Calling all Quilters

The South Fork Conservancy (SFC) would like to make you aware of an opportunity to exhibit your quilts at its 2022 outdoor show and auction called “Natural Connections.” SFC holds the show and auction in conjunction with its annual Creek Rising fundraiser and celebration. It takes place at Zonolite Park in Atlanta on the banks of the South Fork of Peachtree Creek in the fall of 2022.

In 2021, a group of generous quilters from the Atlanta area who learned about the show through their quilt guilds, donated 18 quilts that they made for the show. Although the pandemic short-circuited SFC’s plans for an in-person Creek Rising, the show and auction went on—online—to an audience eager to view and then enthusiastically bid on them. Consequently, every quilt sold!

This year, SFC plans to hold both an online and “live” show and auction and anticipates that even more quilters from a wider geographic area will decide to join the party. As the last show demonstrated, quilters know how to connect. They have an idea for a quilt; they think about what they want it to look like, connecting their ideas and musings to fabrics and embellishments they might use. Ultimately, they connect fabric pieces to make one whole and beautiful creation. Similarly, SFC has a vision of connecting neighborhoods along the creek, restoring its banks, removing invasive plants, and planting native species that beckon pollinators. Creating new trails makes possible a way for people to enjoy, respect, and care for the natural world.

Click here to find a “Call for Quilts” that we ask you to share via email with your friends. It contains information about the theme, quilt sizes, pricing, intent to submit, and submission deadlines (Note that the entry form is due by March 1, 2022). Briefly, here is how it will work:

•    Quilters donate a quilt that they have made. The donation is tax deductible.

•    Each quilt will be professionally photographed. Photos will be placed on the SFC website and in all materials related to Creek Rising.

•    Quilters will receive photos  (jpeg or tif) of their quilt.

•    Quilters will be invited guests at Creek Rising and will receive a one-year membership to SFC.

•    Quilts will be exhibited online and outdoors at the live celebration. In the event of inclement weather, the quilts will be exhibited in a covered space.

We can’t wait to see the exciting and creative ways which participating quilters will interpret our theme, “Natural Connections.” Thank you for sharing this request!

Iris Eyes are Smiling

By Sally Sears

Wild iris, native and blue, smiled on the far bank of the Floataway pond. We planted a few as a Morningside neighbor’s gift and watched the plants thrive in the damp meadow at Zonolite Park. Blue Flag Iris (Iris virginica) spread quickly along the edges of the water, raising bright flags of true sky blue on top of sharp blue green leaves.

So imagine my wonder, turning to dismay the next year when they came back yellow instead of blue. I couldn’t believe my eyes. My iris eyes were looking at Blue Iris and seeing yellow. What had happened? Vivid yellow, bright as goldenrod, floated on top of the sharp leaves. Nothing blue in sight.

Yeoman Pete Densmore, head of the Friends of Zonolite Park, had put volunteers to work all that year yanking out cattails. Nobody wanted a pond full of cattails because they hid the pond surface and crowded out a range of birds. The removal was terrific, but I wondered if the yanking had somehow turned the nearby iris from blue to yellow.

My smart garden friends shrugged off my question. They of course wanted to see for themselves. A few weeks later, we came back. And to my amazement, the iris were blue again. Just as I remembered from the year before. Was I looking through lying eyes?

My gardening friends were amused and slightly condescending. Now, Sally, anybody can mistake yellow for blue, of course! Just enjoy how the hummingbirds are liking the iris.I burned inside. Lying Eyes? When Iris Eyes are Not Smiling!

I turned to the internet in a frenzy burning with humiliation. The very word iris means all colors. The Greek goddess of the rainbow is named Iris. The color of our eyes is the color of our own iris. This was not helping much. This year I went early in April, staring at the plants on the near side of the pond, daring the flowers to show up, wild to figure out if I am in fact crazy. I am not crazy. The buds starting to unfurl were yellow again.

Driving through Morningside I saw the same yellow iris in dozens of yards, beside mailboxes, in tidy gardens. Not a blue flag iris anywhere. All April I watched the yellow iris spread a buttery scarf along the pond edge. I bided my time.

In May, my crazy color mystery began to be resolved. On May Day, dozens of blue iris bloomed. A month ahead of the blue flag iris, a yellow European cousin (Iris pseudacorus) is enjoying the same habitat. The yellow iris can be a bit pushy, but both are thriving, both good for pulling pollutants out of the storm water pond.

And both are smiling treats for all of our iris eyes.

Chestnuts for Life

Thomas grips Chestnut trunk

When he was nine, Thomas Rudolph and his Morningside Elementary classmates in the fourth grade pushed chestnut seeds into pots to see how fast they would grow.

The seeds were a special hybrid hoping to restore the long-gone species to Atlanta. Chestnuts grow fast, and by summer, the foot tall seedlings outgrew the classroom.  You can eat the nuts these trees will grow before you get out of high school, the Chestnut Foundation teacher promised.

They did grow fast. The seedlings were two feet tall by the fall, when Thomas and other scouts from the Haygood Methodist troop planted them on the South Fork of Peachtree Creek on a steep slope.

WABE’s Myke Johns brought a microphone, recorded the excitement and broadcast it to all Atlanta. Thomas remembers that lots of people thought it was pretty cool.

Eighteen or so of the young trees made it through that first winter. But the excitement of the experiment began to fade as Thomas turned ten. Then eleven. The promise of tasting real chestnuts growing on the trees began to grow less important.

Middle school. High School and sports. Science class and lacrosse, ten years passed.

Then, this winter, a senior in high school, Thomas decided to check on the trees. He and his mom Monica walked from the Armand Park trailhead to the steep bank he remembered from ten years earlier.

They climbed, pulling aside wintery vines, looking hard at bare branches.

Then, overhead, a few thin leaves waved a hello. Thomas wondered if they were looking for him. There, in plain sight, he found the biggest of the five surviving chestnut trees.

Excited, Thomas leaned in.

As if waiting for him, spiny chestnut hulls lay in the leaf litter.  By his feet he saw the first harvest of chestnuts from the trees his class began as seeds.

He didn’t find any nuts left, though.  Chipmunks, possums, all kinds of chestnut-loving wildlife found them first. Still, he filled his fists with the prickly hulls and put his hand around the trunk of the tree. The trunk was thicker than he could grip. His smile was radiant.

That Chestnut Foundation scientist had been right. In ten years under the right conditions, chestnut trees can mature into nut bearing food sources. 

Thomas is off to Auburn University in the fall. The trees he and his classmates brought to life will be here when he comes back home to visit. If he times it right and gets there this fall before the chipmunks and squirrels, he can taste the chestnuts himself.

Thomas examines chestnut burrs