You Grow Girl Makes - Winter Squash Worth Growing Embroidery Project

An Embroidery Project for Pumpkin Lovers

Please allow me to introduce the second embroidery project in our You Grow Girl Makes series for plant and garden lovers. This fall themed wall hanging was inspired, in part, by a surprise gift of 300 pounds of pumpkin that was delivered to my door last fall. The experience gave me the opportunity to taste

Natural Dyes Sumac Lovage Coreopsis

Experiments in Dyeing with Plants

When I last wrote here about dyeing with plants it was June and I had been experimenting with fresh coreopsis flowers. Despite reports that cotton fibres CAN NOT be dyed with coreopsis flowers, I was able to use the gleanings from my garden successfully without using mordants (a fixative that allows the dye to bind

You Grow Girl Makes - Tomatoes Worth Growing Embroidery Project

Introducing You Grow Girl Makes

Introducing our newest collaboration, You Grow Girl Makes and our first project in the series, Tomatoes Worth Growing, a 12″ x 12″ embroidered pillow (or wall hanging) dedicated to some of my favourite heirloom tomatoes. In the off-season, when the garden is put to bed and I am resigned to longer hours spent indoors, I

Grow Write Guild: Creative writing prompts for gardeners

Grow Write Guild #31: Summer Fruit

Summer fruits and berries have been in abundance these past weeks and the experience of foraging, picking, eating, preparing, and preserving them has conjured up all sorts of memories from my past going right back to early childhood when I discovered a black currant bush and onward to my teens when I did fruit picking

Grow Write Guild: Creative writing prompts for gardeners

Grow Write Guild #30 Our Gardens, Ourselves

Our gardens reflect who we are, what we need, and what we like. I am a tinkerer. I like to experiment, mess about, and explore. I am curious. I like insects. I like to grow plants that are useful. I like diversity. My garden is filled to overflowing with a wide range of useful and

Dye with coreopsis flowers

Dyeing Cotton Thread and Fabric with Coreopsis Flowers

Late last summer I tossed a few flowers from the garden into jars and covered them with boiling water to make a “colour tea.” I then tossed in little bits of cotton thread to see what would happen. This wasn’t about anything that I had read in a book. I didn’t use any mordants. I

Grow Write Guild: Creative writing prompts for gardeners

Grow Write Guild #29: Wildness

“Maybe this is what gardening is about: slowly opening the door, a controlling hand making tentative gestures to wildness.” – from The Gardener’s Manifesto by Lorraine Johnson Grow Write Guild Prompt #29: Write about wildness. The Grow Write Guild is a creative writing club for people who love to garden. Everyone is welcome to participate!

Grow Write Guild: Creative writing prompts for gardeners

Grow Write Guild #28: Greener Grass

Someday I’d like to have the experience of gardening in another climate. While I certainly haven’t experienced everything this climate has to offer a gardener, I think it would be an exciting challenge to try growing somewhere completely different, where I would have the opportunity to see some of my favourite tender plants come into

Grow Write Guild - Year One

Grow Write Guild #27: Loss, Attachment & Letting Go

Just the other day I wrote about the hit my garden took this year as a result of an unusually harsh winter. As spring progressed, I watched a number of particularly beaten plants closely for signs of life or recovery. As April turned to May and the time for recovery was well passed its due

Grow Write Guild - Year One

Grow Write Guild #26: The Physicality of Gardening

I’m a week behind in posting a writing prompt. I came down with some sort of plague that knocked me flat out cold and it seems to have overlapped with the onset of spring seasonal allergies. Through even the worst days when I could barely get up and get dressed, I thought about the garden

Grow Write Guild: Creative writing prompts for gardeners

Grow Write Guild #25: Connecting Through the Garden

Over the years, I have met all sorts of people as a result of my personal and professional interest in gardening. Some of these experiences have been thrilling and joyful; others were colorful, frightening, a bit odd, or downright nuts. Some of the strangest conversations took place as I tended my former “Guerilla garden” on

Grow Write Guild: Creative writing prompts for gardeners

Grow Write Guild #24: Favorite Garden, Ever

Grow Write Guild Prompt #24: Write about the most inspiring garden you have visited. Further Notes and Questions: Was it a public or private garden? What about it appealed to you? How did you feel there? Describe the parts that you liked best. Did you discover a new plant there? Did you learn something else