MUKILTEO — His and hers.
There is a clear division of labor of love at the household of Lorraine and Rod Jones.
He gardens. She quilts.
“Once in a while I tell him I think that plant would look better over there,” Lorraine said. “He either takes it or leaves it. It’s like him with my quilts.”
She and Rod have been married 45 years.
See for yourself the magic of their matrimony. Her quilts will hang in his garden at their home, one of seven stops on the Mukilteo Quilt &Garden Tour, July 18 and 19.
The joint event by Mukilteo Way Garden Club and the Mukilteo Lighthouse Quilters combines sewing and garden arts. There will be about 100 quilts in seven gardens in and near Mukilteo on the tour, which is held every other year.
Ticket sales are capped at 1,000. “It’s a plenty good number,” said tour spokeswoman Jean Skerlong. “We don’t want anyone’s garden trampled.”
Skerlong said garden themes include a foodie garden, Asian influence, native plants, glass artist, miniature gardens and colorful backyard retreat.
Then there’s the Jones’ place. A colorful jungle with bees, butterflies and bowling balls.
Oh, where to begin …
Let’s start with Rod’s “ball of doom.”
“You get a bowling ball at the Goodwill for five bucks and then you put five bucks worth of pennies on it with Goop and then weatherproof it,” he said. “For $10 you get a ball of doom.”
On the tour, see if you can find Rod’s festooned bowling balls and painted wonders in his acre yard.
Hint: Look for bursts of orange flowers.
Rod uses spray paint to embellish what his green thumb and nature can’t.
The allium, a flowering ornamental onion, has a purple flower until it goes to seed. “Then I have this brown ugly ball,” he said. “I have two choices. I can either cut it off and get rid of it. Or I can take a can of orange spray paint and paint them. This is cheating like crazy.”
Maybe so, but it works.
“Look at it. It pops right out,” he said. “It will stay that way until the fall. It doesn’t hurt the plant. It’s done. The plant doesn’t care. Who’d of ever thunk?”
There are still more treasures hidden in plain sight.
Hint: The tall blue towers.
It looks like yard art. It’s really the sprinkler system.
Hear something buzzing?
Hint: The bees are the real thing.
“They don’t bother me,” Rod said. “I don’t bother them. They’re happy. I’m happy. I imagine if I grabbed a hold of them they’d send a message.”
The level lawn with winding paths is a registered Wildlife Habitat, though no creatures are wilder than Rod.
The couple moved to Mukilteo in 1999 from Redmond after he retired as a Seattle Fire Department chief.
“It took three and a half hours to mow the lawn,” he said. “I said, ‘This is the stupidist thing I’ve ever seen.’ So we bulldozed the entire property. We brought in tons of dirt and roto-tilled and roto-tilled so things will grow in here. We put in retaining walls.”
Mowing time now: 30 minutes.
He buys a lot of plants on clearance. “I water them, throw them in the ground. Put them in the ground in the right place and they grow like crazy.”
He gets as excited about plants as Willy Wonka in a chocolate factory.
“I try to have something in bloom all year because it makes me happy,” he said.
Lorraine has the same enthusiasm about sewing.
“It provides for me a chance to be creative, a chance to be peaceful and a chance to lose yourself in something,” she said.
“Quilts are made with love. Every quilt a person has put a bit of themselves in. From the time they pick the fabrics and pattern to stitching it to quilting it to giving it to someone.”
She sometimes invites friends over to set up machines on the garden patio. “It’s very different sewing outside. You hear all the birds,” said Lorraine, who had careers as a respiratory therapist and a ceramic engineer.
After retiring, the couple ran a home-based online fabric store, but now are pursuing their passions full time.
“We are doing the same thing using different mediums. Fabric and gardening are kind of addicting,” Lorraine said.
Their 12-year-old grandson, Dominic, recently had a quilt in a show.
“It looks really cool,” Dominic said. “It’s fun to do and you can make all kinds of different designs and stuff.”
If you go
Mukilteo Quilt &Garden Tour: 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. July 18 and noon to 4 p.m. July 19. Rain or shine. Seven gardens on tour by Mukilteo Way Garden Club and the Mukilteo Lighthouse Quilters. There will be 100 colorful quilts on display in residential gardens in and near Mukilteo. Tickets are $15 advance or $18 on event day. For more information, go to www.mukilteogardenandquilttour.org.
Buy tickets and enter raffles at Rosehill Community Center, 304 Lincoln Ave., Mukilteo.
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