A Pretty, Pesky Mister

Say hello to Mr. Colorado Potato Beetle, or ''Coopie'' for short.
Pretty thing, isn't he?
Ha! ...don't let the dapper, gorgeously striped, color-coordinated-ness of him fool you. He is a cold, blooded potato killer at heart! *Munch munch munching* through our beloved garden spuds is what he loves to do all day (and maybe night too!)

So what happened to Coopie, you may ask?
(You may also ask why I'm talking about Coopie at all, and why on earth I named him...)
(That's another story altogether.)

Well, the simple fact is: Coopie retired.
First, I took his passport picture (above) then I helped him retire.

....to Beetle Heaven!
 And now he lives immortal on this blog.
That's not odd at all! (Right?!)

P.S.~ And don't you tell me You've never taken a picture of something then killed it!

Thyme.

{Or, Time}

There's just never enough of it, is there?

;)

P.S. ~ Just finished a great book, A Jane Austen Education. 

You should read it too!

a Little Update (Books, Violets & such things)

......the violets have absolutely come out this week!....they are just so pretty.....
and I finished three books yesterday......

The Children of Hurin By J.R.R. Tolkien &  

Lies Young Women Believe: And the Truth that Sets Them Free & 

Home: A Memoir of My Early Years.

.......good books all of them!....
Well, I'm off to try and get more things done today yet.

Enjoy the beautiful spring day everybody!

Summer 'Kisses'

I miss the warm, bright days of the year
when it seemed like God reached down from the sky
and kissed the earth...
Summer, come soon please!

Yellow Sulpher Butterfly, Hannah Hottenstein. 2009

I got just a *little* bit excited when...

...I saw THIS on Bing's homepage today!

It's an excellent photograph of moss, of all things! My favorite thing of all in the Kingdom Plantae to study. :) To prove it, here are a couple dozen photographs of my own. Taken carefully, down through the years...and this is not all of them!

{click to view larger}

Happy (Unofficial) Moss Day!

~Hannah

The Secret Garden

Secret Garden PPB by RluvsG on Polyvore.com

Facebook | Michelle King's Photos - fairy gardens and fairies
facebook.com

Garden backgrounds image by written_soul on Photobucket
media.photobucket.com

foto_decadent: Rodney Smith
jazznight.livejournal.com

Loveology
mila-loveology.blogspot.com

a room somewhere: My Garden
aroomsomewhere.net

The Cinderella Project: Fab Frocks Friday
thecinderellaproject.blogspot.com

The cherry blossom girl » images et inspiration
thecherryblossomgirl.com

Dresses Wedding Dresses Magazines: Secret Garden | Brides.com
brides.com

It has been a long while since I revisited my favorite children's books, The Secret Garden, David Copperfield, Little Golden Books, and Alice in Wonderland's adventures included.
This Polyvore collection reminded me of the best of those books.

Garden Lesson

Stories begin much like rivers and creeks do. Not all at once, and they collect their force of thought gradually and from many sources, until all the pieces are running and joining together to form a strong current. I hardly know if this small bit of my own story is worth telling, but I think it may be. It tells how I learned of one of the first things I ever knew about...gardening.

~

~

  “Rachel, please come here, dear,” my mother called me to her side, and I went. My loving mother looked down on me, taking in my small face & eyes. She spoke again, “Have you been having a good play?” I had, so I answered, “Oh yes. I’ve been playing with my dolls, Momma.” She smiles, “I know, my Rachel. But now, I have something else for you and I to do together.” Her eyes twinkle, as they say, and my small mind wondered, What could she mean?

  Pretty soon I found out—Mother & I were going out to the garden to pick things, and since I was only five years old, this was an amazing adventure for me. She held my hand as we slowly walked along the front walk, and then stepped off into the grass. There is where I slowed down even more, for fear of stepping on bees in the clover with my bare little feet; but my Mother was patient.

  Soon enough (for a warm summer day) we made it to the garden. I had as a little thing always heard about the garden, for my parents of course talked about what was to be planted, weeded, and picked. But I had never been in the garden. How exciting! As Mother opened the twig-fence gate and led me inside, the first thing I noticed was the strange, crumbly texture of the dirt under my toes. It was warm, and sometimes soft, sometimes hard—like stale bread or brownies. I look up at Mother and see that she is looking over the garden rows. I follow her eyes and see lots of green plants bearing different shapes of fruits. Tomatoes, green beans, beets and carrots growing on the ground, and the large squash plants crawling here and there.

  We walk slowly in between the rows, and as we do, I reach out my hand to touch all this... I find the tomatoes are soft and fuzzy, and slightly sticky. The beet leaves are smooth and dirty on their tops from rain splashing. I stoop down (and Mother crouches too) and find that the beets and carrots themselves are hard and smooth, and warm like the ground. Only the very edges of them peak up at at me out of the earth. I look up at Mother.

“Why are they in the ground, Mother?” 

“Why, that’s where they grow, Rachel. In the ground.”

Then I ask, "But why do we do that? Isn't the ground dirty?"

She smiles at my quizzical face and laughs a little, “Oh well that is true, but dirt also has food in it for plants, love. In order for them to get that food, they have to grow in it. That’s why we plant the seeds in the ground; so the vegetables can grow where they can get food. ”

You may think it surprising, but it did all that made sense to me after she explained it that way. I live in a house where I can grow and have food. And these little vegetables grow in the ground where they can grow and have food. Mother seemed to explain everything so well; and she did.

After letting me wander around the garden a little while longer, she scooped me up into her arms—my favorite place to be—and we walked back around the garden, through the gate, and into the house. That small amount of time that my mother took to show me the garden and how things grew in the dirt left a large, lasting impression on my mind. I never forgot it.

~

A short fiction story.
Written by,

~Fiesta de Octobre~

My Answers...

{1} What is your favorite hobby or craft to do?
Probably photography. I do it the most, so I must like it, right? I do. Next to that, reading and writing letters, complete with tiny illustrations, gives me the most joy as far as 'hobbies' go.

"Sakura" by HEH

{2} What's the biggest/most difficult project you've ever tackled?
Helping my older brother dig out a 6'x6' foot square hole for a basement window. That was really a LOT of digging! Next to that, helping my Dad clear the driveway with his Massey this year, with.... 4+ feet of wet snow on the ground. That was...long & hard & frustrating. :)

{3} What project of yours are you the most proud of?
My English-style Circle Garden. It's 16 feet across, has four different sections to it (roses, vegetables, perennials, and herbs.) I built it for my high school botany project! It still makes me happy to walk through it, and I'm still changing it all the time, five years later. :)

me, in front of the herb quarter.

{4} Someone gives you a $20 JoAnn Fabrics giftcard. The first thing that comes to mind to spend it on is...
Canvases! And photography frames! I have a bunch of pictures of mine to frame that I want to sell and I have many ideas for paintings stuck in my head that need to come out. ;)

{5} Can you do a project and watch a movie at the same time?
The only thing I've ever tried this with is doing laundry at the same time, but that was sort of an obligatory thing, i.e. " Okay, you may watch a movie you guys, but only if this laundry gets folded..." etc.
I've tried to knit & watch a movie, but I kept dropping stitches. Too good of a movie, I guess!

{6} When you are hand sewing, do you bite off your thread when you're done, or snip it with scissors or just break it with your fingers?
I snip it with my old fashioned, swan-designed thread scissors that Mom gave me for that express purpose. ;)

{embroidery scissors, rather like my own pair.}

{7} Does anyone in your family collect things (like tea cups, stamps, bottle caps, etc.)?

My younger sister & brother collect stamps & coins. We all 'collect' books; but I collect books older than 1950 (I have 36 of them.) I also collect....feathers. Yes, feathers. I have quite a variety, several of some: owl, duck, goose, several kinds of chicken, turkey, bluejay, mockingbird, parakeet, pheasant, and peacock. I used to collect discarded birds eggs & nests, but then I heard about how dangerous (germ-wise) that can be, so I stopped. I always collect tiny (small) books, and letter from from friends. ;)

a barred rock hen feather

{8} What are your favorite color combinations that you use in your crafts?

Olive green, brown, coral & cream white.

{9} Does decorating a Mr. or Mrs. Potato Head sound interesting to you?

No... Sorry! I think drawing faces on eggs in the carton and watching your mother's reaction when she opens it is much more fun. ;)

{10} The manager at your theater needs help in the making of the costumes and/or set decoration and set up for the next production. You volunteer to do....what?

Make the hats. By all means, I will make the hats.

Always,

One Day in the Life of {Little Me}

[Archived. Written Friday, October 1st, 2010]

My family is gone from home (off on a college-weekend event) for four whole days! I spent the first part of this day, inside, trying to recuperate from this nasty head cold I've got.
I was reading, writing, yes, chatting & Facebooking. But you know, after "puttering about" (as my Uncle Erik calls it) cleaning, cooking, dish washing and laundering... I'd had enough.
The inside just wasn't big enough, and it felt constricting.I felt awful. (Being sick, as we all know, is no fun and feels like the 'end of the world' every time.)
So, I went out side. I discovered more stinkbugs on the screen door...

  I found that my garden needed tending...

Most people consider moss a nuisance
and try to rid their brick houses, walks and patios of it, but I like it!
So the moss stays on my garden walks. :)

It's funny why we weed. I can understand if something has thorns, or causes
a rash, or is crazy vigorous, but really? Pulling out every single 'foreign' looking plant
to make room for a sparsely planted, -ultra tidy garden. I don't know... I think I'd just rather the
garden be a little more wild. :)



Wild Strawberry & Yarrow Leaves.
Once the flowers are all gone, I can focus on photographing
& sketching the foliage of plants.

 ...and found that the animals, rabbits & chickens, needed watering and food and a few eggs collecting. The rabbits were eager for some clover. :)

Secret: {This is my favorite wildflower to photograph.}

Peter, left & Jeremy, right.
Quite the rabbit characters, they are! ;)

I did that all and then just stood, in the sun--soaking up the warmth of it.Then, better yet, I grabbed the new feathers I found (from the chicken yard)

...and saw a nice grassy place on our hill, where the grass had flowered and shot up stalks a few feet. They were swaying in the wind, just calling my name.

So I sat in the midst of the grass and flowers (there was some Chicory and Aster there too) and just basked in the sunlight. What therapy! And no medicine involved. :) It felt great. I even got visited by three squirrels who though I was like a statue obviously, I'd been sitting there long enough. They were busily gathered and burying nuts. (It was kind of funny to watch; it almost looked like they were opening little root cellar doors, to stick the nut in, and then when done that, they looked as if they were making tiny beds, of grass, when they were smoothing the spot over! So cute.)

I found a bunch of ruby-red, ripe tomatoes in the garden too. Washed & dried those.
Grabbed the blankets and clothes off the line that got doused in the earlier rains and then dried---all in one day!

 I found a tiny rosebud from my pink rosebush to bring inside & look at...

Floribunda, ever-blooming Pink Rosa blossom.

The sun was absolutely glorious today! I was loathe to finally shut the shades before that particular hour when the outside light and the inside light match in brightness...

Our front door nob.
So much more handsome looking that the other, plain nob we used to have.

 But, once done, it was to a-fixing dinner for myself (rather lonely ritual, by myself!) Tea, soup, crackers a pear & chocolate. Very nutritious! ;)

This cup is from our 'musical cup' set. They look homely but when you
*tink* your spoons against them, they sing! A very musical ring they have to them. :)

 Oh, and POPCORN. My favorite! For the movie, Bright Star.

'Hand popped' popcorn, with our oldie popcorn blower thingy. :)
Just add a little olive oil & sea salt, and voila!

So that was my day, in words & pictures.
Hope you enjoyed a little diversion and learning a little bit more about me. ;)
Love,