One thing I did this summer that has to do with gardens is the Garden Hoax. ( A “hoax” according to our friend and ex assistant, Joe Labolito is a jaunt you go on for no other reason than you want to go on it.)

Several friends, (Jane and Jane and Margie and Sally and Pam and Mike and I), from college, Moore College of Art and Design, ( just Moore College of Art back in the day), get together each year for a couple of days and visit gardens. ( I call it a hoax but the others may call it something else.)

We’ve done Longwood Gardens in PA, White Flower Farm in Connecticut and several wonderful gardens in Long Island including Jack Lenor Larson’s LongHouse and Marders Nursery. Different members of the group volunteer to set it up, so this year Jane and I set it up.

We all stayed at the Thomas Bond House, a colonial inn for a bit of city and yea olde Philadelphia, ate at great restaurants and gabbed all night.

We chose Chanticleer, outside of Philadelphia, a most wonderful “Pleasure Garden’ and a visit to the garden/studio of another Moore Alum, Janie Gross who is a designer of pressed flowers – she doesn’t just press flowers but has a most wonderful book full of her photographs of them – The After Life of Flowers and flower pillows for sale in Kohl’s and lots of other fantastic irons in the fire! She’s studied flower pressing in Japan and been on Martha Stewart – just a terrific artist. – and I do her web site! – Saw Janie in the morning, had lunch and Chanticleer in the afternoon. – Debbie came along also!

I don’t do a lot of things with “the girls” – any girls – what with teaching and working in the studio so this is a major treat and I so look forward to it. Margie started it off and I thank her very much.

Oh, and while I don’t do Sally’s site, if you have a little dog and are nutsy about it, you should visit her site, plaiddogs.com