A Seed Saver's Garden

[heirloomgal]

Now these are my kinda DIY Christmastime ornaments

 

[flowerbug]

very creative!

 

[heirloomgal]

I didn't make them though! I was looking for some natural things to make with DD for keepsake Christmas decorations and found the images online. We did make the ornaments today though, cornstarch and salt dough and we used beans, pumpkin seeds and cloves. I'll post the pictures when I've overcome my wrapping fatigue!

I quite like the bean moose. I'd like to try and make one of those!

 

[heirloomgal]

DD and I have been making some homemade Christmas presents for friends and family, and making some homemade decorations too. I really like nature crafts for holidays. I'm trying to find different ways to use the husks from the corn, DD made a few corn dolls for the tree.

We also made some beeswax candles. It's our 1st time. The block smelled good before we even melted it, but WOW, it smelled amazing once we melted and poured them. I had no idea heated beeswax smelled so good. We picked mason jars for the containers in the hopes that they could be re-purposed, but after trying to clean up the bowl and utensils we used, I don't know if that'll be possible. It seems beeswax is nearly impossible to remove from a surface once it dries on. Boiling water, pure dish soap nor scrubbies could get rid of the residue.

Turns out salt makes for some very nice faux snow!

Salt and cornstarch dough ornaments DD & I made for the tree.

 

[Phaedra]

It's pretty time-consuming to clean those utensils (back to the original status), so I keep a set of old pots for making candles only. Boiling water and some cleaning agents are necessary

 

[Triffid]

Warmed vegetable oil of your choice and a linen cloth will get the bulk of the beeswax off. Then keep the cloth in a tin and use it for balming up your hands when required.

 

[heirloomgal]

Thank you @Phaedra Geiermann @Triffid !

 

[heirloomgal]

What to do with all those little leftover chunks of beeswax?

Reading a bunch of Christmas jokes on the net last night, I found these. MANY with this theme.

I thought is it really that bad, is there that many unwanted gifts? But when I think about it I guess I've gotten a few, and probably given out a few too. So even more motivation for me to try to give gifts that will not fall into the 'not really wanted/useful' category. I'm always a bit befuddled trying to come up with actually GOOD gifts to give that will hit a 'bullseye.'

Food is a good one, if you know what kind of treats they like. A nice bird feeder another one if they like to watch the birdies. I like to do homemade as much as I can. My parents have fires outside all the time, and it seemed the leftover beeswax could be a stocking stuffer gift for that, if we do them up a bit. DD and I got busy transforming the leftover beeswax into something, hopefully, useful which is not simply a candle. Homemade, fragrant firestarters.

We dehydrated a clementine last night (plenty of those around), shaved some of the sticks we whittled this summer which were quite dry, emptied a still very fragrant lavender sachet DD sewed in 2019, got some cloves from the cupboard, dismantled a very large pine cone souvenir from a nature walk years ago, some needles shed from our balsam Christmas tree, a red dogwood branch from the front perennial garden and some other dried natural material from outside. We tore a paper egg carton into sections for the base of each firestarter.

DD added a little greenery, some twine and a homemade gift tag. Simple, but this is one present I'm not worried will wind up in a landfill, since I know they can put these to use. Tomorrow we do greenery balls.

And a homemade card to go with. Santa Mouse doing his own DIY Chritmas gift.

 

[heirloomgal]

Santa brought DD a botanical lego kit. I was so intrigued by how unusual it was I thought I'd post a few pictures. Instead of creating a simple bouquet of colourful flowers, they made particular flower varieties. It was the first gift she put together Christmas morning. A little gardener to be I think!

Rose

Snapdragon

Aster

Lavender

Transplanted the pepper seedlings that needed it, gave them some fish emulsion & their first haircut. They're already starting to look better. Surprisingly, I am beginning to be able to tell varieties apart from small differences in the shape of their leaves. For some reason, the Thunder Mountain peppers are growing the most vigorously. Two of the pepper varieties I'm growing next year began as hybrids - Yellow Pencil and Gong Bao. This will be my 3rd and 4th year growing them out and they have never shown any differences from their parent plants. I would have thought otherwise, but I'm glad. I like Gong Bao's leaf shape, very slender and pointed. It grows these long, red, very thin peppers. The perfect kind of pepper for drying right off the plant. Even though I haven't grown many plants in any one year, the production has still been really good. At this point, in picking pepper varieties to keep, I'm aiming for very high production as well as an ability to dry whole, without being de-seeded.

I'm feeling pretty happy to be tending to my hots again after going mostly without them this past summer. They are the Alphas of the pepper world for sure! I just love them. I'm still feeling tempted to plant some seeds for a variety called 'Rooster Spur'. It comes from Virgil T. Ainsworth of Laurel, Mississippi. It's been in his family for more than 100 years and I had terrific luck with it the last time I grew it, probably 3 years ago. You'd think that it wouldn't do well here considering its' origin, but it was an amazing variety and the first to mature. I already have so many of its' peppers in storage it seems silly to plant again already. But who am I kidding, I grow peppers for beauty as much as anything else!

 

[flowerbug]

wow, flower legos. they sure are being very creative with those sets!