Filed under: City of Ottawa, Hippy Shit, Sticks and Stones, The Urban Jungle, Things I Do | Tags: guerrilla gardening, Hintonburg, neighbourhood, ottawa, urban jungle, urban spaces
The park at the end of our street is a wonderful space for kids. There are broad paved paths perfect for learning to ride bikes, a smaller play structure for climbing and sliding, lots of little hills to roll down and tables and seating to encourage congregation of families and neighbours.
About the only thing missing from this great little gem, IMO, are some kid-friendly plants with flowers to be enjoyed or picked that are hardy enough to withstand the heat from the asphalt and the love from the children. What the park accomplishes in fun and function, it sorely lacks in visual appeal. A few half-hearted efforts in years past have left a couple patches of mangy forsythia bushes, some enthusiastic daylilies, a couple random tulips, and violets that have self-seeded sporadically around the park.
Fortunately, I’ve a surfeit of Spring-flowering plants needing new homes.
Filed under: My Kids, Random Geekery, Sticks and Stones, The Urban Jungle, Things I Do | Tags: faerie, fairy, garden, urban jungle, whimsy
Two days ago, on the walk home from school, #2 found and befriended a little striped snail. He was very worried it might get hurt on the sidewalk and insisted we build it a house in the garden. Building one house was so much fun that we quickly moved on and built another, just in case our snail (named ‘Lyon’) had friends come to stay.
Filed under: Etsy Shop, Fibre Crafts, Needlecraft, Sticks and Stones, Things I Do, Things I Make | Tags: etsy, WIP, FO, DIY
An Etsy convo this morning reminded me that it has been quite awhile since I’ve listed anything new in my shop. It gave me pause for a moment — am I in a funk? am I feeling uncreative? — until I recalled that the vast majority of my craftier energies have been channeled directly into my yard in recent weeks. With another Brew and Q coming up this weekend, I’ve been busting my butt to get some projects done.
Thanks to a donation of unwanted patio stones from a friend, I’ve been working at putting in a stone patio sitting area where we previously used mulch as a ground cover. It’s coming along nicely, though is only about half done — my favorite part is smashing the big square stones up with the sledgehammer, to be honest. (more…)
I have been sadly lax about posting this summer–happily enough, I can blame it on having a lot of fun doing other creative-type things! I’ve been turning marbles and driftwood into suncatchers, needlefelting on some Christmas gifts for folks, gardening, setting up a fun little sitting area on my side porch, and moving my spinning gear into a more pleasantly accessible part of the house (downstairs by the television 
). If that isn’t enough, I have some more Christmas giftwork planned and am intending to turn some copper pipes into wind chimes in the next week or so. I’m in a head space right now where I’m most content when working on a project, so when outside my hands are rarely still.
With school starting (I’ll have both kids in morning classes this year for the first time!), the evenings becoming deliciously crisp, and canning season beginning in earnest, I figured it was time to share a bit of what I’ve been doing recently. Before I do so, though, I need to mention that my tool of choice for this project was a sadly dull Swiss Army Knife my Dad gave me in grade 9. I, of course, asked my husband to sharpen it, then became distracted, sliced my hand open and ended up in the emergency room waiting for stitches. After waiting an hour to have the need for stitches confirmed and being told my wait could be expected to stretch into the 6.5 hour range, I decided to go home and try my luck with a bandaid. I had serious doubts that night about whether it would work, as the wound reopened several times with rather dramatic results, but it seems to be doing well enough now–two days later.
Curious what my butterfingers were making?
