Friday, July 30, 2010

Horse trough planter



I love my planter. The corn is growing, but I don't know how successful it will be at producing an ear. The scarlet runners are showing their beautiful red flowers now. I love the red flowers against the green leaves. I am training the pumpkins to flow out the trough and down the driveway a little bit.

The pumpkin made a huge golden flower yesterday. Brother noticed the flower and pulled me aside to share his discovery. I had noticed it earlier in the day, but I didn't anything since I wanted it to be his discovery. I have also notice that there is already a pumpkin growing from that flower! I'm going to let him discover that as well. :)

My flock



No, not chickens. I wish. Although, to be honest, I'm not really a morning person and at 9 am, I still haven't gone out and watered the garden yet! We made Whitsun Doves from the book "All Year Round". We're not celebrating, I just like the idea for the art project.

We have been visiting a local public garden lately, and the garden is full of art! So, I thought it would be fun for us to make out door art for our garden as well. They are a lovely flash of color when it is windy. And the kids really like to see their art displayed.

Friday, July 9, 2010

Container Gardening



Our yard was not at all ready to make into a garden this spring when it was time to plant. There are so many trees in our area, that I am not sure where we get enough sun for which plants. It really makes me miss my old garden with 4 large raised beds on the south side of the house receiving full sun all day. Plus, I had made the soil myself per the Square Foot Gardener method. It was very easy to be a successful gardener there.

This year we are mainly relying on containers for our gardening. I went to our local nursery where they have a bin full of used containers. When people buy a potted plant, they can return the pot to the pile for people like me to come and borrow for a while. It's a great system. I have eight tomatoes in various parts of our yard. They are all doing well, which is a fabulous surprise.

I also bought our first horse trough to make into a container. It's an investment but I just think they are so pretty, and it should last forever. I invested in a good, organic, potting soil. I can really tell the difference between good soil and the rocky, sandy soil in the front garden bed. These beans are so lovely and strong while the ones out front are yellow!

Fork Wind Chime



We are having a pretty unstructured summer, but we did manage to make a Fork Wind Chime craft from our Earthschooling curriculum. I went to Goodwill and purchased forks. I tried to chose forks with fun designs on the handle or forks that were really light. We hammered the forks flat and then glued two forks back to back with yarn pressed in between. It turns out that we hadn't hammered the forks handles flat enough to to really glue the yarn between the forks well. So, I tied the forks together with yarn and then glued the yarn. You can see the yarn band near the wider part of the fork. When they were dry, we tied the forks to our stick. Of course this was really easy from Brother who is nearing seven, but quite difficult for the 3 year old. Brother braided three strands of yarn together to make the handle.

To be honest, the forks don't seem to swing in the wind, but we sure did enjoy making the wind chime.