August Blooms
I am really missing my garden. And it is not that I am a serious gardener. I just plant and pray that things will grow. But I am a serious lover of gardens and enjoy them wholeheartedly.
It took thirty years to develop the back yard in the old house and the last year of waiting for and then renovating the new place has not allowed time for really thinking about my outdoor space. That is about to change. The landscapers will be coming in about 3 weeks and I am so excited.
So I have been thinking about gardens, in particular, my new garden, a great deal. I won’t be able to get the landscaping done all at once. It will take a few years to get the whole yard finished. But right now I have two things planned.
1.) A small perennial garden for bees and other pollinators, with a small tree as a center focus. A Pink Dogwood – so pretty and delicate looking. Around it will be Coneflowers, Salvia, Russian Sage and Wooly Sunflower and something called Little Bunny, a small grass – which I had to look up. This garden will be in our small front yard, and will add privacy and interest.
2.) I need to create a new herb garden. My old one was built by me, 30 years ago. I laid out the bricks in an old-fashioned square grid and filled each grid with different herbs and flowers. It was my favourite place in the yard. It delighted me and the bees both. I could and did sit out there for hours, knitting or reading.
My new herb garden will be quite different. We live in a bit of a hollow with a long bank down one side of the property. The landscaper is going to build a rock wall along part of the bank and fill it with dirt to level out and create a garden area. I will share the results sometime in September.
So our new garden won’t be like the old but it will have some wonderful things in it as well. It already has a beautiful rhodo and a gorgeous hydrangea on the front side of the bank. That area may get developed more next Spring.
Gardens and garden themes have always been important to me. Quite a few of my patterns have been influenced by gardens. The August Bonus Square is the newest of my garden-inspired knits.
The pattern includes a photo tutorial of how to create the Daisy Chain stitch.
The Daisy Chain stitch is a fun knit. A little fiddly but worth the payback as every 4 rows of the pattern creates almost an inch of fabric. It is also a great pattern for using up the bits of coloured yarn leftover from our other squares.
I also think that interesting textural stitches like this are often overlooked. They can look more difficult than they really are. Or maybe we don’t want to think beyond what we always knit. I believe that sometimes we miss out when we don’t try those new things, those new stitches.
Why Daisies? I have always loved daisies and all daisy-shaped flowers. Coneflowers, Lion Daisies and the lovely little English Daisies that grow wild amongst the grasses. Daisies and pansies (my other favourite flowers) were the flowers in my wedding bouquet. These flowers have faces and can come in so many different colours. And it is August, and I am missing my garden and so I unearthed the Daisy Chain Stitch. It just made sense to play with them in this square.
I have used it a couple of times before. In a little hat for the purple hat campaign, Daisy Chain Cap. It made such a cute child’s cap. The other pattern is a shawl pattern, Peace, Love and Understanding.
Happy Knitting
Lynette
