Summer Postcard Blog Hop

Look what I received!

It's a lovely postcard from Deborah, of A Patchwork of Crafts. No idea what's going on? This is a blog hop sponsored by the witty and talented Jo at Serendipitous Stitching. (Click here to learn more about it!)

Deborah wrote,

The cross stitch is Nantucket Rose, one of the first patterns I ever finished. I like the idea of sitting peacefully, just smelling the roses and possibly contemplating my next project. I do have a garden, it is quite small, not small the way garden designers talk about small (you know still over half an acre) but small as in I can walk from one side to the other in about ten strides length ways and four widthways. With short legs at that! In it there are some roses, climbing roses, as evidenced by picture number two. I love the colour, they start out as very dark pink buds, as they unfurl they become lighter and the hint of yellow appears. Better than that though are the memories they invoke. These are my grandfather's roses, well cutting from them grown over the many years since we lost his company. He was the gardener, full of love of the green things of the earth having spend so much of his life working in the darkness below it.

So I sit in my little garden, with not nearly as many blooms as Nantucket (and considerably less pink and puffy sleeves may I add) and invite the memories to refresh me, the fresh air to invigorate me and plan how to squeeze more plants into an already overly full space.

And when the summer is over and winter takes away the outside roses, I look at Nantucket and remember they are coming back. and set stitches into cloth to capture more memories for me and the people I love.​

Oh my goodness, Deborah, I wish I had roses as beautiful as that! And your stitching is so lovely! My grandfather kept roses as well...in fact, my mother tells me that when my father showed up for their first date, he gave her a rose that my grandfather cut and told him to bring to her! =) Unfortunately, we don't have any cuttings of them, and that house is long gone. I think it's fantastic that you have a cutting of his. And it gives me hope, as someone who can only garden in containers at the moment, that a very small garden can produce such lovely things!