Near Spears Automotive across. This land is “Forever Farm,” YEAH!

The sky was beyond spectacular this morning….. so even though I was taking Eli to school, I finally had to grab my phone and get some pictures.  Only one on the way, the rest taken on the way home about 7:20-7:45 am.   Enjoy my beautiful world!

At Simonton Corner. I could no longer resist the temptation to take pictures, even though I was doing the morning kid-schlep to school. Facing East.

At the high school, facing north-ish.

On Park, heading north-ish.

On Barnestown, headed west, near the North Fork turn. That’s morning rush hour approaching me.

Heading up North Fork.  Sigh…these pictures just don’t capture the incredible colors in the clouds:  soft purple, yellow gray, blue, gold, yellow…..

Boat Landing on Rte 105 just past Molyneaux, Lake Megunticook, facing North ish I think, perhaps a bit NW?  incredibly still water and ice in the shallow bay.

Same boat-launch bay, more NE ish.

The end of the cove, not a bit further NE

Route 105 just past 235/Moody Mountain Road heading to Hope Corner

Through the top of the car,  near the town office

Looking toward True Field near Hope Corner, Town Office on the left

Turning the corner onto our road, looking up over our neighbor’s “front yard”, facing East. 

From our driveway, facing NE, haying equipment in the neighbor’s yard

Near our garage, looking up to our other neighbors, the ones with the sheep, facing somewhat SE

Well… the garden sure doesn’t LOOK like it has had work done.  As a matter of fact, it looks like we’ve done nothing.  But there are 86 tulip bulbs and 300 daffodil bulbs in the ground!

Planting daffodil bulbs on our “meadow” (i.e. a place we don’t mow). I told Eli, Paul, Joshua and Ashley they looked like a road crew: standing around looking at a hole, holding tools, one maybe working….

On Saturday I started in on planting the tulip bulbs near the house.  All the bulbs in fact are fragrant.  I picked Angelique, Tacoma and another variety that is a pale yellow peony style (12 of each) and in landscape (ie smaller, less expensive) 50 (!!!) Orange Princess, this incredible orange with pink and green stripes.  I figure I can get some help deterring the deer from walking Widgeon nearby.  Ahem.

That comment galvanized them (Laughing here!)–they were a huge help. With my arthritis in my wrists and hands it would have taken me forever rather than 90 minutes to plant 260 bulbs! THANK YOU family dears!

Then Joshua and Ashley came over and we had a belated b-day celebration for me (we had to wait for the bulbs to arrive) and planted daffodil bulbs.  Joshua, Paul and Eli dug about 17 holes; Ashley and I planted.   Then, Joshua fixed an awesome mac and cheese with about six kinds of cheese, oven-roasted grape tomatoes, fresh basil, bacon….can you say heavenly?  Finally, I had fixed sticky toffee pudding, which is this delectable English cake-like dessert with sauce, served with vanilla ice cream.  SLURP.  A lovely family day.

Now every spring when I look out on our hill and see the bulbs, I will remember this day.  Of course, the bulbs are on about 1/9 of the meadow, so I’m thinking we may need to make this an annual event for several years.  I’ve always dreamed of having an entire field of daffs–how happy can a garden get, to be filled with daffodils?

Eli brought Widgeon out, so I decided to get down on the ground and take a photo from pug’s-eye-level of him and the view. Except he immediately galumphed over to me….

and this is the shot I ended up with!

A happy, wild-eyed pug ready to smooch his mama (that would be me)

Then today I planted the last of the daffodil bulbs, 25 for near the deck/entry, and transplanted a peony.  We tried to kill a baptisia plant near the peony  so that we could SEE the peony and deal with the VW-Beetle-sized baptisia shrub and failed spectacularly, so I’ve decided if you can’t conquer it, move the peony!

Widgeon looking regal and dignified. Well, he thinks so. Then we all crack up because he is so funny! Can you say LOVE THE PUG!

Now to enjoy the winter blizzards and blinding beauty of snow, then endure mud season, and finally wait for spring to spring and see how the bulbs look and smell.  Joshua and Ashley will be receiving a fragrant bouquet (provided they bloom!).  And I can tell you if those Orange Princess tulips are as glorious as they looked in the photo, there WILL be dyeing of fabric and a quilt of ginormous tulips!  I promise I’ll share garden photos in spring!

When I go on longer dog walkies, we go to the end of the driveway, turn left and head either to this duck pond (no ducks at this moment) or to the corner where the blueberry field is.

Just a quick post to share yesterday afternoon’s dog walkies.  I think many of you on the other end of my ether live in cities, and don’t know how many of you get to hear things like this little video, so thought I’d share the glorious sound of life in Maine when it is soggy.  Here’s the little video, followed by a couple more photos.  I think I need image stabilization in my phone…not as crisp as I’d like in terms of photos.  There is a culvert under the road which you can see in the lower right.  When I pan to the left and zoom, you can see the blueberry barrens at the end of this part of the road (at the corner).

IMG 0032 2 from Sarah Ann Smith on Vimeo.

I head to Houston well before dawn–as a matter of fact I may be taking off as the sun rises!  Will try to Facebook from Houston, and have several posts scheduled to publish while I’m away.  Have fun everyone, and hope to see some of you at International Quilt Festival Houston 2014, the 40th anniversary.

My usual view on dog walkies….good thing I love the curled tail!

More of the duck pond.  Right click for larger view.

Yesterday evening, I dropped Eli off at a teammate’s home for the weekly Cross Country team potluck Spaghetti dinner.  The house is on Appleton Ridge Road, which has some of the most stunning views in the area, so I took the scenic route home.  Then today, on a quest for small halogen bulbs for our under counter kitchen lights, I took the back road–Barnestown to Gillette to Hope Roads to route 17.   OH MY… I truly live in one of the most beautiful places on Earth, and this is the finest example of autumn in the decade we have called Maine home.   Enjoy (and tell me you don’t want to grab paint and dye and play).  Click on photos to view larger.:

on Hope Road in south Hope, Maine. Photo (c) Sarah Ann Smith.  The colorful foreground is wild blueberry barrens.  Rockport in the background.

Friday evening on Appleton Ridge Road in Appleton/Washington, Maine. Photo (c) Sarah Ann Smith

Looking west from Appleton Ridge Road at sunset. Photo (c) Sarah Ann Smith

Sumac at Barnestown and Gillette roads, Hope, Maine.

From Hope Road in south Hope, Maine, looking back towards Gillette Road.  I am pretty sure this is the back side of Ragged Mountain. Photo (c) Sarah Ann Smith

South Hope, Maine. There is a trail head near here and I keep promising myself I’m going to go hiking there. Maybe early this week as a treat?

Tree and wild blueberry barrens on Hope Road, south Hope, Maine. Photo (c) Sarah Ann Smith

Looking towards Rockport from Hope Road, Hope, Maine. Photo (c) Sarah Ann Smith

Hatchet Mountain as seen from in front of the Hope General Store. Hope, Maine. Photo (c) Sarah Ann Smith

Sure wish I’d had my good camera with me, but thank heavens for the iPhone Camera!

Creativity, Inspiration, and Quilting Arts TV Series 1400, Clockwise from top left: Dog Walkies with Pigwidgeon (winter), Kiwi blossoms (garden), Eli home from camp (family), Poppy (garden), Notebook cover, On the set with Susan Brubaker Knapp, taping my Easy-peasy Inside-Out Bag.  Click to view larger.

Series 1400 on Quilting Arts TV, now hosted by my friend Susan Brubaker Knapp, is about creativity and inspiration.  For me, inspiration can come from everywhere:  a glorious plant or view on my dog walkies with Pigwidgeon, ‘Widgeon himself, my family, an idea or a book, or something as utterly mundane as “I need a notebook cover”, or even a bag for all my watercolor stuff. I am so excited to get my copy of this series.  SOB–it’s not on PBS here in Maine on satellite (MPBN are you listening?), so I need to order.  You can too!  It is available either on DVD or as a download (episodes or the entire series) here.  Even better, if you link to the Interweave store from the button on the left sidebar, although the new series isn’t on discount, you can get a discount on some other items on the site. !    And last but certainly not least, visit editor Vivika Hansen DeNegre’s QA Blog and leave a comment for a chance to win a FREE  copy of the series!

Here’s the cover of the upcoming Season 1400 for Quilting Arts TV!

For today’s bloghop post, I thought I would share a lot of photos but not so much blather.  At the end of this post as well as here (the kick off day) you can find links to all the creative talented women who appear on the series, with many thanks to the creative talented women and men who are BEHIND the camera that make all this possible!

Thanks to Vivika DeNegre’s post (she’s Quilting Arts Editor), my dog walkies photos are now in the big time LOL! Inspired by Gloria Hansen’s butterfly photos, one day I took my good camera along with my phone and was able to get this shot of a butterfly on the clover alongside our driveway. Inspiration is everywhere, including the most mundane of times and places–waiting for the dog to do you know what! Whoever came up with the idea of tethering yourself to animal waiting for it to do you know what???

And I’m always inspired by the landscape of Maine, the state that has become my soul’s home. From early summer mornings like this shot to the sunrises of winter and the sunsets of summer, the colors and lines and peace inspire me. Makes me want to go play with cloth and dye!

After nearly a decade using the same headshot, I decided it was time to be honest about the gray and the new glasses. Here I’m with Widgeon–photos with him always relax me and make me laugh–so much better than posed. And you can see my quilt, The Circle Dance, which is part of the exhibit and book Dare to Dance, An Artist’s Interpretation of Joy (blogpost here). Widgeon is joyful when he is fed!

We all know trips can be inspiring, too. Earlier this year I travelled to NY/CT to lecture, and got to spend a day with my friend Deirdre Abbotts. We went in to the city and I spied this incredible building. Can’t you see that as an applique quilt? Reminds me of Jane Sassaman’s work–and she’s on this season too!

It’s always fun to see behind the scenes, too. Here are my three segments laid out in step-out sequence on trays, waiting for my turn to tape. At the filming studios in Ohio. I blogged about the taping here (part 1) and here (part 2).

Sometimes you just have to laugh! We were trying to figure out where to hide the microphone for this episode, when I suggested pinning it to my bra strap. The sound guy was only momentarily nonplussed, then started pinning as I stretched the strap. Then, as Asst. Editor Kristine Lundblad was snapping photos, I blurted out, How am I going to explain to my husband that I just asked a total stranger to mess with my bra? We all laughed!

One of the other fun things about this line of work is running in to familiar faces and friends in unusual places. This is Lyric Kinard–does she not have the cutest, most infectious smile of anyone you know?

These are some of the bags you’ll see on my Inside-Out bag segment for Quilting Arts TV Series 1400, Episode 1402 (and … hint hint… perhaps in print sometime soon too….more on that when I am allowed!)

Remember, you don’t have to wait for the episodes to air (mine are 1402, 1405 and 1408)–you can order the DVD or download the series or individual episodes here.   The way they are recorded, they should play on DVD players or computers around the world–yeah! And if you go to the Interweave store through the button to the left of this blogpost, you can get a discount!

Here’s the bloghop schedule, plus you can also read all about it on Quilting Arts Editor Vivika DeNegre’s blog here. Keep coming back here to click on the appropriate link for each day.

• July 18: Vivika DeNegre at  http://www.quiltingdaily.com/…/qatv-14-sneak-peek-…. and
  • quiltingdaily.com
• July 19: Luana Rubin (luanarubin.typepad.com)/
  • Linda Friedman (lindasartquilts.blogspot.com)
• July 20: Sarah Ann Smith (sarahannsmith.com/weblog)/
  • Karen Gloeggler (Seminarandsew.com)
• July 21: Carrie Bloomston (suchitysuch.blogspot.com/
  • Catherine Redford (catherineredford.com)
• July 22: Sue Reno (suereno.blogspot.com)/
  • Rebekah Meier (rebekahmeier.com)
• July 23: Lyric Kinard (lyrickinard.com/blog) /
  • Margie Ullery (ribboncandyquilts.blogspot.com)
• July 24: Cheryl Sleboda (muppin.com/wordpress/) /
  • Jane Sassaman (janesassaman.com/weblog)
  • Julie Creus (todera.blogspot.com)
• July 25: Susan Brubaker Knapp (bluemoonriver.blogspot.com)

And because I can’t resist, one more of our beloved pug:

How can anyone NOT love a face that cute and pitiful?