Feeling Crafty

I suddenly realized that my supply of birthday cards was getting low. I made enough before we left Georgia to get me through the May birthdays, but now it is June, and we have a bunch of grandkids with summer birthdays.  So today I set up shop on the dining room table and replenished my card supply.

Since I was a little girl, I have always collected and pressed flowers.  All my phone books have dried flowers between the pages.  When my sister, Mona, taught me how to do collage, I found an outlet for all those pressed flowers.

Of course, "real" collage uses paper, not pressed flowers, so I always try to make a card now and then with only paper.

But ever since I started doing collage, anything that can be flattened and dried gets incorporated into my style of collage.

By the end of the day, I had sixteen new cards, complete with envelopes.  When a grandchild has a birthday, I add a picture of them from the past year in the middle of the card.

Projects, Projects

We came home this year determined to clean up all the deferred maintenance around our Washington property.  This involved a bunch of very hard and unpleasant tasks.  We built the hot tub building around a huge cooler that we had salvaged from one of our past lives when we had a bakery.  After a couple of rations of "fixing" it at $700 a crack, we decided it was time for it to go.  That is when we found how sturdily it was built.  In the end, Ron used the chainsaw and a splitting maul to break it down into small enough pieces to remove from the building.

 The cooler joins an old range from our guest cottage, gutters from the log house in preparation for the new roof that is going on in August, and the old furnace from the basement of the log house in our front yard.  

 Fortunately, we know a guy who recycles things, and he came by with a big trailer and hauled it all away for us.

Except the three glass doors to the cooler that I saved to make more raised beds.

Now I have a place to start seedlings in the spring.

Deferred Maintenance

There is a problem with coming back to Washington at the first of May.  The ten acres that Ron mows always takes a couple of times through to look like a golf course again. 

This year something had destroyed the electrical line between our guest house and the well house.  We suspect the moles - so after digging a 950 foot ditch (mostly with the tractor) we decided this time we should encase the wire in conduit.

Fortunately, I had cut out the old raspberry canes before we left in the fall, but I did have three long rows of strawberries to weed while Ron was working on the well problem.

I planted the entire garden within a week of being home, so until the weeding cycle starts, I am going to concentrate on thinning the apple blossoms, pruning the grapes, and weeding flower beds.

The dahlia beds are nearly done - just in time as the new sprouts are popping up everywhere.  I decided to quit fighting the Comfrey and let one small patch grow - maybe I will even figure out how to use it this year!

Dinner at Amy and Dan's

Our first weekend home Amy and Dan invited us down for one of their special dinners.  

They work together to produce an amazing meal!

One of Amy's specialties is homemade pasta.

We got reacquainted with our granddog, Tillie, too.

Today I repotted the beautiful Gerber Daisy Amy and Dan got me for Mother's Day.

Visiting in Eastern Washington May 2012

On our way home, we stopped in Eastern Washington and visited our son and his family.  They have been busy building a greenhouse, a fence around the garden, and new raised beds within the garden.  Tony and I are competing for the most expensive tomato we can raise, factoring in all the improvements it is taking to grow vegetables properly.

New raised beds and fence to keep out the deer.

New greenhouse - it was toasty warm inside on a sunny but cool day.  Lots of plants already started inside.

Tina's ladies - looking for a handout, but producing 8-10 beautiful brown eggs every day.

Tony

Tina

Jesse with his giant cat, Squeezy

Sara

We went for a walk looking for wild asparagus and to admire all the new flowers and emerging plants in the woods.

Interesting rock formation in T&T's woods looks like a smiling ghost.

Quick Compost

In the olden days we used to get a dump truck load of chicken manure from a local chicken farm (there were several to choose from) for around $20 a load.  When we had our own dump truck, my garden was lush and beautiful every year.  When the truck got too old and we disposed of it, we had a local trucker bring the manure every year (he charged twice his normal fee and did it as a favor as the manure is very fragrant and hard to clean out of his truck completely).  Those were the good old days.  


I still plant a cover crop of winter rye every fall and till that in when I get ready to garden in the spring.  I still keep a compost pile that I put in the garden every spring, but my garden is large, so I can't make enough compost. I have had a hard time finding enough nitrogen for proper fertilization, so when I read an article in a Florida gardening magazine for "quick compost" I decided to give it a try.

You can see the winter rye that I have tilled in in the background.  I used one of my raised beds for the experimental composting project.  First step, weed the raised bed - second step - put 50 pounds of "cheap" dog food in the 6' x 3' (apx) area. Cheap being a relative term - this bag was nearly $20 at Costco.

After spreading the dog food evenly over the entire area, I applied the 35 pounds of "cheap" clay cat litter.

The recipe called for 25 pounds of alfalfa pellets - but no one seemed to carry those, so I used a one cubic yard bag of steer manure (the only cheap thing I found for this recipe at a dollar a bag) as the accelerator.

Then the back breaking job of turning all of this until it was fully mixed with a shovel.

Final step - cover with layers of newspaper 

Actually, the final final step was to wet everything down good, but fortunately, it rained hard all night, so I was spared that step.  

This better work!!

Sights around Salt Lake City

We came to Salt Lake City to see our son, Cameron, and his family.  Here he is with his son, Gavin.

Our daughter-in-law, Anne, with Gavin on the train from the Gateway Mall where we parked to the City Creek mall which is downtown right opposite the temple.  

The mall is absolutely beautiful - the creek runs all through the mall, with waterfalls from one story to the next and pools here and there throughout the mall.

We walked all around the mall on the outside of the shops that ringed the walkways.

Every major retailer seems to be represented at the mall.

And some that I wasn't even familiar with.

There are fountains all over the mall, and all of them are accessible for children to get wet.  It was a hot sunny day, so lots of kids in the fountains.

We had lunch at Kneaders and had to stand in line there were so many people coming to the mall for lunch.

Gavin is beginning to warm up to both Ron and I.

Just in time for us to be on our way again - this time heading for our last stop in Tonasket on our way home to our Washington home.