gardens & greenery

When the dump truck arrived last week, we found out that the contractor had the dump truck going through the neighbor's yard. That involved tearing down and reinstalling a fence, which shocked and horrified all of us. The neighbor was fine with it, but we decided that it wasn't really an optimal solution to the problem.

After careful calculation, we've decided to order the dirt and mulch from Lowe's. It's only about a $30 difference and we'll have the convenience of being able to store the excess in bags. We'll have to move all of the dirt and mulch back bag by bag, but the impact on our home and the neighbor's will be minimal.  

The bags do pose a bit of an ethical problem, for me, however. I would have preferred a dumptruck load so that we didn't have to deal with the excessive packaging from over 300 bags of product. I plan on saving the packaging, as I usually do, and will probably re-open fluffnfixings to share the recycled joy. I'll probably also be giving some away to a few of the websites that I'm on that deal with trades.

So, another week put off. I'm going crazy and itchy waiting for this stuff to get here so that I can make a late start on my gardens. It seems like I always start out with the best intentions and I never make it on time. We'll call it fashionably late, shall we? ;)

We haven't gotten our first frost this year, but things are pretty much asleep, outside. Leaves are coming off the trees, a few tomatoes are lingering on, and my bulbs haven't completely gone dormant, so I'm just itching to do a major cleaning. I haven't had a lot of time or energy to do the regular maintenance stuff this year, so I really need to get on top of that.

It looks like my glads are finally starting to shrivel up. I need to lift them, divide them, and figure out what to do with the corms this year. They've started to overpopulate the area that they are in and struggled a bit this year before it started raining like crazy. I may list some of the corms in my shop, but I'm not sure yet. Gotta see if anyone wants them, before I do that!

Nothing terribly new and exciting, though. I think this is going to be a nice day in front of the fire with my knitting and books.

dI don't think we've had a rest since August! Home improvement projects, storm cleanup, family stuff, life, putting the gardens to bed for the winter, etc. have occupied every spare moment of time. I'm loving it! It's so nice to feel well enough to be on top of projects and being able to cross of items that have been on the list for a long time.

I really need to get caught up on my etsy stuff, though. I've got a few things that I really need to list, but I haven't had the focus recently. I also need to get back on top of putting listings up here as I update etsy.  

I should have some pictures to post soon...hopefully I'll remember! :) 

Literally! The past couple of weeks have been wet, wet, wet, as you may have heard on the news. We were out of town for the middle of the Great Rains, which was more than a bit worrying. There are some washed out spots, a few soft spots in lower areas of the yard, and a tiny bit of water damage from roof leaks, but I was very thankful to return home to such minimal damage.

One thing that really irked me, upon our homecoming, was a missing tomato. A beautiful White Wonder tomato was ripening shortly before we left, and I couldn't wait to come home and pluck it from the vine. When we got home, it was nowhere to be seen. I looked everywhere, and there's no sign of it. I've been shaking my fist at whatever critter decided to snatch it, and I hope it was mealy, grubby, and unsavory for the beast. Oh, how I wanted that tomato!

I'll be updating the shopping sections over the next few days and may have a tutorial or two to post, if I get a chance. Here's to productivity!

I have perfected the set up of my paypal shopping cart and checkout, and things are glorious. After figuring out a couple of the quirks, I can set up new listings quickly and without hassle. For that, I must hurray!

As promised a few weeks ago, I thought I'd go ahead and share the magic machine that helps me create some of the fun new planters I have listed in my shop.  

I am such a powertool junkie, and this makes me kick my foot with happiness! Love, love, love it. Up until now, I've been cutting my bottles old school, using tons of electricity to heat water or to run a small cutter, and possibly compromising my health a little.  

With this machine, I'm able to cut a bazillion times more bottles in one sitting and use a LOT (I can't emphasize that one enough!) less energy to produce them. It's invigorating, and the interesting bottles and containers that have been sitting in the garage are finally being chopped up and used. (That's a good thing, because anyone who went out into the garage before would think we were total drunkards!)

I waste a lot less glass with this guy, and rarely have to touch up the edges so that they're safe to handle. Another benefit that also lops off a ton of energy expenditure!

I've only got two 'boat' listings currently in my shop, but will be introducing more of them, along with more traditional cuts, over the next couple of weeks.

Well, it looks like I've figured out the paypal shopping cart stuff pretty well. I do need to adjust the shipping costs in paypal, but I'm afraid that'll mess up checkouts done through etsy. I'll save that experimentation for another day, when I'm braver and have more patience.

I've only got three things in the shop on this site, but I plan on adding things as I add them to my etsy shop or renew listings. It might take awhile, but I'm not in a hurry.  

It's extremely nice to have this all coming together. I hope I'll be able to build up traffic to this site, rather than relying on etsy to provide all of my sales. Since the reseller invasion over there, it's been tough to compete and stand out. My hope is that directing traffic here will provide lots of focus on me, me, me! :)

Not a hurray for most people, but I'm glad things are cooling off. We've had a lot more rain than we have the past two years (thank goodness!), but we've started getting afternoon thunderstorms. I dearly love them, but the cat runs under the nearest couch or bed and the dog sticks to me like glue during them.

In preparation for the fall garden adventure, I've cleared a nice spot in the garden, and have started spreading guinea pig bedding. My fall seeds are in order, and I'll probably get those out in the next few days...if I manage to get my butt in gear and overcome the sapping exhaustion and aches and pains.  

I also order 16 cu ft of perlite, joy of joys, and am mixing potting mix like crazy. We invested in a lovely machine for redoing the flooring in a few locations, and this magical machine cuts glass like a knife through butter. I'll post some pictures of the new, green planters I'll be posting in my shop soon.

I've got a couple new varieties of tomatoes that just went off for germ testing, so keep your eyes peeled for those!

Movin' on up!

fluffnflowers has outgrown its blogspot blog, and will be sharing space, here. I decided it was time to set up a shop outside etsy and have a more permanent home, and fluffnflowers.com is just that.

I'll be posting blog posts on both sites, but I hope to eventually phase everything over to this site. We'll see how things go!