It's not just bigger in Texas!

Have you seen my cucuzza lately?

     Well, here I am, typical sexy backyard look (no makeup, frizzy hair), showing them off.  I posted pics of them previously; the plants grew the season AFTER I planted the seeds, and produced these 2 squash.  I left them on the vine, planning to harvest the seeds, and when I checked on them recently, I was very surprised to feel how light they had become; they are drying out.  I brought them inside, thinking the boys would get a kick out of them and they did.  I'll go ahead and open the smaller one for the seeds as it was already dropped in a mishap and split but I'll let the bigger one dry some more and see what it does, just for fun.

     The crazy calabazas are setting fruits so I look forward to seeing those huge squash progress.  I must learn to eat more squash!  I gave a butternut squash to a friend this evening and felt a little relief that I wouldn't have to eat it myself.  I haven't mastered garden veggie variety yet.

     I was making my daily run to the compost bin and noticed that the giant caladium (I think) in the back corner of my yard is blooming.

     There's a part of me that wants to bring that sucker inside and put it in a "vase" which would have to be more along the lines of a crock to support it.  I long admired the giant caladiums growing in my neighbor's yard and one finally crossed the fence to officially become "mine".

     This plant gives me that "childish delight" feeling every time I see it.  I don't know if proximity to the compost bin gives it a boost; I haven't had much compost since I started letting the hens dig around in there. They treat it like a smorgasbord! 

     A while back the boys said they had "helped" me by cutting down all those big leaves.  I had a momentary "Whaaat?!" feeling but quelled it as I knew the plant would recover and they had a blast creating a lean-to with leaves and sticks.

     The blooms on the angel trumpet tree by the deck are astoundingly large and after sunset, astoundingly fragrant.  Each bloom, including its base, is about 16-18" long.

     The plant has done so well but we've had a few mild winters so I worry about the hit it will take when we get a protracted freeze.

     I miss the perennials from up north.  My little gardens produced beautiful bouquets and I haven't yet matched it here in Florida but I try to be creative with what I've got.  I made this one today with rangoon creeper, 2 kinds of orchids, a bit of sedum, and some stray fern fronds.  I think it turned out nicely!

     The character of my yard will continually change and it's fun to go back and see its  evolution.  Funny that for the plants I have that are really big, my citrus trees (planted 2007-2009) are still shorter than me.  Makes them easy to harvest, I suppose.

If you can't beat 'em...

  I can't officially say I practice xeriscaping since I don't rely on native species but in my yard, if you can't hack it, you're outta there!

     Here's one of my favorite agaves, a green and yellow variegated variety that I started from a pup I nabbed from an abandoned house.  The parent plant was massive so I have high hopes for this slow grower.

     I don't irrigate my yard and when the weather gets cold, you won't see me out there covering everything with sheets.  My plants have to be able to survive on their own.

     This agave was given to my by a friend.  It was tiny when I got it and has quickly filled out into this round shape.

     People have always complimented me on my green thumb but I freely admit that there's no skill involved.  I simply have a willingness to give up immediately instead of coddling a brown twig in the hopes that it will come back from the brink of death.  The minute a plant starts to fail it's off to the compost pile.  I might be so willing to give up because I rarely spend any real money on plants.

     This blue agave was another pup that had grown outside of a landscaped area and was on the verge of being discarded.  This plant will eventually be as tall as me but it's a slow grower and seems to use large amounts of its energy creating pups.  Stop, I say!  Focus! Grow!

     Here's my most recent start; yet another errant pup growing into the roadway from the landscaped area.  I spied it as soon as Mike and I parked and I said, "I have to go look at this plant!"  He knows what's coming so he averted his face and pretended not to know me.  The parent plant was huge!  

     A couple years ago a friend took me to an amazing succulent wholesaler and that was one time where I allowed myself to spend a few bucks.  The plants were so cheap compared to retail! Of course. These plants are obviously tough; my stepsons once asked, "Why are all your plants so painful?"

     I mix them up with a lot of different varieties because as much as I love them, I like other plants, too.

     Ok, maybe I should've drawn the line before filling a strawberry pot with aloes.

Say goodbye to your pride!

     As I've mentioned, I'm working with a very small budget currently, and pretty much for my whole life if the truth be told.  About a year ago I started collecting Coke Rewards points, found on the inside of bottle caps and carton tabs.

     The benefits are modest but after claiming a couple of free tickets to the movies with soda and popcorn I reduced my pride even further and started picking up caps from the street.
     More movie tickets and magazine subscriptions have made me fairly bold but occasionally I still hesitate as I did this weekend, when I spied a cap while exiting a busy Hess station.  It was directly at the feet of a rough looking young man who was draped over a parking pillar, sucking on a cigarette as if it were an inhaler.  I paused and as usual decided, "What the heck."
     He watched me closely as I leaned down to retrieve the cap then nodded and said, "Uhn-huh, take all you kin git, girl."
     I nodded at him.  Thaz right!
   

Of chickens and safaris

Everyone, it seems, likes the new walkways.

     I only have about 28' of walkway constructed and it's not straight or leveled yet, but all the creatures in my yard utilize it: chickens, dachshunds, and me.  That gives me the motivation to keep hammering, sawing, etc.  I do have a finished picture in my head movie.

 But how, you may wonder, will Aimee link this photo of her chickens with a memory from her long ago trip to Africa?  Keep reading...

     Here I am, journaling on a camp cot on the rim of Ngorongoro Crater in Tanzania in 1995, three years before I purchased my first computer, a see-through, grape colored Macintosh.  Oh, and I'm wearing a homemade shirt, lol.

     A man named Pascal was our consummate safari guide: professional, knowledgeable, unobtrusive while we clicked photos of every animal and insect we came across.  He spoke English with a mesmerizing accent that turned the word "leopard" into "lay-o-pod" as he regaled us with hunting tales over open-air dinners on the Serengeti.  Of course, none of us had any interest in shooting an African animal to death but we listened, rapt, nonetheless.

     One morning, heading out for a day of wildlife viewing, we came across a pride of lions walking down the middle of the gravel road; they only moved off into the grass when we got close enough to potentially bump them.  

     I asked Pascal, "Why are the lions walking in the middle of the road?" thinking they, as proud beasts, should prefer their grassy habitat.

     Pascal answered slowly, in that accent, "You see, they do not like the dew."

     Sometimes it's hard for anyone to resist the allure of that path of least resistance.

Keeping things in perspective

     I can't help but make jewelry out of fossils.  They come out of the river looking like little sculptures. I needed to invest in some gear, however.

     It may look like a lot but it's not.  Many of the beads come from necklaces I find at thrift stores;  I've found some nice garnet, amethyst, and tiger eye at Goodwill.

     I heard a story about a woman who mortgaged her house to buy beads to start a jewelry business.  Probably not a good idea.   For me, this is a hobby that satisfies my need to be creative and, yes, I have an Etsy shop now, so a little cash to support my fossiling hobby doesn't hurt.

http://www.etsy.com/shop/SolOpsArt?ref=search_shop_redirect

     Someone just bought the glytodon necklace I made.  Thank you, thank you!  Very exciting!

     I'm keep it in perspective and enjoying all the new things I'm learning.

A connection to the ancient past

      I've been working as a hair stylist for almost...gulp...30 years.  One of the benefits of the job, besides earning enough money to cover food and lodging, has been meeting a wide variety of people that I might never meet on a day to day basis, and getting to have one on one talks with them on a regular basis.  I have learned so much from my clients over the years and am grateful for that contact.

     Recently a client who, like all the others, has been patiently listening to me blather on about fossiling, told me that a friend of hers was clearing out his elderly father's fossiling gear in preparation for the sale of his house (the father, at 90 years old, is still going strong but moving into smaller digs).  I made an immediate phone call to my client's friend and was told I needed to act fast because everything in their garage was going to the curb the next morning.  

     Greased lightening!  I was over there!  And wow!  What an amazing gift!

I took home, for FREE (yay!), stacks of sifting screens, shovels, rakes, gravel probes, a brand new complete heavy wet suit (still had the tags on), a stack of reference books, etc. and, unexpectedly, old cigar boxes filled with broken arrowheads.

     I was told that all the perfect points (the proper term for "arrowheads" as only a fraction of these objects were used with a bow) from his decades of collecting were in his new apartment but I was welcome to the broken ones.  I was already stacking the boxes in my arms as I heard this.  

     Even broken, these are items of beauty.  Sorting through the boxes, I was inspired to watch a YouTube video of someone knapping a point.  It is labor intensive, time consuming, detail oriented work that ultimately depends on the invisible interior structure of the stone. Of course, there was no tv or internet back then and I suppose if you were hungry and just had a rock, you'd have some time to ponder ways to maximize your hunting ability.

     We don't often get a chance to touch something from mankind's ancient past so I've been grateful to have a chance to study, in close detail, a stone tool, made by hand, in a prehistoric environment.  It says everything and nothing.  I love to ponder the mystery of who made it, how it was used, and how it was lost.

     

     I have been drilling holes in some of these fragments and making them into necklaces.  Hopefully I will not be accused of disrespect.  Stone tools were used by all ancient cultures and being able to hold this fragment in my hand gives me a connection to everyone's prehistoric past.

Reading from the big book of upholstery swatches

     Many years ago, in a state far, far away, one of my friends worked for an interior design company.  The business handled stacks of upholstery swatch books which had to be renewed as old fabrics were discontinued, new fabrics introduced, etc. and many of the discarded books were given to me for use in craft projects.  Looking through the "pages" of fabrics was always a pleasurable experience.  The colors were deep and saturated, the materials plush, and the firm offered many natural fiber options so there were entire swatch books of silks, wools, linens, and cottons.

     Mostly I made quilts.  Everyone in my family got a quilt and some wall hangings, too.  It was a fun time and I missed having that rainbow of fabrics at my fingertips.

     Recently, however, someone saw my Facebook post regarding the wristlets I am making for my Etsy shop and offered me a couple of swatch books that she had in her storeroom.

     How exciting to once again have access to this treasure!  I hope I sell some zippered pouches because I can't wait to make more and maybe I'll even come up with other ideas for little projects although I must admit, my quilting days are done.  I like a mobil craft and knitting fits the bill for that.

     And now I must post a photo I took while riding my bike through town to pick up the gift of the swatch books.

     I've been driving past this display of swan planters for years.  That's a lot of swan planters.  If you look closely, you can see them stretching to the back of the yard on the left side of the photo.

The homeowner came out, deeply suspicious, and grilled me as to why I was taking a photo of her yard.  I didn't verbalize it at the time but if you're going to set your swan planters outside, next to a busy street, I'm not sure you have a lot of say over whether or not someone stops in the thoroughfare to take a photo.  I'm just sayin'...

Yes, yes, it's hot...

     I'm in the middle of my summer doldrums.  In Florida, the hottest part of the summer equates to the coldest part of the winter up north:  people tend to hide out inside, trying to avoid the weather, snuggling up to a hot cup of cocoa or an iced liter of sweet tea, depending on your situation.

     Normally I would do some surf fishing as the hottest day on the beach doesn't bother me, but I've been preoccupied with blogs and crafts and physically recovering from my fossiling season.

     Everyone's feeling a little beat down and grungy but I try to do at least one productive thing every day, even if it's as simple as folding a load of laundry.

     I venture outside between the hours of 8am and 8:15am, before it's too miserably hot and try to get the chickens situated, pull 3 weeds, and then run back inside to hunker down for the rest of the day. 

     The little green frog, above, stayed in that spot on the front of my house until nightfall.  That frog knows what's what!

     The view from my kitchen window is great because my patio plants thrive in crushing heat and humidity.  These are a couple of bird's nest ferns, a staghorn fern, and a collection of tillandsias (air plants).

     So I turn my vision inside and continue to strive towards mild productivity.

     I cut some rounds of fossilized deer antler with my Dremel.  I'm going to experiment with polishing them in a vibratory tumbler and if that goes well, I'll use them in jewelry projects.

     And then there's this stack of goodies I need to address.  These are the sides of drawers from dressers that were being thrown away.  Old dresser drawers are often made of oak which gives you a nice quality piece of craft wood for FREE...my favorite word.  I know what I'm going to do with these pieces; I just need to get it together and do it.  The branch on top is a piece of citrus wood I am drying out.  I would like to make it into beads but that would best be done on my nonexistent band saw...

     Oh, Mike...Christmas is coming...

Tastes like chicken

     It's hard to love a chicken.

Terrible things happen to chickens.

     Generally when I check on the hens in the morning and there are this many feathers grouped in an area I start looking for a carcass.  Just this summer I had my 9 year old stepson in tow when I spotted a pile of feathers on the ground inside the hen house.

     "Zach!  Run back inside and grab my coffee for me."

     "But..."

     "I need coffee NOW!"

     The 5 minutes it took him to retrieve my cup were all I needed to find poor old Frannie's body.  She was on her last legs, having lived a good life in my back yard, and some critter took advantage of her frailty to finish her off in the night.

     This morning's dusting of feathers, however, were not an indication of a tragedy.  I counted beaks 3x and everyone is present.

     

     Yes, Peregrine, stand tall and proud, even though you have crap smeared all over your beak.  

  Chickens are gross but I have a big yard and they aren't any grosser than my dogs.  At least the chickens don't try to lick my face after they've been gnawing on a dead, rotted lizard.

     It's hard to admit but I have yet to successfully raise an egg laying hen from a chick. The dangers are endless and come from directions I can't even imagine until it's too late.  One of the worst dangers being my gentle dachshund, Lilly.  She's terrified of the grown hens but show her a baby and Pavlovian drool starts flowing.  

     The next generation of layers is flexing its wings in a secure pen in my yard but it's too soon for names and attachments.  The last time I grew overly fond of a chick she was snatched out of the henhouse in the night by a raccoon that found a tiny opening in the chicken wire I had missed.  

     There is also the matter of not knowing for certain if all my chicks will be hens.  I am a creature of habit and always buy my chickens from the same place.  If I buy the hens as adults, there are no surprises but they will never be very tame.  The younger I get a chicken, the more tame and consequently, entertaining, it will be but the variables are greater.

     My worst nightmare after the fear of sudden chick death at the paws of animals, is that one of my "girls" wakes me up at 4am crowing at the top of her lungs.  I have my doubts about the one pictured above.  I've been told by the experts not to make any sudden decisions as adolescent chickens, much like all adolescents, will experiment with some behaviours before settling into adulthood.

      My neighbor from Trinidad is eyeing this one.  She wants to cook him up.  When I protested that he would be too small and tough, she replied, in that great Trinidad accent, "Oh, we like them like that.  We just use a pressure cooker."  

     Before I resort to that, I will ask around for a farm with room to let a beautiful, hand-raised, little rooster roam freely.

Working with wood and rocks inside

     With the exception of all the granite remnants lying around my house, I guess my current indoor stone projects are pretty much limited to making fossil jewelry.

     I've been learning how to wield the Dremel tool and figuring out which of the numerous little bits will accomplish the desired result.  I also bought a basic rock tumbler, not to turn shards into marbles but to polish some of the fossils and beach rocks a little better than I can easily achieve with the Dremel.  Back in the day, a friend gave me a barrel rock tumbler.  I used it, mostly with agates, but it was an exacting beast.  All the dire warnings about how even one grain of the wrong polishing grit would DESTROY all my rocks.  All the rinsing and scrubbing!  Ugh!  The fossils from the Peace River are, conveniently, already very smooth.  I just want to finish them off.

     My home wood projects became fairly involved once I bought my house in Florida.  I had taken to admiring the Asian and Southeast Asian daybeds I was seeing at the local import stores but the price tag put them out of my reach.  

     I had been playing around with simple wood projects for years and something compelled me to give it a try:  if you can't buy it, make it!

     I devised a full size daybed with a canopy to set in a corner of my oversize dining room.  I imagined myself reclining on it, gazing out my big glass patio doors.  One of my exes owns a small saw mill and works exclusively with untreated southern yellow pine.  His product requires knot-free boards so he ends up with a certain amount of wood waste, still perfectly nice boards.  Free wood is awesome but I still had to buy a lot: wide pine boards for the lattice and oak bannister rails to top the lattice and like a fool, I chose premium pine boards for the actual platform which no one sees because it is always covered with the pad that I bought at IKEA.

     I didn't have a plan and made little sketches as I went along and the thing is kind of uneven but you couldn't tell just by looking and I have gotten so much use out of it!

     But I wanted more...always more!

     I wanted a queen size platform bed for my room.  I hate box springs and never looked back since I started using platform beds.  I did a little more planning on this one but, like the boat builder that can't get his boat out of the basement, I started this in my guest room and quickly realized I couldn't get it through my doorways into the master bedroom.

     You can see on the leg in the foreground that I had to saw the bottoms off and reattach them with pegs once I got the thing into my bedroom.  The back leg is a little iffy so whenever I have to shift the bed for anything, I use the tire jack from my car to stabilize it first.

     This bed was planned to hold a queen size mattress from IKEA and it's my favorite mattress ever.  

     One of my friends jokingly said it looks like a crib but to me, it's a super comfy refuge from the rest of the world and I look forward to retiring there every evening.

     And check out the groovy wooden child stairs I found on the curb.  They make a perfect dachshund loading ramp.

Working with wood and rocks outside

      When I lived in Missouri, I dreamed of having beautifully aged terra cotta pots and garden rocks sporting a thick coating of bright green moss.

(A beautiful arrangement, plucked from a Canadian hillside, by an old friend)

     Now, living in Florida, everything has a thick patina of something or other and occasionally it's moss.  Luckily, I still enjoy the look of it.

     Some years ago I had the amazing good fortune to be included on 2 annual trips to a remote cabin in Canada with a group of amazing women.  Both trips were paid for in exchange for my skills as a gardener and rustic crafter.  I was pretty much given free range to work with some of my favorite materials:  rocks and wood.

     

     I built 2 arbors in that garden using rudimentary tools and saplings that I thinned out of the surrounding woods.  I got a little fancier with the second arbor, building on what I had learned after making the first.

     Hopefully, they still stand, covered with climbing roses and moon flower vines.

     I also gathered tons of rocks from the surrounding hillside and carefully stacked them in order to make attractive plants stands out of cement piers from an aborted building project that could not easily be removed.

     I think I ended up making about a dozen rock surrounds and getting pretty good at it by the end.

     I've tried to replicate these sort of projects in my Florida yard with limited success.  Untreated wood rots in about 2 seasons here so the only trellis I made out of oak branches, fell apart long before the bougainvillea could even start to cover it.

     I made this planter out of a piece of wood someone trimmed off their tree.  It's pretty much as I found it and it's doing ok outside but its days are numbered.

     And there's no rocks unless I buy them!  I've dropped some cash in the past at the local rock vendor and I just can't afford to do it anymore.  I treasure those rocks like I've never treasured rocks before and I also have some scavenged pieces of cement from places where an old sidewalk was being removed.  Still, there won't be any big rock projects in my Florida yard (unless it involves sheets of granite) for some time to come.

My Florida home and its inhabitants: the critters

Life in Florida is different.

     I live a very outdoor oriented lifestyle and I enjoy the blurring of the lines between outside and inside; whenever the scorching heat abates slightly, I throw open my doors and wander in and out.  Of course, lots of other things wander in and out, too.

     Thank goodness I have friends who are incredibly smart and attuned to life in Florida.  The only way I wind up doing a lot of the things I do is by riding their brilliant, adventurous coattails.  I also call on them whenever I need to ID a critter.  Case in point, the spadefoot toad (above) that wandered in from my patio during a heavy rain.  They mostly stay under ground but elevated water levels can bring them out into the open on occasion.  

     Jane assures me that the golden silk orb weaver is a very gentle spider and I have grown to admire them and their alien beauty, however, I'm not sure I would hold one unless Jane were there to calm me AND the spider.

     There are lizards everywhere and my understanding is that the brown anoles I see are an introduced species which has displaced most of the native green anoles.  Years ago, on a trip to New Zealand, I witnessed intense discussion regarding introduced species and what to do about them.  The driver of a car hit a small bird, pulled over to ID its tattered remains, coolly pronounced, "Introduced," and tossed it to the side of the road.  While I won't actively encourage more brown anoles, I think I'll just let them be.  P.S. They are fun to watch.

     I love a gecko.  When I disturb a clutch of their eggs, working in my yard, I bring them in to hatch.  See the little eggshell on the counter in the photo?  Geckos live in my house, only coming out to hunt in the dark but I always release the ones I hatch in a more natural environment outside.  

     There are lots of sleek, shiny skinks in my yard but they move so fast I have yet to capture one on film.

     I've only found one glass lizard but what a cool looking creature!  I uncovered it while shifting some mulch.  It has no legs so it resembles a snake.

     This is definitely a snake, no mistake!  I always have Florida black racers in my yard and I welcome their presence as they munch on mice and rats that snack on my chicken feed.  The biggest ones in my yard are a few feet long and while they are not poisonous, they can bite, so I give them a wide berth. 

     Baby black racers look very different from the adults and when I initially posted this pic on FaceBook, there was a lot of consternation that I had picked up a baby rattle snake.  Truth be told, this baby did bite me, leaving 2 teeny tiny specks of blood on my finger.  Lesson learned!  

     Lots of toads and frogs.  Every time I turn over a board or rock in my yard, I've disturbed a little toad's resting place and the frogs are hiding in all the nooks and crannies around my plants.  One time, before I could stop her, my older dachshund grabbed a toad in her mouth.  Maybe it did that peeing trick or it was covered in a nasty secretion because Schotzie dropped it immediately and began foaming at the mouth, running all over the house, rubbing her face against the furniture.  No lasting illness from it but she avoids toads now.

Lots...

of...

bugs!

     This giant katydid was visibly pissed at me for the photo session and eventually flew at my face.

    I could make a full-time hobby out of trying to ID all the insects in my yard but I spend enough time on Google as it is.

Native.

Introduced.