April 4, 2008

Denver National Quilt Festival Acceptance


My quilt "The Organic Garden" has been accepted into the Denver National Quilt Festival, May 1-4, in Denver CO. You can see detail shots of it at my newly revamped website right here. I always get a vicarious thrill when my work travels someplace I would like to go--the closest I got was 2 hours once in the Denver airport--so if you go to the show, please let me know your impressions.


I am becoming increasingly stir crazy at my inability to get out and work in my actual garden. Usually by this time of year I have started a few things and at least puttered around a bit, but it has been consistently too wet, too windy, and too cold. This too shall pass....In the meantime, here's a few pictures of the vegetable garden the quilt is based on, in its glory in late summer.


In front are salvias, then rainbow Swiss chard and other greens and herbs, then a variety of peppers, pole beans, and tomatoes in the background.



In this section, I've got nasturtiums, then eggplants, then gladiolus, and a huge stand of cannas. In back of the cannas is the asparagus bed. It's all kept under a permanent straw mulch, fertilized with compost, and maintained organically.
I don't try and grow everything. Lancaster County has more farm stands per capita than any other county in the nation, and I have four excellent ones near my home, two of them organic. I don't need to grow corn, for example, when a small farmer does a much better job of it. So I grow things that please me, and that I like to have handy at dinner time.

2 comments:

cat in tassie said...

Sue, I've just been looking through your blog after following a link from your post on Quiltart. I think your work is just incredible, and I haven't even gone past the first page yet. Thanks for sharing.

Nikki said...

I really enjoy seeing the garden that inspired the quilt.