1st time mowing the lawn

Here are more photos of what my new land looks like, and what I’ve done as far as landscaping. I’m hoping that next year I can get a vegetable garden going since there is so much space, until then, I’ll be happy with making it look nice before the baby comes. It’s been wonderful being able to spread out, and expand again. I haven’t been able to really garden garden for the last 3 years since I lived at home with my mom. I feel full of possibilities here.

Side garden bed

 

I put in all the plants in March, theyre doing well

 

My neighbor gave me like 20 of these straight from her garden, so I made up a bed for them.

Flying pigs yard art

I’ll have to post pics up of the front yard next, I’m still need just a few more plants to fill out that garden bed though. To all my gardening friends I wish you much success this summer!

~Happy Gardening

I’ve missed blogging though, but mainly I’ve missed the summer. This is a wonderful time of year but they stop selling cacti and succulents around sept. So now until the last freeze in spring I mainly just try to hold onto the cacti and succulents I still have. Every year though a few die and it’s pretty sad.

Well here in north Texas it should be winter but it’s not, we’re still playing between perfectly nice days and fleeting cold fronts. Which is good because it prolongs the time I have before I must bring everything inside. To recap the summer I thought I’d post things that grew prolifically this year.

This hybrid has gotten so long it can't stand up anymore, I didn't know it would do that.

There are like four growing in here now

This one grows like it's on steriods. It's grown well over a foot since last year, not including the growth of the offshoots.

This is the offshoot pot, where all the limbs that fall off original plant go.

Happy Holidays everyone and as always,

~Happy Gardening

As some of you may or may not know I’m an Art teacher at an economically disadvantaged school. This year due to budget cuts we can’t afford to purchase clay and glaze, so I’m hoping to have it paid for through a site called Donors choose. We only need around $300 to be donated which would pay for 300lbs of clay and glaze, enough for my school of around 800 kids.

If you’d like to donate, or just to read more about my school and what we’ll be doing with the money, check it out here:

http://www.donorschoose.org/donors/proposal.html?id=627174

A little over a week ago I tried again, this time with thimble cactus and a hybrid cactus that I have.

Thimble cactus parent

Grafted cacti together

I decided to use my hybrid cactus as a host for the thimble cactus because it is so hardy. I’ve never had one die on me and I’ve had this plant for about 3-4 years now. As you can see in the pot, this plant propagates easily. So far the graft has taken. I tried to get a thimble cactus that was the same size in diameter as the hybrid cactus, but if it doesn’t take I think it’ll be because the thimble piece is small. Also do you see the two pink spots near the grafted area? That is where new propagations will grow. This hybrid when cut grows more heads.

To make the graft:

1. I cut the thimble cactus into a wedge or a V shape at the bottom, in the hybrid cactus I did the inverse of the other cut. Both cacti were sticky inside and just kind of glued together.

2. I then got a piece of paper towel and placed it over the top of the thimble part and rubber banded it off. I think next time though a piece of masking tape would work better. The rubber band was difficult to use on a cactus this skinny.

I hope this helps, it’s a fun experiment to try if you have a couple of compatible cacti.

~Happy Gardening

euphorbia lactea ’crestata white ghost’ hybrid

euphorbia lactea ’crestata white ghost’ hybrid

~Happy Gardening

Both of us in our younger years

Yesterday I restuffed my favorite childhood stuffed animal and most cherished possession Puppy Cow. Puppy Cow was given to me when I was 4 years old by my now deceased step dad, so she is about 20 years old now. As you can imagine with a 20 yr old stuffed animal, Puppy Cow has seen and been through a lot. She’s had her arm ripped off, her tail has fallen out, she’s been tapped to a ceiling fan by some mean older siblings and spun around, she’s been washed & dried a 1,000 times, and she’s gotten grayer and lost a lot of hair in the process.

When I first got Puppy Cow on Christmas day she was in an instant the most wonderful gift I’d ever gotten. I think at first I fell in love with how soft she was. I don’t know what she was made out of but I remember her being so wonderfully soft and fluffy.

Oh you’re probably wondering why she has such a weird name. At 4 years old I at first thought she was a stuffed animal puppy, later because of the horns I found out she was a cow. So there ya go.

Anyways, after learning to make my first stuffed crochet monkey, I decided, Hey I have a lot of left over fluff and Puppy Cow is so worn out, I’ll restuff her. So I did. She looks great now, much squishier and she actually sits up instead of flopping over. Enjoy the pics!

After!

Puppy Cow Before

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

First Cut along the Bottom

 

2nd cut along the back

 

PuppyCow destuffed

 

Finished!

 

PuppyCow with new stuffed animal I made

 

lithops, split rock, aloinopsis schoonesii

Lithops & Split Rock are very beautiful succulents with very specific watering instructions, but despite this, I’m giving them a 2nd try. It’s been I dunno like a year since I last tried to grow Lithops & Split Rock. The last time they died I’m assuming it was because of over watering, and possibly too much direct sunlight (my last apt received at least 8 hrs of direct sunlight a day.) These plants are much more sensitive to watering than any of my other cacti and succulents. In the summer months they are dormant, storing up their water and do most of their growing from fall to spring, however they need to be watered still in the summer months, only when the soil is dry and allowing it to completely dry out between watering. In winter the soil has to be bone dry.

I found a really helpful guide about growing Lithops with really detailed instructions on care & cultivation if you’re interested. Check it out:

http://www.lithops.info/

lithops, split rock, aloinopsis schoonesii

Here I have paired Lithops, Split Rock & aloinopsis schoonesii, all of wich have about the same growing conditions and care. Hopefully they will do well this time!

~Happy Gardening

I was inspired a while back to try out some different containers for my plants other than the usual cheap plastic pot found at Wal-Mart. What I came up with was this: Reused ceramic cups made into small planters. I think they came out really cute and its easy to do.

Materials for DIY ceramic planters:

1. Ceramic cup. I found mine CHEAP at Goodwill they all cost me around 50 cents. If you don’t have a Goodwill, any second-hand store will do. They have a lot of neat & different things to choose from.
2. Charcoal. The charcoal is the same that I place at the bottom of a glass terrarium. What it does is help add air to roots to prevent rotting in pots that don’t get good drainage. You can buy a small bag at Home Depot or Lowes in the garden section.
3. Ceramic drill bit & electric screw driver. Just go to Lowes or Home Depot and ask for a ceramic drill bit. They also have drill bits that will go through metal in case you have something in metal you’d like to convert into a planter.
4. Potting soil.
5. Succulent or cactus, the small ones I bought I believe I purchased from either Wal-Mart, Lowes, Home Depot or Calloways, as all of these places offer plants in this size.

—-There ya have it, its pretty easy to do and really all you need is the ceramic drill bit to get started as you can skip the charcoal if you’d like and you may already have a cup you’d like to drill a hole into.

San Diego Zoo Ocotillo

It grows to be extremely tall and has a wild free form shape. It’s covered in spines and grows tiny flat green succulent leaves all over its body. The plant is native to the Southwest United States and Mexico and grows even in areas that are too hot and dry for cacti. Ocotillo may or may not have leaves at any given time throughout the year. It may shed and re-grow leaves as much as seven times in one year.

Luckily I was able to get my own Ocotillo at a nursery near my parents house! Everything that is hard for me to find or grow here in Texas because of the extreme  heat and cold just flourishes up there and is found everywhere. Such is life, but it does make collecting more exciting.

Also, because I was not able to carry the plant on the plane with me I was able to successfully ship it to myself back in Texas. I got a box from Uline, a shipping supply company that sells boxes in so many different sizes, wrapped the plant totally in bubble wrap to keep the leaves and spines from breaking, and mailed in via UPS. The ocotillo got back to me in perfect condition. I was really happy about this because I’ve always been leary about mailing plants, but now I know that the next time I travel, I can always mail back whatever I find. More photos to come soon!

~Happy Gardening

My first cactus arrangement is doing better than ever.

My latest addition to the garden, a blackberry bush.