Hypertufa Cast Leaves

I've said it before and I'll say it again. NASTURTIUMS!

I so love them. They are prolific, sunny, edible, a living mulch. And I couldn't live one summer without them!

So I immortalized my love for them by casting a few of their lovely leaves in hypertufa. Scroll through my step by step photos below for a jump on the how to.

Gather your leaves and cover your work area with plastic. I would avoid working in direct sunlight so your cast leaves don't cure too quickly and possibly crack. mound damp sand in to the general size of your leaves and placed a leaf on each mound, bottom side up.

With a brush paint your leaves with oil. I used recycled machine oil but vegetable oil or even spray cooking oil works fine. The oil behaves like a resist so your casting medium releases.

Mix up equal amounts of fine milled peat moss, perlite, and Portland cement. I used a plastic 2lb. coffee container for measuring. You know, I completely forgot the perlite in my recipe but was satisfied how they turned out anyway. Love it when that happens!

I added enough water to make it the consistency of thick oatmeal. I added a little more to the batch as I was molding the leaves as the mixture tended to dry out a little as I worked on the leaves.

If you want to hang your finished creations you'll need to insert a sturdy wire into the mixture while soft placing it near the stem. Small paper cups will keep them upright while curing.

2 to 3 days later un-mold your leaf and etch the imprinted veins a little more for definition if you feel it needs it. The edge of a putty knife works but I had a small pointed scribe handy and thought it worked great.

You can leave them natural or paint them like I did for weather durability. I chose a teal colored semi gloss exterior latex for the bottom coat. I thinned the paint with water so it wouldn't hide the details. It dried fairly quickly and sealed the leaf.

Next I added touches of gold. I used an acrylic craft paint.

To give my leaves a weathered look I finished with a top coat of black semi gloss exterior latex thinned with water. I brushed it on and then came back with a wet soft cloth and wiped them until I revealed enough of the teal and gold to my liking.

There you have it! Love immortalized.

Summer Obsession

I am unabashedly unapologetic for my blogging lapse. It's cotton pickin' SUMMER at long last! I have my daily dose of sun block applied. Denim overalls for the chill of early morning, raggedy old swim suit to feel every ray of glorious sunshine in the afternoon. I'm cavorting with the flora and fauna, dirty kneed and happy as a bumblebee in a Borage patch. Woodoggie! Even two nasty blistered bouts with poison oak have failed to dampen the pure joy of a late and long awaited Pacific Northwest summer. So without further self indulgent blather just a few thoughts and doings at Panther Creek Cottage.

Nasturtiums

The best dadgum ground cover ever! A prolific little border of blooms that can liven a simple salad of early summer greens. Or add a lovely touch to a summery glass of refreshment. Oh, not to mention all the nitrogen rich green to boost the compost at summers end.

( okay, I've said summer 6 times already, but whose counting?)

Next, get a load of these dark and sensuous Nasturtiums!

(I've used the word sensuous once to be exact, but whose counting!)

Garlic curing in the garden shed.

Copious amounts of sun tea consumed regularly.

With a tad bit of this to end a long and beautiful summer day.

* ~Summer Greetings ~ *

P.S. Make that 8 summers ( I counted).

Duped

I got duped this weekend. Saturday we were spoiled with beautiful 66 degree weather! I poked around a bit in the garden, contemplating planting season. I even cut back and deadheaded the herb garden some. The Purple Globe Thistle, Yarrow and Catmint look all tidy now. I mused quietly to myself my sentiments about not tidying up the garden to early.


"Don't get ambitious yet! Don't be fooled, Back up from the Peonies, right now!!"

Sure, I like to think I have learned by now not to be tempted by errant sunny weather in early March. But dadgum it, it was a spring like 66 degrees!! Honest. So, I blissfully clipped and scraped away a lot of dead plant material. Ack! Don't do what this cottage woman did, do you hear me? Listen up.

• Resist
• dead plant material = protective mulch
• Resist the urge
• tender new plant shoots love the mulch
• RESIST

Or go ahead and learn the hard way (again & again) like I did and wake up to a chilly 30 degrees and a light frosting of snow. But, at least I inflicted this cruelty mostly in the herb garden. Those chillins can take fair amount of abuse.


The vegetable garden is doing terrific however! The garlic has a good foot hold and we're still enjoying last years harvest. I cook with garlic almost daily. Maybe that's why I only have a few friends. They're probably garlic lovers too. The ground cover of winter rye and some such other stuff has filled in nicely. And the spaghetti in the forefront there......



Too mushy. I like it el dente, with lots of garlic. So I tossed it.

Okay okay, it's lasts years Nasturtiums. See what a great winter ground cover dead Nasturtiums are. Because, as you might have forgotten. Bare dirt is not our friend. Bare dirt will invite weeds over to party when your not lookin'. And then leave you to deal with the mess when the party gets outahand.

The pea sized Nasturtiums seeds are lying there all snug. New plantlets will pop up in the real spring and I can easily move them around where I want them. Then, I can remove last years dead plant material to the compost pile.

You gotta try this friend. Pop a few of those Naturtiums into a well soaked and (organically) fertilized strawbale. Strawbales have a multitude of benefits and uses in the garden. This years strawbale planter will inevitably be next years compost additive (carbon), path mulch, or garden mulch. Perfect!






I'm so glad I didn't attack the spaghetti when I allowed myself to be duped. (agin)