everything that there is...

I've really been enjoying these old fabrics! The ones I brought out from my cupboard this summer. But, you know, as I started working with them I realized something - almost all the designs come from the garden.
Check this out:




These are collages of my fabrics with flowers from my garden. Neat, no? But it got me thinking about the source for design. We look around. Everything around us. Some of the things we observe seem to calm and quiet us. some stir us. some annoy us. some inspire us. So I wonder... What is it about gardens that inspire so much art?

I love working in my garden when I'm not sewing :> I keep a journal, too, of all the life that goes on in a garden. Once upon a time, I found this and scribbled it in the front of my little garden journal:
"Indeed, almost any garden, if you see it at just the right moment, can be confused with paradise." -from Henry Mitchell The Essential Earthman

I think it describes the unspeakable longing that is deep within us all.