn before going out to turn of the hose that’s watering the shade garden first.
They decided to extend the festival by a week. So, there were 3 weekends instead of 2. We made plans to go with my younger sister and her husband, reserving the same house we stayed in last year and decided to go the weekend in the middle. Yay!!
We thought that meant they could come after work on Friday, have 2 solid days of art and take one day off to get home on Monday.
But, no. Nothing is open on Sunday or Monday. So, what’s the point of that? And our rental was occupied until Friday morning.
So, we gave back Sunday night (our hosts were understanding.) and crammed as much as we could into Friday evening and Saturday.
We’re home, now, and my hips are still annoyed. We did have a fun time, though. We saw a lot.
Yesterday, there was a guy with a laptop in one of the stores that was participating in the festival. He was showing a video to the store owner and the few other people who were there. CBS Saturday Morning had run this: https://youtu.be/XBtkgV51ksA
We mostly think that’s great. But, we also think it’s likely to make everything more crowded which is not to our personal advantage.
I’m not going to post a bunch of pictures this year because you can scroll through and have a look as it suits you here: https://www.artfieldssc.org/galleries/?festival_year=2026 And if you have a look at the top of that page, you can click through to all the previous years.
Yes. I do have parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme. Also, oregano, cilantro, basil and chives.
The thyme, oregano and parsley are in one of the troughs. The rosemary and sage are each in a very large pot. The chives are in the ground. We have a couple of big pots where the cilantro and basil get replanted in their correct season. They overlap some; so, we don’t use the same pot for them. And I did seed some dill in front of the herb trough, too. Mostly to feed swallowtail butterflies. But, I’ll dry a little for me, just in case some recipe wants it.
I replaced the rosemary and thyme this year because they both died this winter. The rosemary didn’t care for me transplanting it and the thyme just wore out. I don’t think it lives longer than 3 or 4 years. None of mine ever has, anyway.
I’ve been considering moving the parsley and oregano to the ground. Specifically, to the area between the walkway from the patio to the driveway. They get really big and crowd each other and the green onions I store there.
It would take less effort to find a(nother damn) (s)pot to keep the thyme in and just clip those 2 more regularly. It’s not like we d/won’t use (most of) what’s dried when it slows down in winter. Neither dies back completely. So, a little fresh is available, then, too, if we ever need it.
I have 2 pots I could put the thyme in. One has a pawpaw seed in it and the other has caladium bulbs. I haven’t seen any growth from either one, yet. So….. I’m not sure which one I’d use. And I’d like to move the thyme, if I’m going to, sooner rather than later.
I may put in asparagus. I can get crowns delivered from Lowe’s. But, I think I want this summer to be sure the bed is well prepped and not trying to grow stuff I thought I got out but didn’t. But, if I plant this year, we’ll have a real harvest sooner…..
It didn’t do well in a trough in the middle of the yard. But, I think that location was bad because the metal trough got hotter than the ground and it didn’t get watered enough because it was too far from the house. It did well in the raised bed until the trees-of-heaven took it over. The last year there wasn’t enough to feed us. But, we got one good meal out of it.
So, that’s what in my head lately. I need to make some mustard and maybe pull some weeds while it’s not sweltering.
