Gardening and Puzzles

 I took a bit of a break from cross stitching.  It is finally summer weather here in my part of Canada.  Dave & I have been busy every day planning and planting annual flower seeds.  Some of the seeds I collected from my flowers last summer.  I love the satisfaction of growing my annuals each year from seeds.  Dave retired at the end of April, so he has more time to spend in the garden this year, we added 2 raised vegetable garden beds to our backyard.  We started planting vegetables from seeds (peas, beets, yellow beans, carrots, radishes, lettuce and herbs) and a few tomato and pepper (sweet & hot) plants from the nursery. We still need to start the corn.

Here are the 2 metal raised vegetable garden beds we bought and assembled.  The lettuce was bought at the grocery store. They were hydroponically grown, so they had lots of roots and we just transplanted them into the ground.

They had to be covered for several weeks when we still had frost every night.

I buy lots of wall garden art at the dollar stores.  We used magnets to stick the sun onto the metal.

We also tried one of the Ravensburger Escape puzzles.  This is the one we chose, called Space Observatory.

It only has 759 pcs, so we thought it wouldn't take us very long to build.  We were so wrong.  It is the first time we built a puzzle and didn't complete the border first. Some of the border pieces can fit in different places and because it is a lot of dark colours it was very hard to see any patterns.  We built most of the border and then added pieces next to them to make sure they were in the correct spot. We still had to move some around half way through. We enjoyed the assembling part of the puzzle. It was challenging enough and we enjoyed the image because it doesn't look exactly like the box cover. 

Here is a close up of the box image.  I won't show a photo of the completed puzzles in case someone is interested in assembling it themselves.

Dave & I both didn't enjoy trying to solve the puzzles to escape. We used the hints on the website. Some of the puzzles, we understood how they got their answers, but a few of them we didn't.  We both decided not to spend money on another one of the escape puzzles. 

We will continue buying new puzzle designs we like or just re-do the ones we already own. 

Cherries

I think it is time to pick cherries from our tree.  We planted this tree around 20 years ago.  The first time it gave cherries it was every other year.  Then when it was mature we now get them every year.  We have enough for Dave & I, our friends and neighbours and and half the tree for the birds, squirrels, rabbits, raccoons and skunks to enjoy as well.  Unfortunately, my family now have their own cherry trees, so I can't share anymore.

The first 4 photos are taken from above looking out my craft room window.

The next 3 photos are taken from the ground at eye level.  You can see how full the branches are.

This photo is showing a cluster of cherries on one branch.

Here is a small bowl of cherries picked from the branch shown above.

Blogged every day in 2020

I haven't stitched today and don't have a photo to show, so I wasn't going to post on my blog.  Then I realized that I have blogged every day so far in 2020 and didn't want to break my streak.

Dave & I spent some time pulling weeds in the flower gardens.  Here is one side of the backyard.  We love colour so we added old lattice painted and decorated with are from Dollarama on the pink lattice and an expensive wrought iron decoration from TSC Stores on the white lattice.  We have more brightly painted lattice and Dollarama décor around on the fences.

This is a privacy wall we built for our hot tub 10 years ago.  Every year I add more wall decorations.  

Chair #2 painted

We spent this weekend painting the second chair orange.  We LOVE the colour of the chair, but what a pain the paint was to work with.  It wasn't the same brand of paint as the yellow one.  The orange  chair was painted probably 6 coats in some areas to get the same effect as the yellow chair which was only 3 coats.  We used 1 quart of yellow (and kept painting to use up all the paint), but the orange we had to buy another quart to get the same coverage because the paint was so thin.  I will NEVER use Valspar exterior gloss paint again... it looks great, just too much extra work..

Weekend stitching and painting

I had a productive weekend.  I continued working on Tiny Miniaturists chart of my LNS Stitcher's Place.

Dave & I also started an outdoor painting project.   We have 2 single chairs (adirondack) and a double with a table that are now very old and weathered.  We decided to brighten up our backyard with some paint instead of restaining them.  Here is a before and after for 1 of the single chairs.  We only did one to see how we would like it.  We LOVE the new look.  The other single will be painted orange next weekend if the weather is nice.  Still not sure what colour to do the double chairs.

Fairy & Gnome Miniature Garden

Does anyone else have a Fairy or Gnome miniature garden?  I have been wanting one for years.  I built dollhouses years ago but never did miniature gardening.  It was always enough work to finish the inside of the dollhouse forget about doing the outside landscaping.   Yesterday we were at the nursery, Dave was looking for herbs to put in our garden.  We talked to one of the ladies that works there about Fairy gardens, she was very helpful (also has one of her own).  We bought a wooden box, potting soil, and miniature plants at the nursery.  Later I found a fairy and a gnome at Canadian Tire.  

This morning I put my garden together.  The house is a fish tank bubble watermill, but for now it is my house.  I want to build one from twigs, rocks and leave but that will be another day.  The rocks I collected on the beaches from New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island (11 years ago).  It is still a work in progress.