Monthly Archives: December 2010

New Year’s Eve 2010

Posted by Lesley on December 31, 2010 None comments

It’s been an uneventful and wonderfully warm New Year’s Eve so far.  The temperature got up to the seventies, and I’m taking it as a sign of good things to come in the new year!  Here are a few of the other good vibes my garden was giving off today:

Tiffany, my favorite rose in the garden because of her sublime scent, is about to bloom.

The Salvia is more beautiful and blue than my camera can portray.

The Cassia tree is starting to give me seeds. 

And Lukey, he knows it’s going to be a good year because he spent half the afternoon in the garden gnawing on a ham bone.

Have a safe and happy new year!

Weird Florida Weather

Posted by Lesley on December 28, 2010 2 comments

Time to find out where that woman bought her ski mask…it’s freezing, literally.  My sun-glistened garden border turned into a line of frosty mugs last night.  This photo was taken at 8 am…

This was the view through my windshield just before 9 am…

And here’s the make-shift ice scraper that got me to work at 9 am on the dot because the windshield wipers weren’t cutting it…

When I got to work, John had his coat off for the first time in a week.  He explained with a grin and a slight pull on his pant leg to reveal a gray cotton band around his ankle; he switched out his boxers for Long John’s!

Quick and Easy Homemade Christmas Gifts

Posted by Lesley on December 24, 2010 2 comments

It’s 4:30; dinner is at 6:00; I just finished crafting…phew! A quick blog post and then it’s right to the shower for me. Here are my top three homemade, quick, easy, and cheap Christmas gifts…

  • Crazy Crayons – Peel and chop your old crayons into psychedelic jumbo crayons.  Bake them at a low temperature (150 – 170 degrees) for about 20 minutes.  Use non-stick muffin tins, and they’ll pop right out when fully cooled.

Before:

After:

  • Personalized T-Shirts – Supplies can be bought at any craft store (Michael’s, Joann’s) for under $15.  My youngest brother is a huge Taylor Swift fan.  He proclaims to be her future husband, so this seemed fitting.

  • Treat boxes – Fill them with anything you can make or bake. 

These are Martha Stewart compartment treat boxes filled with pantry soaps…

Peanut butter and banana dog biscuits…

Speclatz…

Combine 4 cups flour, 2 cups sugar, 1 teaspoon cinnamon, the rind of 1 lemon, and 1 teaspoon baking powder.  Cut in 1/2 lb. whipped sweet unsalted butter, then add 3 eggs.  Mix thoroughly and refrigerate overnight.  Let stand 1 hour, roll thin, cut cookies, and bake 350F 10-12 min.  Thanks Grandma for this delicious German family recipe!  Merry Christmas!

A Christmas Gift for Gardeners

Posted by Lesley on December 21, 2010 None comments

Other gifts may last longer, but Rosso’s International’s 100% biodegradable bamboo pot is still my favorite gift this season – so much so that I’m keeping this one for myself.  It’s an attractive, inexpensive and eco-friendly planter.  Consider it a longer lasting peat pot.

Depending on where you keep the pot – inside or out – cracks will start to appear in two to three years.  At that point you have two options – throw it out or bury it with whatever is planted inside.  Either way – landfill or garden bed – the pots decompose within three to six months.  But you may as well plant them because while the pot breaks down, it also acts as a fertilizer.  The pots are made from natural materials, mainly bamboo husks.  So while they have the look, feel and utility of heavy-duty plastic, they leach nutrients instead of chemicals.  So far, so good, but it’ll be a few years before I can write my follow-up post. 

The First Harvest

Posted by Lesley on December 17, 2010 None comments

A grapefruit tree

+ Vodka

= Happy Hour

Not all the grapefruit are ripe yet, but there’s enough to cover the first round…TGIF!

Free Christmas Cards

Posted by Lesley on December 15, 2010 None comments

My manic crafting led to an overage of Christmas cards.  And with only 10 days left until Christmas, I’m feeling the season!  Email your name and mailing address to lettuceshare@comcast.net by this Sunday at 12am EST to receive a free handmade Christmas card with envelope.  I’ll be mailing the cards Monday morning, so USPS willing, your card will arrive with time to spare before Christmas.  Ho ho ho!

Edison’s Christmas Ornaments

Posted by Lesley on December 14, 2010 2 comments

Although they’re called the Edison and Ford Winter Estates, Thomas Edison was the first of the two to settle in Fort Myers and the estates showcase more of his life than Ford’s.  Two of the three houses are Edison’s, and visitors can also tour his research lab.  Aptly, the Christmas decorations not only celebrate the surrounding landscape but also Edison’s inventiveness.

At $20 a piece, the picture is my souvenir.  I’ll wait for a light bulb to blow around here and make my own.  A small drill bit will poke through the top of the bulb, and a lightweight wire hanger can serve as the hook.  I love how the beads are worked in.  They keep the wire in place but also add some finishing flair.  The garland was finished with citrus and equally charming.

There were lots of natural ornaments on display too…

White Angel’s Trumpet- Brugmansia x candida – Peru

Cluster Fig – Ficus racemosa - Asia

Nagami Kumquat – Fortunella margarita - China

Limequat – Lime x kumquat - China

    

Edison and Ford Estates

Posted by Lesley on December 12, 2010 None comments

We spent yesterday at the Edison and Ford Winter Estates in Fort Myers for John’s birthday.  It’s an easy trip from Sarasota; we were there in under an hour and a half.  The houses were, of course, interesting and historic, but as a gardener, I adored the grounds!  The backdrop is a postcard view of the Caloosahatchee River, and a large portion of the landscape is edible. 

The citrus collection made my mouth water, and the trees made my mouth drop.  Long vines hang like streamers from this Sausage tree.  Aka Kigelia africana, it’s native to tropical Africa.   

The vines have flower tips that resemble orchids.    

Many of the trees were planted in the early 1900s, and they clearly show their age through their girth and towering height.  Harvey Firestone gave Edison a Banyan tree in 1925 that has grown to occupy an entire acre of the estate to itself!  That’s a Buddha coconut on the left and a trio of Australian King palms on the right.

Edison planted palm trees throughout his estate and what is now the surrounding neighborhood.  It’s suddenly serene to pull off of busy US-41 onto McGregor Boulevard.  There are palm trees lining both sides of the street leading to the estates.  When Edison and Ford were traveling McGregor, it was a dirt cattle trail.   

There’s still more to cover – Christmas decorations, exotic plants, edibles.  To be continued…

Christmas Wreath – Round Two: Ligustrum

Posted by Lesley on December 9, 2010 None comments

The Jasmine wreath lasted less than 12-hours.  Hopefully the Ligustrum will have a longer run.  With the addition of fake Holly berries, this wreath has a more traditional feel.  But the smell is completely the opposite.  In candle terms, trade pine for fresh linen.  There were only two blooms between the two bushes because the Ligustrum normally blooms around May, but those tiny buds pack a punch. 

The smell is clean and fresh as soon as you approach the door.  If it keeps, it’ll work out well when I’m feeling lazy throughout the holidays.  The first impression scent of Ligustrum will trigger tidy thoughts and visitors will just naturally assume I cleaned the house…just don’t look down at the dog.

       

Christmas Crafts

Posted by Lesley on December 6, 2010 None comments

I remember being a teenager and coming home at 2 am to find my mother baking gingerbread houses.  She wasn’t waiting up for me; she’s just a little crazy.  She’s probably never slept eight straight hours in her life, so she becomes narcoleptic the minute a television turns on.  But to be fair, that’s only when she’s idle and she hardly ever is, which brings me back to the gingerbread houses.  With all that extra time on her hands, she does a lot of crafting.  If she’s not building a gingerbread house or marbling a pot holder, she’s sewing or stenciling something.  My whole life I’ve watched her create.  It was amazing to grow up with such a crafty mom.  I could flip through a book and say, “I want that,” and voila – a two-story gingerbread house with Smurfs in every window would appear!  I was never subjected to those cheap Halloween costumes with the flimsy cardboard masks and matching plastic smocks with pictures of a superheroes on them.  My costumes were made-to-order, some of my clothes too.  She made a gorgeous velvet gown for me to wear in my sister’s wedding.  The reason I’m thinking about any of this is because at 2 am Sunday morning, John was asleep in our bed, covered in card stock because I decided to make Christmas cards.  I was up most of the night, slept on a button and when I got undressed to take a shower on Sunday, a scrap of paper fell out of my flannel pajamas!  It’s official; I am my mother.  Thank God I don’t mind!  Now that I’ve shown you my metaphorical cards, here are some of my literal cards.  Everything I could find got glued – deconstructed jewelry,

magazine pages,

fabric scraps, and buttons.

After I was done with the Christmas cards, I pulled out my grapevine wreath from last year.  Without a Holly tree to snip from, I traded out red berries for white blossoms and tested out the Jasmine. 

Gorgeous, but it’s a good thing it only took five minutes to make because this is what it looked like by lunch today…

I was hoping the cold weather would keep it perky for a few days, but it may have even worked against me.  Oh well, I’ll try the Ligustrum next.  And btw, it was in the 50′s today and this transplant is cold!