Our house and garden

When we were looking for a house in Iowa I had two hopes. One was space for a studio in case I should have a chance to do some private objects conservation work or time to work on my own paintings. The other was that it have a big enough yard with lots of sunlight so that my kids could run and I could plant a garden. We looked at a handful of houses in one weekend and picked one to move into as soon as we could. We didn't expect it to be perfect, but it has wound up being perfect for me and my family. I love it.

It is an old house on an old side of town in a neighborhood that is full of very tall, old trees. It doesn't look like much from the outside, but inside it feels warm, and cozy on cold winter's night next to the roaring fire or breezy and cool on a midsummer's day. The front of the house faces west and when there are no leaves on the trees and the sun is about to slip below the horizon line the sunlight streams in, lighting up our living room and dining room and making spectacular patterns on the walls.

 In this house I am fortunate enough to have a small studio on the second floor with a lot of windows that overlook the garden we put in in the backyard. Pictures of the studio will have to wait until it is clean one day. For the time being it is full of stacks of materials that I plan to use in some way, books and interesting papers and the random kid items that migrate into any open space in the house. 

My garden in the backyard isn't as big as I would like, but it is large enough to grow several tall tomato plants each year, lettuces, peas, beans, sweet corn and one of my favorite summer vegetables, zucchini. This year I'm also going to try for cucumbers and sweet peppers. So far I only have sweet peas and lettuces started and a few tomato plants are being hardened off right now, but I'll post a few of my favorite close up pics from previous years. My garden fuels my creativity all year round these days since I am always working with seeds in some capacity and dreaming about fresh, delicious fruits and vegetables as a result. 

Bush Bean

Sweet Pea

Tomato Blossoms

Zucchini

Blue Lake Bush Bean