floral melody
quavers over a ground bass ...
summer symphony

Something we did last year which was really fun was to create small sunprinted banners similar to Tibetan prayer flags. We used Setacolor Soleil paints which we ordered in bulk from DharmaTrading, but you can get small quantities of the same paints in a Klutz book kit called "Sun Paint" (see http://klutz.com/catalog/product.php?itemNo=2880&cat=search). Basically you paint swirls of colours on a bandana-sized square of cotton, arrange leaves, flowers, tools or other garden-related objects on top and leave it to dry in the bright sunshine. You end up with beautiful negative images of the objects printed over lovely colours. We hung ours in a row on a string between fence posts and they looked just beautiful flapping in the breeze. They probably helped keep the birds off the strawberries too.

This spring we had fun weaving a trellis with apple-tree prunings. I nailed together four big straight branches into a rectangle with legs. We banged the legs deep into the soil and that kept the rectangle square enough to work with. Then we wove the long thin apple-tree canes over-under-over-under within the rectangle. It looks really nice. I'm sure that it will rot away by next year or the year after, but that's part of the garden life-cycle, isn't it?

Another idea I'm keeping in the back of my mind... using discarded CD's to create wind mobiles to deter birds from the fruit trees.

Miranda

sandy