What’s Blooming?

What do you get when you cross an art opening at a gallery with a farmer’s market? An art fair! That’s kind of what it feels like to me, anyway. I’ve been in gallery shows, and helped out a farmer’s market booth, and find both activities immensely enjoyable. Tomorrow is my first outdoor art fair and I’m really looking forward to meeting lots of new folks and showing off the fruits of my labor. The weather is supposed to be on the hot side of perfect.

I’m ready!

If you’re in the area and looking for something fun to do, check out What’s Blooming on Harrison. 

I’ll be at booth #78 on the South side of Harrison Street, east of Lombard.

Then after that I’ve got to focus a little bit on What’s Blooming in my garden. The weeds have definitely gotten the upper hand this year, so they need a little talking to! My little dwarf peach tree is leafing out and my fig tree looks awesome. The persimmons, japanese maple and paperbark maple are looking happy too. It occurred to me the other day that I might eventually be able to take the flaky bark from the mature paperbark maple and roll them into beads, kind of like the Ugandan barkcloth beads I bought from Mzuribeads.com. That might work together in a necklace. I also need to plant my canna lilies so I make sure to have lots of the perfect, round, unbreakable seeds that look great as spacer beads. They are a deep chocolate-brown. And of course, over the next week or so I need to plant lots of scarlet runner beans, the magic bean that started my jewelry making frenzy.

I’ll still have plenty of edibles, tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, tomatillos, and such are going in the ground too. And then I need to harvest the bumper crop of garlic, carrots and purple peacock broccoli that lived through the winter and completely took over the square foot gardens.

What’s Blooming indeed!