A private waterfall

This is why my papyrus is growing so well. And why I planted it in this corner. And this is with less than a 1/4 inch of rain too. It really gushes when I get an inch of rain

A Little Bit of Egypt

We had a palm tree by our back door. But it was only inches away from the wall. So we decided that it had to go. I dug it out myself. It took me three days, but don't underestimate the power of my stubborness.
That corner gets a lot of rain too. The roof funnels it right down in. And it can get a few inches of standing water. Thankfully, it drains quickly.
But what do I plant there?




I had seen Egyptian Papyrus about a week before I had dug out the palm.
It doesn't have to be wet all the time. But it does like boggy conditions.
It took a while for it to finally come back to the store. But I was able to get it today.
And I got a few bags of river rock to help keep the moisture in.
I'm really happy with how it looks.
This stuff is the real deal, what ancient Egyptians used to make paper.



My friendly neighborhood toad seems to like it.
















My morning glories are doing really well too

Gardening again

I really enjoy being out in my little yard. And I like to take photos of my progress.
I'd forgotten how much I love being outside until I got some dirt to dig in.

I needed to thin my swiss chard. And in the process, I had a bowl of the greens.
The first day, I put them in a salad. They were a little bitter, but nice.
This morning I sauted the rest with olive oil and garlic, and added two scrambled eggs.
Pretty tasty.
I'm thinking of making a quiche when I'm able to pick some more.




My morning glorys are growing. It's hard to believe I planted the seeds about a month ago. They're blooming already. And when I checked this morning, they were about a foot up the trellis














A cardinal has been visiting my bird feeder. The picture isn't the best, I had to take it through the window.
I haven't seen the red wing blackbird in weeks.
I had two young male cardinals visiting for awhile. I started calling them "The Brothers"
But I've been just seeing the one lately. I think cardinals are territorial. So the other, (and the black bird too) might have been run off.

Hair Cut

I'm posting these for my sister to see (Hi Mary!) She doesn't use FaceBook.
So I finally got all of my hair cut off again. I've been planning on getting my hair cut for months. But one thing clinched it:
I had it done on Monday. I got in the car to drive to the salon. It was a little breezy out, and I had my hair down.
And I closed the car door on my hair!
It's been 3 1/2 years since my last hair cut. And I was really glad to see that Karen still works at the salon. She understands my cow licks
I donated my hair to Locks of Love. It's a great organization that makes wigs for children who have lost their hair to cancer or other diseases
http://www.locksoflove.org

Spring!

A few new pictures around my yard. I have seeds springing! Here are my baby basil and swiss chard. I also have coleus (an ornamental plant) coming up. I just put in some tomato seeds a few days ago.

There's a story on my swiss chard. It's a green. But I've never eaten it before. I have no idea what it tastes like. When I was a kid. We would get seed catalogs in the mail. Mom and Dad never really bought any thing from them. But they were fun to look at. The "exotic" plants always got my attention. And I would tease my parents to buy them.

"Mom! Mom! Get the 3 foot beans, get the hollow tomatoes, you can stuff them!" No deal.

We would get the same boring (But yummy) vegetables every year.

When I went shopping a few weeks ago, I looked at the seed packets. And I saw the "Bright Lights, rainbow of colors" variety of swiss chard. Swiss chard has a stem, almost like rubarb. I believe it's normally white. This comes in yellow, orange and hot pink!

I smiled. It was a dollar a packet and I knew I had to buy them.

I have strawberries! Last month, my husband and I went to the Strawberry Festival at Plant City. And I bought a hanging basket. These are berries #4 and 5.

I was so excited when my first berry started to turn pink. I called it my 7 dollar strawberry. (What I paid for the plant)

It was almost ready to pick. I decided it needed another day of sunshine. I went out the next morning to take a picture of it. And it was gone!

Something stole my $7 strawberry! I think a bird got it. The stem was neatly snipped off. If any more berries come up missing, I'll get some netting to wrap around the basket.

Here is one of the flower pots given to me by a neighbor. I put it by my front porch.

I planted dianthus and dusty millers in it.

You can also see my pink azalias.

Flower and Garden Festival

I went to the Flower and Garden Festival at Epcot a few weeks ago. I went by myself, but I had a nice time

The fairy garden was was really sweet

And I loved the butterfly house

Topiaries, etc.

Some of the famous topiaries at Epcot

A pair of mallard ducks made the fountain in front of the American Pavilion their own private pool

Off Kilter

This is the band Off Kilter. They play at the Canadian Pavilion at Epcot. It's a rock band with a bag pipe player
(Yes, you think Scotland instead of Canada, but remember Nova Scotia means "New Scotland")
They're pretty wild. They put a rock twist on traditional Scottish tunes. They do a little southern rock, a little John Denver...even some Jimi Hendrix.
I picked up a CD

British Invasion

This is British Invasion. A tribute band that plays
at Epcot, at the British pavilion. They put on an awesome show.
As look-a-likes, they're brilliant. Check out "Paul's" left handed bass guitar.
They play Beatles, Hermann's Hermits, and music from other great bands

British Invasion Video

This is a quick video of British Invasion

Cindy Jo's 30 years with Disney

We had a suprise party for Cindy Jo on March 17th to celebrate her 30 years with Disney



















Vanessa, a Disney Ambassador was there to present her with her 30 year pin and statue. Cindy Jo also received an honorary Ambassador for the Day pin.












Cindy Jo's favorite character is Cinderella.
Gene, a character artist from Art of Disney, did the artwork as a gift for her.

We all had a great time celebrating with her.

Cindy Jo

Cindy Jo at her 30th anniversary with Disney party

First finder

When we moved into the house back in Nov., one of the first things I did was set out my bird feeder.

I don't buy wild bird food for it. I set out left-overs from my pet cockatiel, Sami.

Cockatiels are notoriously picky eaters.

She won't eat the pellets in her seed mix. (She will eat the pellets that I buy separately, go figure) Along with some other bits, she won't eat the sunflower seeds either. Which is good. Sunflower seeds are actually cockatiel junk food.

But I was getting concerned that I didn't have any visitors to my feeder. Four months is quite a long time. I was even considering taking it down.

But I finally saw my first bird at my feeder yesterday. It was a young red wing black bird.

I know it's not everybody's favorite bird. But I am glad somebody is enjoying a free lunch.

(I couldn't get a good photo of my visitor, so I googled one)

Letterboxing, The Body Farm & The Cemetery

I'm sure that title got your attention.

I had an awesome day.
Today, we had a Carve & Bind at Downtown Orlando. A C&B is a get together where we carve new stamps and bind together new log books. It's a great way to share techniques and ideas.
It was held at the Beardall Senior Center. The center was a school at one time, built in the 20's. They have a lot of different events and classes there. They even have an exercise room. Since there are school rooms, it's a great place to hold a small event.
When I got there, I just waited a few minutes outside, when Paula arrived, aka God's Girl. We had chatted a few times on Atlas Quest. So it was great to finally get to meet her.
We went inside and Kim (Suzume), who organized the event, already had the room set up.
Michelle (Moonflower) also arrived. We had a few no-shows. It was just the four of us. But we had a great time.

I had a small party for my birthday back in December. Kim had car trouble and couldn't make it. So she brought my birthday gift today. It was a gift bag. And Ohh...I was just speechless.
She gave me a new carving tool set, a chuck with about 5 different gouges. Then a large box with about 2 dozen carving tools. It looked like it was more for wood carving, but it had every size blade imaginable. There was a roll of camo tape. And two blocks of Speedy Carve!
(The pink stuff, my favorite medium!)

Speaking of mediums, this was the focus of our event. Last month, Kim experimented with at least seven different carving media. She had printing plates, "Safety Cut" and a few different erasers. She had carved some stamps, and just tossed them out on her deck this past month to see how they would weather. She had a display of her stamps, "The Body Farm" with her opinion of each medium. The stamps became the Event Stamps.

There was an African Violet show at the center the same day. After the event, we checked it out and bought a few plants.

I knew Kim had planted three new letterboxes at the Greenwood Cemetery this past week. It was about a mile from the center. So I decided to check it out. Michelle and Paula couldn't go. But Kim decided to go with me. She wanted to double check her clues. It's a good thing she did. One of the boxes was missing already. The bush that it was hidden under was cut down. If Kim wasn't there, I'd probably still be looking for it. The director of the cemetery knew about the boxes, so Kim was going to check with him. I'm hoping it was turned in. The boxes were tributes to people who were buried there. Very nice.

Now on to the photos. The first photo shows a wet land that the cemetery overlooks. It is very pretty.



There is a dead pine tree with an eagle's nest in it. Kim uses it as a part of her clue. I'm sorry to say that we didn't see the eagles. Foxes have also been spotted in the cemetery as well.

































On my way home, I pulled into my alleyway. I saw that the neighbor on the corner had three large clay pots that he was throwing away. I asked if I could have them. And he said he was hoping he could give them away. Score!
They're large too. The largest looks like it could hold three gallons. Now for some warm weather to plant in!

This is a photo from last month. I should have posted it earlier. It's from a mini meet that was in St. Augustine. It shows (left to right) T-Rex (Seagull is hiding just behind Rex) DownEast Cowboy, myself and Mark & Sue Pepe. The weather was bad, but the boxing was good. I might write more about that adventure later.

Wedding Vinylmation

This past week, a couple brought a large set of Disney Vinylmation for me to decorate for them.

Vinylmation are collectable figurines. They come in 3" and 10" sizes. Most of them come with decorations

http://www.vinylmation.com

But they also come in white, that can be personally decorated.

The couple bought 33 of the small ones. They wanted me to personalize them for place settings for their wedding reception. They had also bought two of the large ones for me to decorate as a bride and groom.

I gave them each a wedding ring. The groom wore a tux with tails, and spats.

Here comes the Bride Vinylmation

It's hard to see in the photos, but I had also added glitter gel to the bride's dress and veil.

I was going for the glass slipper look on her shoes

Vinylmation/ Reception place settings

Here are the 3" tall vinylmation

Each had a heart in their palms

And some of them had favorite character names added as well

Meet the Sandies

We have Sand Hill Cranes living in our neighborhood. They are a rare bird here in Florida. I've posted photos of cranes on my blog before. But this is the first video I've gotten of them.

Just to warn you, towards the end of the video, one of them finds a bit of lizard jerky in the road for lunch.

I was hoping they would start calling. They can be quite loud.

I had just turned off my camera, when one of them started. I got a quick video of it, which is my next post...

Out for a walk

I had plenty of excuses. We had just moved in. There was lots of work to do around the house. The busy season was in full swing at work. Then we had our cold snap. But I finally took a walk around our neighborhood.

I went to the end of our community. And I found a beautiful bit of wet land. It was small but quite scenic. We have a few retention ponds around here too. But they planted cat-tails in them. It makes them look more natural, instead of a big puddle.