Post # 18, Mother's Day Week

In which I do not kill anything, and I also try my hand at a new craft experience.
I have, rather than the desired 'green thumb', one of those black thumbs that people talk about. It's pretty much a running joke. In fact I currently have a pot that, at Easter, contained beautiful living tulips - but now contains only a brown mass of withered leaves. Maybe this is how tulips behave when they have finished blossoming, I don't know... but it makes me sad when I kill plants, because I really do love them, and they way they look inside the house and out.
When we first moved to Lancaster County, I was overwhelmed with the urge to grow things. Plants just thrive here, and all the conditions come together to create some of the best non-irrigated farmland in the country, possibly the world. Plus, the overwhelming beauty of all the trees and flowers blooming in the spring - it's enough to make even the most avid devotee of silk plants consider attempting to maybe keep at least a little cactus. Just to give it a shot.
Well, I am proud to announce that, after putting it off for four years, and only one failed attempt, I have not killed some plants! Yay!


(See the bonus marigold? There is also a hyacinth growing next to it- planted in a nifty self-watering pot - that wouldn't fit in the picture.)
All of these were sprouted by moi. Using recycled planting materials, no less. (Pats self on back)
Now, in the interests of full disclosure, I did kill the first round of seeds I planted; they became moldy, and only the beans seemed even interested in trying to sprout... but I have narrowed it down to four possible reasons why this may have happened:

1. The dirt. I figured that the clay-ey, sticky soil around here is good enough to grow literally tons of corn and what-not, so it should be good enough to start my seeds, right? Besides, those expensive potting soils are just full of chemical fertilizers, anyway. I failed to remember that the soil around here is also liberally treated with non-chemical fertilizer, in the form of liquefied cow poo. How I failed to draw this parallel at the same time that the pungent aromas of spring were drifting in through my open windows, I don't know. Apparently, I am not a smart person.
   
2. Over-watering. I figured seeds are dried, they must need a lot of water to get started. I may have been a bit neurotic about the watering.
3. The water itself. The reason that chlorine is put in city water in the first place is to dissuade bacterial growth. It would only logically follow that trying to make plants grow with chlorinated water would probably be counter-productive. This did not, however, occur to me until the moldy, half-sprouted seeds were already being mourned. In my defense, this is I think the first time I have had city water in my life.
   
4. Plants just don't like me. I may to go with this one, since it involves only a slight blow to my self-esteem, rather than acknowledging that I got pretty much every aspect of growing plants horribly wrong.

So, I set out to correct what I could, using my now severely depleted seed supply. I bought potting soil, rather than relying on my own front yard dirt (for now), I watered much less than I had the first go-round, and I also made a point of not watering the plants with any water that hadn't been sitting for at least 24 hours to let the chlorine dissipate. I also smiled at them a little more often to make myself more likable. Maybe that helped, because, as you can see from the picture, I have potential vegetables! It seems as though nearly 80% of the seeds decided to grow - yay! I don't know if that's a good ratio or not, but for me, anything more than 20% would have been considered a success!

In other, somewhat unrelated news, I have tried my hand at jewelry-making!
I made these lovelies for my mom and MIL, for Mother's Day. (Yes, I know I shouldn't be advertising what I made my mother and MIL on the interwebs, where anyone could wander across it and spoil the surprise, but we all - and by that I mean I- know that no one reads this blog anyway, and the chances of either of them stumbling across it and finding out what their gifts are in the next five days is roughly the same as the odds of Death Valley flooding. So I think I'm good.) Here they are, being modeled on my favorite shirt, mother's day birthstone pendants!



Aren't they pretty?
The one on the left is for my MIL, the gems being emerald for my BIL and ruby for my DH. The one on the right is then, obviously, for my mom - aquamarine for my brother, rubies for my sister and I.
I made both of the charms with beads I picked up at the Lancaster Bead Company and some things I had at home already; all the beads and both necklaces ran about $40 total. IMHO, that's not bad for something nice and sparkly like these. Especially if you have gone out and priced mother's rings/pendants first, like DH and I did last week... ~shudder~. Even the 'simulated' (or, as fake as fakey fake can be) gemstone rings cost a ridiculous amount of money.
I like 'em (the moms, I mean), but there was just no way we could buy them both mother's rings.
For each pendant, I used two round silver beads and two smaller hematite beads, plus the birthstone beads and a decorative separator bead in between.
I strung them on thin silver wire, which made this waaay more difficult than it could have been... I had some previously purchased 32 gauge wire, which was quite a bit thinner than what I really needed. I twisted it back on itself (securing the hematite bead at the bottom first to keep all the other beads in place), and then ran the wire up and down the center of all the beads a few times to make it less likely to break. Doing that also created the bail (the loop that the necklace goes through) at the top.
If I were to make another one of these, I would use a head pin instead - much easier and faster to string the beads onto it, and the top could just be bent down with a pair of pliers to make the bail once the beads are strung. Example:


It took me about thirty minutes to make each charm, not including dithering some more over the layout of the beads (DH was about ready to scream in the bead store, I was changing my mind so much, but he was being good because he was trying to convince me we need a PS3... I'll take the cooperation with my indecisiveness however I can get it, though).
Had I bought the headpins, it probably would have taken me five - ten minutes to make both charms, not including dithering time.
I hope the parental units like them, rough as they are. Does the extra (ahem- and possibly unnecessary) time and effort I put in negate the obviously homemade nature of the gift? I'm not above pointing it out, if I have to...
(I could go off on a rant about how the appreciation of a handmade gift generally decreases in direct proportion with the age of the giver, but I'm trying to be positive here...)
I have to get my mom's in the mail, probably today, to make sure it gets to Florida in time, but we should be having supper Saturday with DH's mom, so I'll get to give it to her in person and see if she likes it or if she's just being nice about it. she'll probably like it though.
Happy Mother's Day to all the moms out there! I hope you get something you like, whether it's a piece of handmade jewelry, or a dishwasher (DH has been dropping some not-so-subtle hints that he's probably getting me one - I'm cool with it!), or extra quality time with the kids.