Hoppy Easter!

When I was a little girl my grandmother bought me a record of Easter songs. One of them began "See the funny little bunnies, / how they work and play making eggs all day . . . ." It's been stuck in my head for over a week, and since I've been listening to a lot of reggae lately, I find myself wondering how it would have sounded if Bob Marley had covered it.

These knitted bunnies were my effort at a calorie-free chocolate bunny. I made a plain orange hat for this first one, but then, what can I say, I had to knit him a different hat because of Bob Marley and the bunny song. (shrug) His ears actually are the same size but I guess I stood him up oddly.

This is his girlfriend; she's a bit more petite and conservative in her headwear. The pattern is at http://petitepurls.com/Summer11/summer2011_p_fruit.html. It says you'll get 8" bunnies but mine are bigger, maybe because I used worsted weight yarn or maybe because I knit a bit loosely, or a little of both.

Outdoors it's definitely spring. This verdin has me refilling the hummingbird feeder much more often these days, and it's worth it to see him (or her - male and female verdins look alike) while I'm busy just a few feet away in the kitchen.

And this is the full moon, taken at about 4:30 a.m. a couple of days ago, just as it was about to set. I'm never satisfied with my night sky photos, but these are better than most I've taken.

Several years ago it snowed on Easter, but that won't be happening here this year. It's warm and gorgeous and things are growing like mad. If it's not warm where you are (and you want it to be) I wish you warmth and flowers and bunnies and eggs and all those nice spring things. Happy Easter, Happy Spring.

The Greens of Spring

Happy St. Patrick's Day! I've got on my green shirt and even painted my toenails green, now that it's sandal weather again. It's a great day to be outside in the garden, which is yielding a true bounty of gorgeous green veggies. The refrigerator is stuffed with bags of various kinds of leaves: lettuce, chard, broccoli rabe, bok choy, beet greens (and beets). Here's the first picking of beets, which I plan to roast along with some carrots and onions, with the steamed beet greens as the green part of dinner.

 We love arugula's rich color and lemony bite, so much so that when it's in season (very hard to find in stores, unfortunately) I like to finely chop the tender stems (to the right of the bowl below) and use them in place of celery in egg and tuna salads.

Here's that same bowl of arugula fancied up with chopped oranges and slices of red onion. I used my favorite "house dressing"; the recipe is at http://morning-glory-garden.blogspot.com/search/label/salad%20dressing. When there's fruit in the salad I like to use white balsamic vinegar in the dressing.

Change is in the air everywhere. When we moved to this house 13 years ago we planted three octopus agaves, which get very large; these are 4 or 5 feet across. Two or three years ago one completed its life cycle, sending up a huge flower spike (at least 15 feet high) that was soon covered with hundreds of tiny plantlets. Alas, that spectacular show marks the end of the mother plant's life cycle. A couple of days ago I noticed this one's begun the same process, 

as has the last one, though you have to look closely at the center to see the beginning of the flower spike. As they get further along, they look (briefly) like giant asparagus! One thing about these plants, they definitely go out with a bang, not a whimper, and put on a great show while they're doing it.

And Now It's Spring

The weather roller coaster continues--we're currently heading up and there may not be another precipitous drop like last week. Birds are everywhere. A verdin was at the hummingbird feeder this morning and stayed as long as it wanted. Hummingbirds will drive each other away from the feeder and swoop and dive in fierce noisy battles, although I have seen a male and female pair (Mr. and Mrs. Costa http://morning-glory-garden.blogspot.com/2013/02/to-everything-there-is-season.html) there, sipping together peacefully. Tiny as it is, the verdin is bigger than the hummers. Mr. Costa flew up and hovered behind it for a few seconds, was ignored, and flew away to feed on red sage blossoms until the verdin left.

 Last year a quail laid her eggs in a typically flimsy nest in a big pot by the house where some predator got some of them, and maybe the mother, or else she abandoned them. After a couple of weeks I gathered those that were left and and put them up in a safe place--left undisturbed long enough, they will dry up inside--and remembered them last week and got them down to make something pretty for the coffee table. The covered terrarium jar was $7.99 from Michael's, the Spanish moss for the "nest" came from there too. Normally, I'm not a fan of artificial flowers, but I think these work here. They're from a big spray (half price!) and I put what was left in a vase on the mantel.

 The beautiful crocheted doily was a surprise gift from my mom, who found it several years ago while browsing secondhand stores. I think it's perfect for welcoming spring.

       With all the cold weather, the winter garden--there's a picture of it with snow on here http://morning-glory-garden.blogspot.com/2013/02/its-still-winter.html--got a slow start, but it's making up for lost time. I'm not sure we can keep up with all the greens before they bolt. Here are new leaves coming out on a bok choy plant I cut a few days ago.

As usual at this time of year, there's lots of wildlife mating activity going on. The doves, especially, are shameless; our back fence is a veritable den of lust. This dove built her nest in the jasmine along the side of the garage. She's just above eye-level and doesn't appear to be bothered when we pass by several times a day.

 It seems like a good site. Every year we have a dove nest somewhere in the yard. Last year's chicks, hatched in a nest on the top of a ladder Joe left out on the other side of the garage, in the blazing sun, didn't fare well. But the year before another dove family,about 4 feet up on a branch of the pine tree by the labyrinth, hatched, thrived, and flew away in perfect textbook fashion.

It's Still Winter!

What a lovely, sunny weekend we had! On Sunday I thought to myself "I guess spring is here," and although spring inevitably turns into the kind of summer where you probably can fry eggs on the sidewalk, I was okay with that. Then yesterday (Wednesday) the rain came (along with a brief midday fall of big fluffy snowflakes that melted as they hit the ground) and the temperature plummeted, and this morning my back yard looked like this!

There are blossoms on the rosemary, but what you're seeing here is snow, and snow filling the bowl St. Francis holds, snow on the octopus agaves behind him, snow on many things in the yard but none on the ground or the patio. A friend who lives in Boston scoffed at my delight in our little bit of snow, saying "It doesn't count as snow if you don't have to shovel it!" And having grown up in Idaho, I have plenty of snow shoveling memories, but hey, don't rain on my mini-blizzard!

There was no freeze warning so we didn't cover the vegetable or herb gardens, but I think they'll probably be all right. The birdbaths were frozen (sparrow skating rinks, anyone?), our neighbors' solar panels were white, and so were the Tucson Mountains to the west of us, not just on top but all the way down as far as we could see. That just never happens!

     The prediction for the next several days is for high temperatures in the 50s and low 60s, then they'll probably climb back into the low 70s, something I could live with for a long time. Right now, I'm glad we have a fireplace to enjoy for a few more evenings. Later on we'll go back outside and light up the chiminea, which is currently taking a break.

To Everything There Is a Season

Of course, seasons in the southern Arizona/Sonoran desert aren't quite like those in more temperate climes. We've had winter; maybe we're still having it. The garden shows the effects of a week of overnight temperatures in the low 20s the second week in January with quite a bit of die-back on things that will recover, like cassia, purple heart, and some other perennials, and some that won't, such as wild poinsettia (which has, however, probably reseeded itself), sweet potato vine, and nasturtiums.
    The goldfinches went away, but other birds stay year-round, like Mr. Costa, who feeds on the other side of our kitchen window (his real name is Costa's hummingbird; we've gotten quite well acquainted but I still like to address him with respect).

A female black-chinned hummingbird also showed up yesterday and was able to feed without being chased off. Mr. Costa and another male have frequent, swift, noisy battles, sometimes right over our heads, but the female got lucky. Apparently early European explorers believed hummingbirds didn't have feet because they only saw them hovering to feed at flowers, with their feet tucked up against their bellies. This feeder has perches all around and the hummers like to sit on them to drink their nectar - and I've seen their feet close up through the glass. I wouldn't buy a hummingbird feeder that didn't offer them a place to rest - they burn up a lot of calories buzzing around the way they do!

Verdins also like hummingbird feeders; we saw one yesterday morning, the first in more than a year. They are among my very favorite birds, so tiny, fluffy, and colorful with their yellow heads and red epaulets.
     It's hard to know what season it is from one day - sometimes one hour - to the next lately. This morning when we took our walk it was definitely winter. This female phainopepla with her feathers fluffed out for insulation, on bare branches against a gray sky, perfectly captures the feeling. She's there in the same spot every morning, surveying her territory, I guess, and trying to stay warm.

 Up around the corner and about a block away we spied two red birds facing off in the middle of the road - male cardinals. They're very territorial; apparently one was trying to horn in on the other's turf - like the phainopepla in her tree, this fellow owns that half block or so. The green leaves on these mesquite branches aren't new growth, by the way; they just never fell when it got cold.

But spring is coming. New leaf buds are forming at the ends of the fig branches, and new blossom buds on the Meyer lemon, though it took quite a hit from the frost, in spite of being covered. There's bok choy ready to pick in the garden with chard right behind it, and all the herbs except the basil (of course) weathered the cold well. Even though all the nasturtiums in the hanging baskets bit the dust, new ones have popped up, apparently from seeds that hadn't germinated earlier. This interregnum between winter and spring is quite a nice time, really. Winter in the morning and temperatures in the low 70s by mid-afternoon, at least today, and tomorrow, though we'll be back in the low 60s with night temperatures in the high 30s by next weekend. I'm in no hurry for the weather to warm up too much. Someone told me the other day that when people complain about the cold, he just offers three words in response: "June, July, August." Yep.

Found by the side of the road I

I confess, I love to collect things that show promise, i.e., possibilities for repurposing. This item was once a post on our neighbors' bed frame that they put out for the semiannual brush and bulky trash pickup a few years ago. I snagged it and put it at the center of a circular flower bed that has since become a vegetable garden.

It had a dark wood stained and varnished finish then, which the weather eliminated fairly efficiently. It was easy to stand it up in the garden as there was a hole in the bottom, so I sunk a piece of rebar into the ground and then put the post onto it.
     For its later incarnation I didn't sand it or anything; I just used the same techniques to stand it up in a bucket of dirt (using cans to keep it upright and balanced) and painted it with a coat of primer. Hardly high-tech, but it worked.








(That's a kitty litter bucket. They come in very handy for many uses.)

When the primer was dry, I began adding color. I used four colors: gold, turquoise, purple, and red, so I just started with gold and counted the sections, painting all the gold first, then all the purple, turquoise, and finally the red.

 The latex paint came in sample jars from Home Depot, much more paint for less money than buying the craft acrylic at Michael's or JoAnn, and you can have them mix up exactly the color you want for $2.99. I got good coverage with one coat on the first three colors (the purple is much more purple than the pictures show), but the red, not so much, as you can see in the picture below. I eventually wound up putting on 3 coats of red (this picture shows it with only one). Now all that remains is to give it a couple of coats of clear polyurethane, as it's going back outside, sort of, either as a doorpost to the shade house http://morning-glory-garden.blogspot.com/search/label/shade%20house or somewhere in the front entry http://morning-glory-garden.blogspot.com/search/label/ferns. In either case, it won't be subjected to the harsher elements as much as it was in the garden, but it will need more protection than just paint can offer.

One of the things I like best about projects like this is that I didn't buy ANYTHING; every part of it was either found (yep, by the side of the road) or left over from previous projects, like the primer, paints, and polyurethane.  I've got a companion project to go with it that also fits in the "found or leftover" category, but haven't begun work on that one yet. Stay tuned!

hooks and needles

I'm nearly done with a big knitting project/birthday present for Joe, but it won't be finished by tomorrow, which is his birthday. It's okay, though. He understands and knows he'll have it within the next two or three days, and then I'll post photos, etc. In the meantime, I took a few hours off to crochet this little hat for our little friend Rory, shown here with her mama.

It's an owl, and there's no real pattern; I was just winging it (I don't mind if you groan at the pun). I'd read the dimensions (circumference and depth) for a hat for a 2-year-old and tried to match those; it's double crochet in the round, with the earflaps added when the rest was done, then the eyes and beak crocheted and appliqued on, and finally single crochet in turquoise (to match her new jacket) around the bottom edge, with braids attached to each earflap.
     As you can see, Rory and her mama were both pretty happy with it. Sheep are Rory's favorite animals, and I'd found a cute pattern for a sheep hat, white with black ears, but it just wasn't coming out right so I unraveled it and used the yarn for this one instead.