Straw Bale Goodness & Monster High Doll

Now onto good things, and let us leave the bad things behind us. I’ve been throwing myself into new things. The doll project (I’ve paused in painting because my anxiety has made my hands shaky and the quality of work is suffering). This is what I have so far painting wise. It will require refining

I have to refine the smoothness of the irises, and add detail, lines etc. She also lacks
eyelashes and whatnot. But this is layer 2. There are a few more layers to go.
When my hands steady themselves.

. Now onto the great garden experiment.

We live at about 1200 feet in a rain foresty part of the Mount Hood Wilderness. We are only a few steps away from the Sandy river, which is a lovely background rush that we enjoy.  There are lots of trees. It's dark.  However a few years ago, our neighbour hacked down the trees in his back lot, and made a garden, opening up the area in our back yard.  Then our septic died and we had to have it redone, leaving our back yard a moonscape. It's been kind of messy back there for a while.

Well, I've always wanted a garden. The soil here is mostly volcanic sand from the last lahar from Mt. Hood's eruption 200 or so years ago. The soil has difficulty holding organics. Planting things just for an ornamental garden is a challenge. My dream of a lush English garden will not come to be here. Ony natives really thrive. And some really scraggly grasses. We get trillium, and oregon grape and ferns, and in summer, foxglove pops up everywhere. The neighbour brought in tons of manure and compost and tilled up his garden into a lovely fertile patch. But he still has issues with the shorter growing season because of the elevation and location.

I read an article on straw-bale gardening, and for a few years now, I've talked about it.  My hubby decided it was time I got my garden (he still says no to chickens though). So we went out and bought six bales to start with. We also put some tires my sister left here to use for garlic and potatoes.

Here's the garden as it stands: 

I will be adding herbs in pots as the growing season progresses. I have rosemary
as of now. I'm hoping this one will live. Hubby got me some hazelnut/filbert shell
much to make the ground around it nice and dry and mud free. I love it.
We need to clean up the moonscape still, throw away the old grill and trim
the wild grass. But the garden is a start. 

I've dedicated one tire bed to garlic. I loves my garlic.  The other tire bed is only
half constructed, and I will be breaking it down to start the potatoes.

I wil add a tire and soil every few weeks to keep the plant growing upwards, adding
depth to the space where the potatoes grow. In late summer, I shoudl be able to
remove the tires and harvest the potatoes all the way down to the ground.

The seeds I planted are quicky coming up.
I think I overdid it in the radish department. 

So excited to see these little guys grow.

My green onions are coming up too! So cute.

Peas are coming up. The strings are at the ready for them to climb on.

Pretty little baby radish. :D

This year is the great experiment. If this works, we'll add to the bales next year, and add more crops. I've already planted the carrots, cauliflower, cabbage, onions of a few varieties, garlic, leek, asparagus (that won't likely yield until next year). There are other seeds waiting their turn. I'm hoping this won't be destroyed by opportunistic raccons or deer. So far, they seem to be doing well. :)

Foiled and Used!

Yes, my ability to post new office specials has been severely hampered by some doom & gloom rumours at work. You see my company is clamping down on rampant internet use as another added reason and excuse to kick people to the curb. You see firing someone is infinitely cheaper than laying them off, so they have their minions out and about looking for firable offenses.

I heard it through the grapevine through a fellow geek in the IT Department that they will begin tracking individual user's internet time, and use that information when it comes to review time. Pretty evil, isn't it? Considering how quickly I can stamp out an office special, type out some fairly random post to accompany it, and be on and off blogspot -- I shouldn't really be concerned, but since they do probably log visited sites, and here I am logging on to a blog during my work day, I suppose it can be construed as my being naughty. Heaven forbid!

Anyway, that is in part made posting during the day a no-no, and by the time night rolls around, and I've got the dogs let out, fed, let out again, dinner cooked & eaten, dishes cleaned, a load of laundry done or picked up all the dog toys strewn all over the place, some eviscerated and their fluffy guts spread all over kingdom come... I'm usually not really thinking all too much about blogging. In fact, I usually remember the next day, at my desk, while sitting down with a fresh cup of green tea, thinking "This would be a great time to draw an office special.. Oh, waaait... Riiight. I have some new drawings but they're at work and unscanned.

OH WELL. I'll make do I suppose. Damned IT spies.

I grabbed my camera this evening, after I fed the monsties, and took some pictures of some of the interesting blooms that are busy showing off right now. My day lilies are in that stage where they bloomed spectacularly, and now he blossoms are shriveled and ugly, and the next ones are still all alien-pod-like... so I couldn't grab those... but here are two of my favourite delicate flowers that I adore.

This is my Crocosmia Lucifer. Loverly isn't it? The red is so vivid and saturated it's almost hard to imagine it's natural.


The Gaura is probably more common. Despite it being hailed as a great plant for well drained soil and direct sun, I have had very little luck with these plants. This year I just crammed it in the base of the wisteria pot this year, and hope that it'll survive. I've tried various colours and types of Gaura in the past years, including a really pretty variegated one that died immediately. As my Master Gardener coworker says; "more will die than will flourish." Thanks A LOT. I want these to work because I just LOVE LOVE LOVE the delicate little butterfly flowers that flicker around when there's the slightest breeze.

O.C. (Yes, Orange Cat... that's his name, we are Soooooo original, and he's not even ALL orange, he's orange in spots, and his orange spots are really tabbied up) has been coming back. Tonight, I went outside to take the flower pictures, and I hear the persistent, persistent meowing of the 'oh, I'm so shy, let me take hours to come to you but once you touch my head and pet me in the tiniest way I'll follow you around rubbing all up on you and meowing incessantly until your head explodes' cat. So I tossed some kibble in his little bowl, because now he has a freakin' bowl... Remind you of another post I once made? (being bamboozled on a smaller scale) and he just totally crammed his head in there and just hoovered it.

Then when me ate every last kibble in the bowl, he's like... PET ME SLAVE! MEOW MEOW MEOW... So I comply like some stupid robot, which he is just mega-kitty-delighted, rolling around, purring, stretching up his back in that Halloween cat thing... then he's like. Yah, thanks, later lady. Off he gingerly tippy toes away in his kitty-user way. Cats... I know there's a reason why I don't like them as much as I like dogs. There's a word for creatures like that in French: Le Profiteur. Or maybe Sale bête is a more apt description.

Either way, I always walk away from OC encounters feeling like I just threw on my clothes, stuffed my underwear in my purse, and ran home after that questionable one-night stand. Damned cat.

A Friday Garden Stroll

I got home this evening and had to snap some pictures of the garden.


The stupid rose I can never kill. I keep trying and it keeps coming back. It's wedged into the foundation--so it's impossible to pull without digging through the blueberry roots. I'm not a huge fan of high-maintenance hybrids. I prefer natives. This one is defying me.



The Huckleberries are still producing. Such a lovely colour.


The millionbells seem to like the windowbox outside the kitchen window.




The Foxgloves are all over the place this year. They line the highway and grow all over the yard.



The birdhouse is now vacant of the little family that occupied it this Spring.

My Uninteresting Evening...

I got home last night determined to get a baby squirrel that's started frequenting our corn-cobs on camera. He's so cute, and Marmee Craft's recent squirrel post inspired me to go out there to capture the cuteness. I was successful! The little bugger was there when I got home, so I grabbed my camera and chased him around the tree a few times. He wasn't pleased. He made the little whiny "peeew--peew" noises at me, and postured a bit. He's not very imposing; he could easily fit in my hand.. and his tail is not even fully fluffed out yet.

After harassing the baby squirrel, I went inside and got a bonnet I wanted to get on camera to show someone, so I figured I'd take advantage of the remaining daylight to get a decent picture of it. So I took it out to the fence and took a picture. It's a bonnet for a little girl, so it's really small and cute. I simply had to use pink... I had no choice in the matter ~ it's for a little girl, after all.

I then went around and snapped a couple of other photos of the rainy garden. The three that really stood out were the really bold coloured rhododendron flowers, my slowly unfurling hostas finally waking for spring, and the old-man's beard that has taken residence on our fence. That stuff really puffs up and proliferates during winter and spring.

Otherwise, it was a quiet evening of bonnet-making and dog-tormenting. With hubby away, I have to pay special attention to the dogs to make sure they've been properly rumbled with, and Simon has had his toy tossed for retrieval the requisite number of times each evening or he won't let me sleep. :)

The Weekend Rounds

Wow. I'm tired this dreary Monday; I must simply grumble about it. I had a busy weekend. I started it by creating a stovepipe bonnet for my friend Tara. I usually have few issues with them; but I guess when I'm making one specifically for someone else, the laws of the universe change completely and the most basic tasks end up being the biggest challenges.

That bonnet fought me from the beginning. I'm still angry at it. I can't look at it for the accomplishment that it is, but for the unending issues it presented to me. From the angle of the brim to the fabric I chose, it was a pain in the butt. The only thing that made the project redeemable was the cost (which was disgustingly low... the most expensive things were the feathers...) It still has issues that irk me. If Tara doesn't like it, it's going on ebay; and maybe the next one won't be such a pain in my rear end. I'll post pics of it soon. I still need to figure out how to deal with some flaws. Urgh.

I did manage to take a stroll around my garden this weekend to take a 'growth' assessment. At my elevation, I'm about 2 weeks behind the Portland area; so things are still in an earlier stage of growth. I was pleased to see that all of the mason bees had hatched out of their straws and tunnels. I was hoping to be quick enough to remove the straws this spring, because they're ugly, but the bees have already started repopulating them with their egg-cells, so I guess they'll get the straws for another year.

Hubby made them a whole new house; a foot-long length of 4x4 peppered with holes. They are busy, buzzing all around my head when I'm out there, sweet, quiet little black bees, going about their business. They have some sources of pollen; the cherry blossoms have fallen, but a few other plants have put out flowers, and I planted some million-bells last week (gasp... I actually spent money on annuals... a whole $6!!!). I never normally even look at annuals at nurseries, but I wanted a little punch of colour for my window boxes to enhance my sedum-scapes.

I saw some hummingbirds about on Saturday, and we have new visitors, huge band-tail pigeons have started to frequent our feeders. They're giant; like a good-sized crow almost. I like their cooing, it's really soothing. They show up in couples on the most-part but we got a flock of them Saturday afternoon. They're pretty funny-looking, with little pin-heads and big bodies with huge orange feet. Cartoony almost.

Sunday, we did the mother's day rounds. My mum is 3,000 miles away (thankfully); and she was taken care of with a phone-call. My husband has his mom, grandma and sister to consider; so we made visits most of Sunday. I then watched 'Cranford' on OPB (Oregon Public Broadcasting); and then a few episodes of Buffy (I'm doing the annual Buffy-Binge... The Jane Austen marathon comes after that...). I went to bed late, and am now suffering for it. ::yawn::.

It was a busy but uneventful weekend; and obviously this post is quite dull because of it. ::hee hee::. I get few quiet weekends anymore where I can just stay home and craft. Hubby complains too much about my crafts taking over the house.

A healthy obsession

I am obsessed with sedum. I know, it's weird, but I can't go anywhere with plants without roving the area with my sedum-seeking radar, looking for varieties I don't have. I'm also a sedum thief. I have a quick hand, and I can pinch a piece off with ninja-like speed and reflexes. I will ferret them away with a dampened paper towel from the nearest restroom, and stick them in the first opening I see in the various containers I have in my garden.

I don't really draw a line to my sedum placement or volume. Aside from being tossed into my many flower beds as ground cover, I also have a number of special sedum planters, including an old chair, the bottom half and flue of a terracotta chiminea, my window boxes, and a little metal pan that sits on an old rocking horse I have on my deck.

I love them. Some bloom, others don't, but the riot of texture and tones floats my boat. Some thrive, others struggle, but in the end, in early summer, they're dense, lush and colourful. And so low maintenance to boot.

This winter took its toll; not only on my sedum collection, but on some of the containers. My lush sedum chair has been reduced to a stubbly, sad looking mess, and a number of my tiny hens & chicks have died, but some still cling on, and fight to gain footing again.

They are great plants. They make perfect window-box plants because they don't mind being dried out sometimes. There are varieties that will hang down over the side, varieties that bloom, that look like dense flowers with reddish and purple tones. They propagate so easily, a cutting, a pinch turns into a huge mound of living matter. I truly love these plants. :)

I recommend these plants for the not-so-great gardener like me. I have visions of a cottage garden, which has been a challenge with my sandy, organic-poor soil, but my sedum gardens have never failed me. You can buy some in early spring, and by summer, they'll be bursting over the edge of your containers. If you forget to water them once in a while, they won't wilt and die. And when you look at how lush and green they are, and your containers are dripping in them, you'll feel very accomplished indeed. Go to your local nursery and give them a whirl. Once you start, you won't stop. You'll become a sedum addict and you will find yourself pinching pieces off of plants in your friends' and public gardens.