Come to the Bee In this Saturday!

Gardening at Moberly: Seasonal Postcards

An ephemeral visual poem.

A wasp scrapes wood fibers from the garden beds to make a nest.

A yellow-faced bumblebee drinks deeply of lungwort.

Blushing dogwoods bloom profusely.

Huckleberry bells.

Male bees lek on currants.

We leave nine daisies for every one we pick.

Brussel sprouts are creating new shoots.

Scabiosa seeds planted for hungry bumblebees.

Kanzan cherries at peak bloom.

Love is in the air!

A Party to Celebrate National Pollinator Week!

 

 We celebrated Pollinator Week in style, with a fantastic group of students I've been working with this spring. Their teachers have been welcoming and enthusiastic, the kids have been warm and creative and fun. I feel so grateful for this opportunity to share my passion for gardening and celebrating bees with this group. And thanks to these kids and their teachers we have a new pollinator garden at Moberly and more bees than ever visiting the community garden this year.

Slofemists At Moberly: Consensual Textile Workers

Here's a sneak peak of what the Vancouver chapter of the Slofemists is up to. This is a slofemist cover, soon to be part of an installation by Margaret Dragu at the Kamloops Art Gallery.

As we knot it and frame it with a protective border of blanket stitching we can't help thinking about the other invisible textile workers assigned to embroidering the original linen fabric.

How strange it is, to be in a privileged position where sewing is a relaxing hobby, an art, and a way to enjoy the company of other empowered feminists. All this occurs in an environment where a cross-pollination of creative and critical discussion can take place.

Next up we have a collection of sketches on fabric from the archives of Margaret Dragu. These are being stitched together into a panel for the exhibition.

 We, knot, stitch, and sew by machine. We talk about the issues of the day and whatever's on our minds.

Then it's potluck lunch time! The first day was all about simple and delicious sandwiches made especially good with Lexie's homemade pear chutney. The second day we made sushi cones with ingredients from the garden at Moberly wrangled away from the busy bees.

The shiso leaves were so large, I even made a cone with shiso leaves instead of nori.

Lois made awesome sushi rice with dashi broth.

We had sardines, tofu, and avocado to stuff in the rolls. They were super delicious.

On the third day we finished the slofa cover!

We started working on  some cushions.

And for lunch we made soup with beans from the Mayan gardeners at UBC, farro and lentils from Grain, and dried smoked corn Lois rbought back from Santa Fe, along with a giant dried chili pepper.

So there you have it! The Slofemists move upward and onward, slowly and surely. Thanks to everyone who came out and became a part of our collective herstor(ies).