February 27, 2009
· Filed under darwin, gardening
It was 86 degrees yesterday and I spent the whole day in the garden. Unbelievable weather – hope it is not a predictor of a summer in the triple digits. Not going to worry about that now – it was a great day and I got lots done. Our Japanese Maples are leafing out – see how pretty!
Speaking of Japanese Maples, I have declared War On Squirrels. The little “tree rats” have decided to eat one of our Japanese Maples. And this is no ordinary maple – it is now 10 feet tall and has been lovingly nurtured by me since my DH and I spotted it growing in our front yard 12 years ago. We have 18 maples growing on our property – all grown from seedlings from a large Maple in the front. It takes 6 – 7 years of loving care to get these seedlings ready to transplant in the garden – they are like my children.
Initially I thought the squirrels were just climbing on the small branches and breaking them off. Then I thought they were just eating the fresh young leaves. No! They are gnawing on the limbs until they break off. And they don’t eat the young tender leaves – they just run off after they have done their damage! I just chased two away now. Of course Darwin, our airedale terrier, is sleeping in with DH. He is not a morning dog! I am thinking about a gun. Or we could cut down the adjacent magnolia tree so aerial climbing wouldn’t be so easy. You can see I am obsessed but I have a feeling that the squirrels will win. Hopefully this maple will survive eventhough it will be misshapen.
Two more gardening pictures. The first is one of my three peony plants. They literally seemed to grow in front of my eyes yesterday – at least six inches by the end of the day. The second is a snapshot of the loquat fruit on our loquat tree – going to have a bumper crop this year – maybe the squirrels will eat them rather than our maple.
And speaking of dogs here are two pictures of handsome Darwin after his grooming.
A cold front is coming in today – crazy Texas weather. Will be down to freezing Sunday evening. More daffodil pics!
February 13, 2009
· Filed under etc.!, gardening, grandkids
Here are some pictures from my front yard – daffodils in bloom! Last year I didn’t get this many flowers – lots of stems. But the flowers are prolific this year and are such a harbinger of spring.
Going to get some sweet peas or sugar snap peas planted this week. My wonderful helper spaded my two raised garden beds yesterday and added compost and expanded shale to help keep the moisture in – we are having another drought. And last week we had the Tomato Lady give a talk to our garden club. She is 70 something and has been gardening tomatoes since she was 3 years old. She was so knowledgeable and I got so enthused until I remember why I stopped growing tomatoes here in Texas. Those pesky squirrels. I tried everything – fox urine, bird netting, etc. Several years ago a squirrel got stuck in the bird netting and his ending was not pretty. But I will probably plant a few tomatoes – around the third week of March – and hope the squirrels find another yard. Here is a picture of our garden club – we had fun!
Finally a picture of a garden sculpture by my grandson. We spent quite a while Sunday at the Museum of Nature and Science. He had never seen taxidermy before so he asked at least a hundred times if the animals were dead or alive. Later that day I challenged him to make a sculpture from playdough and things in the yard. I showed him one my granddaughter made when she was about 3. He told me that it looked too hard to do. But I went into the kitchen and started dinner and I heard him go to the back yard. In a few minutes he produced two sculptures – here they are!
Been a busy week – and my DH and I finally bought a new mattress today -been thinking about that for a long time! Glad the deed is done!
February 5, 2009
· Filed under art/craft
We were iced in last week – so I decided to “play “with some of my yarn and some silk scarves I bought a couple of weeks ago. DH bought silk paints a long time ago – so he pulled them out. I have been wanting to do some wet felting too.
So I set up my space and attempted to felt some lovely multicolored roving to a silk scarf. Did all the right things but couldn’t quite get it to felt properly. But I did learn a lot – maybe that wet felting and my arthritic joints aren’t compatible. My forearms and left elbow ached like crazy the next day. It takes a lot of rolling to get silk and wool to felt. So I needle felted the prefelt I created onto a piece of white wool felt – here 
it is…..
Then I wet felted a grid of pink felt with the blue metallic — then needle felted that onto my silk scarf – just playing and here it is……..
The silk puckered (not the technical term for what happened) and I cut the silk scarf away from the material. Not sure what I am going to do with this except learn from it.
Then I attempted silk painting on the silk scarf end – but DH went crazy with the silk paints after I went to bed – and here that is…..
I did the middle part – he did the outside. Not useful for anything but experimentation.
I am still interested in doing more wet felting – wondering how I can do it and not have sore joints the next day. Going to try some more experiments and will keep you posted!
