Metalsmithing

It was so fun using different metals together. I've only ever used silver. The copper and brass compliment each other nicely.

It was fun to experiment with different textures too. One layer has a brushed sunburst finish and the other has a hammered finish.

For the Birds!

I saw a cool blue bird perched on our garden post this morning. I rushed for my camera, took a picture, but the memory card wasn't in it. (Still can't find it. Where could it be? The computer or the camera are the only possible locations?????) At first I thought it was an Indigo Bunting which is the prize of birds to see. I've only seen two before in my lifetime. . .

Then, I thought it was a Bluebird. . .

But it turns out, it was a Barn Swallow which makes the most sense, since we have about seven nests in the eaves of of our garage overhang and under our deck.

Here's more of a close-up.

They are pretty, except they leave little presents on our retaining wall and our garage slab.

Baby Corn!

We weren't sure they were going to come up, but here they are!

Metamorphosis

The caterpillars came home from school with my four year-old son so he could take care of them for the summer.


Soon, they we on the roof of there bug house in their chrysalis.

When they hatched, the butterflies were very fond of the kids.

My son was very sad when his butterfly finally flew away.

My daughter sang hers a song called "Butterfly Fly Away."

If We Plant It, Will It Grow?

We aren't farmers. We just happen to have a tractor (two, actually. More on that in a later post) and a significantly sized yard.

My husband got it in his head that he wanted to plant some corn. We like to eat corn. Does that qualify us? Do we know anything about planting corn? No. The most we've ever done is planted a few tomato plants and sunflowers.

He did his research, but it was much more complicated than we anticipated. We had no field. We had grass, so we had to get the area tilled. Twice. We had to get one of these to plant the corn.


It has two bins because the top one is for fertilizer and the bottom one is for the corn. We had to turn the tractor tires around because they were too far apart. Talking to the old guys at the fertilizer store was nice because they really knew what they were talking about. And we had to decide what kind of corn to plant. There weren't a whole lot of choices at our tiny feed store, so we tried a few.

Now we have one of these. Our own field of dreams. . .