the masked avenger rides again

Its been raining on and off for about a week now. More on that off. However the sun is still sending out those UV rays, so Cass and her pink nose needs all the protection she can get.

The idea of running around behind her in the paddock with a tube of sunscreen twice a day like a Greek mother chasing a kid in the park to get it to eat its lunch... well, I wasn't interested.

I just bought her some sun protection gear. Here she is modelling her new fly veil with nose flap and her light summer rug.

The really does look like the masked avenger!

The rug isn't so white any more either...

Today was the first sunny day in ages and they say it'll be warm and sunny all weekend. Great. The lawn is growing an inch a day at the moment. I need to get out there and attack it with the mower and brushcutter.

My back is much better. My new exercises call for a long rubber cord and somewhere to tie it. Who knew the pole in the middle of the living room would actually come in handy for anything other than pole dancing?

I just need to blow up the exercise ball (yes, I found it in the casita). Unlike a lot of other things I can't find. Like my glasses. I've been looking for them for about a week now. I took them out of the car (my first mistake) and haven't been able to find them since.

Then again, I did find Wayne's passport. He'd been looking for that for 3 years. He thought I'd hidden it so I wouldn't take him to Greece with me. (I hadn't, but it was handy.)

I've been busy lately with organising stuff for 2 markets I'm doing. The Shabby Market next weekend and Lazy May's Market the week after. There's tons to do and I'm all over the place. I really do need to make things every week, regularly. That way I can avoid this madness.

When I'm away from home I can think of exactly what I have to do. I write lists of things I need to do, sketch ideas, make notes. Then I come home and even when I look at the lists I can't seem to get stuck into it.

I blame spring. The lawn. The plants. The seedlings I planted and look at every day to see how they're going. Somehow the good weather and the garden weasel their way to the forefront and sitting in front of a sewing machine or using power tools and paint brushes just can't compete.

It won't last. Soon as the weather gets hot I avoid the outdoors like the plague. That's when I'll get stuck into more art as well.

That's my story and I'm sticking with it.

Just for fun, here's a gorgeous photo of the sky one morning last week.

z

hanging baskets - prettying up the boring side

You may remember when I put the crates on the driveway side of the house as window boxes. I love them there. That side of the house was really plain and boring, kind of a wasteland with no plants and just blank walls. The window boxes give it some character and colour.

Although I found that its not a great spot for most plants. In winter the frost almost killed all the plants so I had to move them onto the porch. In summer it gets so hot that I will have to stick to succulents in the boxes. But that's ok. I have lots of succulents, all I need is some more of the creeping kind which might grow and hang out of the boxes. That'd be pretty.

You can barely see it, but the second box has a little bird in it. Its a wire jumble bird that Wayne made for the Salvaged Art competition. He's gorgeous. This is the only photo I have of him right now, remind me to get a photo of him in the window box.

 Anyway, back to the side of the house... the long wall behind the mud room is the bathroom and office wall. Other than one window it was blank and boring. I was thinking of going all wild with baskets and signs and all kinds of things but I now wonder if that might look a bit tacky... For now I've just done a few simple things... first I bought a punnet of snapdragon seedlings. They're doing great. Flowering for the first time now. That should create a nice garden alongside the house where there was just bare pebbles before.

Then I hung a few baskets I'd collected from tip shops so they have that old worn look. I added the rusty wire wreath I made from some old wire I found buried in the paddock and the barbed wire flower Wayne made me (never say the man isn't romantic!). I had to buy hanging hooks for the hanging baskets but I hung one from an old scale thingy I found in a tip shop. Love it.

So far the flowers I've put in there seem to like it there. Fingers crossed.

On the corner I hung a very old rusty wind chime from an old rusty bracket (also from a tip shop - I do a lot of shopping at tip shops). In that spot the wind doesn't get it too often so we're not tempted to rip it off the wall.

You may have noticed a small tree in the photo... I bought 2 plants from a little old lady down the road and she threw in one more. So I have 3 new pots, all with more than one plant in them! These will all eventually go in a new bed I'm planning (but not actually doing myself!) between the washing line and the water tanks.

I can't remember the name of all the plants, but one is a hellebore, the tree is some kind of orange blossom, and there is a lupin and about 3 other plants in the pots. It'll be a surprise when they flower.

I told you I've become addicted to my garden. 

Spring has that effect.

z

weeds and other realisations

Let me introduce you to cape weed.

Ground zero (otherwise known as our lawn) is covered with the stuff.

Over the last week I've become obsessed with the stuff.

Now you know I'm not much of a gardener.... but I have this 'grandpa weeder' thing I bought a couple of years ago and never used, which allows you to pull out weeds without having to bend over or dig them out. I rediscovered this handy little tool last week and I've been waging war against the cape weed ever since.

So far, the cape weed is winning.

I've been out there every chance I get, when the weather is nice, when I have some free time, when I walk through the yard and spot another cape weed glaring at me with its beady little eyes...

Last week I filled four big garbage bags with weeds. This week I filled another three.

All I have to show for it are a whole lot of 'holes' in the so-called lawn.

And the cape weed continues to thrive.

I'm not ready to give up yet. Sometimes it takes a long time for defeat to sink in.

Like how long it took me to give up on the all natural, home-made, eco-friendly cleaning products.

I read all this stuff on Pinterest about how you can clean the shower using vinegar and dish washing liquid and I was like "Yeah! Healthy and natural, not to mention cheap!". So I scrubbed and washed and scrubbed and washed. But the mold kept coming back stronger than before. The vinegar was only making it angry.

It was a few months (and a disgustingly black shower) before I gave up and pulled out the big guns. Give me strong chemicals any time! At least now I don't need a tetanus shot to have a shower!

Similarly, the gardening attempts... We've been here for over 2 years... All this time I've been kidding myself that I'll create a garden... that I can create a garden. Despite all evidence to the contrary - as attested to by all the dead plants who came home with me in great hopes of a good life in the country.

When I was flat on my back groaning in pain a couple of weeks ago, I finally decided to admit defeat. I will never be a gardener. So I did what any self respecting failure would do: I paid someone else to do it!

I hired a friend to come over and weed and put in a couple of garden beds for me. I had planted a line of lavenders along the front of the house. (Most of them actually made it surprisingly.) But the weeds were drowning them.

This is the planning stage: weeds gone, weed matting down, pots placed where plants would go in.

I found this great mini corregated edging which is so 'me'. I love the yard now! (Well except for the cape weed.)

Just imagine how great the place will look when the painting is finished and the plants are grown....

The area around the trellis has a new garden bed too.

I'm really loving my new garden. When its mowed. And I can't see the cape weed...

 

I swear, I was never into gardens or flowers, but come spring, I kinda go crazy and want a garden and buy plants like crazy, then have to smuggle them into the garden so Wayne won't see them. He has no faith in my gardening abilities.

I love watching my flowers grow (some of them...) despite my ignorance! It actually makes them more special if they survive me!

 

I still have a few unusual containers with plants in them but I've decided to stick with succulents in most of them cause most flowers can't handle the heat in pots, and cause I love the way this old metal ammo box has filled out.

Eventually all these should fill up like the ammo box. Pretty cool, huh?

Anyway, this isn't meant to be a gardening blog is it? I apologize... I just haven't been doing a lot of creating lately. I have started a few new projects so hang in there, it will come!

z

PS. Thanks to Ginny who sent me a link to a handy page about "identifying that weed", I now know the names of all the weeds in my yard. Now I can greet them by name.

The sad thing is that if I were to actually succeed in getting rid of the weeds, I'd have no lawn, just a mudpit in my yard. Maybe the wogs had it right.... just cement it all! No weeds, no mowing, no mud! LOL

redecorating the casita

When you come home and the poodles greet you with white nails and white noses it can only mean one of two things:

They baked you a cake.

or

They started redecorating the casita.

I'll let you guess which one.

Yep. You got it.

The poodles decided they'd put a shelf nook in the hydrobath room for me to keep bottles on.

How thoughtful.

Romeo poses in front of the grooming room door, proudly showing of their handiwork. Pretty neat huh? Almost a perfect square.

Mind you, there are teeth and digging marks all over the place including my fancy dog lead hanger and chalkboard. Sigh.

By the time I took the photo I'd also swept up the piles of plasterboard bits.

So... Anyone want to hire two poodles to do demolition work? They come cheap! All you have to do is drop a small furry critter  (or feathered, they're not too fussy) into the wall cavity you want removed. They'll do the rest.

Of course, if someone hadn't left the casita door open this wouldn't have happened... I won't mention any names but it starts with 'w' and ends with 'ayne'.

After the great possum debacle of a few months ago, when we came home to find the contents of my workshop in the casita re-arranged, we decided to keep the door closed when we went to work.

Now, I was very mature about it. I didn't yell or jump around like a two year old denied a lollypop. Nope. I just laughed and cleaned the mess up.

Then I told Wayne what had happened. The words "Its your fault" never crossed my lips.

They didn't have to...

z