Easter and Collecting Seeds

We had a wonderful Easter.  After going to church and seeing a small drama which included brief sketches with appropriate songs sang by singers who gave me goose bumps, and the Pastor finishing up with an artfully told story of the crucifixtion...I must say the story of the sacrifice Christ made for mankind never ceases to pierce my heart and bring tears to my eyes...it makes me examine myself and vow to weed the garden of my heart of self will, jealousy, hatred, selfishness....I do want to be more like Christ daily....the family goes to my Sister's house.

.....I love our Easter tradition of going to my Sister's house and having a potluck lunch and an Easter egg hunt with all the adorable eggs my nieces and nephews decorated and dyed...crack, crunched, perfect or not....they all are embodiments of the dyers' personalities!

Here is a pic of the teen and not so teen girls posing....Leanne (my red headed step sister's kiddo), Fragile (niece), Liver' (niece), Tear Tear (daughter), Tina Fish (I wouldn't mind if she was my daughter.), and Auntie Nita trying to sneak in the pic.

...cameras were everywhere....I'm scared of the angles they're taking these photos at...me and my sisters are on the other side...we can just imagine how this makes our thighs look!....

...Vangie (niece) discussing the prettiest and coolest eggs with Ave (nephew)...

...my brother in law Mike in an adorable moment with his two youngest children...I wonder what they are telling him...

....Tally and her eggs....she's lamenting the fact that she only has one more year before she's too old to hunt and will have to hide....

....Jake (nephew)...holding up his friends and cousins with his amazing mental strength...

....collapsing pyramid...

....Big Bro....I think he went this far off for privacy....not possible in this family...there's always someone (like me hee hee) who will go out of their way to bug you....

....It's very important to me to be able to save my own seed....I want my garden to be able to support itself and feed my family whether I can buy seed or not.  Regardless, being able to save my own seed makes good money sense too.  My garden shouldn't cost more than purchasing food, and It doesn't.

I allow many of my plants to bolt or go to seed.  I know it takes up space where other things could be growing, but I plan to plant heat loving plants immediately into their spots after the seed matures and I remove the plant.  I find bolting and seeding plants are beautiful in their own right and the flowers provide nectar for bees and encourage pollinators to visit the garden. 

This is dill producing seed.  The seed can be planted and used in recipes as well.

...the kale seed pods are finally starting to dry.

...onion going to seed.

Curly Mustard seed.  I love this variety of mustard...spicy and yummy.

Some of the flowers blooming in the garden.

The sunflowers volunteered from the seed dropped last year.  I have them all over the garden.  This is the first one to bloom.  Another benefit of allowing plants to seed are all the volunteers around the garden and yard.

...see the bee up close.  The bee is actually checking out a beetle that was on the sunflower.  I keep an eye on the different insects that visit my garden.  Very few require any action.  The garden just seems to do a good job on it's own of balancing out the insect population.

So far this year I have saved seed from:  broccoli, curly mustard, dill, and arugula.

Bentos and Flower Shows

Thanks to my Sister Terri I discovered Bento Boxes.  Bento lunches are adorable lunches packed in stackable boxes and secured with a strap.  This style of lunch packing comes from Japan.  I'm now addicted to looking at bento blogs since I've discovered them!   On my side bar I have a link to a bento blog which in turn has tons of links to other wonderful bento blogs.

So I started packing bentos for my girls.  Not very good at it yet...but....I love to make them!  Making lunch for my girls is soooo much fun now.  It's like getting to do a little art project each morning.  It also makes you look at what is possible for lunches in a different way.  I find myself packing things I might not have before!

My girls at first were a little shy to bring their bentos to school.  Now they relish all of the attention!  Lately I've been picking mulberries each morning from the tree and filling the bottom tier of their bentos with them.  When I asked Seleste if she liked them...she replied, "Yes, but everyone begs for them!!!"  It appears that the children all crowd around and ask Seleste to give them some of her mulberries....Now mommies..(pause and sigh)  ..I hope that isn't your child begging my daughter for her lunch.....Get Rid Of The Doritos and PLANT A MULBERRY TREE.....LIKE YESTERDAY!!!!!  :)  My girls love eating their bentos....I find they eat their lunches much better now.  The boxes always come back empty....their bags never did.

A happy Babybel cheese ladybug...pecans from the tree...peanut butter crackers...cranberries...

Recently I gave in to my longing and bought bento tools I'd been drooling over....mind you....I didn't buy all the ones I'd been drooling over.....just a few....

...Sweet little bunny picks for decorating and eating berries and other such things with....

...caa..ute..little picks for the same thing....

...these are the tiniest little cups for packing condiments and sauces...

...the shapes on the left are for shaping rice balls into little bears and flowers...More about rice balls later...the tall silver cutters are for cutting veggies such as cucumbers and carrots and other things into cute decorative shapes...

....some cutsie cutters for cheese and meat etc...

...these are groovy...boiled egg molds!!  after hard boiling the egg you peel it, put it into the mold, drop into ice water for a minute, remove and voila....a bunny or bear shaped egg....how cute....my girls love boiled eggs in their lunches and the chickens are laying plenty!

...these are little cutters for cutting bread and other things into shapes...It makes adorable sandwiches...

I've also been knitting new dishrags for my kitchen.  My old kitchen linens have been transferred to the carwash/house cleaning rag basket and I have and am making new ones....the old rags were...um...well...raggedy...!

It's spring and it's flower show time.  Myself and two friends from my garden club conspired to interpret a painting with flowers for Art In Bloom at the New Orleans Museum of Art.  Much to our delight we won first and an overall award for "Best Interpretation".  I remember going to Art In Bloom as a teen and wishing to my sister Terri that I could participate.  This is my fourth year doing so....God does so like to give his children the desires of their hearts!

I submitted quite a bit of horticulture in the Federated Council of New Orleans Garden Clubs and Jefferson Parish Council of Garden Club's flower show.  I was thrilled with the awards my specimens won.  Eleven blue, two red and an honorable mention.  As well as two of the five coveted overall awards.....

This large green ribbon was the Arboreal award for my crybaby tree.  I was able to cut a long large perfect branch filled to the top with red calla lily like blossoms....stunning....I was thrilled to win (most of the cuttings I threw out after the show rather than transport them home again...things that could be rooted we shared with one another).

This award of merit was for the large perfect leaf from my Tropicana canna lily.  This canna is grown mainly for it spectacular foliage which is yellow, lime green and green bordered with red edge.  Again...I was smiling ear to ear...!!!

Chamomile Tea and the Garden & my camera

The flowers are blooming faster than I thought possible.  Every thing's brown then wham...not anymore!  There are small citrus, peach and pear fruit on the trees.  We're already picking mulberries and loquats.  My small creole garlic is turning brown already.  So, I pulled one up to discover a perfect garlic bulb with a rosy tinge...the lettuce, greens, and turnips are bolting...I'll save the seed.  The beans and pea plants are getting tall....loving it.

My Moonglow Iris...

...they do glow in the moonlight!

...I've had a terrible respiratory infection....despite...I went outside to pick some chamomile flowers...

....I plan to make chamomile tea with them....I love chamomile tea at night.  It does make me drowsy and I love it's naturally sweet honey flavor.  It doesn't need any sweeteners at all.....I'm so excited about brewing my first cup of homegrown chamomile.  I planted it last fall.  I'm not sure how it will fare in the long run in our hot humid climate...but it did just fine even during the frosty snaps this winter.  I'll save some seed for planting in case the plant doesn't make it.

My garlic bed runneth over!!!!  I plan to dry much of it.

Bachelor buttons, kale flowers, and bean poles.

More on Chamomile

Leslie asked "...exactly what kind of camera do you use?"  I use a Nikon D40.  It's actually my husbands...which I gave him a hard time about buying.  He loves to point this out when I use the camera.  I love this camera....I do a lot of cropping....but very very rarely any color adjustment.  I find taking pictures in the morning, evening or when it is overcast gives the best color.  I never use flash if I can help it....I just hate the way flash makes things look....Never regretted buying this camera...I just won't admit it to Byron!