Our spring rains have made for happy plants in our yard. We have two crossvine areas that have hundreds of buds and are now bursting into bloom.
Crossvine explosion
Fancy Pillbug
I was fixing a leak in the watering drip system in the front garden when I spotted a rolly polly with green markings! I’ve seen the dark gray common pill bugs, I’ve even seen these terrestrial crustaceans half light gray and half dark gray, but I haven’t seen these markings before, like they were painted with ritual paint. Neat.
Strange egg shape
This egg is nearly round. I’m not sure what caused my hens to lay a round egg, when I cracked it open it only had one yolk. It also happened on a day that six of the eight chickens produced an egg, which is unusual. My hatchery quality Faverolles usually lay every other day or so.
Better as a decal
I bought some temporary tattoo paper actually designed for inkjet printers (see my fail post here). I still had to leave the prints out to dry overnight (the instructions said an hour, but I didn’t find that adequate), but the ink stayed where it was put. These temporary tattoos come with an adhesive sheet, which had a small learning curve, but not too bad. I tried one on my arm and … meh. Even though it is thin, it isn’t thin enough to mimic a real tattoo; it is more like a plastic bandage, wrinkles and all. Hm. I tried applying one to a glass sheet out of curiosity and tada! We have contact.
This is an intriguing use of material. The current limitation is that the surface needs to be water resistent. In order to remove the backing, it has to be dampened with water, which could potentially wreck havoc on paper items. Experiments continue.
Phew
Covering my container garden with a sheet of plastic (ok, it is a clear shower curtain) helped keep the basil alive during our cold snap. The plants didn’t go unscathed; there are some brown spots and browning at the tips of some of the leaves. They look hale enough to grow, though.
