Renovated Bird Bath

Our bird bath developed a bunch of cracks and would no longer hold water. It was a shame, because the bird bath was great. It’s made from light weight plastic and has a little solar panel in the middle which runs a pump so the birds can have a shower as well as a bath. For a while, epoxy worked to seal the cracks and stop the leaks. Eventually, though, epoxy couldn’t keep up with the cracks. When we looked for a replacement, we couldn’t find anything we liked.

Plasti Dip to the rescue! If you haven’t used Plasti Dip before, enter it as a search term on youtube and you’ll see people using it in all kinds of creative ways. It’s a product which creates a flexible plastic barrier that feels sort of like rubber. We used a can of yellow Plasti Dip (because that’s what we could find) and a paint brush to fill and cover the cracks in the bird bath. We didn’t want a yellow bird bath, so when the yellow Plasti Dip dried/cured, we used a rattle can of gray Plasti Dip to cover the entire top surface of the bird bath.

Plasti Dip was easy to use and worked exactly as we hoped it would. 

The bird bath is now getting heavy use and isn’t leaking.  The birds are happy and we are, too. 

New Light Fixture

Several months ago, we started looking for a new light fixture for our front porch. We wanted to have a fixture on only one side of the front door, and we couldn't find anything which would look good as a single fixture. After doing a bit of searching on the internet we found Turtle On A Rock Studio, which is the home of Laura Armstrong, a terrific metal artist located in Texas. Laura worked with us to get exactly what we wanted. 

The fixture is 27 inches high, 7 inches wide, and 4 inches deep. It's made of steel and has our house number on it. Laura included all the wiring needed to install it, along with a set of clear installation instructions. There's a fitted cap on top and a bug screen on the bottom. She gave us the option of using whatever kind of glass we wanted and we chose to use stained glass. The glass is mostly shades of green with some purple swirls which don't show in the pictures you see here. Even though I can't manage to get a decent photo of it, you get the idea, right? Honest to goodness it looks great. At night, when the lights are shining through the stained glass, it's beautiful. 

Even if you aren't in the market for a light fixture, you might want to take a look at Laura's website which shows you more of her work. (No disclaimer needed. The only interest we have in Turtle On A Rock Studio is our interest in promoting art!)

Hot Pepper Relish

Recently, we picked 20 pounds of peppers from our garden. We didn't want to freeze them because we've been freezing peppers all summer and we have enough frozen to last through the winter. We didn't want to use them fresh because we have plenty of fresh peppers left in the garden and because even though we love peppers, it would take us quite a while to eat 20 pounds of them. So, we decided to make pepper relish. 

Half the peppers we used were mild -- orange, red, and green bell plus some red banana peppers. 

The other half were chilies, jalapeños, and some little red fireballs which are a lot hotter than either the chilies or the jalapeños. They taste like I imagine molten lava would taste. One of my aunts gave us the seeds for these years ago and we've grown them (and saved the seeds) ever since. 

We seeded the mild peppers and the jalapeños, chopped up all of the peppers and some onion, added sugar, salt, cider vinegar, and mustard seed, and set things on the stove to boil.

Then, we filled pint jars and processed them in a hot water bath.  

We thought this batch would be warm, not hot, because only half of the peppers were hot. Instead, we ended up with 15 pints of the hottest relish we've ever made. We plan to add a little bit to anything that needs some zip. A very little bit! 

Something to Smile About

Ah, the joys of Spring. The grass is green. The flowers are blooming. And the goats are smiling.

Getting Ready For Spring

The 2014-15 winter threw a lot at us here in the mid-Atlantic region. We had brutally cold temperatures. We had snow. And ice. And freezing rain and sleet. And more snow. And more cold temperatures. We sanded, shoveled, scraped, made lots of chili, and filled the bird feeders hundreds of times. Weeks ago, we ran the white flag up the frozen pole, but Mother Nature refused to accept our surrender. Tomorrow's forecast is for 8+ inches of snow followed by single-digit temperatures.

This morning, we decided to ignore winter and get ready for spring by starting some seeds. We have one of those little cube refrigerators and it's stuffed with seeds. There are flower seeds which my late grandmother gave us decades ago. The hottest of our hot pepper seeds are from my 90-year old aunt's garden. A friend gave me seeds from two varieties of tomatoes she's grown for many years. Some seeds we saved from plants we got at plant exchanges. There are a few packets of “store bought” seeds and some seeds whose origins are a mystery. We sifted through all of them today and decided to start twenty varieties of peppers and four varieties of tomatoes. After we finished tamping the seeds into containers of potting soil, we put the containers into trays, covered the trays with clear tops, put the covered trays on shelves in a little plastic greenhouse, and closed the two zippers in the front. (In the photo, the front is open, so you'll have to imagine it zipped closed.) 

The greenhouse sits in a corner of the dining room which will be sunny the next time we see the sun.  When spring arrives, we'll be ready! 

Bird Strike Deterrent

Hello fellow bird watchers. Once in a while, a bird slams into one of our dining room windows. We always run outside, scoop them up, and hold them until they're ready to fly away. Nearly all of them live, but we still feel awful about it. So, this morning I used some scraps of clear vinyl (approximately .004" thick - bought it at JoAnn's) left over from another project and a black marker and made two of these:

The vinyl is really transparent and I had to take more than one photo to make it show so you could see it. When you're in the dining room, you sort of look through the webs and hardly notice them. The vinyl sticks to the windows by itself, just like a screen protector on an iPad, without any adhesive. Our hope is the birds will see the webs and choose a different route.  I mean, who doesn't hate running into a spider web, right? 

Christmas in January

Nearly two years ago, we planted 2,100 tiny trees which are protected by plastic tree shelters held in place with wooden stakes. Even though some of the trees are now more than six feet tall, we need to keep the shelters in place until they're quite a bit bigger. Unfortunately, the deer and damp weather combine forces to make sure the shelters fall over regularly, which means we have to reinstall them. We've been doing this on foot while carrying all of the equipment we need to get the job done. Juggling the shelters and the stakes while carrying a shovel and a small sledge hammer wasn't a lot of fun. Neither was walking back and forth to the barn when we discovered we needed a cable tie and walking back and forth again when we discovered we needed a length of twine and walking back and forth again . . . . . You get the idea. This is what they looked like in April 2013:

We started looking for a reasonably priced John Deere Gator (or something similar) to carry our “stuff” and to spare us the endless walks to and from the barn, when we found this little guy on craigslist.

The engine, drive train, wheels, and body belonged to a 4x4 John Deer Gator, and the clever guy who sold it to us turned it into what you see in the photos. It runs like a champ. It has headlights and a blindingly bright spot light. There's a windshield wiper and a fan. The prior owner did some nice wood work under the removable dump bed. 

The snow plow is stainless steel. 

The wooden cabin comes off with a few screws. 

It cost less than 20% of what we would have paid for a Gator without a cabin or a snow plow and we are 100% happy.  

We Have Mushrooms!

Three inches of rain in 24 hours gave us hundreds of mushrooms. These are a few of the gill-less varieties we've found in our yard in the past few years.  (Please don't eat mushrooms unless you are absolutely sure they aren't poisonous.)  

See the slug?

   

Surprise Peppers From Seed

In early March, we planted pepper seeds in small pots and put them in a sunny spot in the dining room.  We put three seeds in each pot, thinking maybe one seed per pot would germinate which would give us plenty of plants.

The seeds we planted were from peppers we grew and harvested last year.  It's always interesting to grow peppers from non-commercial seeds because, with one exception, we've found we can never be sure what kind of pepper the seed is going to produce.   Seeds saved from a red pepper in Year 1 might yield a pepper with green and purple camouflage in Year 2.  Seeds saved from a mild banana pepper in Year 1 might produce a mild banana pepper in Year 2, while seeds from the Year 2 mild banana pepper might produce a hot banana pepper in Year 3.  The one exception to this is the small round peppers which we grow from seeds given to us by one of my aunts many years ago.  They always breed true and they are as hot as molten lava.

Nearly all of the seeds we planted in early March germinated and we ended up with dozens of pepper plants.  Dozens and dozens and dozens of pepper plants.  Somewhat insanely, we planted all of them and we ended up with a wide variety of colors, shapes, sizes, and heat.  We enjoyed them all summer, plus we de-seeded, sliced and froze bag after bag of them, and we canned several dozen pints of pepper relish and salsa.  It's early October and the garden is starting to fade.  We've saved our seeds so we can start the cycle again in early March.  We can hardly wait.

Lunar Eclipse

Got up early this morning to watch the lunar eclipse which ended with a blood moon.  We hope you got to see it live, because (as you can see) we don't have any good photos to share.  The iPhone's camera leaves something to be desired when you're taking photos in the dark and focusing on an object that's 238,900 miles away.