May Flowers

     Hi everyone. Happy Wednesday. I hope you are having a  great week so far.

     Today I start my summer job, 2 mornings a week checking boats for invasive weeds at the big lake in my town, weather dependent that is. I have mixed feelings if I want to schedule my time 2 mornings out of the week since I still have so much yard work I want to complete before it gets too hot, but on the other hand, I get to chill by the lake  (and today it will be chilly by the lake too 😕), read in between boats and get a bit of cash for it. Plus I feel like I give back to my community a bit doing it too. I'm sure once I actually start I won't miss the chores at home at all. 😏

    First let me  answer a couple of questions from yesterday's gardening post. First of all, I know dirt is technically soil. I didn't realize using the word dirt  would make so many interesting comments.  👍😀  

   The second question was what kind of snake that was. It was a Northern Milk Snake (Lampropeltis triangulum triangulum).  Against certain light it has a red tint to the brown diamonds on it, and it isn't poisonous. I'd say he/she was just under a meter long, and definitely not interested in me. I just don't like to be startled by them, which seemed to happen a lot last summer as I had another garden bed in that area with the wild growth all around it. As I said in my T day Garden post, hopefully now the gravel will make it easier not only to see the snake, but to walk through. And Angie, I don't think the 2 dogs I have now would do anything to the snake except want to smell it, but I know when I was growing up we had a dog who hated snakes. She would grab them and thrash them about. 

     I'm back today with lots of flowers, starting with a page I recently made for Neet's It Must Have Wings challenge at Art Journal Journey. I am really loving this robin's egg blue lately, so I used a glaze that color to cover my page. When that dried I used some grey paint and a wire fence stencil.

     My Art by Marlene big punch out images book was sitting on the floor next to my work table, so I did a whole lot of flower and leaf punching out.  I really like all the colors and the arrangement I made. I also added a few birds and even a silly bee. I didn't plan on making a beautiful garden arrangement when I started this page, but since it makes me smile, I'm going with it. I hope it makes you smile too.

    The flower word is also a punch out from this book, and I stamped the Happily Ever After quote below it. Finally I used a bit of white splatter (white gouache paint) to finish my page.

    Last week my local botanical gardens opened.  A friend and I went one morning, so let  me share a few photos starting with the Japanese maple trees that caught my attention.

     And here's a few early spring flowers (or about to be flowers)  as well as other views too.

Thanks for stopping by, and  have a wonderful day.

      

T Stands for a Garden Project

        Hi everyone. Happy new week to you. And hello to you if you're stopping by Bleubeard's and Elizabeth's blog  for T Day. 

       Warning, this isn't the  longest post, but there is a bit of food and also a snake photo, in case you don't like snakes.  

      Last week I was busy with more yard work.  I  bought some raised garden beds that needed to be assembled.  Assembling them was the easy part; moving the heavy bags of soil to fill them was a work out.

      My veggie garden is being partially moved to this new spot. I'm doing that because  my other veggie garden is now only half sunny and therefore doesn't have a lot of planting room. I have a  sugar maple tree that has since grown up on one side of the garden and shades the area. It's too pretty of a tree to cut down.  I still use that garden, but it will be nice to have some very sunny spots for those veggies that like the almost full daylight.

   You might notice in the above photo that the new garden beds are sitting on sand, but in the background there is stone/gravel. Last fall I had a dump truck load of stone/gravel delivered because we needed it for under the greenhouse (which we put up last fall). I still had a lot of gravel left, but even last fall I knew I wanted to put gravel in the area around the greenhouse, not just under it.

   Besides building my garden beds last week, I also had my husband use his tractor to move some gravel to that area. He had the easy job on the tractor. I once again had a work out spreading the gravel. 😏  I didn't mind because this was a job I wanted done. I don't think my husband cared about it, although he did enjoy playing on his tractor. 😉

   

      It wasn't the easiest place to dump the gravel because the hubby had to drive the tractor up this small but steep ridge which doesn't really  show  in the photo.  You might be able to make out the shrub under the bucket of the tractor. That shrub  blocks the drop off. If you look carefully you can see my husband is dumping gravel over the shrub. There is also the electric box  that I use for the electric fence that goes around the beehives that he had to stay clear of.  But the hubby was successful. He got all the gravel dumped without ruining the shrub, hitting the electric box nor tipping over the tractor . 👍

        Here's my finished area. Once we get some rain it will wash the dust off the new gravel, and it won't look so splotchy.  I'm excited to have this done. It looks more finished.  And now the snake that lived in the weeds that used to be in this area and who used to surprise me too often, will be more visible in advance if he's laying on the gravel.

But he did surprise me yesterday as he was crawling on the deck that's at the other end of this area.

     Also last week I needed to get some more bags of soil for my beds so I was heading to Portsmouth (New Hampshire) because there is a store there that had their 40 quart/big bags of soil on sale. I wasn't sure what day I was going to go buy the soil, but on last Thursday I got both a text and a phone call from my husband in the morning (he was at work) wanting to know if I was coming down. His  big work project was finally wrapped up, and he had time to go have a sort of leisurely lunch. That sounded good to me, so that's where my drink for T day photos come from.

     I had a tuna melt with onion rings. I was disappointed the waiter never asked what kind of bread I wanted, and then I thought  that it came with marbled rye so I didn't say anything. However it came with toasted white. The white bread was homemade so it wasn't bad, but this sandwich is still better on marbled rye. And you can see my diet coke in the red glass.

 

    That's all for this post. Hopefully in the next week I'll get the rest of my plants and get them in those beds. It's actually right on schedule to plant in my area, as we can still have frost right up through the end of May. 

    Have a wonderful T day and week ahead. 

A Magic Page

      Hi everyone. Happy Sunday. I hope you're having a nice weekend. Today the weather is supposed to be better than yesterday's was so I'm planning on a work out garden day 🤞. I hope to get a big project more or less wrapped up but we shall see if that happens. 

     I'm back today with another page for Neet's It Must Have Wings challenge at Art Journal Journey. While I was thinking about potential pages to make, I remembered that there are a lot of wings in the Harry Potter series. I also have a sticker book based on Harry Potter and some Ciao Bella papers that would work for that theme too, so even though my page is not strictly 100% accurate Harry Potter, it is a magical page inspired by the story.

     I started with this background paper of the castle stairway. I trimmed away the edges and put it down on a background that I used  some gold glaze paint on. I also rubbed the background with brown ink to tune it down a bit. After everything dried, I rubbed some black ink along the edge of my paper.

     I fussy cut the wizard (who is my take on Dumbledore) from another Ciao Bella print out. I glued him down, and then to make him blend into the background I rubbed some light blue paint around most of him and onto my page. I didn't add blue paint around his fiery wand. I added some gold sparkles to that, because of course the wand is where all the magic happens. 

    In the Harry Potter books Dumbledore has a phoenix named Fawkes, and I had this sticker in my HP sticker book. The Phoenix of course has wings, and he looks like he belongs at the top of the arch. I did ink him with some black ink not because I wanted his colors to be more muted but because of the white edge that I wanted dull down a bit. 

    I also had a small Harry Potter sticker in this sticker book, so I put him on the floor behind Dumbledore. I know in the books and movies his robes are not blue, but if I colored it in black it would just look like a blob, so I went with blue because it matched the blue around the wizard.  I also added the Lumos magic spells sticker, and I inked it to have it blend in and not be so white. I also added the blue metallic paper trim along the bottom of my page.

    My page still looked like it needed something, so eventually I thought of the clear crow tape I have. I  cut around some crows and added them to my page. And I know Harry Potter is not from Ravenclaw, where the symbol is a raven, but I thought the crows were interesting and magical enough to finish off my page. 

    I am also linking up to Gillena's Sunday Smiles. Have a super rest of your weekend and start to the new week. 

Bluebirds

      Hi everyone. Happy Friday. Another week has zoomed by, and it's time again for Friday Face Off over at Nicole's blog and also Friday Lunch break over at Gillena's blog.

     I hope you don't mind me starting with  some more bird photos. You might remember that last Friday I showed the parent bluebirds feeding some babies, but you could not see any babies, just the parents at the opening of the birdhouse.  Now you can see those babies. Well, you don't see them when you're nearby but if you step in the house and zoom in with your camera you can see them. 

   The baby bluebirds in my birdhouse are getting big. I took these photos a few days ago, so they're  even more developed now and might even be getting ready to fledge. Or maybe that have fledged and I missed it, which would be sad since I wanted to see that.

     I see 2 faces in one of the photos, and the babies' eyes are open. I read that the babies open their eyes at 8 days, so the birds must be at least 8 days old when I had taken these photos. They're obviously even older now. I hope I didn't miss when they fledged. I read that the parents take care of the young for a short period of time after that too, but so far I haven't seen any signs of that either.

     I also have a page from my envelope journal to share for Neet's challenge over at Art Journal Journey.  If you join in you know her challenge is It Must Have Wings. 

     I had some left over music paper scraps (back from Vicki's February's Music challenge at AJJ) that I die cut into circles. I also stamped a Dina Wakely image, added a tissue paper head over the image's actual head, and I added the TH stamped, colored and die cut bird It's blue, and that's my connection to this post. Finally I cut a little balloon and added all the words on my page.

     I hope everyone has a great weekend ahead. We could get more showers at my house (another at least partially wet weekend-it's a not so good trend lately) so I hope your weekend is sunny and bright. 

The Bees

     Hi everyone. Happy Thursday to you. 

    I haven't shared any pages from my grunge inspired envelope book for awhile, and this one, with all the bee sequins, is perfect for Neet's It Must Have Wings challenge at Art Journal Journey. Sorry but neither of today's photos are fantastic. The first one is so you can see the whole page in the book, and then I zoomed in for a little bit better view. This book doesn't lay flat very well because it's quite thick, so if the photos look crooked it's because the pages pop up a bit.

     I started this page by die cutting this pretty lace image. After I glued it down, I splattered the page with some blue and brown watercolor paints

     You can see it better in this view. I also added a punch out compass image from 49 and Market. I had this golden-brown colored flower sequins so I added them, and I put a small bronze 1/2 pearl into the center. These flowers were an afterthought since I actually went into the sequin box to find the little bee sequins which you can also see on my page. In fact, they're the park with the wings on my page. (grin)

    I finished by stamping the quote and adding a couple of flat buttons that I ran some waxed thread through first. 

     And I have bees. 👍❤😀  My first batch arrived earlier this week. 

    This time I ordered my bees back where I originally received bees. I used a bee business called Mountain Sweet Honey in Georgia as I've always had high quality bee shipments with them. The man who runs this business only wants successful bee colonies to ship, and when the colonies needed more time for a successful queens, he postponed  shipments for 3 weeks. It worked out for me better also  because now it's warmer and better bee weather here in New Hampshire.

     This is what the box is like when I open up the screening. To release the bees (next photo), I remove this can which contains sugar water that feeds the bees while they are in transit. This time I tried a new variety of honeybees called Caucasian bees. Like their name says, they are originally from the Caucasus mountains which are in southwestern Russia as well as Georgia, Azerbaijan, Turkey, Armenian and parts of Iran. One trait of these honeybees is that they like to make a lot of propolis/wax  compared to other varieties. You can see they made some on the can, and it did make it a bit tougher to remove from the box.

     I decided to try this variety because they reach their full colony growth mid-summer. Many bee colonies reach that size earlier in the season, but since spring is later arriving where I live, I thought these bees might do well. I also discovered in my research they have the longest proboscis (a straw like structure coming out of the mouth) of all honey bee varieties.  Time will tell if I like this variety or not.

     When they first go in, there are bees everywhere. I guess if you're disturbed from your closed in space and somewhere new. you are not only a bit out of kilter but also in need of exploring your new turf.

     They find the front of their hive box quickly enough, and after a couple of hours, the swarm of bees calms down and most of them are in the hive.

     And for those who may be wondering, I did not get stung in the process. 😏

     Have a great day ahead. 

Keeping It Simple

        Hi everyone. It's Tuesday so that means it's time for a new challenge at Try It On Tuesday.

      First, let me thank everyone who joined  our Deep in The Forest challenge. There was some great pieces  shared. ❤ 

         For the next 2 weeks we're asking for you to create some art and Keep It Simple.

   I decided to go with a journal page even though I think this challenge would  be easier (for me) if I was making  a card.  I just feel like my page isn't finished. 😏 However, I did hold myself back and didn't add in lots of other bits. Grin.

    I began by using a light blue glaze to color the background. Then I took a similar toned and  thicker acrylic  paint and a stencil to add a few basic details to the background. I then added a 49 and Market film frame. The butterfly is actually cut from cloth. I was cleaning last week and came across a couple of packets of cut fabric butterflies that I forgot I had. I glued this one down on my paper, and then even though I wanted to embellish it, I held back and decided to keep it simple and left it as it is. 

     I finished by stamping the quote (from an old Cornish Heritage Farm set) and added a few little plastic bubbles.

     Since the butterfly has wings, I am also joining up to Neet's It Must have Wings challenge at Art Journal Journey.

     I hope you like to go simple and join us at TIOT for this challenge. 

T Stands for Mother's Day

      Hi everyone. Happy new week, and to those of you who celebrated Mother's Day yesterday, I hope it was lovely. And if you're also if you're stopping by for T day over at  Bleubeard's and Elizabeth's  blog, a Happy T day hello to you.

       I spent Mother's Day with my daughter. She lives a couple of hours west of where I live so I headed out first thing in the morning. We had plans to go for a walk and also lunch, and that's what we did. It was a really lovely day. And it was even lovelier since we'd just had almost a full week of rain. If you look carefully you can see how high on the banks the water is. 

      I'll also warn you, there's some food photos later in this post. 😏

     The first half of the walk was through the woods and along the Ashuelet River. 

    On this leg we saw lots of turtles sunning themselves.

    And this fraternity of male mallards. Their green heads really sparkled in the sun.

   After that the trail wound through a wooded area that went under and over a couple of roadways, and then we wandered through the city park and the city sports fields. 

     Finally we wandered through a little neighborhood, crossed another road and were back into the city and  to the car. It was a lovely 4+ mile (6.5 km) stroll.

      While we were walking one thing we talked about was lunch. We both decided it was a good day for ice cream. 😏 Since I had a 2 hours drive back home later in the afternoon, I figured we ought to eat something else first. We decided to stop at a sandwich shop and split a BLT (bacon, lettuce and tomato) with avocado first.

      It was a very yummy sandwich (well half since we split it). And you can also see both my and my daughter's drinks for T this week too. 

       And then we went for ice cream. Since it was Mother's Day she let me pick what I wanted, so we also split a brownie hot fudge sundae. 

We certainly made short work of that too. 😏

  Not only was the weather lovely, but it was a great Mother's Day for me too. And I think my daughter also enjoyed it too. 

   Have a great T day and rest of your week.