Flower vase gets a new look with rubber bands and silver spray paint.

Tin upcycled with spray paint and water slide sticker can be used as a flower or plant container. 

Button stamp fail.

A simpler way to reuse wine cork is to make them into plant markers. 

In theory, making a stamp from a wine cork and a button, is a simple 

way to upcycle corks and save money.  It probably works if the button used has a carved surface that allows stamp ink to adhere to it.  My own experiment with this was a failure, as the photo above shows. I glued a heart-shaped button to a champagne cork and once the glue dried, I inked the button and applied it to paper. Since the surface of the button was too slick to collect ink. The image did not transfer t the paper. I might try again with a different type of button, but I find that wine corks work better as the plant marker shown above.

Spray painting a homely glass vase with Rustoleum Silver Bright was a more successful venture. I wrapped four rubber bands around the vase in order to mask the areas I wanted to leave unpainted. I think this turned out well and it is a good match for my mercury glass candlesticks.

I have posted photos of repurposed, painted tins before, but for my latest  project I used a  water slide sticker of heirloom roses. I will use the tin as a planter. I might attach to the tin a wire handle that will make it easy to to hang it well above the seven feet vertical space the deer in the resident herd can reach.

I BLOG, THEREFORE I AM

      Bulgarian tomato seedlings in a recycled milk carton.

Basil seedling in a recycled food container.

Some bloggers  write to keep a record, hoping that future generations will look up their posts and say,

 "Ah, that is how people lived in Tater Hollow, a century ago. "

Unlike those bloggers I have no wish to document the doings of my  little community. That was once my intention, but not everything that happens in Tater Hollow  is filled with sweetness and light. There is much discord and all I got for my effort was a more and more jaundiced eye.  To be in Tater Hollow, but not of Tater Hollow is my present ambition.

Living apart from one's fellow villagers is not the most satisfying condition. It can be lonely and occasionally frightening. Surprisingly more and more Americans choose to live apart from their communities. preferring to make friends in cyberspace. Is this social evolution? How did its happen? Do we fail when we reject the hurly-burly of face-to-face interchanges or do we grow wiser, calmer and more balanced when we decline to enter the fray? Fray there is, in a world that is changing so rapidly it is difficult to know what, if anything is permanent. Many of us face violence, hunger,  war, terrorism, economic crises, political upheaval, natural disasters, and  a diminishing supply of essentials such as food,  water and fuel. Does it not make sense to grow closer to one's fellow villagers?

       Ultimately,  the answer must be yes. Meantime, one must cultivate one's garden and hope for the best. My garden, weedy and unruly as it is, gives me great pleasure. In a few weeks i will be planting out the seedling I started earlier this month. With luck, tomatoes, pepper, several types of basil will provide me and mine with a feast that will extend beyond the growing season.  Outside, in my little vegetable garden,  asparagus, garlic, onions, strawberries, juice cherries and salad greens thrive as do the perennials in the flower garden.  Maybe before the year is out my neighbors and I will gather around a big pot of Soupe au Pistou  and relearn the old ways of Tater Hollow when folks still remembered that no one is an island.

IN THE MIDST OF DEATH, IN THE MIDST OF LIFE

IN THE MIDST OF DEATH, IN THE MIDST OF LIFE

Hello Ryiad, Rabat, Barbastro, Jerusalem, Teheran, Mega, Rouen, Lisbon and Pawpaw! It is rainy and cool in little Macondo by the Potomac. Roses, irises, oriental poppies, spirea and sweet rocket are blooming, asparagus is ready to harvest and it is time to plant more strawberries. I am about to have a slice of freshly baked corn cheese bread and a cup of espresso. How about you? I am assuming that you also have breakfast, wherever you live and I hope that you have plenty to feed yourself and your family, plus a few extra pennies to blow on books, a box of chocolate, flowers, a bottle of good wine, music, movies, and whatever you like and your religious beliefs permit. Out there, in the big world of realpolitik, things are not so pretty. People are killing each other in Iraq, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Darfur, and Sri Lanka, among other places.

I suspect that some of you might think that killing is not such a bad thing. Some of you might believe that you go boom-boom and you fly straight up to where your seventy virgins await you. That is your thing. I confess that I do not understand it. It is not that I am that terribly afraid of dying. I just happen to have seen enough death to gather that it is dadblasted final. Besides, there a few features this side of paradise that I would like to enjoy a little longer.

Being on the sunny side of sixty, I belong to a group whose peers seem to be departing life all too often. Two of mine died within the lat couple of months. A couple of days ago I helped bury a good friend. Actually, some of us who love her scattered her ashes in the confluence of the Shenandoah and Potomac rivers, below Harpers Ferry. It was a sunny afternoon. The sky was as clear as the best aquamarine. Gold flecks shone on the cool river water and and on the hills, the old trees had the achingly beautiful green of new saplings. A gentle breeze turne the surface of the water to a froth of lace. A Pawlonia tree showered us with it royal blue flowers.

After we had scattered ashes and roses into the river, a pair of wild ducks made its leisurely way to the shore. A swallowtail butterfly, old quaint old buildings of the town seemed to huddle together arund gardens where e pink clematis yellow roses bloomed. In the hour long trip home we saw more wildlife than we usually see in a week. Baby turtles sunned themselves on a log on the Potomac. A trio of groundogs played in the grass. Deer watched us from the woods. A great blue heron fed in the shallows. Mourning doves sang in the wheat fields. All about us there were reminders that in the midst of death there is unquenchable life.

I think that you out there in Rabat, Teheran, Rouen, Jerusalem, and I, in this little town in West Virginia are good neighbours. We have more in common than you imagine. We hve known love, loss and we have learnt to carry our burden of grief with dignity. We know that some of that grief could have been avoided if only we could have chosen wise leaders. As it is, we have to do goes on when our best as individuals. We cannot determine the results of the talks between Obama and Netanyahu. We cannot prevail upon Ahmadinejad to stop rattling his nucler saber and bringing the world closer to complete disaster. We cannot stop floods in Brazil, nor keep the swine flu from spreading globally. What we can do is to respect each other. Life is short. We can do nothing better than to honor our shared humanity and tend the seeds of peace as carefully we tend our gardens.

Last year a good friend gave me a pair of red leather gardening gloves that are really too beautiful to use while grubbing in the dirt. Generous as the gesture was, I am not the sort of gardener who wears gloves. I like to feel the texture and temperature of the soil. I like to sink my fingers into a nice mix of sand, bone meal and humus when I prepare a spot for recalcitrant poppies and lavendar. Though they might keep my hands and nails from being brutalised, gloves get in the way. I feel like a wuss when I wear them.
Early in the season, a hard day of sewing the abominable trees of heaven that find their way into my Nanking cherries and lilacs, makes my hands look like they belong to a wussy urban gardener. Today, after clearing beds for snow peas and sunchokes, I earned broken nails, abrasions and blisters. No matter. During my thirty some years of gardening and seven years as a metalsmith, I learnt that a certain amount of discomfort comes with the territory. Sure, there are times when I would like to be Vita Sackville-West, mistress of a bevy of hired hands in charge of grunt work. Quite often, at the jeweler's bench, I wish I were Faberge or Spratling and leave the uncomfortable tasks for minions. Somehow, I doubt that I would enjoy either gardening or silversmithing as much, I have no castle--I garden in a half acre lot. My silversmithing clients are every bit as discerning as Russianj aristocrats, but they have a smaller budget. I think that I am doing what I have always been meant to do--gardening and making jewelry my own way, gloves off, all senses on the job.

We are switching to microblogging, what with novels to write, the business of crafts and gardening season just around the corner--we are being very optimistic, metereologiccaky speaking.

The first novel of the series is in the hands of a capable reader. The second and third are nearly plotted. The business of crafts is gasping, but there are big plans afoot for a cooperative effort that should breathe life into it. At present, the garden is a tiny pot planted with cilantro and green onions. High temp today is 30F, low 15F. The poor seedlings need a blanket. The food news is that outdoors, the daffodils have reach an impressive five inches growth and some of the perennials-- sweet williams, poppies--have more than a hint of green. Adelante!

How sweet it would be to channel a pre-Raphaelite beauty who limits her demands to exquisite color and intoxicating fragrance. All her needs would be met by a small rose garden. Mine is a coarser world that requires brute manual labor in order to yield flowers whose ethereal beauty is a thing of a day.
I enjoy this wealth of roses, peonies, irises and poppies as much as I the heavy clay soul I have been amending for twenty years. I have made a garden in a meadow where cows used to graze a couple of centuries ago. The cows are gone and so is the miller whose land this was long before my village earned its place on a map. On this land I have grown roses that once graced a mandarin's garden. I have also grown peas, potatoes and huge crops of weeds, of which creeping charlie, the most detestable pest, came to the New World as a medicinal plant. Creeping charlie leeches the soil from water and nutrients better mannered plants badly need. I fight it with a crusading zeal and it fights back with such panache I want to come back in my next life as an invasive weed.
Yesterday, I issued a fatwa on another imported--the accursed and inaptly named tree of heaven. There was shock and awe in the garden while I battled these foul fiends. Now I can finish planting beans and potatoes. I have peppers and tomato seedlings to be brought out of the cold frame; there are new clematis and roses in need of borders. I will continue the good fight. My sidekick will help. Eventually, the weeds will return. Such is life.

OK, so this is a blog about arts and crafts, right? Not quite. Crafts are all very well, but life does intervene and the restless artisan must tend to life sustaining endeavours, such as gardening. Artisans must eat and these days it costs a considerable amount to put food on the table. According to a Ha'aretz columnist, we earthlings are actually "eating oil."
That is, oil production has passed its peak; our demand for it has not. Consequently, oil rich countries can up the prices to unprecedented highs and we will continue to ask for more, more, more. Obviously this affects the cost of energy needed to produce and transport food and it makes a grocery shopping expedition very painful indeed.
What does a sensible artisan do in these circumstances? First, she invests in a rain barrel, a compost maker and repositions the cold frame. Then she enlists the help a friend who will dig the weedy patch that once the vegetable garden. She lavishes soil amendments on the tilled space and plants edible flowers, a row of snow peas, a four store bought tomato plants, and row Red Dragon carrots interspersed with radishes. She plants herbs in a half barrel, pak choi and kale in an old wheelbarrow, salad greens in capacious plastic pots. She she weeds the edges of the veggie garden, checking on the health of three gooseberry bushes, two raspberries, half a dozen Nanking cherries, an enormous quince tree. Miraculously the asparagus that had been repeatedly uprooted by an echo-terrorist of sorts, reappears in quantities large enough for a two quiche-like pies.
Encouraged, the restless artisan tucks seventy five strawberry plants into a raised bed among recently planted Purple Passion asparagus. She pots a Marseille fig tree, a Maypop passion fruit vine and banana tree and dreams of feasts to come. Oil, shmoil. This is good. This is very good.

LOVE AND BETRAYAL

I loved him from the moment he came into my life. He was so bright, full of potential. I hoped we would be a good team and even now I thought we were. We wrote a novel together, gathered distant friends around us, created a history of togetherness and trust. We gave each other two of the best years of our lives and then the worst happened--he betrayed me. He is going into rehab soon, my Zed Bestboy, aka HP Pavilion dv2120. He will have his perfidious heart torn out of him so that a new, presumably faithful one, can be installed.

Will I ever trust him again?As most women in love I closed my eyes to reality. I forgot that relationships such as ours cannot defy built-in obsolescence. Still, we should have had four good years, at least. WHY, why, why did he fail me? I will never know, but one thing is for sure, my next laptop will be an IBM. Meanwhile, there are pansies heleborus and daffodils blooming in my garden, there is Madama Butterfly on PBS, raspberry sorbet in the freezer and other loves, far more constant than Zed's, the pig.