My nasturtiums bloomed! However, they are not climbing nasturtiums. I was rather hoping for a nice shady vine to climb up the chicken coop, but alas, no. These are about 18” high with no signs of tendrils or runners. I’ll have to try for something vining next year. However, they are pretty and smell nice. They don’t taste of much, though. The leaves remind me of lily pads.
I have baby basil and potential strawberries! Hurray!
Waiting for the outside cat to finish her dinner (she needs a guard while she eats because of Big Orange Tom), I was distracted by the honeysuckle runners reaching into the grass. So I grabbed a knife and trimmed the stems that were going out of bounds, which left me with a dozen or so long bendy pieces. The cat was still eating, so I made an attempt at a basket. I laid out six of the thicker stems as my spokes and used the other stems to twine around the spokes. When I ran out of material, I wove in the tops of the spokes. Huh. I can make a basket. There we go. The cat was long gone, at this point.
It is a rough little basket, but was straightforward enough that I looked up honeysuckle basket making online for more information. It turns out the best recommended time to harvest honeysuckle vine is in the fall, and once harvested, the vines can be stored. Then the traditional method is to boil the vines to kill any bugs, assist in removing the bark, and make the vine more pliable before making a basket. So I’ll give that a try this fall.
To all who mother. Here is my mother’s day gift: a strawberry pot with strawberry plants! I picked it up early, but the plants seem to be happy next to the cucumber jar, which is an old glass tea jar. The tea jar has a hole where the spigot used to be, so drains well. Time will tell if the cucumbers like it. There is more sunlight here than in the previous location. The water comes from my rain barrel, which was my gift last year. Yay growing things.
I’ve been holding onto some empty helium tanks, determined that I can recycle or upcycle them, rather than take them somewhere for recycling. My idea was to turn them into outdoor planters. So I got out the angle grinder and fit it with a metal cutting blade, then clamped the tank into my work bench so it wouldn’t wiggle.
It wasn’t hard to cut the top off; it took longer to grind the edges so they weren’t vicious sharp. I did what I could with the angle grinder, then used a file. I then flipped the tanks over and drilled drain holes with a stepped drill bit. While my youngest wanted me to leave them pink, I just couldn’t do it. I used black and silver spray paint to obscure the writing.
When the paint was dry I filled them with dirt and set up some extra drip line. I put onion seeds in one and watermelon seeds in the other. We’ll see if anything grows! At least they look good.
Critters and Craft 