Garden

These candles are painted with acrylics and the pattern is by Charlene Barlow in the Special 2007 Holiday Issue of Create and Decorate magazine. My friends and I will be painting these next and we love the primitive-style pattern which will make nice gifts to give to friends. Below is my garden pest. His name is HOJO and that is short for Howard Johnson's I guess. Our grand child, Lexi, called him that when he was a kitten and it has just stuck. Notice that he is perched on my crowded art table under the warmth of the light and when he is not patrolling the garden for bugs and birds he pushes his way into my space. He is not very ambitious so the birds have nothing to fear, but it makes him feel like a hunter if he can stalk and pretend to hunt.

I have been trying to prepare my garden for winter. My garden guru "Bonnie" brought a wonderful new green coneflower and about 25 tulip bulbs. Soooo....they had to get planted before the really heavy stuff starts to fall. Working away in my favorite place and happily digging holes for the bulbs, I hit a buried black plastic tubing which is like those used in sprinkler systems. The Mr. happened to be out there and I brought it to his attention. When this home was built, it appears that an elaborate sprinkler system had been installed. I didn't discover it until I was digging for my pond last year and the rototiller chopped right through one of those black tubes. The previous year, in an attempt to terrace for a garden, I had already hauled in loads and loads of dirt and this buried the sprinkler system even deeper than mother nature had already done in the many years of neglect. We couldn't revive the system so just chucked it up to experience and disconnected everything out back. My Mr. told me to cut the black tube so that I could plant that precious bulb, but when I couldn't, he tried. He poked a small hole with a pocket knife and "ol' faithful" erupted. Water in a line no longer used and not for years? He took the pick and plunged it into the tube to relieve the pressure and more water appeared instantly. We now had a small puddle. While standing there scratching our heads, it occurred to us that our pond had quit pumping. We had punctured the water source to our pond and there is no end to the stupid things we do. A trip to the local hardware store and a few hours later, I was back to planting bulbs. I can hardly wait for spring now to see the beauty that arises from these little bulbs.

Teach us delight in SIMPLE things. - Rudyard Kipling