Fairy garden Sunday!

Well, yesterday my husband, Mom, daughter and I went antiquing in Arcadia, Florida. They have a sweet little downtown...a few blocks of shops and little restaurants, of which the one named Wheelers is the best ever! They have a full time dessert person who does nothing but make pies and cakes, etc. My Mom had Key Lime pie, my daughter had Chocolate Peanut Butter pie, and I had Butterscotch Peanut Butter pie! We had really intended to just go in for drinks since we were so hot and tired, and thirsty to boot! When we saw the list of pies, we caved in and ordered...but I think we were all glad we did. They were stupendous!
I was on the hunt for beautiful and colorful marbles, and some possible glittery items to add to my fairy garden. I read about how fairies really love the glitzy bling- stuff...from a new blogger named Sarah. She has made a wonderful fairy house, and enjoys it so much, reading her blog is delightful! She is only 13, and she is very crafty, and also writes fantastic poetry! You can find here at The World And It's Roses. I think I will start searching out blogs where fairy gardens reside, and make a separate section for my fairy garden friends!
OK...here is what I found...some tiny gold post-back earrings that I thought would make sparkly mushroom tops. I was going to make the stems from clay, but then I am not a waiting kind of person...I want something done NOW! So I spied some orange plastic straws in my kitchen and sort of cut them slightly on the diagonal and glued my earrings to the tops. My glue was dry enough in 10 minutes, and I was able to stick them right in the garden...and I like how they are whimsical, AND water will not bother them in any way!!! The fairies, particularly Tinkerbelle, who practically resides in there already fulltime, should be so happy!!!

This picture is blurry, but thought you might like to see little froggy hoppin around in there!

CLICK ON PICS TO MAKE BIGGER
This one you can see the mushrooms are just to the right of the house!

And here is a far away view of the whole garden. I can hardly believe those shamrocks are still thriving (the ones I pulled out of my Moms front yard)!!! The Arelias and English Ivy are going strong. I highly recommend them for low light situations! I have this garden in front of a window, but, sadly we have the curtains closed most of the time...I generally only open them on the weekend!

Good Saturday morning!

I am sitting here watching the sun come up this morning out my back window...something I get to do most days as I drink my coffee and snuggle with my Doozey! I made this ATC in honor of my little doggy. It is not her picture that I used, but a chihuahua from an old chi calendar...this one kinda looks like mine, but Doozey doesn't have the white on her nose. Anyway, I had to share this ATC here too, because of it's significance. Home Sweet Home, here in the United States. Where we are so blessed to have food to eat, and my heart goes out to the people in Haiti and other world locations who do not. It is in the moments like these, where we realize how TRUELY blessed we are in our fortunate circumstances, and watching a sunrise, and knowing it is also happening for people all over the globe, and I am praying that everyone who is hungry has a quality meal today, and that their situation can improve somehow. I also think of the U.S. Military, and how so many of them are far away from home and going through so much, and I hope and pray they will all be home soon, and this war can end. NOW. So...my little ATC brings all of these thoughts to my head, as I sit here with my doggy and watching the sun come up again, over my back fence!
I pray you all have a wonderful weekend!

Well, I did it!

Well, here is an all-too-familiar story. The one where you just feel compelled to stop somewhere on your way home from work, just to sort of check out the succulents, and maybe a new pot. Yeah, yeah, yeah...and then you know what happens. I found a nice pot for burying my crested baby, but I also found another crested baby (just like mine), so decided to plant two. Here they are with their stalks buried, to become giant roots. BTW, the new plant I bought was calling my name because it was sitting in a bag of water because they were in an open area, and it has rained every evening for the past week. I HAD to. Had to. Had to. I think they look real nice sharing their new pot together. Of course I removed all of that wet soil around the roots of the new plant, so it is so happy now. I am happy for them both!

Here is a littel orange colored lizard that Doozey and I found on our walk tonight. It is hard to see just how orange he was...he was a sort of bright rust color...quite pretty.

And last I got a shot of Doozey saying "Please don't take me in the house...I want to contine on my smell-o-walk"! That is what we call our leisurely walks where she is allowed to stop and smell all those lovely doggy smells around the neighborhood. When she gets back home again, she stops in her tracks outside on the sidewalk, and refuses to walk to the front door...she has to be carried up, because no good walk can ever last long enough!!!

Shipwreck!

I bought a copy of the 2008 Farmers Almanac, and came upon a recipe I tried tonight called SHIPWRECK! It is pouring rain here every night lately, and gives the impression anyway of being shipwrecked inside our own house! LOL. lightening, thunder and strong winds and rain outside!
If you happen to own a copy of this book, the recipe is on page 190. It is not vegetarian, but felt led to make and eat it anyway. Maybe I need a bit of B12!!!
Here it is:

Shipwrecked

1.5 pounds of ground beef
1 large onion, chopped
1 green pepper, chopped
1/2 pound mushrooms, chopped
4 stalks of celery, chopped
2 tsp. garlic, chopped
1.5 cups of water
2 beef cubes or beef boullion
1 28 oz. can of chopped tomatoes
1 cup of red wine (I used Merlot)
2 TBSP Worcestershire sauce
2 TBSP Oregano
1 pkg egg noodles
2 cups cheddar cheese

I have adapted the above recipe to the way I made it, which was perfect.

I had to load it all into a roasting pan to fit it...I dont think it would fit in a regular 9 x 13.

First brown the ground beef, and then add onions, celery and green peppers, and saute till soft. Add rest of ingredients, down to and including the oregano. Let bubble while you cook the noodles, then drain noodles and add to meat mixture. Pour into roasting pan and cover with cheese. Bake in oven on 350 for 30 minutes.

It was GOOD!!!!!

After I got it into the oven I drank a big glass of Merlot, and this added a lot of wonderfulness to the whole meal!!!

ENJOY!!!

Should I do it?

This crested THING (I like to call it that because it looks monstrous to me) is so top-heavy, I want to cut the top off and plant it directly into soil. What do you think...should I try it??? I like the color and shape of the top, and I think it would look really splendid in a pot all alone, basking in it's own glory...without that green stalk underneath it.

Free wildflower seeds!!!

I just ordered mine! Click here at Burt's Bees for your free seeds to encourage the bees!!!

A neighborhood walk...

I took Doozey for a walk, and decided to take the camera, and try and go with a theme! It turned out to be mushrooms and lichen! These first 2 shots are so neat...they caught my eye because they look like stapeliad flowers! Then I realized they are actually mushrooms (I think). They were growing inside a rotting part at the base of a tree. I will do the I.D. on all of these when I can and try and add them to the post later. Are these not the cutest little things you ever saw. I wish there was a way to get them into my fairy garden!!!

And a side shot of them!

And here is a close up of some lovely, quite frilly-looking lichen or fungus on the side of my Moms avacado tree! Looks sort of kale-like!

These are your standard approximately 3.5 inch mushrooms (the 2 largers ones were about this size)...growing in a yard that gets a little too much water in our water-restricted area, if you know what I mean!!! LOL...they are obvious rule benders!!!

This little tan-orange colored one was under a tree, growing in the dirt!

Here is an inch around circle of some sort of white powdery growth growing on the leaf of a palm frond. My neighbor pointed it out to me on one of his trees, where he finds them all the time (interesting...I wonder what it is)...

And that same neighbor pointed out this small mushroom that felt very slimy, in his grass!!! It was down in the grass, so I had to hold the blades open to get the picture! And...NO, this is not all fingers from one hand...I looked at this shot for quite a while...first wondering how one of my nails had gotten so long (I always keep mine cut where you cannot see any white on the tips), and then wondering who can hold their fingers in this sort of fashion (probably impossible), and finally realizing that that top right finger was not mine at all, but my Moms!!! LOL.

And lastly...a cute picture of one of the neighbors trees, with a cute face on the trunk!

And that concludes our interesting walk. I enjoy these things, which I find worrisome on my part...what kind of a person enjoys fungus kind of stuff??? Oh boy! Maybe it is just part of the succulent life!!!

Doozeys surprise!

Doozey got some new toys tonight after a terrible thunderstorm rolled through. I bought her a couple of dog toys made by TY, and they crinkle. She has had many of the yellow ducks over the years, but this is her first red, white and blue bone! She is pretty happy playing fetch tonight!

A new ATC!!

If you want to check out the first in a patriotic series (hopefully)...my newest ATC made today, by ME! The edges are straight, but I didn't have time to scan it, so I published the photo which always makes it look curved. Anyway, my daughter and I are on our way to do a little antique window shopping! You can see the new card HERE. Catch ya later...

A rainy day...

This is my automatic rainwater collector!!! I just pick it up, water the plants on my front porch, and done. Lately it has been filled every day by the time I get home from work! We have been having thunderstorms every afternoon since Monday, and you can see the leaf trash that I need to get cleaned out. Our grass here has all turned green and lush again...amazing after a full year of no watering here, and nearly no rain! I thought for sure my grass would be COMPLETELY gone, and surprise, surprise, it is still going strong. This would have been an expensive proposition to replace it...and believe me, all I could think of was rocks!!!!!

Doozey says hi!

After about 15 shots, I finally got one that wasn't blurry or a pic of her butt! She is constantly moving...right now she is staring me down to try and get me to play tug-of-war, or throw her toy so she can run after if for the millionth time in a row!

Good Wednesday night everyone. Work was rough and continuous all day again...no lunch on M-T- or W until 3:30 every day. Too much going on....but it won't last forever. When I got home, my hubby and daughter and I went over to a Jewish Deli for dinner...it was great, and I even had a bowl of matzo ball soup! Here is a pic of directly east out my back screenroom, where you can see the solid afternoon rains today...if you go this direction for 2 miles you would be swimming in the Atlantic Ocean! Never mind the telescope out in the rain...it has never worked...I found it, so it just sits out there all the time until I pitch it, but I kinda like looking at it...I think it reminds me of my Dad, who is no longer with us, but he was a dreamer and astronomer!!!

Thanks to Lovely Plantings , I found out the best watering schedule for my big beautiful Bronze Tea Cup hybrid aeonium!!! Doesn't it look splendid! It has a bit of rain on it from todays showers coming into the screenroom, but it needed more water, and now it is so happy and perky! It's leaves at times would get very droopy, and it seems to need more water than all my other succulents. These guys are from the Canary Islands, where it must either rain more, or maybe they are closer to sea level to where the roots stay wetter. I don't really know...just making dumb guesses! Hee hee. Anyway, I appreciated the advise she gave me, and so does Miss Bronzy!!! She is such a showoff, isn't she??? I try not to love things just for their out and out beauty, but in her case, how can I help it!!! LOL

Update on these darn (and believe me, I want to say a DIFFERENT word...LOL...Kitten Ears:
These things can come and go faster than cakes in my house!!! They look like shi-, and then start fresh again, and round and round they go...almost to being such a freakin pain I nearly want to throw them in a trash pile...but yet I can't. They are cute when they want to be. My Kitten Ears after about 1 year:

OK...here is something major! I have been waiting for these things to get big enough to take a photo of for longer than a year. I believe I have finally gotten a close enough and sharp enough pic to possibly have someone be able to I.D. them for me! I believe they are either a Haworthia or a Gasteria. If anyone knows...please feel free to let me know. It has been a mystery all this time...I do not find anything like this in either category of my succulent books. Thanks in advance!!!

And that's all folks, for today! Talk to you again soon!
Julie

Well, whadaya know...

I went out to sit by my daughter, who had downloaded a CREATURE CREATOR from www.spore.com (which is very neat, BTW, if you enjoy custom created creatures that you can bring to life afterward)...and I just sat and looked out my back windows and saw nothing but green. The fence has gotten covered with vines, my bushes along the fence, and the trees, all together just for some strange reason looked so beautiful to me this evening...at around 7:30pm, as the sun was setting, and everything just sort of glowed. Well, everything but the dead orange tree in my neighbors backyard! I don't know if I actually captured the glow here, but I tried to anyway! It just made me realize what a paradise I live in here in south Florida. It can be really lush and lovely at times.

I hope everyone had a wonderful day today. My week thus far has been extremely busy, and I am hoping for a bit of slow down soon! This is where I appreciate my blog and all of my blogger friends so much...I can come home, sit down and enjoy all of your updates and photos with my poor old legs up and sip on my Fresca quite happily! Gee, this feels good!!! Below is a pic of how my little wax beans are starting to come up. I took this 2 days ago, and tonight I counted 21 plants above soil and still more to come. I can't wait to see what happens. My fear is that it may get too hot for them...so I am just sending them all positive thoughts and words of encouragement...soon I may try singing to them...but they hear me talking to the lizards and whistling to the birds every morning out my kitchen window...and as I am so happily doing this, my husband and daughter are wondering which looney bin to call to come pick me up!!! LOL.

Home Sweet Lizard Home...

Many lizards are found basking in the sun on my succulent tires throughout the days, but today I walked out to take a few pics, and found this sweet little head poking out from the back of the tire...from a little home he made...can you see it???

Here is a close-up! He let me get pretty close, and seemed to trust that I wouldn't hurt him. I named him No Tale...(his tail is missing, and all he has is a stump!)...even though he probably would have some good tales to tell, if he could tell them to me!!! LOL.

The Universe saved an owl for me!

I had seen this owl planter at one of my favorite thrift stores last week, and passed him by. Now this week, I found him still standing where I had last seen him, amazed he was still there. I picked him up and found out he looks the same on the back as he does on the front! He looks like he was made in the late 60's to early 70's, and was designed to sit between two living areas so he could be seen facing you from either room! What a cool design. You know what I HAD to do...now he sits in the corner of my little Florida Room...and if I am ever sitting outside at my picnic table, I can see him looking out at me too (Well...if I move him a little to the right or left anyway)!!! He is planted with some of my beloved Fittonias!!!

I like to keep things on the small side!

This is something I have discovered about myself slowly over the years. I like small stores to shop in (I prefer Ace Hardware to Lowes or Home Depot), small restaurants to large ones...I like to live in a relatively small house, and I also have discovered that I like small gardening. I think this is why I am attracted to succulents in pots, or in my tires, and I also enjoyed planning, making and having my fairy garden. I love my rather smallish, colorful indoor plants, namely my Fittonias.

Here is a new shot of my Fairy Garden. As you can see I have kept the Aralia and Ivys going, and also, amazingly enough, a few of the transplanted Shamrocks! Tinkerbelle (or maybe her sister...I'm not sure)has sort of taken up residence, and seems fairly happy here. You can see her sitting on the black rocks in the front of garden...(click on photo for a close up).

A few succulent arrangements...

This afternoon I moved a few of my plants around...they had either outgrown their pots, or I had wanted to make an arrangement.

This is my zigzag cactus, or ric rack that I repotted. It is still looking good, and I love the way it grown and its shape...pretty neat!



Now, this is what I had been wanting to do...put these three star shaped plants together. They are all different colors and I think they look great together! The back left is my Dykia marinae lapostele, the back right is Haworthia limafolia, and the front is the Cryptanthus!



Now, I removed my Aptenia cordifolia (Baby Sun Rose)from it's doggy container, and put it all fresh in here so it could have more room to spread! It had some leggy peices, which I cut off and stuck back in...hopefully it will take off growing!



Here is my little curly-que plant which has yet to be indentified. The senecio varieties have not panned out so far, and I am still on the hunt...thanks to all who have taken shots at it so far...hey...feel free to keep looking...I am!!!



This plant is a Sedum furfuraceum...ain't it cute??? Hard to see with the Purlite laced soil. He was getting a little too much sun in the tires (note the fried far right end of it)...so have moved him to a pot on the porch.



And now doggy planter stands alone...waiting to see what his mommy puts in him next!

OK, I am breaking down and asking for help!

I have no idea what this plant is. It was sent to me as a cutting...I put it in some dirt and watered it a while, then I checked for roots...NONE. So, I brought it to my window ledge and trimmed the bottom off a bit and stuck it in a glass of water. It has been in the water about 1 month now, and I see it has finally put out a root! (See second photo). I am so excited, because the longer I have had this little sweet curly thing, it has grown on me, and I absolutely find it to be the cutest plant on earth! I have had NO, ZERO, NADA success in finding out what it is, and I am desperate at thins point! LOL. Well, I haven't taken it down to the botanical garden here yet, but I may today. Anyway...her she is (she is too slender and curvy to be a boy)!!! LOL.

Off the beaten path...

of succulents...

Just wanted to post about the amazingness of an Indian diet! So many wonderful vegetable recipes! Tonight we went out to an place called Saffron (Taste of Bombay).
I had a vegetable Biryani. Loaded with vegetables (green beans, peas, corn, carrots, onions, cauliflower, and mixed with rice, almonds, and lovely spices)...fragrant, and made like in the Royal Indian Palaces! It was delish!

For lunch I was at a Middle Eastern restauant, and had a wonderful cold salad made of lentils, and carmelized onions and whole garlic. This was like eating candy, the onions were so sweet. It had a drizzle of olive oil, and that was it. Wonderful.

All in all, I doubt I had more than 1200 colories for the whole day...probably less.

Being vegetarian for three days now has already given me more energy, and I feel happy and carefree! I never thought I could live without my meat, but I have, and feel better for it!

I am looking into some international recipes for a ton of variety!

Floating to the top!

I came home from work tonight and went around to water my tomatoes and bean seeds, and guess what I found? The bean seeds had come up out the top of the soil...they were opening up, and I suppose the action of that worked them upward, until some of them were laying on top of the soil. I made new holes and dropped them back down again! LOL. It was good for a laugh...they are very entertaining seeds! Maybe this means they will be very vigorous climbers, and hopefully proliferative too! LOL.

A vegetarian day!

I am proud to say that I stayed almost vegetarian the whole day! I did eat a little seafood at lunch (succulent grilled octopus, which by the way, was tender, blackened, and delicious), with mixed vegetables and a peice of homemade bread with honey butter on top, which was superb!
At dinner, one slice of cheese pizza with double mushrooms and fresh tomatoes, and then one slice of a dessert apple pizza. I know that part was adding calories, but I could not resist.
I want to stay with mostly vegetables, fruits, a little seafood here and there, eggs and cheese. I work with a woman who is very thin, and she follows this plan. And as our fellow blogger and Doctor, Green Thumb from India Garden states, it seems a healthy way to eat, which I am in need of now that I am in the over 50 group! I have lived a life of eating freely, and of everything I ever wanted, but I think the time has come to start to watch it a little. I want to see my grandkids graduate from high school and college now too!

Notes on cactus

I am currently looking at this LITTLE book called "A Passion For Cactus", by Jack Kramer. He uses so many adjectives to describe them, I had to share a few! Get ready!!!

Powerful, fierce, spiked, crested, armed, strange, exotic, bizarre, beautiful, jumping, dangerous, thorny, cursed, huge, small, barrel shaped, whimsical, globular, wooly, unusual, gnarled, weird, spiraling,vibrantly flowering,night blooming, fleshy, medicinal, edible, delicious, sculptural, spiny, rigid, columner, star shaped, cascading, fruiting, dagger-like, leafless, prickly, tall, small, dwarf, desert dwelling,rain forest dwelling, fearless, flat bodied, sharp, silk haired, pincushiony, erect.

Can you possibly think of any more???

BTW, according to this book, the only known instance of death by cactus was whan a man in Pheonix, Arizona who shot a giant cactus twice with his rifle, and a 23 ft. section of it fell over on top of him, killing him! This happened in 1984, and this book was published in 1995...I wonder if there have been any deaths since then?? I hope not. Please don't go around shooting at giant cactus! Of course, there is 0% chance of this happening in Florida...but be VERY careful out there in the west! LOL.

Fun in the yard

This is a hibiscus that had been neglected for years, probably. Please don't hate me too bad, Donna in Louisiana!!! I cut it back severely today, and cleaned out grasses, asparagus ferns (note, I refuse to ever capitalize this),and a stray cherry bush that had gotten started from a nearby plant. I think, while the hibiscus is re-growing out, I will look into getting some type of vegetable suitable for summer that will climb the fence here...it gets full sun all day and will be perfect. What do you think of a climbing green bean? I need to do some investigating to see what that would be! I always liked to get fresh green beans whenever I can, from my own darn yard! That's fun!
You can see the grass directly behind the fence that has had a broken sprinkler, and it is so dry...but further back green grass is present. I am going to start hand watering until it fills in again, until the darn sprinkler is fixed. The sprinkler man came out and fixed quite a few that needed help, but this one doesn't turn like it should, so it just shoots out a stream in one straight line...and this is going to be addressed ASAP.

This picture is to show the evil that lurks in my yard...asparagus fern...it runs rampant here, and is a pain in the tush to deal with since it will stick you to death dealing with it. So this is my evil corner!

This Flippin Flapjacks has had a few leaves shrivel and disintegrate, but I see also that there are new leaves coming out...how cool is that...(I'm happy).

And last but not least, look how tall these suckers grow. Another Kalenchoe. I am wondering if it would look good if I put peices of it in each hole of my strawberry pot, and in the top as well. Would it get too tall and crazy looking, or would it look really neat? I can't decide. What do you think?

OK...I am getting off the computer and...

going outside right now to find something really juicy to post. I should be back in a few hours. My hubby is mowing the lawn, and I am going out to trim some of my hibiscus and lantana bushes, and get some weedy vines pulled out. Where is my Round Up??? I mean serious business today! Be back shortly...
Julie

It's all over now, but the crying...

Graduation was Thursday night, and now my last baby (age 18) is a grown woman, and about to start college. I'm not really crying, but the only thing that keeps me from it is that she will stay home and attend college. YEAH...I need my computer genius to keep me techologically able. LOL. The other graduates Moms and I decorated the room for the ceremony and dinner. It was really great. Another memory to keep for my old age, which seems to be forever approaching! I'm on the other side of the hill now.