A Creative MMP ...plus... It's Summer! A Garden Party MMP

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
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No, not a creatively written MMP as I’m not a writer, but a MMP about creative hobbies.

Growing up my Mom was always doing something creative with us. She is the most creative person I know. I remember making bunnies out of washcloths, painting many things, making Christmas ornaments out of dough, cookie cutters, popsicle sticks, and just about anything. It seems like she was always doing some sort of project with us. I remember during elementary school I made a mummy tomb out of tiles and various craft supplies Ma had on hand. I always remember making a Native American type diorama for some class. It still amazes me that Ma never had to buy anything for these projects, she always had everything on hand.

Ma is also a sewer. Growing up she made some of my clothes, and even helped me when I was in 4-H to learn how to sew. Needless to say that didn’t last long as I also had to model the clothes that we made in 4-H. But I grew up knowing how to sew buttons on and even charging Grandpa a dime a button to sew them back on his shirt. He gladly paid me, even though Grandma could do it for free and was much better than I was.

As I got older, I didn’t want to do any crafts. I thought that they were lame and boring and wondered why would you want to spend the time on them. I swore that I wouldn’t do any crafts when I was older and moved out of the house. In college, I was in a work study program and one of the secretary that I assisted was big into scrapbooking among others. I remember thinking and swearing that I would never scrapbook in my life.

Anyway, back to Ma. I thought that all Mom’s were as creative as mine. It took me to moving away from home to realize that not everyone had the wonderful experiences that Ma gave me growing up. The manager at one of my first jobs admitted that she doesn’t know how to sew a button on and that she slips it into the pocket of whatever it fell off of, and the dry cleaner fixes it for free. A couple other co-workers can’t hem or fix anything. Now I’m not the best, but I can get by. Some co-workers complain about the creative projects (dioramas) that the kids have to do because they are so expensive because they don’t have anything at home.

Since getting married almost 5 years ago and moving away from home, I realized that I inherited some of Ma’s creativeness. I am now a scrapbooker, card maker, and alter-er of just about anything I can get my hands on. I have been on the Design Team of two local scrapbook stores. I love creating things, playing with things, seeing what I can do. I enjoy the process. I am getting to the point where I am not that afraid of the sewing machine anymore. I can use it, change the bobbin, and thread it with no problem. I have been told by many people that I am “so creative” or that I’m an “artist.” I brush those things under the rug, saying anyone can do those things, but I do realize that not everyone is crafty or enjoys doing it like I do. I love exploring my creative side and hope to be able to do more in the future. When I grow up I want to be as creative as Ma.

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Usually, by July, I’m starting to weary of gardening tasks. I usually take on so much early in the season that I get burned out.

Not this year. Not sure if it’s because I’ve been better about pacing myself or because the wonderful spring weather has resulted in the most lush gardens I’ve ever seen in Columbus.

In any case, I’ve decided it’s time to host a virtual garden party. Please put on your best garden hat and join me as we wander around admiring some of my favorites.

Refreshments (catered by Pie, of course) are on my non-existent patio. There’s lemonade, cute little sandwiches, cheese straws, a selection of salads, and - because I know there will be demand - beer and chocolate.

But first, the tour:

I’m so pleased with the way my canna lily container turned out that it has it’s own album. This is what it looked like on Thursday.

And these hollyhocks are stunning right now.

I’m impatiently waiting for the red mandevilla to bloom (it’s the vine climbing the trellis). It’s almost there. The Salvia “Black and Blue” is looking pretty, although I’m not as happy with the double red petunias I planted with it.

I keep trying to get a picture that captures how impressive the coneflowers are. Can’t remember the variety offhand, but they’re a deep salmon pink and look lovely. The bees seem to think so too.

The butterfly bush comes by its name honestly.

And I’m really happy with my daylilies this year. Here are a bunch of close-ups. I have a couple varieties that haven’t bloomed yet and I missed getting a close up of my earliest ones, but I’m trying to catch each one this year. I’m moving some of them once they’re done blooming, so I wanted to make sure I knew which was which.

One of the benefits of a virtual garden tour is that you can go back and catch the crabapples. They were AMAZING this year. And, for the first time ever (well, in the 9 years I’ve lived here) it snowed crabapple petals.

I’m still tweaking albums. I don’t have many labels yet; I’ll try to add some tomorrow. There are some repeats in a couple of albums.

So, make yourselves at home and wander through the garden. I think there are even scary pictures of the renovation that’s happening in the way back of the garden.

And help yourselves to the refreshments.

Happy Monday!

GT

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So which one is the REAL MMP???

ETA: great OP gt. Beeyootiful garden ya got here!!!

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McUne was one minute ahead of me. I’ve asked the mods to combine this one into this one over here…

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Judging by some of the pictures we’ve seen, I think you’re headed in the right direction. Cool OP!

GT

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Aww, I wanted to be first!

And unfortunately, I don’t do any of those things, except for very very rudimentary sewing skills.

:confused:

Time for bed!

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Cool! Two awesome OPs on a Sunday night.

McUNE, I had the opposite experience. My mom didn’t know how to sew at all and I did a bunch of sewing since I was in the fifth grade where I learned how in school. I remember making prom dresses and traveling outfits.

And gt, your garden is stunning!! I really like the black and blue flower, but I agree about the petunias. . .a little washed out looking. Thanks for sharing. Now I know why you’re always writing about going back to your garden to work on it. . . there’s a lot of work there. It’s very beautiful.

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Woo! I get to get in on the MMP before I head to bed.

Great OP, McUne! I was kind of in the opposite boat growing up. My mother split from my father at an early age, saddling my father with a great deal of debt. As a result, he couldn’t afford to look after me while he paid off the debts, so he put me in the care of some friends of his for a couple of years until he was in a financial position to take me in again.

The environment I grew up in at that time wasn’t very creative at all. While the man of the house was a jazz musician (drummer, which is how my father, a jazz trumpet player, knew him) I wasn’ t really exposed to it much. Nevertheless, creative genes infused my person and manifest themselves pretty early. My mother could do some wondrous things with oil and canvas, and had creative talents in other areas as well, while my father – well, I already mentioned he liked to blow his own horn. So I inherited creative genes from both sides, which manifested itself as a love of drawing at a young age.

Oddly, even when I returned to live with my father and was taken out to innumerable jazz concerts he played, I never took much interest in music. While he did his thing with the band on stage, I’d usually wander around whatever venue he was playing and find my own amusements. I think it was a combination of having no interest in jazz music and having no real interest in the instruments played therein.

As I grew up my creative interests branched out. I got into programming the day I brought home my first computer. (I had nothing else to do with the computer – no game cartridges or software of any kind, just the user manual with some BASIC command definitions and a few example programs to type in.) That branched out into digital art on said computer once I got some art software for it. I even tried my hand at writing a novel, though I’d get half a dozen or so chapters in before I decided I’d learned quite a bit more about writing (vis a vis reading) and start the whole thing over again. I never did finish that novel…

Eventually I discovered I really liked electronic music and wanted to try writing some, but having no instruments to practice on, it would be several years before I had a computer capable of doing anything remotely like real music.

Now music is my primary artistic hobby, though I do artwork and stuff from time to time too, as well as web design and various other things of a creative bend. (I love cooking, which certainly has its creative elements.) Frankly, I think I have too many creative hobbies that I like, because there’s never enough time to indulge in them all – or any of them, with life the way it is these days.

Being addicted to the Dope certainly doesn’t help. :smiley:

GT - Because I know your MMP The 2nd OP will show up here shortly – those are some purdy flowers. I have no aptitude for growing things. I probably could if I spent the time to learn, but at this point I haven’t really the desire to do so. I admire and respect those who do though. Cultivating greenery can be tricky business and takes a lot of patience and care. I tend to lack the former.

Alright, time to put the laundry away and head to bed.

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Very nice OP, McUne! I know what you mean about the craftiness thing–the way people kinda stand in awe while the crafty person mostly just can’t figure out why everybody can’t/won’t do the same stuff.

I spent fifteen years or so playing in the SCA and in the course of it I learned how to sew (I’ve made garb from every time period from Byzantine to Elizabethan, and every culture from England to Japan) how to make booze of many kinds (just amazed my kid neighbors with some strawberry liqueur I whomped up because the leftover juice from a half flat of strawberries shouldn’t go to waste) how to compose and perform comic filk songs, how to perform period music, how to play a doumbek and belly dance, how to work in wood and build stuff, how to spin yarn and ply it, medieval cookery, medieval dance, just about a gazillion things. The nice thing about the SCA is that EVERYBODY gets crafty in at least a few disciplines and then they trade for things they don’t know how to do. Craftiness isn’t a spectator sport in the SCA!

Even growing up I learned a bunch of stuff that apparently nobody learns as a matter of course any more–basic embroidery, knitting, crocheting, macrame, leather craft, origami, papier mache, basic carpentry, auto repair. I tried to pass on my know how but my kids didn’t see the value of it until they were grown and now they’re forever asking how to plant a garden or make jam and pickles or how to make compost.

Even with all the evidence pointing to me being a pretty crafty/creative/artistic person I don’t really think of myself that way at all–I’m just a jack of all trades, mistress of none in my own mind. I think I just learned all this stuff because I had no real alternative–if I wanted it, I had to make it! I really do think that most people are woefully ignorant about how to do stuff in general, though, and that’s a shame. It seems to me that we’ve become too much a society of consumers and spectators rather than doers. It’s almost as though if you aren’t good enough at something to make your living at it that it doesn’t count–perhaps a result of our mercantile culture?

I just think everybody ought to try their hand at doing something they’ve never tried before because really, what’s it gonna hurt you if you fuck it up? A little money, some supplies? On the other hand, when you don’t fuck it up you have something you can point to afterward and say “I made that!” It’s a really good feeling.

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Oky-doky - let’s try this again! :wink:

Great OP, McUne! I envy your crafty skills, as I have mentioned many times before - your set-up of the Mumpers’ Recipe Blog was fantastic, your paper doll clothes were absolutely gorgeous and your home-made designer cards are truly beautiful!

My mother is also an inspiration to me - she may not be an arty-crafty type, but she is a pretty mean seamstress. She made a lot of my baby clothes (including some gorgeous emroidered, smocked dresses with matching frilly knickers) and they are now family heirlooms, as HRH has also worn them. I will need to pack them up carefully now, to keep for HRH to dress her daughters in, God willing. My parents weren’t wealthy or even well-off when I was growing up - two government teachers working to raise 4 kids (well, one teacher working and a SAHM until I started pre-school), but my mother never stinted on making us beautiful clothes and keeping a beautiful home. I didn’t realise just how amazing she was (and is) until I had HRH.

Thanks McUne, for sparking some great memories for me!

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Hi kids. Sorry, I haven’t been around much lately. I had a tough month, emotionally. 6/24 was my birthday and 6/26 was the anniversary of my son’s suicide. It’s been 8 years. I know I should be better by now, but I’m not. All I wanted to do was sleep. I think I slept 18 hours out of each day for over a week. Hubby was beside himself. He wanted to help, but everytime he spoke to me, I growled.
I’m better now. We’re going to the Oregon coast on Tuesday for 3 days, fresh air and all that. I’m sure I’ll be back to my old chipper self soon.

I hope everyone has been well and happy. See you when we get back.

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{{{picu}}} Enjoy your little holiday!

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Hi people!

Great OP, **McUNE **-- and yours was good, too, GT, even if you were one minute late :slight_smile:

Me, I’m good with my hands – if I absolutely have to do it (“it” being sewing, cutting, drilling, DIY, whatever…) I can.
I’m also lazy, so I mostly don’t… :o Oh well, maybe in another life :slight_smile:

Green Thumb… not so much :frowning:

Boos and Yays and hugs to anybody I missed last week (all I can remember right now is congrats to **Dotty **on the new, awesome job!)

And {{{picunurse}}}. I can’t imagine how I’d get through a child committing suicide :frowning: You’re a stronger person than I suspect I would be.

Don’t y’all let Monday get you down!

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::drive-by::

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Let’s see… if Lolita The First died at age 3… and she was born two years before Mom… then she died in 1941. That’s 67 years, and Grandma still hurts. Some pains just never go totally away, picu, they just slide in and out of sight. {{{{{picu}}}}}

Love the OP. Mom sews some, but with back and coordination problems and a seamstress mother who’s a horrible teacher, it’s mostly things like hemming and buttons. I can sew a button, that’s about it, but I can also do some kinds of embroidery (cross-stitch and similar ones). In school I turned out to be better at the craftsy stuff that was expected to be more “boyish,” so long as it wasn’t something the boys had been taught by their fathers (no way mine would, both for sexism and because he believed I had to do my homework myself). Don’t ask me to backstitch you a straight line, but I can paint mirrors just fine.

As a kid, I loved drawing, but stopped doing it for several years after one of my drawings (a “Pocahontas” my age, only I didn’t know about Pocahontas, I’d just gotten an “Indian” doll recently) elicited such a horrible response from The Gods that my little 4yo self thought that Drawing Must Surely Be Bad. The Gods had always had violent responses to my drawings, but that one blew the top. I got dragged To See The Director, my parents got called in and many heated arguments were held over my head. Nobody thought of informing me that they were surprised, not angry :smack: so I didn’t draw again until 5th grade and then only because I was ordered to do so in class. I still don’t show any drawings to anybody, except if they see them by accident or it’s in a place where I know it will be all right. Silly, uh?

I was a writer in a MUD for 8 years; I still can’t write action (as those are a big no-no in a MUD) but I can describe the longest hallways and make them sound interesting :slight_smile: For those of you who don’t know it, in a MUD what’s written is basically the landscape where the players play. So a writer is supposed to describe what a “non player character” looks like, but not what it does; the look and feel of a place, but not how the players feel about it.

I want to learn how to paint W40K figures, as my brothers and their friends are playing that now. I’ve always wanted to learn how to paint models; when we were kids, I’d create battlefields from rags, Legos and shoeboxes for my brothers to play with their toy soldiers. W40K is just the same game, but more expensive. Lilbro doesn’t like painting, so if I learn to he’ll have his painter handy. For some reason, making models used to be (I hope not any more) one of those activities that girls not just didn’t do but weren’t expected to have an interest in. Games Workshop stores are supposed to offer a “teach you the basics” service; if I can’t get the ones here to give me more than the old pat on the head, the new handbook which comes out on Saturday is supposed to have a wide section on painting. Chaos Marines, here I come!

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{{picnurse}}
Nice impromptu OP MCUNE! Not crafty, checking in. I can bake pretty well and have created some pretty cool birthday cakes for the kids. I make amazing cut-out cookies and am frequently the only one in my neighborhood that hands out cookies at Christmas time! I started making them for my step-son (who is Catholic) when he was three, so he and I would have an activity that we could enjoy together and to get to know each other. We kept the tradition up and now the neighborhood kids expect to make cookies at our house each year! :smack: :slight_smile:

Can’t garden, really sew beyond a straight stitch, do needlework etc, though my mom can.

We do wicked cool science experiments in our house instead!

Kids off to camp today, for two weeks. :slight_smile: My faculty office is to be renovated this summer (wahoo!). So I need to completely empty my office ( :eek: ).

So… if anyone’s looking for me ( :slight_smile: ) I’ll be in my office and free! Gimme a call- we’ll do lunch (NOL?)!

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<Combined two MMPs.>

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Happy Monday morning! I really enjoyed Gardentraveler’s pics. I’ve always loved those dramatic large flowers like canna and holyhocks. Not enough sunshine here to try my hand at something like that, but I’ve been having a ball with container plants ever since those trees came down on my deck and opened it up to all-day sunshine.

This was late May. Karlen Sanberg | Flickr

I’ve hit the garden store a couple times since then. I’ll try to post more pics today.

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I also sent a “please combine” message

I’ll catch up with both this evening

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{{{picu}}} Enjoy your trip and here’s hopin’ it cheers ya up.

So, I wake up and find that two new MMPs were floatin’ around and are now one. AWWWWWWW… how sweet! :smiley: MCUNE and gt both posts were jake. I am not real creative and the only plants I have are green things that won’t die no matter what. They live on the back porch when it’s warm and live in various places in da cave when it’s cold. I water 'em once a week and they live.

I’m up and caffienatin’. Not workin’ today. Neither is ol’ y’all know who. Soon I shall purtify and we’re goin’ to brekkies. That’s about the extent of activity for today. It’s supposed to be rainy and stormy later on. Well, activity wise, some laundry does need doin’, so there’s that but that ain’t a hard thing. I mean it’s not like I have to take laundry down to the crick and beat it on a rock.

Ok, off for some more caffiene and purtification.

Later Y’all!