I was a flower child long before it became popular.  Not the kind of flower child who did drugs or danced naked in the fields at Woodstock.  My mother grew beautiful flowers in her garden and every year I helped her gather the seeds for next year’s flowers.  She also loved African violets and my father made her a little window greenhouse in the kitchen where she grew some of the most beautiful African violets.  She could have won prizes for her flowers, but she grew them just because she loved them.

In the Summer my daddy would put me in the car with a few buckets and a shovel and we would drive down to the river where daddy would dig up sand and put it in the buckets to take back home to put in my sand pile.  While he was doing that, I was pulling up flowers(weeds) to take home and plant in my sand pile.  They didn’t last long, of course, but for a short time I had my very own garden.  I was always looking at the flower catalogs Mother would get.  I would go with her to the greenhouse where she purchased flowers for her porch boxes.   The man who owned the greenhouse knew my mother by name as she was a regular customer and came back every year.  I loved walking down the rows of flowers and choosing the ones I liked in my mind.  My Mother would buy a flat of flowers and bring them home and plant her porch boxes.  I can’t remember a time she didn’t have porch boxes planted when I lived at home.

Now I have gardens of my own and can plant whatever I want.  I still love going to a greenhouse and looking at all the flowers.  I love the smell inside a greenhouse.  The smell of fresh dirt and flowers is the best scent in the world. Wish they could make a perfume of it.  I probably already smell like that about every day in the Spring when I am outdoors planting and digging and dividing the flower clumps.   Today I finally got everything planted, I think, although I did see a corner in my kitchen garden that has only one flower planted there.  We cut down a redbud tree last year and I haven’t filled in the space yet, evidently.  Time to buy more flowers!

So, come into my garden and see just a few of the flowers that are growing there.

Irises!  One of my favorite flowers because you can’t kill them and they multiply year after year without you doing anything at all.   I told a friend of mine I even mowed my irises down in the Autumn and she thought I was crazy.   But, I do, and every year, they come up bigger and better than ever.

One of my favorites.  One day a couple of years ago, a man stopped by our house and asked if he could have a start of these irises, so I dug up one for him and asked him if he had any flowers he would like to share.  He did!  He brought me some lilac bushes and I planted them and one of them is doing well.

These are becoming one of my favorite flowers now. Digitalis or Foxgloves.  They reseed themselves and are biennials so I should have some every year.  I have planted their seed everywhere and bought more plants, too.  You see, I am making my garden self sustaining so that one day, when or if I cannot plant or work in it anymore, the flowers will take care of themselves.

One of David’s mother’s rosebushes.  It is doing so well now.  For a while, I thought I had killed it, but with loving care, it has come back and has a lot of blooms.  The roses smell just like roses should smell.  I have two of these bushes.  I feel so blessed.  Another reason I can never leave this house.  I have too many flowers from family members that grow all around my garden.  I think of those people every year when the flowers bloom.  Flowers like David’s grandmother’s sixty year old clematis, her snowball bushes, my mother’s day lilies and these roses.  It’s a family garden for sure.

These poppies were started from Grandma Henley’s( David’s grandma) garden.  She had a beautiful garden behind her house and these grew profusely.  I remember her squatting in her garden, her knees up to her ears,  weeding the flowers until she was almost ninety years old.  She also grew the best rhubarb behind her outhouse!

I planted two new Asiatic lilies.  I have ordered more Irises and peonies to be planted in the Autumn.   Nope, can’t have enough flowers.

Speaking of peonies, they are starting to bloom now.  They are my very favorite flower.  They are beautiful and smell wonderful.  The only thing is, they just don’t last long enough.

I have them in red, white, pink and pink and white.

Flowers are not the only things that have been on my mind.  You remember my sock journey?

I have become obsessed with sock knitting now that I kind of understand the process.  I still don’t like the double pointed needles at the end when decreasing the toe.  That is when everything goes all wrong all at once if I don’t pay special care or I get interrupted.  Which is why I only try to knit them when David is at work.    I am trying to figure out another way to decrease the toes.  Every sock has been an experiment in knitting.

    I do have a finished pair now.  My grey socks.

I got a little carried away with the second sock and it’s a tad longer than the first one, but no one will notice when I have them on as they are slouchy and loose.  Made out of wool and acrylic, they will be warm to wear next Winter.

I have purchased several circular needles so that I could have different socks going at all times.  I just ordered more needles and sock blockers.  This hobby is becoming expensive!  Now, I drool over yarn like I have drooled over fabric for years.   There are so many yarn companies and so many beautiful yarns to choose from.

I really love this yarn.  It isn’t exactly a stripe, but there are variegated partial stripes throughout the sock.

Ready for the dreaded toe decrease on another sock.

This winter I plan to have a lot of different socks to wear and I am going to try to knit socks for family members if I can figure out how to make them smaller and larger.

It isn’t true that you can’t teach an old dog new tricks because I am living proof you can.  I never thought in a million years I could learn to knit socks, but I persevered and finally accomplished it.

I hadn’t been in my shop for weeks because of the sock making, but today I went out and started a new purse.  I wish I could tell you where I got this pattern.  I got it online and I have made so many purses from this pattern.   Several people carry my purses.   I call this one my garden purse.

I have this fabric that has country words on it, so I cut out some of the words and sewed it on my purse.

I’m really loving making this purse.  I’ve done some embroidery on it and will soon have it completed.   Just give me an afternoon.

Hope you are enjoying these wonderful May days.  They are going by so quickly. I wish I could wrap one day up and take it out in the middle of the Winter and enjoy it once again.

Here’s to flower children and those who love them.  Bye.