Farmhouse Quilts "Victory" garden

 Hello again,
As summer comes to an end I thought I would take some pictures of my veggie garden and share the results



of my labors. Remember what it looked like when I started in the Spring?

Neat and tidy but not much going on! Well, it looks quite different now ( and  a lot more weedy because I have not been very good about keeping up with that aspect of gardening.....)

So how did the garden do, you ask? Well, I am happy to say that I was able to harvest green beans ( and get enough for dinners!) 3 times. I have been able to harvest some tomatoes and cucumbers as well. The green pepper are still small so I am hoping to let them grow a little longer. My squash plants were a bust. Have you ever known squash NOT to do well? It is practically a weed, but I wasn't able to get one single squash to grow. I made myself a gardening notebook a few years back, in which I sketch my beds and what is planted where. Then I take notes on how plants do in that particular spot so I can hopefully improve yield the following year. Growing a garden in a yard that is surrounded by tall, very old trees is certainly a challenge, but it is a fun sport ;). Next year I will move some plants into different beds, and try some different varieties and see how it goes. I am not a quitter!

Even though I am not new to gardening, I know a lot of people started veggie gardens in 2020, probably because of Covid-19 .Some people were worried about there being a shortage of food (and there certainly were very empty shelves here for a long time!),  some were worried about heading to the stores, and still others were just bored and thought starting a garden would be a great way to stay busy. All this made me think about the Victory Gardens that were started during the World War.

 Even though the effort in 2020 was nowhere near the war effort, especially during WW2 when it is estimated that home , school, and community gardens produced almost 40% of the country's fresh veggies ( source), there was still a huge uptick in seed sales and we certainly noticed a lot  more people growing veggies around here.
How about you? Did you grow a garden this year? What was your most successful harvest? And what do you suggest I try growing next year?

No blog post would be complete without some mention of quilting, so I wanted to share the quilt top that I worked on this past week. I really tried to make it a bit more of a collage quilt by really mixing up the fabrics used in the flowers. Some of the flowers I am not crazy about, but overall I like the way it looks and now I am psyching myself up to add the quilting and embroidering ( on the little bud stems and the flower stamen). The quilting part is scaring me off a little bit, but I think I am just going to have to dive in, pick a color, and free-motion right on the flower petals and bird parts.

 Stay tuned for the results....at some point.....hahahaha.

On a slightly different note, I continue to tweak this new blog forum and, with the help of my sweet daughter, am figuring things out.... One item that I think we have finally fixed is the "Follow via Email" button. You will see it on the left hand side at the top, and also directly underneath the week's blog post. You can feel free to subscribe in either box and then you will start receiving my blog posts in your email again, just like before!

Now that cooler temps have arrived in Pennsylvania, I thought I would pull out my fall decor and will share that next week. It turns out I actually have quite a few fall quilts....who knew? Ha!

Until next time~happy creating!
Monique