Easy Hummingbird Food

My friend Jan says that April 15 is the date not only to file taxes, but also THE DAY to put out your hummingbird feeders. Taking her advice, we purchased two new feeders and put them out over the weekend.
There was some attractive red liquid available for purchase at the store, but it is quick to make your own (the red color is not necessary).

The hummingbird recipe, from  AllFree Crafts:

1 part sugar/4 parts water

Boil the water first, then measure and add sugar, at the rate of 1/4 cup of sugar to 1 cup of water. Let cool and store excess in refrigerator until ready to use. Do not add food coloring, honey (which ferments), or artificial sweetener, which has no nutritional value.

Hummingbirds cannot smell and depend on their eyesight to seek out flowers and food sources. Inexpensive hummingbird feeders are readily available and will attract the busy little birds without the need for coloring the food - the bright red container and easy food source will keep them coming throughout the day. Since hummingbirds are territorial, you may want to hang two feeders - one in the back yard and one in the front, to accommodate as many hummingbirds as you can. Hanging the feeders in a shady spot will discourage fermentation and spoilage of the nectar.

Keeping lookout both Saturday and Sunday, we did not view any hummingbird males scouting out the territory for the females that will arrive a week to ten days later. Maybe the males were just hanging out, watching tv, or doing what hummingbirds do in their spare time.

In the meantime, I'll try to keep the nectar and feeders freshened once or twice a week and keep a lookout for the little critters.

Oil Paints on Wood Furniture; Minwax Wipe-On Poly

Last summer, I posted about painting a wooden table top with fine art oils. You know the type of medium: the small tubes of paint found at craft stores for canvas work. The individual tube of oil paint costs about $5. Compared with buying a new quart of paint for repainting a small project, this type refinishing product that you can mix up yourself is less expensive, and gives a stained result that allows the wood grain to show through the color.

A wooden rocker, painted for donation seven years ago for Hospice of Western Colorado, needed a face lift. It had set for about 2,500 days in a sunny east window of a business owner who generously purchased the rocker for the Hospice CHAIR-ity Fundraiser. He proudly shows off the CHAIR for CHAIR-ity in his waiting room, where his clients made good use of it. However, after seven years of strong sunlight exposure, the back slats were VERY washed out, as shown below:

So it was definitely time for a quick face lift to freshen up the red color. DH picked up the rocker from our accountant's office and carted it home so I could do a little color tuning on it. Here is how it the colorization was done:

Gather materials of oil paint, mineral spirits, rags or paper towels, a container for mixing the stain, a disposable stirring utensil, linseed oil, and rubber gloves for skin protection.

Squeeze out about a two inch ribbon of paint from the tube and mix it with about a 1/3 cup linseed oil and 1/3 cup minerals spirits. The mineral spirits will help dissolve the oil and allow the paint to spread more easily.

Spread the mixture over the wood (first primed with a light sandpaper brush to take off that old and faded top layer). Use several coats for thorough coverage. Let it dry for several days and then apply a polyurethane gloss for durability. I found a clear gloss product, Minwax Wipe-On Poly, that worked very well on the rocker. "Hand rubbed beauty with polyurethane protection" is labeled on the front of the can. It was accurate; truth in labeling definitely applied to Minwax.

Here is a picture of the rocker with its original colors (the yellow flower was not repainted):

Refurbishing it made a HUGE difference in the looks of the rocker, and its backside is a bright new red. It is again ready to face the sun with a shiny new finish.

Now this rocker, donated and painted with butterflies and poppies in 2003, is the next one up for a face lift:

Geraniums: New Plants from Cuttings

Last spring, I wrote about attempting to keep geraniums alive over the winter. Not only did the three plants survive the winter in a pot watered only occasionally, they even blossomed in our non-heated garage. Here is a picture that I took yesterday of the straggly plants fresh out of the garage, a bit chilly but still green.

Now it was time to cut down this pot of geraniums and try to start growing new plants from the year-old stock.

Concise information about geranium propagation was found at Martha Stewart to-the-rescue.

A quick trip to the local gardening supply house would supply the potting medium and growth root stimulator. I still needed some pots for starting the propagation process, and knew there were a few that could be scrounged from prior gardening projects.

I came across a handy article about recycling tin cans for mini container gardening at Craft Stylish. The picture below is courtesy of the same website.

Opting for the packaged container of 2 inch peat moss flats (but alas, not incorporating the clever idea shown at Craft Stylish), here are the 18 geranium starts begun over Easter weekend:

These 18 new starts from the three "winterized" geraniums were transplanted using tips from Martha Stewart to-the-rescue.

Time, sun and water and a little luck should help in making even more viable plants that can be used on the patio this summer. And there will be sixfold the amount of new plants from the three geraniums kept over the winter.