Autumn Pleasures

Photograph by Terree Yeagle www.themomentphoto.com

As the season comes to a close, there is still much to do. Waiting for the winds to dry out the ground, dig up tubers and bulbs, til in rich compost and settle the beds for winter. It is also time to collect some seeds and find interesting seed pods for wreaths and holiday centerpieces! Exciting stuff for a grower as we prepare for the season of giving and holiday accents.

I enjoy that the season ends and we have a break. For this Aries girl, the change of pace is delightful! I would get bored doing the same things for the whole year. I enjoy the rest, the contemplation of what the season offered and the dream of the spring to come. I am giving a talk at the Bucks County Garden Club next week on the great Autumn pleasures. Some tips for you!

Clean up the dead on your plants, weed and put down a blanket of some kind of mulch to warm your flowers through the Winter.

Harvest the last of any herbs and edibles to dry to make teas and add to food. Basil, thyme, oregano, mints, feverfew, lemon balm, chili peppers, fennel and dill seeds. So many delights!

I collect black eyed susan stalks, grass heads, anise seed heads, Queen Annes Lace heads, lotus and butterfly weed pods, anything with great shape and architechure to use in my wreaths. You can spray them gold, silver or red and green. Hydrangea flower heads are excellent too!

Just sit in the garden and be grateful for a fine year of blooms! There is something settling about this time of year. I just breathe and engage in the loveliness of this time of shedding. You won't have much more time in the garden as winter sets in so engage in natures final season of flowers!

Artistic Environmentalism

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It seems that the green theme is everywhere! Not that being an organic flower grower has anything to do with it! Horticultural is making great strides in green as well as so many fields and industries! Things always start alittle overboard but the change in direction is good and the best part, it's creative! Thus artistic environmentalism. If all of us just do a few things that have an impact on the earth, what a big change it would be. We all have our own opinions, and ideas that help out and we are all for it. Here are some ideas from our site, www.trulygifted.us.com.

The Lotus Collection begins from green growing! Grown at the pond on Harmony Hill Gardens, supporting a local farm to remain open and free providing a balancing spot for the community. This is the heart of green!

We offer organic handmade soaps with our exciting Harvest Capture Designs label!
Three Luxury Butter Soaps!

Nutty Necklaces are an exiting line of jewelry made by Shirley Myers that reuses recycled nuts from her family business. Beautiful styles that make an outfit!

Our Lotus scarf is available in two styles and is available in organic silk. We will get the details on our site for holiday shopping.

The materials used to create all our products are of the highest quality out there. As we find ways to use quality sustainable resources that improve our art, home decor, and fashion, we will let you know. Lots of changes are happening on all levels so we will find new resources as they become available.

When you go to our site, add yourself to the Join Truly Gifted, this way you can get holiday discounts for your Christmas shopping. We will keep you posted of new products, design and fashion tips, and savings. Our thanks for being part of our community.

We promote beauty and the essence of nature through our products. We are supportive of the changes that offer a larger thinking about our world. We practice artistic environmentalism! Promoting nature is just part of us!

Winds of Change

Fall is such a beautiful time! It is so easy to connect to nature just driving around. The colors call to me, the fiery orange, oh what a dress it would make, the burning red, so vibrant a color to wear as a sweater, just stunning! The wind is all riled up, blowing the leaves swirling, snowing of leaves, and it feels like it just blows stuff out of you. Like its time to loose some stuff and change it all up! I hear the call of nature and it moves me in joy! So easy to be in the moment when nature just captivates you with all the senses! Oh winds of change!

The green movement is just fired up as well. Our Harvest Capture Designs at www.trulygifted.us.com was showcased at a green card exchange in Pipersville with facinating horticulture and green business friends. I just met the editor of Boho Magazine, green fashionista showcasing green changes and choices across the board! Bohomag.com I met a green tshirt friend who has greenchanges.com with great cozy tshirts! I written articles about green weddings and engaged in planning 4 this season, www.harmonyhillgardens.com. I even through the magic of the internet, commented on a blog of someones, "we are all truly gifted", and that led to a phone call and even an adventure from a horticulture student in Canada, to the Aquascapes event where this spring he will be an intern and help complete his masters degree. It's all swirling, and snowing around, new people, ideas, creativity at every turn. Oh winds of change!

With the weather going cold, the garden season comes to a close. I will play with flowers for thanksgiving and holiday centerpieces, as well as create my live wreaths for holiday doors. The main garden activities take a rest. I think we like this rest as gardeners, a time to review the season and shed our leaves of bad crops and wet fields. A free mind of the season and clearing it for the winters daydream of next season. I will also have more time to utilize the computer. To have fun networking with twitter and facebook and linked in. To promote nature and beauty through our Harvest Capture Designs, through our webstore, Trulygifted.us.com, and through our inspiring woman contest In All Her Glory, the Photo Project. All new exciting learnings and adventures! Oh winds of change!

And most importantly, to clear any doubts or old cobwebs that linger with us through life. Let it all blow away, thus we have room for the holiday season. To Open Our Hearts and minds to greater new things, to love and gathering, friends and family, cheer and trees! The dark winter season has its great purpose. To harbor with loved ones and build the light. To germinate the magic of the spring to come, to be open to new changes of the next year. I clear out to make room for all these grand things! Oh the winds of change!

Enjoy Lady Wind!

A Philadelphia Green Wedding

Here is the fabulous tale of my green bride Christina. All kinds of green wedding ideas. She was Eco-Chic at it's finest. Love this stuff! Enjoy the article! Click on the title to view.

Aquafest 09

Here it is! Our next chance to meet green businesses in Bucks County. Harvest Capture Designs will also be showcased at their open house! Lovely autumn afternoon event! Enjoy nature on 25 acres of nursery, view exciting art and network with other likeminded people. What could be more inspiring!

The Green Collaborative

The Green Collaborative
Mission Statement:
A network of sustainable businesses trading valuable industry information and cross marketing for and eco-exchange of products and services. Effortlessly integrating green elements and ideas, educating the consumer and ourselves on available local resources to create a harmonic environment of sustainability.


We invite all industries to join our Collaborative.
Energy, Building and Commercial Services, Landscape Design and Nursery and Food Growers, Interior Design and Architectural Services, Personal Care and Environmental Home Products
All to promote living green in style.

Exciting news to build our network! Aquascapes Unlimited in Pipersville is having an Open House on October 17th which will include a business card exchange from 4-6pm for green businesses. Aquascapes is dedicated to hydroponic sustainability and is looking for more sustainable methods for managing their nursery. They sell wholesale to most of the garden centers in our area providing quality aquatic plants. They are also very important in the wetland restoration in our watershed.

I will post the invitation when I get it. Rsvp is necessary. Food and live music as well as art showcasing Mary Ellen Hefner, BC Impressionist artist, and Harvest Capture Designs at www.trulygifted.us.com, nature inspired art. A great adventure on 25 acres of Bucks County.

Hopeful Thoughts

Photograph by Terree Yeagle the momentphoto.com


Here it is a heavy day! Waiting on more rain, again!! Signs of Fall all around, the harvest and color on the verge. Every where you turn there is a strife. Cancer, death, politics, health care plans, greed and liars. Personal struggles with friends, health issues, money issues, etc.ect.ect.... Never ending bombardment these days it seems. I am an optimist and I must say it takes full time effort to keep it up in times like these. Yet there is also help from all angles. People doing good things, compassion high, collaboration, cooperation, attempts at unity when things are so heavy. I always remember that in Fall you have this great diversity! In fall things fall apart. The old is shedding off, the dead falls, the leaves make a fine brilliance as the tree goes into winter rest. This goes true to all things, even us humans. It is time to shed and change and regroup. Turmoil seems higher in fall and I think the leaves shine colorfully so we can balance the shed. Our bodies, of course made out of nature, the plant, mineral and animal kingdoms so it would only seem right to notice and follow the cycle of shedding. We can't not. We are part of the cycle because we have physical bodies made of nature. The mind of course is a whole nother blog!

It is in precise times like these that nature has the most to offer. Harvest time is considered a celebration in the plant world. The plants offer their gifts and fruits to us as their reason for becoming. To supply us what we need. It is great joy to harvest flowers, especially at this time. There are sooooo many! Plus there is grains, corn, gourds, okra, grasses, so many lovely things to pick! It is a great time to get out in it, of course we all know, but in fact it is necessary. It helps balance, calm and rejuvenate our physical nature, our body. Thus all the festivals and harvest time celebrations! A simple way to regroup the mind and body during these wild times in history. Just step out! Notice the outdoors, breathe them in, ground your feet on the earth. This awareness is key to healthy living. The whole green movement offers this connection to nature of which we are made of physically. Natures got it going on. Beauty, growing, flowering, becoming, graceful and easy. To notice is enough to improve your heartbeat, sooth your rambling mind, settle your saddened heart. You are immediately grateful in the moment you notice nature. This great joy and calm melts through you. Enough to get you moving again, rhythmic, hopeful and enduring. When you absorb natures beauty, you can't help but feel ahhhh. You know all will be okay, things will work out, things are changing and you just need to flow with it.

That is my strategy as a hopeful optimist at this grave time. Get out, walk the earth, engage in her gifts, and within moments you'll see why it is the quickest strategy I know. That's why all our national parks struggle to hold all the tourists, we are drawn to these spectacular sights to re balance, gain perspective, and sit in Awe! Not need to travel far even, just step out and breathe the crisp autumn air. Notice the cycle and shed your stifes.