A New Season is Upon Us
Happy Autumn, Everyone!
It is the beginning of November and the garden is still blooming here in Bellevue, Washington. The arid summer is over; the air has become cool and wet. Daylight Savings Time ends this coming weekend. Halloween happens. Thanksgiving is on its way; oh, boy! Our days will shorten to 8 hours of daylight before the days begin to lengthen again next year. 
Although people talk about the rain; I find the sun does shine between the cloudiness almost every day; I must pay attention and go outside to enjoy it when I notice it. I'm one of those half full folks always looking at the bright side of things! The rain that is forecast is what I dub, "Seattle Drizzle'. This is so different from upper New York State where I lived most of my life. When younger, I loved the cold, snowy days there. It always made me feel alive. There a high, gray cloud cover begins in autumn and stays put for the most part until spring. So, cloudy rainy weather here isn't so much of a trial for me. Now, the snow and ice aren't so welcoming; well, to say I don't miss them at all is to put it mildly.
Having lived in upstate New York State most of my life, I know what rain can be; we seldom have hours of heavy downpours here. Yes, I have lived the Bomb Cyclone of 2023 and last year there was a Rain River that lasted for two to three weeks flooding the lowlands around us but those were single weather events, not the norm. I found them remarkable indeed! The remnant Douglas Fir and other evergreens belonging to the conifer forest that are in my neighborhood tend to fall when too much water makes them too heavy and then any wind that arrives will knock some of them down. Often, because we humans have taken down their neighboring trees that they would lean against, they fall easily and this is a dangerous situation when a weather event does occur. My family and I have learned to stay inside until it passes. However, even when doing so, one of my neighbor’s trees landed on her house during the bomb cyclone; poor woman was in bed at the time when the tree came crashing into her bedroom.
Vendor Markets
I keep putting off going outside because it’s gotten cool out there, I do love that we don’t get any below zero weather as we did in New York. Brrrrrr. I’m busy preparing for a couple of pop up vendor markets in the Seattle area. We at Bookshelf Anatomy, LLC will be at a Vendor Event Pop-Up Sale at the Gantry Public House Arena, Gantry Public House Stadium on November 28 from 10 AM until 2:30 PM. Then, on December 12 at 12 PM until 6:30 PM we will set up our tent at the Vendor Event Pop-Up Sale at U-Neek Brewing Company. I love working a vendor market where I have opportunities to meet you all. If you live in the Seattle area, come on out and see us. Take a gander at our products and buy some for family and friends this holiday season. I’m making a lot of card sets, writing paper, little journaling books, note pads, and stickers which you can see and buy on our website, too. Hetty is working feverishly on needlepoint canvas sets. Just yesterday, I created this lovely butterfly canvas for needlepoint using this painting as the inspiration:
It is a mixed media piece. I began this work on a wood panel and used Liquitex Matt Medium to lay down a few pieces of pretty ephemera and other papers from my humongous stash. Then I added a layer of acrylic paint as a wash; I wanted some of the papers to peak threw the paint. I used collage papers I made specifically for the different parts on the butterfly wings and painted around them in black with acrylic paint so they would pop. Finally, I sprayed the dried painting with a fixative. This painting is for sale on the website, Bookshelfanatomy.com if you’ve interest in it. It is a 12” by 12” piece.
What Remains in the Garden
Although I tell myself to get out there, I haven’t been very good at harvesting the remaining flowers in the garden. I see plenty of violets and pansy, black-eyed susan and primrose, cosmos and mums, impatience and daisy, cone flower and dahlia, even azalea and flowering maple are still blooming, and the straw flowers have many buds. What do I do with them? I press them flat to dry in books or hang them upside down to dry to use in the art studio or I crush them when eco printing. Papers colored by eco printing often become beautiful mono prints. It makes me happy when folks stop at the market tent and begin to leaf through the basket of unusual papers. So many of. you like to have unusual paper in your stash as I do.
A Big Mistake
In years past, I’d take plants from the garden and move them into pots for indoor living under lights during the cold months. Last year, what I brought in with the plants, in their soil even though I dunked the pots to kill them, were tiny flying bugs. They were flying all around the house annoying the crap right out of me. It took months to figure out how to eradicate them. I do not like to use any pesticides in my garden nor in the houseplant’s pots, but these bugs would not be vanquished no matter what I tried.
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Eventually, I succumbed to poison, and I vowed never again would I bring plants from outdoor into the house for the winter. Instead, I cut some of the stems with a few leaves left on them, set them in jars of water under lights to propagate them. Some of the begonias and impatiens did indeed develop roots and one of the impatiens is blooming. Isn't she lovely?
Appreciation
I want to thank each one of you for spending some of your valuable time reading my blog. It means so much to me and I appreciate every one of you. If you have a topic, you would like me to cover in more detail than I have done, please let me know which blog you read it in and what the topic is. I will be happy to share more about it.
With a Grateful Heart,
Claudia E. Heyer