Etikett: project

The garden pt. 2

Good things come to those who wait…and remember to water their plants. We had a successful first harvest and we definitely accomplished something with this gardening project. The flower and herb garden attracted a whole lot of insects which was very exciting to watch even though some of the plants suffered a bit – the salvia bush seems to have been pretty tasty for someone as several leaves had holes in them.

The gardening project has also been beneficial to the environment. First we have noticed an increase in insect activity. Pollinators have been busy with the flowers and spiders have enjoyed spinning their webs amongst the plants. It even attracted hares and deer who ate up all the parsley in the fall, they must have been pretty hungry.

Other than that, we did not encounter any major challenges with the growing. Actually, thats not true. We had tomatoes and zucchini growing in individual pots and despite our best efforts, the zucchini ended up not doing so great.

Maybe we didn’t fertilise it enough, maybe the stalks ended up ‘strangling’ the zucchini. Either way, we did not manage to grow many zucchini and the ones that did grow were small and hard. Maybe next year? I doubt it. The tomatoes on the other hand came out really well!

The highlight though (at least for me) were the herbs. They thrived in our garden and as a result, we were able to cook meals with fresh homegrown herbs. We had thyme, lemon thyme, salvia, parsley, rosemary and mint. A lot of mint. The parsley bush was huge but almost disappeared overnight in the fall when a desperately hungry creature came and ate most of it. We had thought the taste would be too powerful but apparently not!

For the next grow, we are discussing a larger garden for more herbs and less vegetables. Jenny wants to try growing potatoes and carrots and I would like to try growing spinach, oregano and garlic. The tomatoes and zucchini were fun to try but in my opinion were not worth the amount of time and effort. Either way, we will be more prepared and better with the next gardening project after having learnt a whole lot from this one.

Gamla ljus blir nya ljus

Det blir ju alltid lite stearin kvar i botten av ljuset när ljuset har brunnit ut. Jag tänkte att det väl måste gå att göra nya ljus av det så jag testade och det funkade hur bra som helst! Det var lätt men pilligt.

Jag samlade stearin från utbrunna ljus i en glasburk. Tog bort smuts och vekar och annat fult och lade sen ner hela glasburken i ett bad med varmt vatten. Långsamt smälte stearinet till en genomskinlig massa.

Jag använde aluminiumformarna från gamla värmeljus och limmade fast en veke som jag köpt i en hobbybutik i botten. det var ganska lätt att rikta veken uppåt när stearinet stabiliserat sig lite. Nästa gång tänker jag använda stearinet som lim.

Fint brann sen ljuset. Det brann snabbare än köpta värmeljus, jag vet inte om det berodde på vekens tjocklek eller på stearinet. Ett kul pyssel som jag tänker göra igen. Nästa gång ska jag experimentera med olika färger tror jag och se hur det blir. Vi har både röda och vita ljusrester. Kanske också göra någon form som man sen kan ta ut ljuset ur när det har stelnat så att det blir som ett blockljus.