Well that is surprising. The strawberry plants I had last year have come back! The rosemary bush is bigger, so I’m not sure how much light they will get, but yay for their return!
The strawberries return
Month: April 2020
He liked it so much…
Our dog Griffin really likes his egg crate foam bed, so I made him another for his “place” (dog kennel). Since I am limiting my brick-and-mortar shopping, I bought a twin sized egg crate foam mattress topper online, cut it to size, and sewed a cover out of an old sheet.
This is the first sewing project that I have made time to do in weeks. But now that the CDC is recommending cloth masks for grocery shopping (yes, I’m a little behind the news, it is healthier for my sanity), I will try to make some masks.
Spring flowers
I no longer need to have spring flower envy for my neighbor’s beautiful bluebonnets, Indian paintbrush, and forsythia. We have our own flowers! And it really isn’t surprising that it is all the shade flowers: columbine and shamrock. Our property is very shaded. We have crossvine too, which does fine in shade, but better in sun. We do have some honeysuckle blooming, some speedwell, and a daisy that my youngest picked out two years ago that turns out to be a perennial. It will be interesting to see how the meadow does. I seeded bluebonnets, but we had only a couple flower this year. I didn’t reseed any other flowers, so we are looking to see what reseeded itself. The columbines in the front bed have done a great job of reseeding, and may manage to take over the whole bed eventually, which would be awesome.
Laminated feather book marks
What to do with those feathers that the kids collect outside? Or in this case, the feathers that my eldest decided to keep because our inside cat managed to snag some off a bird from INSIDE her catio. Rather a badge of honor, that. How about laminating them and making a book mark? Any potential pathogens are sealed in, and frankly, we can never have too many book marks. I think this one came out nice; the small feathers arranged and cut out to be part of a larger feather shape. The natural caught in the unnatural. I placed the feathers between the two layers of plastic, gently fed it through the laminator, then cut out the shape. I have a hot laminator, but I think this method would work with cold lamination, or even clear sticky tape.
We also did this with the feathers from our chicken’s first molt.
Going on a bear hunt
I’ve seen great posts about people putting out bears, so kids walking the neighborhood can go on a bear hunt while social distancing. What a neat idea! We have some scrap corrugated metal, so I thought I would try a cut out bear (that would stand up to the elements).
First, this stuff is sharp. If you do try this, wear gloves. Thick ones. Preferably leather. I used metal shears to cut the shape and made the bear as big as possible to make cutting easier. After I cut, I hand sanded the edges and removed as many sharp bits as I could. This is definitely something better seen than touched! I painted the back with black spray paint, but I kind of liked the look of the shiny wavy metal, so left the other side as is.
Although my family all identified the shape as a bear, I feel it looks a little bear/hog cross. Maybe the kids in the neighborhood can go on a guess-the-creature hunt.
Critters and Craft 