planting shoes

The Eco craft class is moving along. We planted old shoes this week. I really loved the old work boots one student brought in. I chose flowers to celebrate May Day.

Upcycled Flower Bed

This is inspired by a flower bed I saw up at Hovander Homestead's children's garden in Ferndale, WA. They added a rustic headboard and foot board to a regular raised bed.

I had so much fun thinking of how great it would look filled with flowers that it really stuck in my mind.

This weekend, while cleaning out the basement, I stubbed my foot 1/2 a dozen times on an old broken bed frame that was laying across the playroom . I complained with some colorful swearing to my husband, whose answer was to drag the bed out into the yard and say "let's make that raised bed from Hovander." So we did.

We dug the existing bed down to the ground (silly us, we put the bed up, before digging out the old one). Used scraps left over from making the fence to line the bed. Looks a little like a bed skirt. The scraps had been sitting in the yard for years waiting for that perfect project. We also sunk some of the left over scraps into the ground as stepping stones. We lined the whole bed with landscape fabric and filled it back in.

I emptied our worm bins and mixed that in. (Here is someone who hitched a ride over from the worm bins)

Now we are ready to plant.

reuser stilts

I am making my first foray as an after school program teacher. Much fun. Here is my mock up for our first project. Using left over formula cans, paint and some grosgrain. I painted a semi-realistic grass scene on one and my son painted an "abstract" on his. His description, not mine.

bobby pin forms

I just got these really great bobby pin forms. I hot glued my favorite button (taken off a hoodie where they were strangely placed). Now I have the simplest easy elegant hair accessory.
SO HAPPY.

Dino Garden

A great project for spring break. It took us a couple hours gather and make this, with a lot of interesting conversation along the way.

My son and I took a shallow pan out to the back yard and gathered items for this garden. We mostly picked things up off the ground and didn't kill anything. Then we selected a planter bottom to use. we lined it with dirt, then arranged the stones and sticks, then the moss and plants. Then he ran and got his dinosaurs and made a big set up with tar pit and ocean. He named the dinos as he placed them and had the herbosaurs eating plants and the others hunting.
We then placed it in his bedroom. We will mist in once in a while to try to keep the moss alive.

Strawberry Tower

My husband has been talking about a strawberry tower that he saw in a catalogue. He didn't save the catalogue to show me the tower, but he has been talking about making one himself. Today the sun was out, our daughter was napping and I decided to have a go at it. I used a rusty old tomato cage, a planter from my college days (aka really old) some landscape fabric, ten strawberry plants and a lot of dirt.
I curled the pointy ends of the cage under, rolled the fabric and placed it in the cage. Then my son and I started filling, and filling, and filling it with dirt. Then I punctured the fabric and fed the plants through. Next time I will secure the fabric to the cage (maybe use black fabric - this was the fabric we had in the garage) and thread the plants through before I fill with dirt. Was really messy this way.
It is a lot fugly now, but I think it will be luscious when it grows in.

spring planting

Well, winter is over in the Pacific Northwest. This weekend we planted the peas and neatened the garden. Inside we planted starts.
My local farmer's market berry vendors take back and reuse the outer cardboard used for berry "flats", but they don't take back the inner berry containers. I can't bear to throw them out. So I end up with boxes of them in the basement. I am trying them out as containers for my starts. They should hold together long enough for the plants to grow and then I can gently break them apart and plant them outside. I reused garden trays and the berry cardboard for these starts. I am crossing my fingers for a good long growing season.