Happy 11th Birthday to Miss Hanna

                         

There's no way to put into the words the joy that my beautiful Hanna has brought me in her short life.  She was 11 weeks old when I brought her home and was all ears.  I was working ten-hour days as a school registrar that summer and the school principal let me keep her in my office (in her crate, of course).  Her job was to calm the nerves of new students when they came to register for the next year.  I don't have to tell you that she charmed them all!

That fall I enrolled her in obedience classes so she could join a therapy group. The instructor was very stern and Hanna was mischievous so she got in trouble a few times.  I have some cute memories from those classes.   She loved visiting the children's hospital and retirement homes.  Since she has developed arthritis in her spine, we no longer do therapy work.  Her job now is to take her baby aspirin every morning and spend as much of the day as she wants on the front porch taking naps with her sister, Heidi.   I run out to check on them often and sometimes we all have a nap, weather permitting.

Garden Tips

 

I read these garden tips on Mom4Real blog this morning and thought they were so interesting and easy.  I am definitely going to try putting coffee grounds on my ivy that I want to give a jump start

 

1.  To get seeds to germinate quickly, simply snip the end of each seed with a pair of nail clippers and soak in water over night! Then plant and watch them germinate in a few days!

2.  Add crushed eggshells to your soil…the eggshells add calcium to the soil and keep unwanted critters away.

3.  Clean out your hairbrush and lay human hair around your plants to keep rabbits away.  I know it sounds kind of icky, and rabbits are cute, but they will eat your flower and plants.

4.  When there is a cold snap coming and temps are going to dive down into freezing, cover outdoor plants with painter’s plastic.  It works like a greenhouse does and keeps frost from killing your plants.

5.  Add an aluminum pan filled with beer to your garden to deter slugs from getting to your plants.  Slugs love beer 

6.  To stop mosquitoes and other insect larvae from breeding in birdbaths or rainwater barrels, put a few drops of vegetable oil on top of the water.  It spreads to form a film over the surface of the water so the larvae cannot lay eggs, but won’t bother the birds!

7.  Hang an aluminum pan in your fruit trees to keep birds from eating the fruit!  The birds do not like the reflection of the sun in the pans.

8.  Spray cabbage and other vegetables targeted by caterpillars with onion juice! Simply grate an onion and mix it with water, then spray down your veggies!

9.  Add coffee grounds to plants to flowers that won’t bloom and ivy that is not spreading very quickly.  It will help the flowers bloom and really get your ivy growing!

10.  Use aspirin and water to repel aphids and other sucking insects as well as promote strong plant growth.  Simply mix an aspirin and water in a spray bottle and spray down plants.

Redoing My Fairy Garden

Spring is finally here and I know you are as happy about it as I am! I've had so much fun this week working on my fairy garden. I planted it in an old red wagon several years ago and this year it needed to be completely redone.  After filling it with all new potting soil, I added two new fairy girls.   I wanted the scene to tell a story of one cute fairy running down the path with her corgi and two fairy friends anxiously waiting at the end of the path.

I lost my tiny owl when I was dumping out the old rocks and soil and was so lucky to find him.  He's about an inch tall.  The tree is a cedar seedling that I found in my flower bed.  

My garden will be finished after I find a few new plants.  I'm looking for just the right container to make a second garden for a gift.