Under a Blue Moon

Last weekend was spent just puttering around.  Aren't those the best weekends?  

We can't do our usual annual gardening since the deck (where most of the gardening takes place in pots) will be under construction in a few weeks.  No sense planting a bunch of stuff just to have to store it behind the house for a month.   I did get some double petunias and put them in a pot on top of a stump.  That stump is actually holding up a new Mimosa tree.  You can see the wire.  I figured it might as well be decorative as well as functional.

The other area – the driveway circle – will require a lot of landscaping but we have to wait until that is finished too.  

Here is a picture of the driveway (looking down towards the street).  That scruffy stuff in the foreground is the top of the circle.  It slopes down towards the street.  We are going to put in a natural rock retaining wall at the low end so the planting area (which is about 28' by 45') can be leveled out.  Then a focal point (the crab apple) will go in the middle with various flowering and fragrant plants around it.  

I did plant one thing in one of the pots on the deck.  A tomato plant.  We don't have any areas that get prolonged amounts of sun during the day except for the deck.  So I figured I would try growing a tomato in a pot and see how that goes.  

It is a Brandywine.  I picked it because after spending half an hour looking in the tomato aisle at our local nursery I got overwhelmed and it said it was heirloom and Amish.  Good enough for me.  We'll see how it goes.  

One thing I don't want to have to deal with are those ugly horned worms.  I have taken preventative measures.

I saw a picture of a glittery pink flower and decided I needed to figure out how to make a one for myself.

Here are the step by step (mostly) pictures and directions:

(click on picture to see it in its full sized glory)

Step 1:

First take a length of crepe paper streamer (mine is about 24" long) and fan-fold into eight layers.

Then cut out a double humped shape to make the petals (you will have eight of them). They don't have to be perfectly even.

Step 2:

I took a small button and smeared a thin layer of glue on it and then plunked it into the glitter.  I then took a small rhinestone and put it in the middle for added bling.

I also got the base of my flower ready.  I just cut a circle about an inch in diameter out of card stock.

Step 3:

I found the best way to glitter the edges was to pour a little pile of white glue and a little pile of fine glitter onto a piece of card stock.  Then fold the petal in half and gently dab the edges in the glue and then in the glitter.  Unfold and let dry.

Step 4:

When the petal edges were dry I scrunched up the bottom and glued it to the outer edge of card stock circle.  Do the same with the second petal, glueing it to the opposite side.

Step 5:

Repeat with two more petals.

Step 6:

For the second layer of petals I glued them a little closer to the center and off-set them so they covered two of the petals from the first layer.

Step 7:

Repeat with the last two petals.

Step 8:

Glue your glittered button to the center.  

And there you have it.  I thought it made a pretty embellishment for a present.  Or you make a napkin ring out of a strip of cardstock and glue it to that for a girly napkin ring.  

 

 

 

I have to make my own Spring since ours has seemed to have vanished.  What is up with the weather??  It is cold and rainy here.  On Sunday we had hail of biblical proportions.

Kelly stopped by the other day and brought me a sweet little wicker chair.  She also gave me the tin and I promptly plopped a minature rose in it.  I'll eventually plant it outside but I like it in the tin for now.

Let's see – what has been going on around here?  We've been making plans to redo our deck (all gazillion square feet of it) and some landscaping work.  As soon as it is underway I'll post about it.  Our deck is about to fall off.  Well it's actually only about two feet off the ground but it is rapidly declining. 

Since we are basically going with the exact same layout and size I'm not overly excited about it.  Yes, nice to get it done but visually it won't look much different.  The landscaping, on the other hand, I am excited about.

We have a sloped circle in the middle of our driveway.  We are going to have a natural rock retaining wall put in on the lower end so we can make it level.  Then we will put in a crab apple tree in the center and other flowering shrubs around the tree.  I think it will look quite nice when you drive up.  And I love flowering crab apple trees. 

We are having a bit of drama with Ina.  We thought she was egg-bound, which is dire.  But now we are wondering if she isn't just broody.  She won't leave her nesting box voluntarily and when have made her she just walks around all poofed up. 

We checked and there doesn't seem to be an egg stuck up there (I'll just leave that particular process up to your imagination….). We decided to separate her from the others and when we picked her up out of the nesting box there were three eggs under her. 

Hopefully she'll snap out of it. 

 

 

Quick post – last night the guys took care of dinner in honor of Mother's Day but I brought a platter of anti-pasta skewers.  Super simple and very well received. 

I bought marinated mushrooms, little mozzerrella balls (which I also marinated in bottled Italian dressing), kalamata and green olives, cherry tomatoes, salami and I made cheese and sun-dried tomato tortellinis and marinated them in the same dressing. 

I made a few without salami for the vegetarians. 

I can't take credit for coming up with the idea.  I saw it somewhere out in the interwebs and filed the idea away.  Pretty darn clever if you ask me.