Backyard Visitors

One of the nice things about living near the edge of a large city and homeschooling is that we can pause our day to observe a rabbit for about half an hour and count it as science. Check out some of the critters who have visited us recently:

We found this poor little guy stuck in the chalk box. He was quite happy to crawl out and onto our fingers.

And here's our bunny friend. The cat spotted him first, but we didn't let him outside. The bunny happily hopped around the backyard munching on various weeds for quite some time. The girls thought it was amazing and were excited that he let me take his picture.

Shared on Friday's Nature Table- The Magic Onions

Making a Rustic Wisteria Trellis

Our latest project has been a rustic trellis for the wisteria in the front yard. After researching various sources and drawing inspiration from Pinterest, we collaborated to make this project.

Collaborated is such a neat and simple word, but it really doesn't capture the amount of combined thinking we did on this. First, my husband is a fan of clean lines and simple modern looks, with a farm-like rustic quality. I like ornate antiques and dark woods. Combine that with the style of our house (think suburbs with siding, white trim, shingle roof), our modest budget, and the poor trellis that has been already taken over by the vines, and you have quite the task. So, without further ado (if you want more "ado" check out my wisteria post here.)

Making a Rustic Wisteria Trellis

What You'll Need:

• 2 - 4"x4"x8' pressure-treated wooden posts
• 1 qt. dark walnut stain (optional)
• 1 25' roll rabbit fence (ours is wire, the widest holes are 2" x 4")
• staples
• u-nails
• 1 bag concrete

1. Check and Measure. 

The first step is always to check with your local digging hotline to make sure you aren't going to burst a pipe or hit a power line.

Second, measure where you want your posts to be. Ours are about 12 feet apart, I wouldn't recommend any wider than that because it will be difficult to tighten the fence.

2. Stain the Posts (Optional). 

We had originally intended to leave the posts as-is, but they looked very green against our tan siding. We decided to go for a dark walnut stain and I'm quite pleased with the results.

 

 

 

3. Dig the Holes

We  My husband dug the holes about 2 feet deep. Word of advice if you get into some tough clay: fill the hole with water and allow to soak overnight. My husband actually bent our post-hole digger on this project.

Also, you might look into buying a digging bar, but that requires quite a bit of muscle. If all else fails, you can rent an auger, just be careful if you're in close proximity to your house. (Our project was way too close to the house to consider this option.)

4. Mix the Concrete and Install the First Post. 

Being rather old-fashioned and cheap in terms of construction methods, my husband mixed our concrete by hand.  The concrete adds stability to the posts.

When thoroughly mixed, pour a little concrete into the first hole. Set the first post in the hole and use a level to ensure it is straight. If necessary, use a sledgehammer to drive the post into the concrete. Add a layer of rocks and gravel, then fill the hole with concrete.

5. Attach the Fence to the Second Post and Install It.

Stretch out your fence material. For our project, we used two lengths of fence. Be sure to measure and allow an amount for wrapping around the edges, so that the majority of your staples and nails will be on the back of the posts. Before installing the second post, wrap the rabbit fence around the outside of it and secure the fence to the back of the post the back using u-nails. Then install the second post using the same method as the first.

 Now allow the concrete to set. We waited a week before proceeding. You might need to put up a brace to support your post.

 6. Finish Installing Fence.

When your concrete has set, wrap the fence around the other post and secure using staples and/or u-nails.

7. Attach Wisteria Using String.

The string also helped anchor my existing trellis to the new fence trellis. I'm sure the fence will be completely covered next spring. 

And that's it! I hope this gives you some ideas for taming your climbing plants and filling up a long vacant wall. 

Waxing Poetical on Wisteria

Soon I'll be posting the second entry in the showcase of projects my husband completed recently. But first, would you like to hear the long story behind it? Of course you would. If not, scroll through to the next post.

My Wisteria and Rose Bouquet

Have you ever been to the Albuquerque Botanical Gardens? (See, told you it was a long story.)  If you have, you probably would not forget the Ceremonial Rose Garden. For those of you who haven't been, the rose garden features a very large arbor covered with the most beautiful and delicate lavender flowers that cascade like grapes. I fell in love with that garden from the moment I first saw it. Everything from the copper roof accents to the gnarly trunks of the vines was beautiful. I decided then that wisteria was my favorite flower (even featuring it in my wedding bouquet, see picture at left).

You may remember we lived in England for a time and I LOVED it. One of the things that England is rightly famous for is the beautiful gardens. I don't know if it's because of the rich soil, the gentle misty winters, or a combination of both.

Case in point: in England I had two rosemary bushes that grew almost like weeds. I trimmed and shaped them like hedges and had plenty of rosemary for cooking. Here, I have unsuccessfully planted and soon after killed two rosemary bushes. Now I have a pathetic sickly-looking one in a pot on my windowsill. That seems to be the only way I can keep them alive. I digress.

Back to wisteria- one of our regular commutes in England meandered through a village. It was not a particularly old or beautiful village when compared to the pristine ones you find on postcards (although those do exist and are marvelous), but it was the sort of village where life continued to plod along. Buildings were more likely to be mended than replaced. When new buildings were added, the most recent being in the late 1970s or early 1980s by my rough guess, they were done so in entire streetfuls so that you had three or four streets full of older houses across from a whole block of ugly apartment buildings. Instead of ruining the older houses, the apartments seemed to heighten their beauty by contrast. On one side, you had an ideal of what, to an American like me, I would assume all of England would look like. On the other, with the apartments, was the stark realization that life progressed. People needed inexpensive housing, just as they do in America, and so the utilitarian housing units were brought in to serve that purpose.

On the side with the older houses, which mind you weren't incredibly old, just old enough to be cute, was one house in particular that was covered with wisteria. I loved that house. In the winter it wasn't much. The vines lay dormant, swirled and intertwined like a Celtic braid. In the spring, the vines suddenly brought forth the most amazing display of light purple and white flowers, completely blanketing the front of the house.

So when we moved here and bought our current house, I started messing with the garden right away. I was determined to slowly but surely transform our yard into a beautiful English garden, complete with a wisteria-covered wall. So finally I purchased a little wisteria plant and put it next to my big empty wall in front of a decorative trellis. It bloomed and thrived, but the poor thing could not attach itself to the wall. Go figure, vinyl siding is not as wisteria-friendly as brick (probably a good thing, too, I can just picture the little tendrils working their way between the panels. So plan B- look it up on Pinterest! My husband and I (he's actually a more avid pinner than I am) both did some research, sketched out our ideas, collaborated, and finally agreed upon a design. Hopefully not long after Thanksgiving I'll be posting what we did.

P.S. Sorry for waxing poetical tonight. This is National Novel Writing Month and I'm forcing myself not to participate because I'm overbooked. All that pent-up literary creativity had to get dumped somewhere, right? 

 

Tobacco Hornworms

Yep, you read that right. Tobacco Hornworms. This isn't a craft project per se, but a cool science experiment the Miniature Master Gardener (MMG) and I did just for fun (and counted as part of her homeschool science curriculum). It's a long story, so settle in with a cup of hot tea and enjoy!

The Mysterious Origin of our Tomato Plants

Let's go back to the very beginning. Two summers ago, we had the brilliant idea to start a compost bin. We set an old MDF dresser on its side (without the drawers) and chucked in all our compost ingredients. The bin went well until the MDF started to fall apart and we noticed mice were drawn to it. So we carefully moved the compost bin and contents to the opposite corner of the yard, away from the house. It remained there for a while, but we started seeing snake skins and bunny droppings around it. Finally, we gave up on the rotting dresser. However, my brilliant husband, an avid Pinterest user, has found several ideas and hopes to build me a new and improved compost bin sometime in the future.

The original site of the compost bin has yielded some very fun mystery plants. We had a cantaloupe vine grow out of there which yielded just one cantaloupe, but the best cantaloupe I've ever had. We had an avocado tree sprout, but the two-year-old pulled all the leaves off of it. We have a new tree that I think is a peach tree. And we had 4 tomato plants grow from there. Two we transplanted to our official "garden" area, and two we left growing in the five-foot-wide space between the fence and the house.

The Finding of the Caterpillars

The two tomato plants in the garden seemed to be doing much better than the ones we left by the house. Imagine my surprise when I found two of these big, intimidating caterpillars on the upper leaves!

We looked them up on the computer and found out many things. Most tomato farmers consider them pests and advise quickly dunking them into a cup full of soapy water (in case you have some or too many of these beauties you need to make disappear, that's what I recommend). Often these caterpillars play host to a parasitic wasp and some sites recommended keeping the caterpillars infected with the wasps alive long enough to allow the wasps to hatch and infect more. Other websites claimed to plant tomato plants in the hopes of attracting the hornworms.

From what I could tell, these are tobacco hornworms, which are very similar to tomato hornworms. Both feed on tomato and tobacco plants. The spike, while menacing, is a fake.

Caterpillar Adoption

Caterpillars in the Jar

So we rounded up the first two, plus a third one,  and put them in a large pickle jar. They need plenty of soil for burrowing, since these caterpillars make their cocoons underground. We also put in a sponge and lots of fresh green tomato stems and leaves. It was really neat to watch them munch away on the leaves. The girls were able to use magnifying glasses to see the caterpillars' eyes and mouth.

Big Fat Caterpillar

At first, they didn't seem to eat much. In just a few short days, they were eating a whole jar's worth of leaves within a few hours. I hoped my poor tomato plants would be able to keep up with them. The caterpillars grew fat, as large around as my thumb, and twice as long. I'm not exaggerating! Look them up for some pictures on how gigantic they get. The picture at right is not quite their full size.

Remnants of a Cocoon

Burrow

Then one by one, they lost  interest in the leaves and started doing "laps" on the dirt at the bottom of the jar. They slowly burrowed into the soil. One burrowed pretty close to the glass, so we could see when her cocoon formed. For a long time, nothing happened. I had to remove the remaining leaves because they started to rot. We set November 1st as their eviction day if nothing happened.

Sphinx Moths

(Or Hawk Moths) As I was passing by the jar a couple days ago, I noticed the surface of the dirt was not smooth like usual. There was something on it. I looked closer and found a large moth lying on its back with its legs in the air. We took the jar outside and gathered up some more foliage from the tomato plants (which were thriving again by this time). It was a little bit of a struggle for the moth to get on the plant, but once she did, she scurried quickly to a spot where she could hang. Her wings were shriveled, but a few hours later, she had long brown mottled wings that were straight.

"Liz" getting cozy on the leaves

Soon after, the second moth emerged. She moved up the leaves more quickly and got in to Liz's spot. There was some fluttering as the two moths sorted out who was going to hang where. That attracted the attention of my cat (since these moths are huge, look like bats, and are often confused for hummingbirds) and merited the jar being shut up in the bathroom for the night.

By the next morning, the third moth had emerged and the first two had straightened their wings. It was time to say goodbye.

 We planned some time at the end of our school day to walk to the wilderness area near our house and drop off the moths (same place we released a turtle that wandered into our yard). We picked the same spot as the turtle: just on the edge of the pond, under a tree. After a few solemn words, the gardener pulled the masking tape off the lid. Instead of a massive fluttering of wings, Liz flopped out onto the ground after getting her foot stuck in the tape and crawled really quickly toward me. I imagine she thought I was some sort of tree. We got a stick and convinced her to grab onto that while we moved her to the tree. As soon as we put her on the trunk, she crawled to the edge and clung to the side with her wings folded around her.

Notice the bright body spots.

Perfect Camoflauge

The second moth, "C" climbed onto her stick after we showed it to her. Mini Master Gardener (okay, I've got to come up with a better nickname for her), actually got to hold the stick. C pretty much stayed like the below picture once she got on the tree. 

 Since "E", the last moth, was snacking on a tomato flower and had the most fragile wings, we moved her and the foliage at the same time.

 Our caterpillars turned out to be really fun. Mini Master Gardener is already hoping for some new ones in the spring.

Shared on Friday's Nature Table at The Magic Onions: http://www.themagiconions.com/2012/11/fridays-nature-table-7.html

2 Paintings of England

Fall Break is Here!

And not a moment too soon! Of course, by Fall Break, I mean I'm doing just one class right now instead of 2. The class I just finished was the hardest, but the most rewarding class I have taken yet. Just 7 more to go! But enough about school and back to the art!

Framlingham Castle Moat

The painting at right is my favorite so far. It's based on one of my pictures. I prefer to work with my own pictures because I usually connect to them better and I can remember some of the details the camera didn't capture. This picture was an outing we took to Framlingham Castle in England. My husband is carrying our daughter on his shoulders as we stroll through the moat.

2 Tips for the Day:

1. Don't feel the need to accurately represent exactly what you see in your source. If that was the intention, it would be photography, not painting (unless you're doing someone's portrait, which is why I don't do portraits- yet). Painting is about artistic interpretation. As the artist, you get to choose the level of detail and what you want to include.

2. A mediocre picture can sometimes make an amazing painting. In the Castle Moat painting, I liked the picture okay, but I LOVE this painting, which is really saying something for me. My reactions to my own work usually range from loathing to indifference, it's rare that I really love something I've done.

So here's the painting once again. If seeing my source photo would absolutely ruin it for you, don't keep scrolling! (Or scroll really fast to the next painting!)

 

And here's the next one (I really need to think of names for these things!) Can you tell the difference between the top and bottom pictures? I tweaked it just a little and signed it.

 In case you were looking REALLY closely, you might notice my brand new easel (a birthday present from my sister!) in the top photo. That's probably the cleanest it will ever be. For what I changed on the painting: added light green in the top center leaves, added light green on the lower right leaves, added lighter colors to the gravel. And here it is next to the source photo, a picture I took from the window of a tea party in England.

Here are four of my other paintings grouped together:

In other news, I've been asked to teach a painting class for a women's group this month. They've had such an overwhelming response that we are offering the class on a second night! I'm quite excited to be teaching and encouraging others to branch out and try new things.

More paintings!

I'm supposed to be doing homework, but I thought I'd take a few minutes to share what we've been up to. Since I've been in school, I've really needed a way to relax one night a week. Doing landscape paintings has become my outlet (for now, I change artistic directions fairly often). I don't really have any great techniques to share, but I have a few tips:

1. Get a buddy and an honest critic. My sister is my painting buddy. We never paint the same picture (other than our first ones because we did a class together), but we usually pick something in the same genre and size. Having her here pushes me to do better and keeps me accountable to finish my work. My husband is the critic. He tells me what needs to be fixed and what looks good. He's nice about it, but he doesn't hold back.

2. Find a size that works for you. I bought a value pack of 12" x 12" canvas. The size is large enough for me to do a decent painting on, but not so large that it takes more than one sitting to finish. Perhaps one day I'll tackle something bigger. For now, it's nice to focus on technique.

3. Just past the "I hate it!" phase is the "Hey, that's not so bad" phase. If you hate, keep going until you're satisfied with it (same thing goes when writing a novel).

4. Check out sales and wholesalers. I was able to snag some canvas at a really good price from an art store I don't normally go to. And a friend of mine recently introduced me to a discount supply store that had amazing brushes for 25 and 50 cents apiece!

And that's it! Over time, you'll get better and better. In the meantime, you'll relax and have a great time. That's all for now, I really need to get back to writing my paper.

Making Our Very Own Fairy Garden Part 2

In my last entry, I discussed how we made our fairy garden. Since then I have been informed that it is a "Princess Garden", not a Fairy Garden. My apologies to our Miniature Master Gardener.

Our Princess Garden was almost complete at the end of the last entry, but we brought in the big guns (my husband) to make some neat wood projects that make the garden even more amazing. He made wooden mushrooms, fence panels, and a ladder for the princesses to get up to their garden.

Mushrooms

Taking inspiration from The Magic Onions, we decided to add mushrooms to our garden.

Here's what you'll need:

• Sphere halves (sold at a craft store, 6 per pack)
• 1/2" Diameter dowel rod
• Nails
• Patio paint- red & white

1. Drill holes in tops. 

To make his life easier, my husband drilled a hole through the center of each sphere half, slightly smaller than the nails he used.

2. Cut dowel rod.

He marked 6 2" long sections on the dowel rod and cut using a saw. The remaining piece of the dowel rod was saved for the top of the ladder.

3. Paint tops.

Our Miniature Master Gardener did this step. She painted the tops red. After they were dry, she added white dots.

4. Nail tops onto the stems. 

And you're done! Amazing little decorations for the amount of effort. They are probably the two-year-old's favorite thing about the Princess Garden as she is constantly rearranging them.

Fence Panels

For each panel, you will need:

• 7 popsicle sticks
• wood glue (preferably outdoor safe)

1. Cut the popsicle sticks in half. 

Cut 3 of the popsicle sticks in half. Set 1 half aside for another panel (or something else).

2. Lay out the pieces. 

Arrange 5 stick halves parallel to each other, about 1/4" apart. Place one of the whole sticks on either side, parallel to the others with the tops (round edges) flush.

3. Glue.

Run a line of glue along the remaining sticks. Place them glue side down onto the other sticks, so that one stick runs 1/2" below all 7 tops and the other stick runs across the bottoms of the half sticks and the middle of the whole sticks. See the picture if I've completely confused you.

Mushroom, Ladder, and Fence

Ladder

Our princesses were using the vine to climb up to their garden, but they decided the vine was starting to look a little worn and they needed a ladder instead.

Materials:

• 16 Popsicle sticks
• 1/2" diameter dowel rod
• Safety wire
• Wood glue

 1. Cut the sticks.

Using a saw, cut 8 of the popsicle sticks in half. Cut the dowel rod into 2 sections approximately 4-6 inches long.

2.  Assemble the panels. 

Arrange 4 of the half sticks parallel to each. Glue a whole stick across the tops of the half sticks. Glue a second whole stick across the bottoms, parallel to the first. Drill a small hole (large enough for the safety wire) in each end of each whole stick.

3. Wire it together.

Lay out the panels end to end. Using safety wire, connect the adjoining holes. Be sure to twist them together tightly and tuck all sharp ends under. At the top of the ladder, use safety wire to attach the dowel rod pieces. Stick the dowel rods into the soil.

And we're done!

Well, we're done for now. Our Master Gardener has mentioned painting the fence and some other projects. I'll be sure to keep you posted if we add anything. For now, they are enjoying the garden. Here are some pictures of the completed project.

Rearranging the Mushrooms

In the Garden

Of course, I had to take a ton of closeups. What photographer could resist such a charming and sweet space! I hope you are inspired to make your own Fairy Princess Garden. Thanks for reading about ours, we have enjoyed making it and playing with it.

Update: The Moss Rose is starting to bloom in the perfect shade of pink!