I am so excited to go home again and do an angel signing at the new Falls City Library. Even though this is not the same library I grew up in, it is still nostalgic because the library at home was such an important part of my growing up. I always had a book checked out from the library; I was one of their best customers.

Each book I read took me on a wonderful adventure and expanded my imagination.

My mother, who was a teacher for many years, passed down the love of reading and learning and this legacy was the root of my romance with books. I must admit that I was sometimes accused of being a book worm and my family would ask me to “put that book down and talk to us”.

Well many years have passed and I continue to love reading. Now my favorite book is the Bible as I have discovered the eternal beauty of this book and so, along with many other books, reading is still a highlight in my life.

It will be such a pleasure to meet old friends and make some new ones. And it seems appropriate that this will take place in one my favorite places when I was growing up.

Thank you for this sweet invitation. See you at the signing!

Mark your calendar to come:
October 7, 2012     2:00 – 3:30PM
Falls City Library & Arts Center
Kathy Martin
1400 Stone St
Falls City, NE 68355
Phone: 402-990-9876

I will be signing angels at Borsheims from 11:00AM – 12:30PM on October 6, 2012. I hope you can meet me there. Borsheims has been selling my angels for many years and I am honored to do a signing event at the store. I look forward to meeting my collectors in Nebraska!

I am so excited to travel to my beloved home state. Before I ever designed my first angel, the Nebraska landscape was my subject matter of choice and every time I travel back home I am deeply touched by the exquisite, understated beauty of the landscape of the Great Plains. I know that when you grow up somewhere, that somewhere becomes most dear. Even though I love where I live now, nothing can compete for my heart connection to Nebraska. It is home and I love it. I can’t wait to come again.

Please follow this link for more information about Borsheims.

Mark your calendar to come:
October 6, 2012 11:00 – 12:30PM
Borsheim’s
120 Regency Park
Omaha, NE 68114
Phone: 402-391-0400

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My daughter’s friend Kalem came to visit from New Zealand and Caitlin and I made a pie to welcome him.

I combined peach and blackberry for the filling. Sweet peaches are enlivened with berries along with Meyers lemon juice and fresh grated nutmeg and mace. I also like to substitute half of the sugar with dark brown sugar in peach pies and I always use tapioca rather than flour in all my fruit fillings. These little details add big flavor.

Oh, how delightful are the late summer flavors of fruit from the beautiful Willamette Valley.

Sometime around Labor Day is a good time to trim back lavender. In colder climates I believe this trimming is recommended to be done by Labor Day. There is a little more leeway for my lavender at the beach because of the very mild climate.

The deep purple lavender heads were still so beautiful it was difficult to cut them all off, but I knew that this trimming would keep my lavender plants shapely and healthy. My labor was pleasant with the air pungent with lavender perfume.

Now I can look forward to another year of elegant and luxuriant blooms.

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This last weekend I gardened at the beach. My main job was a deep watering for my new lavender field.

Last summer in August we replanted the lavender that I had originally planted in front of my beach house over ten years ago. I had not been diligent to trim the bushes every year and the old plants grew huge and leggy and lost their elegant forms.

It was a big project to remove the 60 plants, many of which had achieved a diameter of five or six feet and an accompanying root structure to match. After many weekends of work, the lavenders were pulled up and removed. We were ready to replant.

We spaded the beds before adding and working in the mixture of compost and top soil that I had trucked in and dumped.

Finally we planted sixty new Grosso Lavenders, each only a 4” potted plant. The smaller plants are so much easier to haul and plant.

I had purposely waited until late summer to replant because even though there is so much moisture in the air at the beach it does not rain much in the summer.

And now only a year later these lovely lavenders are so big and full of blooms. They love it at the beach and thrive in the dry summers once they are established. This last weekend was only the 2nd time I have watered them this summer.

In a few weeks I will be faithful to do my yearly trimming. I’ll trim each plant down to a tight mound. Lesson learned!