A little while back I was looking for an attachment to screw onto a 2L pop bottle and turn it into a bird feeder. A couple weeks after my post, I found these beauties on the Lee Valley website. They’re not quite what I was looking for but they’ll do that job. Now I just have to find someone do participate in craft time with me…
Oh, I also got these cute little wood yo-yos to paint!
I don’t know why I stayed away from blogging for so long, there’s so much I want to tell you about!
Like these wine bottle torches:
photo courtesy Trenland
You can find the tutorial here and make your own. I think these will look great around my parents new patio, they worked really hard last summer to get it in and the wine bottles would be a perfect addition. They don’t have a tall fence like this one those so I’d have to change it a little to get them to stick in the ground. One could even get citronella lamp oil and be rid the swarm of mosquitoes!
I kept seeing these flowers in the blogs I was following and could not figure out what they were. My first job was working in a greenhouse so I knew I’d seen them before and new it was an “-ulus’ name I was searching for but could not put my figure on it. I finally, out of desperation, posted a photo on facebook and asked the masses. I got was I was looking for,
Ranunculus
Now I’m off to search the greenhouses around town for these tubers! I’m hoping I can grow them in some beautiful planters by my front door.
I neglected my garden. It’s not that I didn’t have time or that I didn’t want to have one, I just stopped paying attention to it. It gave us excellent lettuce and I’ll probably plant lettuce again next year because it was so nice to just go out to the garden and get it. I also planted carrots, I haven’t thought about them in awhile so I went out to check today and look what I found!
They are going to be so good with our roast beef dinner next weekend with friends!
By the way, this is what the garden originally looked like;
and this is what it looks like now…
This is me taking ownership.
The dogs love carrots.
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…
So it’s July already and I’m happy to report that things are falling into place. I got an excellent job for the summer and just had an interview and have somewhere to work in September too! I’m feeling very fortunate today.
The yard and garden at our place is bursting! There’s flowers blooming left and right, the bean garden is well on it’s way and my bird house gourd plant is off to a great start. I’m glad I didn’t plant a lot in the garden because by now it would have all been dead. The beans on the other hand thrive on a little neglect so that works for me. Plus sometimes the neighbor lets his sprinkler go over the fence and they get a good water from him.
I planted a couple of herb buckets as well and they just turned into buckets o’ basil. That’s on with us though, I’ve made some delicious fresh pasta sauce with it. I don’t think there would be enough for pesto as previously planned.
Finally, I love living in this area because there’s still that old community feel. I came home from work the other night and there was a tiny carbord sign at the end of a driveway about 6 doors down that said “Free Cherries, U-Pick” so Handsome and I went a picked a huge bag of them. We devoured them before I could take a picture, oops.
My practicum is over and I have a month left before I am a fully certified educator! We were going to go camping for the weekend but I couldn’t stomach the idea of packing and unpacking the car so we decided to stay home. Today was overcast so it was a perfect day for a little gardening. I started some scarlet runner beans and an experimental birdhouse gourds in the house and they were getting pretty big so today was a perfect day to plant them. I hadn’t looked at the garden patch I had in mind for these plants in awhile and when I went down today it was covered in grass and dandilions (I should have taken a before picture). Fortunately, my greenthumb kicked in and I was able to transform it, I’m looking forward to vine fresh beans.
I also started some herb seeds inside and today planted two herb pot gardens with dill, basil, cilantro and parsley. None of my rosemary came up so I’ll have to pick some up at the farmers market next weekend. Turns out basil is really easy to start and we have an abundance of it, I put it in a pot for now and hopefully put the rest in the veggie garden. Our neighbor suggested a pesto party, I said “Good idea!”.
