Blue Planet Garden Blog

Help – The Halloween Store Ate My House!

But no surprise there, it happens every year.

If you followed my blog last October, then you know Halloween is the holiday where my husband Nick takes over the decorating.  As you can see from the photo, the front of our house is very small; in fact, we joke that the kids don’t even need to come up to the door, they can just stick their bags out of the car window and we can drop the treats in from the front door.  Unfortunately this means Nick doesn’t have a lot of canvas to work with, so adding new things becomes difficult.  However, rest assured this does not stop him from shopping for new supplies each year, and adding even more  spiders, snakes and rats to the house:

 

Guess these little fellas got a bit too hungry waiting for the Halloween candy.

The Grim Reaper’s been a mainstay for several years now, although his victims have been known to change.

Bluckeys are also an important part of the scene. For those of you unfamiliar with the science of Halloween decorating, bluckeys are little plastic skeletons.  I recently learned (from Nick, of course) that the term bluckey comes from the blown plastic used to make the skeletons and the word buckey, which is what the more anatomically correct skeletons you may recall from biology 101 are called.  These three bluckeys are a repeat performance last year, still busily attempting a break in:

I like the one on the bottom, who looks like he’s annoyed by the rat on his head, but can’t currently spare a hand to get rid of it.

Last year these bluckeys were engaged in an honorable duel, but this year the one in back appears to be planning an ambush.  Our neighbor recently shared that her four year old daughter refers to the sneaky one in back as Susan and the unsuspecting one in the front as Nick.  Which of course made us ask ourselves, "just what does she think goes on around here?"

Also new this year, the addition of eyeballs to a few of the skeletons:

And apparently, plain old spiders just aren’t scary enough anymore, so Nick upped the fright factor by adding these creepy faces to the ones that hang right over the door.

As this is a garden blog, I’ll end by asking your opinion of grey skeletons as a foil for chartreuse foliage.

Celebrating Mother’s Day in the Garden (hers to be exact)

Yesterday, we celebrated an early Mother's Day at my mom's, and at this time of year, that means relaxing in her beautiful garden.  In honor of the day, I’m sharing some photos I took during my visit.

The pond is the focal point of her garden, and even though she has a patio with a planned seating area in her shade garden, this is by far the nicest place to sit, so we always drag chairs over.

Most of my pond shots are from the same angle, partly because it shows it off the best and partly because this way I didn’t have to get up from my seat.

Her pond is full of koi, as well as being home to a turtle who was too shy to show himself this visit, and this bullfrog who is anything but shy.

My mom designed and planted this beautiful border behind a dry stack retaining wall. 

One of its nicest features is the sculpture my cousin, who is a sculptor, made for her.

 

Mom recently made her first visit to Annie's Annuals, and now worships at their altar along with every other gardener in Northern Californa.  Here is one of her finds, nestled in the rocks that border her vegetable garden.

People who visit my mother’s garden for the first time often assume I helped design it, but she laid out the whole thing herself, and believe me, this garden was a real fixer-upper when she moved in eight  years ago.

On the other side of the spectrum are those who assume I inherited my love of gardening from her. The truth is, until my late  twenties, I wanted no part of it, despite the fact that my mom added trees, ornamental plants and a vegetable garden to every home we lived in.  My lack of interest may have been a stab at rebellion, because as a kid, one of my chores was to mow the lawn, which is essentially the Southern California equivalent of walking five miles through the snow to school (uphill both ways, of course).  Or maybe becoming a homeowner and having a garden of my own to fill finally woke me up to the pleasures and passions that have delighted and obsessed gardeners from time immemorial.

Either way, for all you gardening moms out there celebrating mother’s day with non-gardening children, don’t give up hope!  You may be inspiring them more than you think.

Happy Mother’s Day everyone!

I'm dreaming of a brown Christmas

Last Christmas when my friend Roxy and her family came over for a gift exchange and a few hotly contested rounds of Wits and Wagers, Roxy announced she had taken a sustainable approach to gift wrapping.  Out came an odd assortment of lumpy bundles wrapped in scarves and dish towels - one wrap job was even held together by a belt.

While I did not  raid the closet or the kitchen drawers this holiday season, I was inspired by Roxy's approach and the realization that most wrapping paper is not recycleable, so in addition to reusable gift bags, this year I bought a few rolls of brown packaging wrap and ribbon from the craft store.  The paper is recyclable and the ribbon is reusable.

   

 

I think they actually look quite nice.  One roll wrapped six large presents and the Christmas ribbon was 60% off (is this the season of the Christmas sales or what?), so it's an  affordable way to go.  The only problem is the paper is very stiff and difficult to work with, plus regular scotch tape does not hold very well.  If there is a source for thinner paper and/or a better tape to use let me know.

Changes like this are relatively easy to make - a kind of obtainable sustainable. Anyone else add in a sustainable element this Christmas?

Happy holidays from my computer to yours!

For the last four years I've designed and illustrated holiday cards for my clients - the first two years I did everything in my home office, including printing, but for the last two years I've had my cards printed by Zazzle.  Thought you would enjoy seeing Christmas 2008 -

   

and inside...

   

Have a lovely holiday all!!  Susan

Add a shot of vodka - your paperwhites will thank you

When I was a little girl, my granddad told me that coffee and cigarettes would stunt my growth, but for flowers, it's all about the booze.

I read on-line that adding one part alcohol (such as vodka) to 7 parts water keeps paperwhites from getting too big and flopping over.  You wait until the plants are 1/2 to an inch high, then switch from regular water to the 7-1 mix. I wasn't paying attention, so mine were about 2 inches high before I introduced them to to the 24/7 cocktail hour.  This photo shows my results so far.  Because of its depth, I planted the first pot in potting soil, but still watered it with the 7-1 mixture.  The bulbs are sitting higher in the pot than the other two, but this pot still got the tallest and will probably start flopping in the next few days, but seems to still be less floppy and tall than in the past when I used just regular water.

The middle dish is moderately successful, but I think the last two achieved the ideal height.  Could be because they are more tightly packed than in the large oval dish, as I noticed they have less root growth and drink their vodka juice more slowly.  This will be the first time I haven't had to stake the paperwhites, or if I started them in water, just cut them and put them in a vase.

You can use rubbing alcohol as an alternative, but I don't know what the proportions are.  One caveat - in the second week, my inner cheapskate came to the surface and I decided to use some rum in the back of a cupboard instead of the expensive imported vodka.  What did I learn?  Unless you associate Christmas with the smell of a distillery, stick with an odorless choice.  When you have a home office, it's already hard enough to explain that even though you can quote Oprah extensively, you really ARE working all day  - a house that reeks of rum will not make this any easier.