Although I come from a family of gardeners, the urge to play with growing green things never (ever!) appealed to me. My parents said I have a purple thumb, meaning I don't take to gardening. OK with me... I love purple!
Early this spring, my husband started talking about us having a vegetable garden on our property. Ohhhhh, no! Not me! I don't DO gardening, I said. A bone of contention between us , it became a hot topic in our counseling sessions until I finally agreed to contribute 10% (to his 90%) toward the building and operation of the garden (labor and cost).
You guessed it. My thumbs are greening. You can see it in my Bead Journal Project piece for June. The purple bugle bead pathways are my thumbs, the greening around the edges (looking a little like beet greens) is what is happening to them! The other arm of the X is our garden.
I even started a garden blog. I'm ghost writing it for my husband, which he claims is stealing his identity. If you'd like to see the results of horse-trough, intensive, raised-bed gardening, take a look at Rain Barrel Garden.
Now here's some fun... click on the picture below to make it big and see if you can identify the vegetables. Not in order and not counting the obvious ones in the center, they are: beets, carrots, tomatoes, radishes, three types of lettuce, kale, strawberries and spinach.
Although I enjoy planting, harvesting and eating our own organic foods, I had no real appreciation for how much I enjoy it until it showed up in my beading. All I do at the start of one of these visual journaling pieces is to tell myself, "This one is about the relationship between me and our garden." The rest just happens... improvisationally... bead by bead. It's magic!
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