What I won’t be writing about today: the Fall Fiber Festival of Virginia
Rain Friday and Saturday cancelled soccer games here (goodbye knitting time) and apparently turned the fields at Montpellier Station, where the Fall Fiber Festival of Virginia is held, to mud. Not having four-wheel drive – which the festival organizers suggested to prospective Sunday visitors - and given that most of our crew were looking for a lovely day out rather than a slog in the mud (not that the two are completely incompatible) we decided to keep ourselves busy here at home instead.
I’ve actually been to the Fall Fiber Festival three or four times before, but purely as a pat the bunny (sheep, alpaca, goat), admire the clever dogs, and eat a funnel cake outing. This would have been my first time since the knitting began, and who knows what might have happened….
All that rain took its toll on the garden as well; almost everything was bedraggled this morning:
(the pink is aster Alma Potschke, the grass a self-seeded pennisetum, and the yellow a swamp sunflower, Helianthus angustifolius).
No damage, thankfully, to the dahlias, which are only now starting to bloom.
I have been waiting for these all summer, and waiting far longer than usual: if I remember correctly (note to self: this is why keeping a garden journal is a good idea) they’ve bloomed as early as July other years. Thomas A. Edison, which was introduced in 1929 (my source: Old House Gardens), is my very favorite, which makes it all the more frustrating that its incredibly rich purple is nearly impossible to photograph. I tried three times today, in varying lights, and the pictures insisted on coming out reddish/fuchsia. The shot of the plant in bud is close to the right shade in the parts where the petals are coloring up – and you can see how dark the stems are as well. Unlike dark foliaged dahlias like Bishop of Llandalf, Thomas Edison has good dark green leaves – all the better to set off the flowers.
