Moss instead of Grass for Lawns

Walking along and listening to podcasts this morning, NPR Science Friday had an interesting story about how one guy on the East Coast of the US (Pennsylvania) had ripped out all the grass in his lawn and replaced it with moss over forty years ago. Note that one must have a shady lawn in order to accomplish this green feat.

Here is the website from a researcher who looked into the problem from NPR Story.

...and this talks about cultivating moss on acid soil. Buffering is slow, but about half way into the video, you will see an amazing lawn of grass, so it may be worth your wait to view the show.

Painting a Day Lily in oils

This is one of our front yard day lilies blooming. Yellows, reds, rust colors, oranges, burnt sienna and greens set it off. The bloom lasts less than a day, so you have to admire it when you can.

Now to try to paint a likeness of a day lily.

Step 1: Outline the day lily in pencils, adding in some leaves and filling in the background with some color:Stretched canvas painting continues after a week of work with further definition of petals:

Here is a picture of the day lily still in progress after about three weeks:

It is about half finished at this point. It is 30" x 40", and there is still lots to do on it. Grounding the leaves from the base is a hurdle that needs to be overcome. Any helpful suggestions?

Finches, Flying the Coop

I have been amusing myself with watching the wrens over the past few weeks, from nest building to egg laying to bird hatching. And this morning, here is a picture of one of the little ones right before he flew the coop:

One of his siblings still in the nest about an hour ago:

Their size is deceptive in the picture, as they appear larger than their actual size of a silver quarter coin. That bird poop around the perimenter of the nest is disgusting, but they don't seem to mind.

This YouTube site, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IMJIFYcru-E, shows 10 minutes of finches in their nest.

Mint in Dips and Salads

Tons of mint are grow in our back. What to do with it? From Indian Food Forever:

1 bunch fresh mint leaves
2 green chillies
1 tbsp tamarind pulp
Salt to taste, a little water

How to make mint (pudina) chutney :
To make tamarind pulp soak a little tamarind in water and keep aside for 2 hours. Then strain the mixture in a bowl with the help of a spoon. To make tamarind juice add a little water to the pulp. These days ready made pulp is available in the market.

Wash the mint leaves well. Grind it to a smooth paste with green chillies, salt and tamarind juice. You can add water if the mixture is thick.

This mixture is similar (or the same) to that green dipping sauce served with appetizers at Indian restaurants. It is delicious with Frito's!

And from Lowfat Cooking:

A bright green salad of sugar snap peas and sweet green peas in a light, mint dressing. Cook Time: 2 minutes

Ingredients:
2 1/2 cups frozen peas
1 pound sugar snap peas, strings removed
2 tsp sugar
2 tbsp
white wine vinegar
1 tbsp extra-virgin olive oil
1 tbsp lemon juice
1/4 cup freshly chopped mint

Preparation: Bring a large pot of water to a boil. Add frozen peas and snap peas, and cook for 2 minutes. Drain and rinse immediately with cold water to stop cooking, and empty peas into a large bowl. In a small bowl, combine sugar, white wine vinegar, olive oil lemon juice and mint. Drizzle over peas. Toss, then refrigerate for 2 hours. Serves 8

Per Serving: Calories 83, Calories from Fat 17, Total Fat 2g (sat 0.2g),
Cholesterol 0mg, Sodium 53mg, Carbohydrate 12.6g, Fiber 3.8g, Protein 4g

Here is a picture of this refreshing summer pea salad with mint sauce:

Another summer salad shown below is my husband's invention and can be found at his weblog recipe for pasta primavera salad. (no mint in this salad)

And here is our Tuesday Ladies' Auxiliary yesterday after our salad repast. Let's do it again soon, friends.

Faroese Shawl

Over the past couple of weeks, little progress has been made on a lace shawl I have been knitting because I have ripped out more stitches on it than have been accurately completed. But FINALLY, I'm about 10% through it.

It should end up quite large, if perseverance continues, roughly five feet at the top edge tapering down to a modified ending point four feet from the edging border.

The pattern begins by casting on 423 stitches and continues row by row for a bit less than 200 rows. Here it is at row 20 on size 7 circular needles:

The Faroese Shawl was named by Marily van Keppel as she translated the pattern from the Faroese language and has it published in A Gathering of Lace (complied by Meg Swansen). This shawl has its own thread on ravelery. Moderator Diane at Bella Vita Farm has been a great help in interpreting this pattern. Thanks, Diane.

House Finch: New Family Arrives

SIL Jack asked what kind of finch we had nesting in the arbor. Here is what Birdsource had to say:

The identification of these three finches of the Carpodacus genus can be extremely difficult. Each species is about the same size and shape, each is colored red with varying degrees of brown streaking, and each is common to feeder areas. What's more, the ranges of these birds overlap quite a bit, primarily owing to the ubiquitous distribution of the House Finch.

The picture of the male house finch, courtesy of Larry McQueen, appears to have similar colorings to the one I see going in and out of the nest.

Dragging out the ladder again, here is a picture of the newly hatched finches this morning:

It's off to fill the finch feeder again, so the hatch lings can receive supplements to their diet of insects from their parents.

Finches: Their Diner and Nest of Four Eggs

Look what I found in our honeysuckle arbor today: a tiny nest of finch eggs!

I have been feeding finches for about two months from one of those bird feeder net socks. The feeder sock is about five feet from the honeysuckle arbor, so it is a convenient diner for mom and dad and soon-to-be kiddos. There are four eggs in the nest, and I was very careful in not leaving my scent too near the nest.

Catherine wrote this blog post about wrens nesting in cactus, and it spurred me to get a ladder out and look up into the honeysuckle branches where finches seem to be nesting. Sure enough, there were the pretty little eggs in a wee little nest.

It takes 21 days for chicken eggs to hatch, but only 14-16 days, according to Yahoo Answers, for finch eggs to hatch.

What is hatching in your neighborhood?

Pink Day Lily Finished!

The pictures above were taken in January, 2009 in Auckland, New Zealand. Don't those colors create a riot in your head? Day lilies come in many varieties and colors, and these were absolutely spectacular. Here is a website that tells you everything you could want to know about this flower: The Day Lily Organization.

I had to try to paint that close up picture of the pink day lily because the colors captured me. Here is the project when I was about midway through painting it in April, 2009:

And it was completed yesterday (except for the glazing process), with a picture of the results below. It took four months to complete, what with my busy schedule of a retired diva.

It is painted with oil based fine art paints, and the picture is on a stretched canvas, measuring 11" x 14". Although I like those pinkish, mauve, purple and red colors, I am thinking of painting another rendition of a day lily in golden yellows, burnt sienna and reddish browns, similar to the day lilies in our front yard:


The canvas is prepared and I 'm about ready to sketch out the flower on it. This painting will be my opus, since the size is 30" x 40". Yikes! My husband was kind enough to spend a part of a day building me an easel large enough to hold that humongous canvas.

Wish me luck in painting it. I may be through with it by 2010, Lord willing.

Claire Lace Shawl (free pattern download)

The Claire Lace Shawl, designed by Yvonne Senecal, available at the Caffeineated Knitter for download at NO cost... is... ta da.... finished! Yvonne was kind enough to answer a few of my questions while knitting this little jewel.

The fiber was purchased in Dunedin, New Zealand and is 40 % possum fur, 50% merino wool, and 10% silk. This acquisition was blogged about in February at possum-fur-and-wool-fiber-blend and again at a later posting. Eight skeins were used in the body of the shawl (100 yd/skein).

Some minor modifications that I made to the pattern were to finish off the sides of the shawl in a coordinating multicolor wool and silk fiber. Then a single crochet stitch was added to the top of the shawl, covered over with a four stitch I cord.

This is the top of the shawl shown in greater visual detail. Thanks, the Caffeineated Knitter (Yvonne) and Ravelry, for such wonderful technical support.

Now I'm on to the next shawl project from Meg Swanson's A Gathering of Lace.

"The Scream" by Edvard Munch; Again Surfacing in Grand Junction, CO

Remember the theft of the iconic art ("The Cry", or "The Scream") representing existential angst in the form of a screaming face? That piece of art was created by Edvard Much around 1893. Its actual title is "The Cry", according to Web Museum Paris:

(b. Dec. 12, 1863, Löten, Nor.--d. Jan. 23, 1944, Ekely, near Oslo)
Norwegian painter and printmaker whose intense, evocative treatment of psychological and emotional themes was a major influence on the development of German Expressionism in the early 20th century. His painting The Cry (1893) is regarded as an icon of existential anguish.

A gifted Norwegian painter and printmaker, Edvard Munch not only was his country's greatest artist, but also played a vital role in the development of German expressionism. His work often included the symbolic portrayal of such themes as misery, sickness, and death. The Cry, probably his most familiar painting, is typical in itsanguished expression of isolation and fear.

And from Munch_Museum, a description of the theft almost five years ago is given:

On Sunday, 22 August 2004, two paintings by Munch, The Scream and Madonna, were stolen from the Munch Museum by masked men wielding firearms. The robbers forced the museum guards to lie down on the floor while they snapped the cable securing the paintings to the wall and escaped in a black Audi A6 station wagon, which police later found abandoned. The paintings were recovered by Oslo Police on August 31, 2006.

Above is a picture of "The Cry" and then a close up of the face by Munch is below:

...now look at a rock found on a neighborhood street in Grand Junction among a pile of bigger stones:

Do you see a similarity?

God has a sense of humor, if only we take the time to look carefully.

China Court & Other Read Aloud Books

Written by Rumer Godden in 1961, China Court: The Hours of a Country House was reviewed by The Book Diva at Viewpoints with this quick summarization:

Rumer Godden spins a complex and delicate tale of family, and time, and love. Past, present, and future weave around each other in layers of story centering on an old family home and the generations who live and hate and love there. I first read this story many years ago, and I still find many of Ms Godden's strong characters and unique turns of phrase vivid in my mind. I would recommend this book without hesitation - a re-readable joy.

Prolific reader, blogger, and all around marvelous personality and strong soul Julie, who writes at Forgotten Classics (and two other blogs!) has recorded this book on audio. I have recently downloaded her readings of China Court from this site: complete-episodes-listing, starting at episode number 23.

When downloading, each episode (a chapter or two) is copied automatically into my iTunes account. For some reason, it is saved to my "music" folder. But when saved onto my iPod, it is easy enough to pick up the first episode in that folder and begin listening to the book either in the car or my favorite easy chair (while knitting, of course).

These audible books in the public domain are easy to record onto a CD, or you could listen to the recorded podcasts/books on your computer, although those venues are not so portable.

Julie has recorded the entire China Court: The Hours of a Country House book (over 14 hours of recording time) in a clear voice, that although is not a professionally trained reading voice, Julie's tempo and lack of regional accent is very easy on the ears. What a gift to hear this read, and at no cost to the listener!

Try Julie's website, Forgotten Classics, and spend some time poking around there. She has a lot to offer.

Another of my podcast favorites, Craft Lit, hosted by Heather Ordover from Arizona, spends some time each week talking about things going on in her life (actually, quite interesting) and then either she or other readers read one or two chapters of a book each week. The past month or so, Heather has been reading The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne. As a literature teacher, she has lots to add from her literary background which aids in content understanding.

Here is a listing of books which Heather has read/reviewed since 2008:

Frankenstein; Little Women; Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, The Scarlet Letter (and probably one or two others I have forgotten or missed over the past 18 months)

You can find Heather's recordings at Craft Lit; just look on the left hand side under "Library".

Since April of 2006, Ms. Hardover has recorded many books in the public domain that have been read aloud by faithful followers of her blog. Like Heather says, "If your hands are too busy to pick up a book, at least you can listen to one." She is another amazing woman who has so many stars in her crown, like Julie at Forgotten Classics, it would be a full time job just to shine them.

There is a wealth of goodness at the sites of these two podcasters, and I encourage you to take advantage of them to increase your knowledge of the classics.