Alternative Laundry Supplies & Redbuds & Frozen Kefir

     Today although pretty cool we have bright full sunshine and so far no wind. Last night the winds were really strong again with at freezing night temperatures.

   The redbuds are still pretty here too even after all the crazy weather. I just took these photos now, this pretty red bud tree sits behind my mailbox. The red roof is our garage

Below photo is me standing on top of our driveway looking at this pretty red bud in our neighbor's yard

Have any of you tried out the new laundry supplies available now-pods-sheets?  With my different allergies I have always needed to go with fragrance free on everything. I had been using the All fragrance free pods for awhile  now. At Sam's Club they were always a good buy opposed to the stores.

  The last couple of years though I have been trying out more earth friendly packaging  I bought when on sale Free the Ocean's laundry sheets. They do a good job but too expensive even on sale. 

  Over a year ago now I tried out Clean People pods for laundry. I love them and their packing is in cardboard little boxes. When they had a big sale last year I stocked up and they were less expensive than All pods were.  Clean People is based in Canada  some products like laundry pods made in America.  

    Instead of liquid bottles of non chlorine bleach-they offer a granular product that works really really well.

 I find the pods or sheets work equally well but I like the pods

Another photo from today  phlox and a few of my bottles with seeds

     I haven't found a ice cream I like---less sugar, less lactose, less fat so I decided to freeze up some peach kefir that I also added organic diced canned peaches to.  So easy turned out perfect. Next time I will add a bit of sweetener

T Stands for Tuesday Watercolor Practice & Gardening Projects

 Hi everyone, it's been a very cool and rainy past week. I was "getting in the groove" working outdoors in the yard and then the weather put a halt to that. The grass is really starting to grow too despite the cold temps.

   The last Tuesday of March is upon us already, I am ready for April and hopefully a warm up again soon. Welcome to the T group, if you would like to join in the link up- it is in my sidebar with our hostess Bleubeard and Elizabeth.  I would like to thank our hostess for this weekly event, if it were not for T not sure how I would find visitors to my blog here on Blogger-which seems more difficult these days.

  Saturday my two forsythia starts came in the mail. Packaged very well and good looking plants. I found the shop on Etsy and the reviews were all very good, I was very happy with the plants, and they came in Saturday instead of Monday so that was better for the plants. Sunday morning I placed them in a bucket of cold water for several hours-per instructions. These are to spread 10 feet and get up to 8 feet tall, so thinking in a few years they will cover up a bunch of grass

   I always loved the pretty yellow flowers in the spring and I have not had one of these bushes since moving down from Illinois. I recently got a post from my favorite herbalist-Jan The Nerdy Farm Wife on things to make with the flowers.  I did not know that the flowers were edible too. Below photo taken from her site

  My two plants are in the ground  There is not as much full sun on this side of the house that I had thought. There is also areas with solid rock not too far down, so the second plant couldn't go where I wanted it to. Can't see real well but these plants were 2 feet tall with branches, and even a few little yellow flowers

I had this material that keeps weeds out, it will do until I can pick up some nice bark mulch

  I hadn't accomplished much at all last week. Having allot of trouble with my eyes, they just ache and are too dry I think. I did purchase a heat pad of sorts for the eyes which seems to help a little bit. Thinking the allergies could be an issue as well-I needed to stop taking those allergy pills about a month or so ago-bad timing I know-because I believe they were causing the painful leg cramps, and making my body too dry.

   Saturday I used up the last of my water bottles and the bags of soil for starting seeds to plant lots more of the ground cover creeping thyme. I need to save up more bottles for sure. As you can see I added allot more "greenhouses" The yarrow has sprouted so far.

   Of the plants I bought  last year-I was sad that only one of the lavender plants out of 6 survived. I had ordered 3 they did not make it so they sent me replacements and only one survived. Only two of the bee balm plants survived but they do look good and have spread already. Not sure yet if the echinacea plants survived or not as nothing coming up so far. I do have a couple different ones planted as seed in the bottles.  Really hoping I have success with these perennial seeds I am starting I researched them all on how to start from seed-and these all needed a cold treatment first for several months. I would not have known that.

 

    I am going to work on practicing with watercolors at least once a week. I had picked up a couple of books that Kate shared last year.  

   I was using the idea of using India ink and my dip pen for highlights.

  The stems on the right I thought needed more-well this happened when I didn't think about the ink being reactivated with watercolors-so lesson learned  

    Making us our meal on Sunday, I remembered I had an eraser from way back in the 60's (1960) that I thought I might go over it lightly and see what happens, and add a little more watercolor-well now it's a bit better  I think  

   Those of you that paint, do you start over or do you try to fix a mistake?

For a practice session I am happy with the flowers especially.

  My drink share is a cup of herbal tea I have shared in the past. I do like this company's teas

Sunrise over the weekend

Happy T

Seeds in Bottles & Views on the Lake

   Good afternoon, Larry went to check on things at the woods home with a friend today, and I needed to start planting my wildflower seeds in the bottles.

   I had a huge bag of bottles I had saved and had them all prepared to use so that saved time-but I started around 8:30 am this morning and was finishing up with the last two bottles just when Larry got back home around 3:30 in the afternoon so it took longer than I figured.  

  I love this method of growing seeds because you end up with mini greenhouses and the stems are usually thick and very healthy too. I learned about this from our blog friend Carol years ago (she doesn't post much anymore but she lives in Missouri too) 

  Note: I had just emptied a bag of seed starting soil into this tub when I took this photo so it still needs to be wetted down well.

These bottles have holes punched all over them including the bottom, and then you cut around the bottom but leave the area near the handle in tack-when finished planting seal up with duct tape and leave outdoors in a sunny spot, these don't usually need much watering either, as in the mornings the condensation drops back into the soil and plants

I ended up with 20 bottles today  I have a few more seeds to plant this way, but these I really needed to get started so they will be ready to plant in May

close ups I think you can read these if you enlarge the photos

My bag of shade wildflower seeds, and the medicinal plant roots arrived today too, I am going to place the roots in that tub I was using with the seed potting soil til I get the ground ready for them. These were mailed in plastic bags and need to get out of those.

Early morning today a very very bright rising sun-so we had diamonds on the water

and visitors

Couldn't believe it-we made it up to 75 degrees today with full sunshine. I finally could change out my sweatshirt for a t shirt-exciting haha 

and last night a surprise

Happy Mid week Everyone