Dance of the fuzzy bees

Twenty days have zipped on by since I last posted anything.  Not a whole lot has happened in that time frame...  Lots of rain, and I do mean LOTS.  Which sort of sucks the motivation out of ya - well it does to me at any rate.  I have managed to do some things out in the yard, like add this little flowerbed out front:

There are quite a few types of flowers housed in that little bed.  daffodils, hyacinth, astilbe, coral bells, bleeding hearts...  all of which are doing pretty great.  

The first daffodil

Hyacinth - on clearance @ Lowes - 3 bulbs for $2

Bleeding  hearts are starting to bloom!

The yard is becoming very well stocked with plants, mostly because of friends and family giving me pieces of their yard.  This year I have received (and planted, in some cases even shared with my neighbors) daffodils, ornamental grass, hostas, daylilies, foxglove, bee balm, sweet william, helenium, lily of the valley, plus the spiderwort liberated from a previous residence.  The flowers are certainly enjoying all the rain even if I don't because as we know April showers = May flowers.  I am seeing a great deal of bumblebees cruising around outside, too.  I watched them for several minutes two days ago; pairs of bees chasing each other doing a funny little dance of sorts.  I found myself captivated by the bees and wondered if this happens every spring and I am just noticing it or if I have some goofy bees residing near me.  Perhaps they are just checking out the sweet new pots on the front of the shed:

$1 clearance Lowe's pansies & some lobelia

Lovely azalea bush - $2.50, clearance @ Lowe's

Dandelions, they're just unexpected flowers.
Seems harsh to label them as weeds.

Rocks Ann also got to go outside for a bit today.  She was, as always, beyond delighted.  Visitors are often surprised at how well she behaves outside without a leash.  She just goes out to do her two favorite outdoor activities: eating grass & rolling on concrete.  Once she's done she'll walk right back inside, such a good (and smart) kitty.  

nom nom nom nom nom

Meanwhile, Forrest is inside.  He is not so keen on the outside world.  I carry him out and walk around the yard but he starts to meow after a few minutes - gazing at the door to go back inside.  He's the type of kitty that hangs out at the central A/C vents- clearly the outdoors are not really his thing.

 

O yes, let's check in on the veggies...

Peppers

Cucumbers

Tomatoes

Cabbage, daisies, snapdragons, & pumpkins

Audrey III, right, with other Big Max pumpkin

Shawn is planning to put the garden fence up this weekend while I rake in the big bucks (ha) with a yard sale, and next weekend the veggies will be in their permanent  homes.

< $5

One of the jars from the flea market was aqua colored glass, taller than the others, and already has a wire handle of sorts so I wanted to do something different with it.  I painted it with the same rolling-in-water method as the others, and used only silver and the weird pink.  I really like the way it turned out and decided to use it for a springy vase.  I got two bunches of fake daffodils from Michaels for the low low price of 79¢ and split them apart to arrange them.  I stuffed the bottom of the jar with the remaining Easter grass and poked in the faux flowers, and voila!

$1.58 flowers + $1 jar + 50¢ spray paint + leftover grass = rustic spring centerpiece

Forthwith.

We are doing a few fundraisers at work to benefit a nice lady that suffered from a heart attack, and the week before Easter we'll be doing a silent auction for baskets.  I chose to make a gardening basket and already picked up a few items last week - seeds, herb starting kit, gloves, and a mini flag.  Yesterday afternoon  I found some Westinghouse solar landscape lights for a buck a piece in a forgotten corner in Wal-Mart's garden center, and 6 will be in the basket.  I went to Lowe's for a little gardening set (trowel, hand rake, pruners, knee pad) and also got two clearance ceramic pots (one will house garden markers for the basket) as well as two packs of a sunny perennial seed mix.  I found a nice big galvanized pail at Michaels to put every thing in as well as some Easter grass and a teeny tiny chick to give it a little touch of spring.

 

Of course I have to keep it in the bathroom with the plants so Forrest doesn't eat the fake grass.  It's quite alright, it blends in with the all the plants and gardening supplies back there...

 

It truly is a jungle in there.  Which brings me to today & our old friend Audrey III.

 Scary, isn't it?  Everything else is progressing quite well - flowers, vegetables,  and chives.  Even the new cilantro I planted has sprouted and grown at least an inch tall.  Nothing quite compares to Audrey III though,  I'm excited to see the pumpkins that grow of the little beast.  

Peppers

Tomatoes

I also aged the markers for the basket and sprayed them with a coat of varnish.  This is the first set that is aged (using teabags) and it really goes well with the tarnished old spoons.

Once they're completely varnished they'll go inside of the yellow pot in the basket, a nice little centerpiece.  Oh in case you were wondering what became of the other clearance Lowe's pot...  Tada!

 $1 clearance pot + $1 ribbon + hot glue = ultra cute pot!

Ketchup, er, CATCH up

Okay, moving on to this week!  Sunday started off with a trip to the flea.  I love the flea market for so many reasons.  Great bargains, horribly over priced junk, and such a colorful crowd.  This week we came home with a few large jars, spoons, and a great deal of produce.  We also shared a fresh squeezed fruit drink from a gentleman who's sign proclaimed IT WILL CHANGE YOUR LIFE FOREVER!  I have to admit it's a pretty fantastic sales pitch, definitely what lured me in for a sip.  I won't say my life has changed, but it was a very refreshing beverage for sure.  There were a few items that I rather regret not purchasing: a multitude of VHS tapes, several crusty aquariums, and a hamster ball sans lid.  After the flea we did some work out in the yard.  Shawn dug up a new flower bed for me and pulled up all the bricks out front to use for edger.  I planted the columbine, irises, and a few lilies in the new flower bed, got two rows of onions in the garden, and cleaned up the little flower bed under the tree out back.

 

It's only exciting because everything you see there are plants that returned from last year, and they were all wildflower seeds I had sort of tossed outside.  Bit of a surprise, though, two of the plants are catnip!  Forrest and Roxxy will be delighted.  Julie stopped by in the afternoon and we crafted a few cards for Operation Write Home.  They are a wonderful organization that sends thousands of cards to the men and women deployed all over the world, please take a minute to check out OWH.  Halfway into our card making, Shawn discovered the internet was not functioning.  I did all the troubleshooting in the world, then we checked the TV, and discovered it was out.  It seems as though in creating a new flower bed we snipped the cable!  Shawn replaced the damage section of cable but the web never did return so I had to call Comcast for a tech.  Monday a nice young man from Comcast came out and restored the web - hooray!  The cable Shawn had installed was just old, so he replaced that and we were back online.  Tuesday turned out to be my lucky day, I ripped my foot open on a floor vent in the living room, burned my thumb on a steamer bag, and dipped the tip of my index finger in hot vegetable oil.  No need to relive any of that nonsense.

Previously...

I really need to get in the habit of doing this on a daily basis instead of lumping things together!  Let's recap last weekend:  April Fools Day (Friday) was spent with the kitties @ HOKAFI, a great way to spend an evening.  Saturday Shawn and I visited Surplus City - I got some small cans of Duplicolor spray paint for 50¢ a can and some other goodies.  All the colors were metallic, so I wasn't sure how the next craft project would turn out but I do love metallic so it must be ok!  A friend gave me some old mason jars so I could try to make some outdoor candle holders, and the original plan was to use flat blue to make the glass look mottled.  I went with a light blue & silver - seemed like good choices to me. 

 

Armed with my tiny cans of spray paint, I got an old plastic tray and filled it with water.  Then I sprayed splotches of paint, like so:

 

I then rolled the jars in the paint, repeating the process numerous times until the jars were pretty well covered.  If I had used a darker, non-metallic paint, it would've been important to not cover the jar too much. Too much paint then not enough light escapes and you're left with an ineffective candle holder.  The good thing about the metallic is it's so light it remains fairly translucent.  If you'd like to try this youself, it's important to get acetone based paint so it floats well on the surface of the water and doesn't break down.

 

Since there was some spare black spray paint in the shed, I decided to try something...

They seem a little more outdoorsy now, don't you think?  I found another jar in a kitchen cupboard and decided to experiment with the pink spray paint.  Unfortunately, the pink is NOT of the acetone variety so it got a little funky.  The pink broke apart when it hit the water, whereas the metallic paints was just a sheet on top of the water.  I still tinkered around with it anyway and ended up with this:

Eh, it's alright.  Some glitter, varnish, and black raffia sort of helped.  I also chipped off a few pieces of paint before glittering and varnishing to allow more light to get through.  I used a matte spray varnish, so the unpainted sections of glass appear smoked now - little bonus!  Three of the remaining jars will get  metal  hangers, and the other one is in the craft ER mingling with some black & turquoise ribbon, just sort of waiting to see what happens.