Just outside my door lives my inspiration and living here feeds my creative soul. I have to say my yard and the different gardens are one of my pride and joys. I live in a truly inspirational place. This time of the year my usual routine is to wonder around my yard in my PJ’s and flip flops checking out how much my garden has grown during the night. My flowers are like little art gifts planted in the soil for sight, smell, texture and inspirations for future art quilts. I have lived in a lot of houses and had some fantastic yards but this house is different. When my husband and I first visited here we were in awe of the river that ran the whole length of the back of the yard and there were very tall trees around the perimeter. It was like a little hidden oasis as you walked around the back of the house. Seven years later we are still in love with our little cottage by the river. When planning out my yard design I put some thought into how I wanted it to inspire my artistic side. So you can see that I have been collecting great yard art to mix in with my beautiful flowers. Each year I take on one big project to compliment my yard. Three years ago it was to put railroad ties around my garden area and front flower beds. Last year I built the arbor going into the garden and this year was the privacy fence in the back yard. Collecting yard art is another one of my passions from the old rake display by the blue front door, a 1947 rusted pickup truck with roses in the bed to my 1966 airstream trailer I use for fabric storage. One of my prize pieces has to be my Coca-Cola chest cooler. Last weekend a young couple stopped while driving by to look at the airstream trailer. He told me that when he pulled up to our yard it looked like an artist lived there. I would say that is probably one of the greatest complements a gardener can hear that you have hit the mark with your design. This morning while taking pictures for this post the dew was still on some of the flowers in the garden and I was able to capture some of them for future art projects. As you can see it was an awesome time to be taking pictures. How I get inspiration for my artwork is very important to me because the process of finding different ideas is just as fulfilling as the finished art quilt projects. It might just be a single flower with a bug landing on it that starts me on a path to collecting the pieces for my next design. Several years ago one of my sisters loved collecting Georgia O’Keefe’s work. She was a fantastic painter of large flowers and she would blow up different parts of the flowers and paint them. Very inspiring! In the back of my mind I am planning to do something similar on a piece of fabric. So who knows maybe one of my flower photos I took today may grow very large and end up painted on one of my future art quilts. So I am suggesting that when you step out your door, look at all the living things that surround you and maybe you will be inspired too. What inspires you in your yard? Would love to hear your thoughts on that………