Tuesday, August 23, 2016

Rooting Roses

I have a rose bush that I found years ago in the mess that was the flower bed at my old house. Isn't it beautiful???



When I first found the rose, I was pretty sure it was dead. Just this hunk of root that was over an inch thick that I thought was a tree branch, but there was some thorny stuff coming out of it. So I gave it a chance, and I'm so glad I did. It moved with me, and has been sitting in the "nursery" next to the woods where we put plants that we don't know where to put yet. I'm sure it'll stay there for another year or two, and in the meantime I'm trying to take some cuttings and root them. Wish me luck that this baby grows!


Saturday, August 20, 2016

Bunny Feeding Station

This post is photo heavy - forgive me. Or not. I'm ok either way.

I have pet bunnies! Did you know that? Sugar Cookie and Henry. They're both dwarf Holland Lops, Sugar Cookie is grayer and Henry is browner. They're freakin adorable. :) They're also messy as heck, and bunnies do tend to poop while they eat. To encourage them to poop in their litter box, I keep their food dish in their litter box. And Henry likes to dump their food dish. Daily. It drives me nuts. So today I decided to make a feeding station ATTACHED TO THE WALL. That bowl isn't going ANYWHERE.



I forgot to take during photos, so here are some elaborate after photos. Cuz I'm a bad blogger for not completely documenting this. There are three stations - water bottle, food bowl, and hay manger. My goal was to build it using things I already had (minus the new food bowl).


The water bottle has two parts, the top is a piece of wire attached to an eye and secured to a hook with a loop in the wire.


The lower part supports the weight of the bottle, so I wanted something a little sturdier. I took a curtain rod support and reshaped it with a hammer, It fell a little short so I put a thin board under it rather than try to find something else to support it with.


Next we have the food dish. That was easy to attach, the bowl base has two bolts coming off the back that go between cage bars, then secures to the cage with a metal strap and some nuts. The bolts, handily enough, were just 1/4" longer than my board was thick. So I drilled a couple of holes, put the bolts through, and secured it with the nuts.



Lastly, the hay manger. It's meant to hang from cage bars also, so I gave it some wire to hang from. I made a little loop in each end of the wire and screwed it to the board through the loop with some large headed screws.


Lastly, I screwed it to the wall at the right height over the litter box, added the food dish and water bottle, and filled it all up! Henry is modeling it, below. Isn't he just too freakin cute?


Saturday, August 6, 2016

Stretching Stir Fry with the Garden

When you have SO MUCH CHARD and your friend gifted you with the motherload of zucchini what are you going to do? Make stir fry! Obv.

Well, we do it the easy way. We pick up the stir fry DIY bags from the freezer section when they're on sale (or we pick up a sauce packet) and then we add SO. MANY. VEGGIES. Rather than serve it over rice, we chop and steam chard, spiralize zucchini, and toss in some fresh green beans. Mix it all together and that 1-2 serving bag easily feeds 4+.

Our beets are finally ready to pick! Well, some of the bigger ones, at least. I think of it as thinning to let the littler ones get more sunlight (I purposefully crowd them). I wasn't sure about adding beets to a stir fry, but they make an amazing side dish!