I had to think on my feet this afternoon since I wasn’t able to find the bird feeder thingys and I came up with Mint Syrup! We have mint growing everywhere is this yard and I love it, I especially love mowing over with the lawn mower and having a mint aura linger over the yard. But tonight, the wee child and I decided to harvest the mint for syrup and tea. We chopped all the mint down, washed it and de-leaved about a dozen stems, put the leaves in a large pot with 5 cups of sugar and 2.5 cups of water (2cups sugar to 1 cup water). We basically jammed as many leaves as possible into the pot, if I were to do it again I would do more. Brought the mixture to a boil, boiled for about a minute, strained the leaves off, let cool and voila! mint syrup!

I’m having a nice, refreshing glass of water and syrup right now.

This afternoon I’m watching after a friend’s daughter and I am trying to find an art activity to do with her that doesn’t involve cluttering up the fridge door anymore than it already it. I came from a “functional art” household and was taught/raised/valued to create with a functional purpose; so when I was younger I remember making bird feeders with my Grandma out of pop bottles to hang in the yard. Grandma had a stash of feeder attachments for the pop bottles that you would just screw on in place of the cap and away you go!

Easy right? Well do you think I could find one of these anywhere? I went to six different stores, including some major big box stores and couldn’t find them anywhere! I came home and called the craft and the pet stores and no one has them, nor have they seen them for quite some time! What?! These are awesome, where could they have gone?  I’m going to now try to find some online, however i have a sneaky feeling that they’re going to be hard to get and expensive.

Today was not a complete loss, while in one of the home and garden stores I came across this:

Woot woot! Clover seed is finally available! I bought two boxes of it and plan to over seed our lawn! In case you’re wondering why I’m so excited about this, I worked for the local municipality when I was in university and my job was to educate the public on water conservation. One of our tips was to leave the clover in the lawn and let it thrive because;

-clover uses nitrogen from the air in photosynthesis whereas the majority of other plants, including grass, needs the right microbial conditions in the soil to change nitrogen into usable nitrogen (see nitrogen cycle). With clover you cut out the middle man and away you go!

-It’s hardy and needs minimal water (drought resistant), good for water conservation!

-it’s low growin’ = no mowin’

-resistant to dog pee!

Let’s hope the lord of the lands goes for it…