Late Fall Garden

Late fall in the garden is a time of transition. It seems that only a few weeks ago it was 80 degrees out and too hot to plant the winter garden. I planted a few violas with scotch moss in small pots. I tried to buy a few more of these small oval pots to plant some mini iris bulbs in. No luck at this point.

Yummy romaine lettuce. I have been picking the leaves off for sandwiches. I still have a few yellow onions grown last year to add to them, too.

I planted twice the amount of red and yellow onions I did last year. Used up all the red onions first. Having your own stores of food is like having your own store (duh!). I think, gee, it would be nice to have some onion to go with this. Then I remember that they're on the back porch! 

Some baby pan choi and bok choy seedlings just sprouted. They should be ready to eat in a month or so.

Newly sprouted bulbs. I've had these mini-hyacinths for a couple of years. After they are done blooming, I put the pots away and let them dry out.

My new thing, fairy gardens. It does bring a bit of pleasure to recreate little gardens. I saw them at a nursery but it seems too expensive to buy all the fairy elements. So, I used things I have around like this bird house and found stones from the river.

Memory pillows

Okay, maybe this isn't the best title for this post... The pillows aren't made of memory foam but from old, favorite t-shirts of my friend's son. He is back from college and having to downsize his clothes. I needed some rags so she brought me some of his discards. I thought I would make him a quilt of his favorite t-shirts from the pile. Alas, he liked plain, un-logo-ed t-shirts...I found these 2 with nice logos from vacation trips to Hawaii. I could tell the Longboard Surf Club was a favorite from the frayed neck. With only 2 t-shirts to work with, I decided to make pillows instead. The t-shirts were boys medium in size so I had to add some fabric to the top of the white pillow to keep the logo centered on the pillow. The black pillow was a wife-beater t-shirt so I sewed a scrap in the spaces where the armholes were to make a 12 by 16 inch square. I cut the t-shirt apart at the sides and used the back to make a the flap since it had a finished t-shirt edge and I don't do zippered closures. I also sewed a 12 by 16 inch scrap piece of cotton batting to the wrong side of the front piece to give it a little more body and to help center the design on the pillow. Then, stitched around the logo, assembled the pieces (make sure the back is in the right order when turned inside out), trimmed the edges down and zig-zagged the cut edges. I slipped in the pillow form,straightened out the back and fussed it about to get it set right. Hope he likes them!