Howdy Partner - What on earth did our garden grow!

 We certainly enjoyed gardening this year.  Had some interesting results. as you can see...

You can't make this stuff up!

We started our plants inside again this year. Though we had a couple of false starts (like frost and wind and rain) we eventually watched our little seedlings take shape.

We found one little onion buried in leaves when we first prepped the beds in April.  That little plant survived the winter then proceeded to show us what an onion could really do!  We watched and babied our onion all summer.

When September rolled around, so did the damper weather so we snipped the head off the onion and it's now upside down in a brown paper bag.  We hope to harvest some hardy seeds from this baby. Thanks!

Overall the onions did great, loads of snap peas and shelling peas, lots of tomatoes, carrots, chard, parsnips and late beans.  They'll likely not get much bigger.  Maybe next year...

Our beans might be ready about November!  A very late start but they're fighter's, that's for sure.

And YES!  We did enjoy cherries from our front porch.  Shared a lot with the crows and robins but got about 6 cups off this one tree!

We ate well, with our own salad ingredients and veggies at almost every meal.

We ate so many delicious, fresh meals.  Now we're freezing tomatoes for winter use.

Had a wonderful potted flower garden again, which we enjoyed from our patio.  Meanwhile, our veggies grew and grew.  Some, like our potato plants looked pretty pitiful and still we got potatoes from them!

We had a couple of surprises when a crop of mushrooms appeared overnight then died off in two days.

These are Walla Walla onions.  Pretty sweet and NO TEARS!!!

Jim's brother, Peter, and his partner Kathleen, came up for Labour Day weekend.  We put Kathleen to work in the garden while Peter supervised.  Chef Peter Bowen then made us a delicious fresh tuna dinner!

Apparently when the humans jam the carrot seeds in so they don't have room to grow properly, they just join forces.  Three sets of leaves, one carrot!   Some of our produce was bigger than expected...

The beets are amazing.  We've had a number of feeds already and have 18 dinner size vacuum bags in the freezer, along with chard, carrots, blackberries, tomatoes and spaghetti sauce.  

Jim loves growing tomatoes and this year was no exception.  We'll have lots in the freezer again. Yes!

You never know what you'll find...that's the fun of it!

Now we're putting the garden to bed, finishing turning the compost pile over and mulching the beds.  Looking forward to next year's veggies already.

As I write this, Jim is out there in the damp pulling up the last of our beets. We're going to eat well this winter!

Cheers

Jim and Tricia Bowen

Artist Endeavours - Bowen Style

Yes...we are still building our house but...you have to have balance!  We both are enjoying exploring our more creative sides.  Jim is now joining the acrylic pouring crowd, with a twist.  He doesn't use canvas to show off his creations, he uses local wood.  We've started using reclaimed Malcolm Island wood for our pours as well as gifts of wood from a couple of locals who liked our art.  Some scavenged planks have gorgeous live edges and other pieces are sanded cedar we had on hand, which Jim readied for art.  He's taken it one step further, though.  Jim is now carving nature in the acrylic pours.  Here are a couple of examples.

First, you never know if the finished product is what you expected or not.  Jim did this red and green and blue acrylic pour but the red paint kind of became most prominent. Not what he expected at all!

Doggy pads work great at absorbing excess paint, which has to flow 

in order to create the interesting patterns and densities.

When it was wet, the greens couldn't be seen at all. Their density was thicker than the rest of the paints.  He wanted to carve a salmon into an ocean-like background.  Not with this piece!

Once it was dry, Jim studied it and studied it....then he knew what he had to do...

...the piece showed him...

That's the coolest Canadian flag I've ever seen!

Next he tackled a bigger piece.  He wanted to carve a cedar tree into a piece of cedar. Since I'm usually doing acrylic pouring by myself, I never have pictures of the process.  So here's a quick tutorial...

Jim started with a few containers of prepared paint and pouring medium to create a camouflage of colours.  Each colour was added to the wood.  

Once all colours were added Jim tilted it to ensure the entire surface was covered with paint.

Once the paint was even, Jim 'swiped' it with parchment paper, which moved paint and created 'cells'. 

This is the wet piece, which takes a couple of days to dry and a few days to cure.  Finding a level, non-dusty place in our house suitable for drying fluid art is sometimes challenging! So far so good.

Look up Acrylic Pouring on You Tube and you'll be amazed.  Having said that, nothing comes close to Jim's pour and carvings.

This is it's debut!  

This carving is so beautiful, both in colour and carving.  Jim used an old cedar tree outside our living room window as his inspiration.  Next, he's going to paint and carve another similar sized piece of cedar in blues with something else...maybe a salmon.

Check out his carving technique.  You can see various colours that come through.  Pretty beautiful!

Our multi-purpose tent became a spray tent for art during the warm still days of summer. Each wood art piece is varnished on all surfaces to protect them.  We now have a second wall of art in the house - Jim's poured, carved art!

Jim also sprayed a number of my art pieces.  Some are on display at our little Sointula Resource Centre.

I've been doing pours on live edge wood then hand painting once it's dry and all the masking tape is removed.  Each piece of wood is so unique.    Here are a couple more that I did the pour on then Jim carved them.  

This is an example of the Christmas decorations I'm doing using the acrylic pouring technique.  I have such fun, even with these little pieces.

This is on a piece of cedar we had on hand.  Notice it's not even cut straight!

This canvas is one of my larger pieces.  It's 16" x 20".   Every pour is different!

But wait, there's more!

Jim also finished a beautiful piece of fabric and painted art called "Two".  He made it as a gift for his brother, Peter and his partner Kathleen.  Jim presented it to them over Labour Day weekend. First time we saw them since COVID started.  Such a wonderful weekend.  "Two" is now in their home in Ladysmith.  

This piece brings together both Jim's love of tie art and his new found interest in acrylic pouring. He started with a tracing of Peter's favourite banjo and Kathleen's favourite guitar.  Then he pondered and decided that their shapes fit perfectly together in profile. 

In January Jim made the acrylic pour, which would help to tie the two shapes together.  

Jim chose similar colours that he had used in ties for the guitar and banjo. 

Once the background was poured and the guitar and banjo tie art was finished, he assembled it then crafted a beautiful cedar frame to complement the whole thing.  These are full size.

Jim's meticulous eye for detail re-created both instruments beautifully.  Kathleen and Peter were blown away.

Jim's now working on carving our tree to closet as his art for the next few months.  There's only so much room in the house.

Cheers

Jim and Tricia Bowen