. I was watching the morning news today and I got inspired by a piece on autumn window box arrangements. It seemed so easy.
I decided to make my own arrangement, mostly using plants from my yard. Here's the first one:
In this one, I've used Eastern White Pine branches, pinecones, sprigs of winterberry, dried hydrangea flowers, dried fern pods and miniature gourds I grew and purchased from the store. Following the advice of the guy on TV, I sprayed a clear lacquer on the gourds to preserve them til spring. I used pieces of bamboo garden stakes to stick into the bottom of the gourds after cutting a small hole through the bottom of the gourd. This way, the gourd can be propped up and not fall to the bottom of the display. You could do the same thing with those wooden chopsticks, if you have some on hand, or with straight but sturdy tree branches.
Here's another one I did in a basket which doesn't look quite as good.
And I really like my new shoes:
I've got a big pot of pea soup cooking on the stove. I love the flavors of diced celery, parsnip, carrot, potato and onion in it. I used to also love to add sliced kielbasa, but my life is nitrite-free now, so I bought some nitrite-free hot dogs which I'll throw in. I would've liked some Italian sweet sausage, but couldn't find nitrite-free there, so the hot dogs will do.
I mowed the back lawn and part of the front, collecting a whole bunch of leaves up in the process, some of which I dumped in my veggie garden.
I also did my best to pour concrete in the long, wide crack that developed last spring at the bottom step of my front stoop. I did a rather messy job, but it if keeps water from infiltrating, even for just 1 year, I guess it will do the job. I'd been bugging my builder guy all year to do it and he's told me umpteen times he'd be over to do that and some other stuff he started, but he hasn't come, and we're toward the very end of decent weather for concrete-curing.
This guy is perfect in every other way that's important in a contractor....reasonable rates, very good work and actually quite a nice guy I enjoy talking to, but when it comes to just doing the job within a reasonable timeframe, that just doesn't happen. It makes it worse when he says he'll show up and then he doesn't.
I had been hoping to get together with a friend today, but her daughter was coming to visit and well, if I had seen my friend, I surely wouldn't have gotten all this other stuff done.
The weekends go by so fast.
Autumn arrangements
October 17th, 2010 at 07:34 pm
October 17th, 2010 at 10:14 pm 1287353669
October 18th, 2010 at 01:21 am 1287364906
October 18th, 2010 at 02:10 am 1287367812
Sounds like your contractor is a pick any two from: cheap, good, timely.
October 18th, 2010 at 04:46 am 1287377180
October 18th, 2010 at 01:32 pm 1287408765