I have one happy cactus in my terrarium blooming away, one that wanted to bloom and I either missed it or it changed its mind, a few that are holding steady, one that slowly died, and one that bit the dust within days of replanting. I put up an artificial light that runs 9 hours a day (my choices are 3, 9, or 12), and water sparingly once a week. Here is the original post.
We recently had a pastry pocket party, with three different fillings in hot water pastry crust. I love the hot water crust because it is easy to work and stays strong. To differentiate the fillings, each one had a different pastry shape. Rectangular for the apple pie, round for the chicken with mozzarella and roasted peppers, and half circle for the beef and peas. I ended up making three batches of hot water crust, but wrapped each kind of filling in each batch. I would do it differently next time, only doing one filling per batch to go in the oven, and putting some kind of topping on each one, to liven up the crust.
When we cut off the ends of the grape vine for our hand railing, my eldest and I curved the ends into a circle and lashed them. It definitely took two pairs of hands, but they bent without breaking. The idea is that when they dry, I will trim them and make loops for either wreaths or other craft projects.
May the fourth be with you.
Here is another potentially edible mushroom in our yard: wood ear mushrooms. I did look it up, and one enthusiastic blogger described eating one as “crisp, followed by slither and slurp”. Um. No. I’ll file these with oysters and cilantro on my “thanks, but no thanks” list.
They are quite wiggly after the rain, and I quite like the soft brown coloration, but they can happily stay and do their decomposition job without fear of me gathering them up.
I took a walk in my woods with my phone and tried taking some more stereoscopic photos. These are all parallel view (I still can’t do cross view, and my eyes ache from trying.)
Here are my tricks when I’m having trouble merging the two photos to see the 3D image: take off my glasses or put them on, make sure there isn’t a glare on the screen, move the screen closer then farther away. There are some images that I simply cannot get the trick to work, sometimes it is the day or hour, and sometimes I suspect poor composition. My favorite stereoscopic (and stareograms) images are the ones so well done that it just pops together with very little effort.
Critters and Craft 