Collecting Seeds & Rubber Stamped Seed Packet

The garden is winding down. Normally we've had a frost by now, wiping out all the tender plants like beans, basil, squash and tomatoes, and then some flowers. Indian Summer will kick in with it's warmth for another month or so, and an occasional snow storm. This is the warmest September ever and we've not had rain for over a month, but a few spits. My watering keeps things going, but I'd planted more salady seeds for producing on into the late fall, but it's like the ground wicks away moisture instantly from the surface, so not many of the seedlings have sprouted yet. Monte and me covered tender plants a couple nights when temps threatened, and that saved them.

I've been collecting seeds from flowers I like to replant next year, starting seedlings in the early spring in my greenhouse. Like I've grown black hollyhocks for years and keep planting more and more - as biennials they do need to be replanted, but mine also keep reseeding. The calendulas sometimes reseed, I collect their seeds to. This year I'm collecting more. Like I like how the hyssop adds it's purple flowering at differing times than the flowering sage May Night and too, catnip. Another I collected is a perennial that my friend Marty wants to see if she can get started - I don't remember it's name.

Years ago I bought a rubber stamp that's like a seed package. I've given seeds as gifts using this stamp. As you see in the picture, you'd fold the paper and glue the tabs to make a seed packet. And I cut out the window - I enclose the seeds in snack-size zip bag and push the bag into the packet, then the seeds don't fall out, but you can see them. My daughter-in-love Sarah, recently stamped some for her gift-giving and used a multiple colored stamp pad. It looked great, so I'm going to be doing that too.

I'm posting pictures of some of the flowers I'm collecting seeds from.

Primary Colors

My last month's challenge for my color and design class was using triads on the color wheel. At first I thought I'd do tertiary colors, but kept coming back to the primaries: red, yellow, blue. I did some researching. My first thoughts went to kids and crayola crayons, then cartoons - like looking at Dick Tracy. But then one of my art books, Itten - The Elements of Color, had a chapter titled "Form and Color", saying colors and forms have expressive values. I guess somewhere in time past the three primary colors were given three primary forms - square, triangle, and circle.

Itten said, the square, characterized by horizontals and verticals includes the cross, the rectangle and their derivatives. It corresponds to red. It symbolizes matter. The triangle owes its nature to three intersecting diagonals, including the rhombus, trapezoid, zig-zag, and their derivatives. It is the symbol of thought. The circle and it's derivatives generate a feeling of relaxation and smooth motion. It is the symbol of the spirit. Reading that made me think of the Trinity. Anyway I mulled over design compositions all month.

My teacher had said at the first class that once a student brought a basket of produce for her show-and-tell. Well it was one of those months! what with gardening demands and company, I was just about to bring a basket of produce, or something. The last day, I pulled out all my craft felt three primary color possibilities and started cutting out varieties of the three primary shapes and started machine needle felting ... something. I put a shiny stripy material over it and the machine did not like that - it shredded the material and broke some of the needles, but I liked the effect it added. I put some blue tulle over all that and needled it in too.

It's ok ... a study. It kinda created itself as I got going and just let it take shape. Kinda the way life feels at times ... things happen at the last moments, not within my control and my timing of how I want it to be.