Garden Inspired

I think that my garden is at its prettiest at this time of year. 

Different flowers are blooming, and leaves still have that newly-emerged vibrancy to their color.

Bearded irises in the side garden.

Blossoms on the back yard apple tree.

In the past 10 years, I have beaten the squirrels to the apples only once.

Those apples made the best apple crisp ever and possibly the only apple crisp from that tree.

Rhododendron along the driveway.

Petunia planter.

Luminous, new foliage on the back yard oak leaf hydrangea.

Columbine that has volunteered itself along the driveway.

My angel of the garden tucked in amongst the pachysandra, vinca and rhododendron.

 

I sometimes look to my garden for inspiration that I can bring to the workbench.

I've used dried leaves to roll print textures.

I've tried to capture the essence of floral forms in metal.

 

Last summer, I paid a little more attention to the seed pods of the Koelreuteria (golden raintree) in my front yard.

After a wonderful summer display of yellow flowers, bright green pods develop, and

the tree looks like it's covered with lovely, tiny lanterns.

Last summer, I thought it might be interesting to see if I could make this form out of metal.

I used an Xacto knife to carefully dissect a few pods so I could understand the separate shapes that make up the form.

I made patterns out of heavy cardstock.

As is typical, those patterns stayed tucked away on my workbench for a few seasons.

 

A couple of weeks ago, I finally decided it was time to try something with those patterns.

Using my metal shears, I cut out shapes of different sizes and began fold forming the pieces.

My initial thought was to solder pieces together to make the pod shape, but I began to like the leaf shapes that I was forming.

I now have enough of these copper leaves to start experimenting

with actual pieces of jewelry.