Saturday, November 12, 2011

GBBD, GTTC, ironies, birdseed ornaments, Scamp update

Happy Garden Blogger's Bloom Day! Though I'm sure many of us are in the autumn perennial clean-up phase, there are still colorful blooms all around the world. Visit May Dreams Gardens on the 15th of each month to check it out. While you're here, check out the rose below. A pretty little yellow rose that seeks out the sun coming from unfortunately the direction of my neighbors' house. As you can see from the weeds on the neighbor's fence, they are not big garden aficionados. Still, the plants I care for end up greeting them as they walk out of their side door and meet the world each morning. ho hum...



In other ironies, I thought the sight of big old mushrooms growing next to the bottle of fungicide was pretty humorous.


And still more ironies... This is our typical farmers market booty. Pear cider, lemon bar with brownie hiding underneath, the sausages that the Amish family grills up, apple walnut turnover, lemon drop cookie. Not a single vegetable in sight.


I'm still harvesting these beautiful peppers (and wondering what to do with them). For those who have been enjoying the Garden to Table Challenge, I must officially put the meme into dormancy for at least the season, perhaps indefinitely. I'm going into my annual anti-cooking kick, in preparation for making Thanksgiving dinner.


Though it looked like cooking, what we're doing below is following Garden Gate magazine's recipe for birdseed ornaments.


We doubled the recipe, but the original recipe below makes six ornaments. You'll need 3/4 cup white or wheat flour, 3 cups bird seed mix, 1/2 cup dried cranberries, 1/2 cup raw peanuts, 1/2 cup water, 1/4 ounce unflavored gelatin, 3 tablespoons light corn syrup. Mix the dry ingredients together in a large bowl. Microwave the water until boiling in a glass measuring cup, then dump the gelatin in and stir until dissolved. Stir in the corn syrup and pour the liquids over the dry ingredients and mix thoroughly. Spoon the "dough" into a muffin tin. While the mix is still moist, poke a hold with the back of a wooden spoon for hanging. Allow the mix to harden for at least three hours before dumping the cakes out of the pan. Allow to dry overnight and add a ribbon or raffia for hanging.


We used a mini-muffin pan to do some extras and strung them in a chain to hang below.


This was the dregs that we made into a ball. Poked a hole through the middle with a chopstick.

These heart shaped ones were pressed into a cookie cutter.


Finally, precious Scamp below. You can see the area of his back that was shaved in order to do the surgery. They also shaved the back of his head where they also did something - not sure what. He's about...3.5 weeks post-surgery now and still slipping and sliding on the floors a little bit, but pretty sure-footed on carpet and grass. We've even been going for very short walks in the past few days and he's mostly out of the crate except for while we're out of the house. His bowel and bladder control came back about...2.5 weeks post surgery. It's pretty fricking miraculous. The last thing I'll mention about this whole ordeal is how interesting the reactions of people have been. A few posts back, I typed out the whole saga, and if you read it, you know it was a huge dilemma whether we should do the surgery or not. I have had someone say, "Wow, you have taught your kids a wonderful lesson about life". And the following day, when I conveyed the ordeal to a co-worker, she said, "Wow, my kids would have learned a quick lesson about life", an exact opposite lesson that the first person meant about life.


Here's Scamp - waiting patiently for food to drop. He's lost some weight since we've adopted him - a good thing since he was on the overweight side. Now that he's made great strides towards recovery from his surgery, we're back to getting to know each other.

15 comments:

  1. That looks like a fun project to do with kids. Yay, Scamp!

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  2. Naughty rose! It's really funny to see mushroom with the fungicide!
    The ornaments look so preety and it's always fun to make with the kids!
    And good to hear about Scamp! It's really a lesson of life!

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  3. Yeah! Super pumped about these ornaments! I am going to do them asap! Rock on about Scamp! That is just great news! He is adorable!

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  4. Scamps recovering very well! Cool project.

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  5. I love the birdseed ornaments. I'm hoping I can do an outdoor Christmas tree for the birds this year and these sound pretty easy :)

    I hope you bring back the Garden To Table Challenge next year, I know I didn't participate a ton, but I really enjoyed it.

    ~Emily

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  6. Anti-cook kick? Interesting! I hope Scamp will recover fully soon and you will find a way to utilise all those beautiful peppers. I love your seed ornament. I think _emily_rose's idea is going to be really interesting too. I imagine there will be lots of birds on the Christmas tree!

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  7. Interesting birdseed idea.
    I had once set some birdseeds in a bottle and hung it up and left it for months and none of the birds came, except the sunbirds which were only interested on my flowers.

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  8. I can't believe you're still growing peppers. Go you! Mine froze to a crisp more than a month ago.
    Your scamp looks so sweet. I'm glad you guys are able to let him out and love on him, I bet he needs that right now. He sure sounds like one special dog!

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  9. I love your birdseed ornaments--I definitely want to make those with the kids. Thanks for sharing! The photo of your sweet pup just makes me want to give him a treat--poor thing! We are complete animal crazy people here, so we would also do anything to help our feathered and furry babies. (Two pups, two cats that adopted us, two guinea pigs, two lizards, six chickens, and many, many fish...all in our suburban home!) Crazy, I know. Hope Scamp is feeling better quickly! Happy GBBD!

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  10. Love the bird seed ornaments...such a great idea! Glad to hear Scamp is on the mend :-)

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  11. Bless your heart. Your Scamp saga is so precious! I'm so, so glad he's doing better now. I'm sure all the love he's receiving is helping. I hope you have a wonderful Thanksgiving!

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  12. Scamp looks good, Wendy. Now if you can just keep him from jumping off things.....

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  13. yay Hi Wendy...so lovely to pop into your realm..fabulous as always! oh my... i love the photo of those gorgeous peppers...i am dazzled and wish i could reach in and take some!
    Love your pup..such a sweet creature with a beautiful soul!
    Kiki

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  14. Hi, Wendy...check out my review of Jam Today. It is a book I think you would like.

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  15. love the irony in the ironic pics. I wish I had roses spilling over from my neighbour's fence instead of the rampant ivy-like terror. And I am so pleased the story of Scamp is moving towards a happy ending. Not only your kids learned something - I did too! I must admit I won't miss your GTTC - as you know I have found it difficult to keep up with my mainly parsley harvest. And finally, lucky birds that get to eat their ornaments - could this be copied for Christmas ornaments? cheers to you wendy from cm

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