My Everything Corner

Yesterday, I noticed the leaves on the pumpkin vines wilting.  I really thought I was done watering this year, and if frost looked to be imminent, I would be.  But instead, it looks like we're in for a heat wave. This is very good news for the underdeveloped pumpkins.   Actually, I didn't think there was all that much on those vines.  But the wilted leaves revealed that there is plenty of treasure to be had.  So I was watering last night and early this morning and I'll be out there again this evening giving everyone a good dose. Those leaves perked up almost immediately!   During the hot parts of the day though, there is time for some crafting and decorating.  The fabric pumpkins below are especially dear to me.  They are made from a worn loved one's sweater.  The stems are dried from last year's pumpkin crop and I just love the acorn dangle. The other is just a bit of décor.  I have so much fun decorating this hutch for every s...

It's my favourite time of year again! I have been going into my patch daily and enjoying my "pumpkin hunts." It is so much fun digging around, looking for treasure and decorating the yard.   This is it, what it's all been for - the planting, the weeding, the watering. At times I wondered if I might be crazy doing all that work. I was ready to sell my acreage and move into a condo on some of those hot days when I couldn't put the work off any longer.   I don't think it will as bountiful a year as 2016, but I'm still having so much fun.  Here are a few pictures of what's going on in my yard.

Having had a rain yesterday, (and it is raining now) the colors of autumn are at their richest.  Before it started pouring this morning, I had a chance to get out with my camera and take Bear for a nice long walk around our yard.  I know the rain is not a welcome thing in the middle of harvest, but it is so very nice to have the dust out of the air for a little while.  A lot of leaves came down with the rain yesterday.  I love walking in this area of my yard when the maples give themselves a shake. I've brought a few pumpkins and gourds from the garden to adorn my porch, but there must be several hundred left to clean off.  I love those colors! My garden sheds have also received the pumpkin treatment.   The  marigolds are still going strong. It looks like the middle of summer in this part of the yard.  There is still a lot of transformation to look forward to. An upside down reflection of my world. ...

Here are a few photos I had fun gathering a couple of days ago.  It all started with that mushroom, and since I already had the camera outside, I thought that I may as well take a stroll with it. This is a Shaggy Mane that has almost reached the end of it's life.  It comes out of the ground as a tight, white dome, and that is when it is good for eating.  Then it quickly unfurls and it will only look like this for another few hours before it's top flips up, blackening it completely.    A pretty little feathery foxtail made for a nice contrast against the grass. Our wild roses are the only thing that add a bit of red to our wild landscape. Looking outside, I can't believe how many leaves have fallen since I took this photo 2 days ago. A view from our yard into my neighbors hay field.  Bear and I walk there sometimes.  It is nice, because I don't have to leash him there and it adds 1/2 mile one way. A close-up of...

It is very quiet outside today.  After yesterday's rain, the farm equipment is all parked, so there is little to no traffic.  The wind completely died back today, and there is hardly a breeze to rustle the leaves.  There is just myself, the dog and the birds, and even we aren't making our usual ruckus.  Everyone is enjoying the peaceful quiet of the day.    This web made by a funnel spider collected the rain drops beautifully. I'm not sure what type of birds these are, but they are usually very chatty.  Not today.  You  wouldn't even know they were there if you didn't look up. Bear usually gets pretty excited when I go out for a walk, and runs laps around me.  But today he just sauntered along not too far from me, the entire time. All the pumpkins have been harvested and are awaiting a few days of sunshine so they can ripen up. Leaves are starting to turn, and fall to the ground.  The hops are cover...

Over the years, I've always admired any fall display with cotton in it.  I've seen it worked into wreaths, put into vases, and used as a bowl filler.  But alas, I do not have access to cotton plants.  What I do have though, are thistles and plenty of them.    I'm not sure why it took me this long to figure out that they have a similar looking texture to cotton, but yesterday it struck me.  Unfortunately, the little seed heads are too delicate to work into a wreath, but they stay put in a vase.    I used a few dead branches from an old caragana shrub, (I like the texture) to give the arrangement a focal point.  Then, I just went around snipping the seed heads into the vase, and Voila!, I've brought some of the Autumn beauty into my home.   I noticed a few other interesting seed heads forming out there.  I will have to start carrying my snippers around with me on all my strolls.   They look so pretty in the morn...

My blog is about to be taken over by kitten cuteness.  A third black cat has entered my life, and he couldn't have had better timing, what with all the pumpkins kicking around, and Halloween being just around the corner and all.  There will be so many photo opportunities!!! If to you he looks on the young side, you would not be wrong.  He was born on July 30th, making him only 6 weeks old.  He was weaned too young, as his poor old mama ran out of milk.  But have no fear, he is eating and drinking well, and using the litter box.  He is evening bathing himself, so I have no worries about his all around health. I have decided to call him Batty, with which most people agree is an adorable name.  The one person who doesn't, will have to suck it up.  You know who you are, and I love you anyway. I could go into the very long, very boring story of my life and how it has been centered around black cats, but to keep it short, I wi...

Somewhere between harvesting and processing the last of the corn off the garden, and cooking a chicken dinner for supper, I managed to put out my fall decorations. The pussy willows in the tall, green tin have been there since early spring, but I just love them too much to throw them out, so I just added a few fall picks to the arrangement, and Voila!  I think it works quite nicely. The black, primitive kitty is new this year.  I fell in love with him and I know I won't be packing him away at the end of the season.  I also changed the picture in the scrapbooking frame.  It's of Halloween 5 years ago, so the kids are just cute as buttons, and it makes me smile and shake my head at the same time.  How the time is flying! That handsome owl was originally bought to be an outdoor ornament, but I set him there in the early spring, and there he stayed. This antique wash stand is always a breeze to decorate, and it is probably my favourite thing to change...

There have been so many pictures online of beautiful, inspiring front porches decorated for the season that I thought I ought to share mine. I have this gorgeous set of iron planters that I always have something going on in. This fall it is chrysanthemums in the perfect autumn colours, homegrown pumpkins, gourds, and corn. There is a wreath made from Engelmens Ivy and a few handmade brooms I threw together with caragana branches, twigs and grass. On the other side are my set of black, basket weave planters.  They contain another chrysanthemum, poplar brances, corn stalks, cattail grass and a couple of super cute gifts from my sister.   She gave me that little ghost solar lantern and, look closely, there is a crow she created from corn husks.   I have no idea how she did this, but I plan on going out for a lesson.  I also had a couple of pumpkins that lost their stems, and so they have been stacked and topped with a gourd, that apparently is ...

Here is a scattering of things going on in my house right now.  Any pumpkins that were ripe, (and a few that were not) have found their way to various locations inside the house.  They are in piles on the floor near cabinets and the front door.  They are lining the staircase and the half wall, and a few have found their way onto pedestals and window sills.  Yay, I actually have deep window sills in my new house!  There are still about 80 greenish turning orangish ones on pallets in the garage. There are several clusters of grapevine pumpkins, (not all shown) and there are the ones I have crocheted while watching many a movie.  There are also metal pumpkins and mini pumpkins on vines (putka pods), and pumpkins in paintings on the wall, (also not shown). The wooden signs that say 'Trick or Treat' and "Happy Halloween' along with the countdown to Halloween blocks, I created this past week. There is an antique, glass jug which my sister gave me last week, and i...

Open the front door to my house, and you are greeted by a large landing with 13 foot ceilings.  There is a mudroom/laundry room at the end, across from the entry, directly to your right is a large, 4 step up, curved set of stairs up into the kitchen/dining area, and to your left is a double set of closets.  Mainly, there is a lot of room for decorating.  This is just one of the pieces I have down there now.  It is an antique (circa 1940) wash stand that my sister picked up for me at an auction.  It will always be decorated for the season.  Here is what I did for Halloween.  The little sign hangs from what would have been used for towels, and I have a garland strung across and hanging down the side.  The bowls currently contain black licorice, black and orange gummy worms, and the big bowl is holding a mixture of autumn coloured candy.  I've had to refill these twice in 2 weeks, and I've been able to keep my freezer stash of goodies just...

Serveral years ago, I received a garden swing for Mother's Day.  It has been one of my favourite features in the yard ever since. In our Cold Lake yard, it moved around constantly, but out here, I put it under a maple in the northeast corner, and it must be the perfect spot, for it hasn't moved in 3 months.    The canopy, weakened by the sun and damaged by the wind, is better left off anyway.   It is very natural to just lay back and look upward into the branches of this beautiful, old maple. My kids, especially my son, love the swing.  He loves to lay it out flat and lie down on his tummy with his nose aimed toward the ground.  He then swings himself while watching the ground move back and forth, back and forth, for what seems an impossible amount of time.  It must be very hypnotizing, because he is always in a very relaxed state after he has treated himself with a bit of motion from the...

The majority of our yard spans in front of the house, south, and to the west.  We have a lot of trees, most of which are very young.  The ones you are seeing in the foreground are Giant Leaf Poplar, (whose leaves sound like rain), and Lilac.   I'm not sure what the variety is, but they bloom a light pink.  There are also Green Ash, Willow, Larch and some little Spruce trees, all planted in neat rows to eventually shelter the yard from the main grid.  In the background, the trees are mature and with exception of the large spruce to the east of the house, are growing in the wild.  There are mostly maples, poplar, and warrior caragana.  But there are some wild roses, chokecherry and saskatoon bushes as well.  So far, it looks as though everyone has yellow folliage for the season.  I would really like to see more reds, so I'm going to find a way to work in some different specimens to break it up a bit.  There are cherry trees in th...

"I can fly!', are not  words any Mother wants to hear from her young child.  But when they've spent 3 days working on a flight suit that they hope will make them airborne, one hopes that they will achieve at least a slight lift off. My 8, almost 9 year old daughter, Kaitlynn has always had a strong, vivid imagination and a drive to create.  She is constantly coming up with new ideas, and actually, a lot of them have worked.  So when she came to me with her paper feather suit and asked me, "Mommy, tell me honestly.  Do you think I'll be able to fly with this suit?"  I have to admit, I was a bit stumped as to what my answer should be.  Should I be honest and tell her exactly what was going to happen?  Or should I falsely encourage her and tell her to jump off the roof?  I decided to walk the middle ground and said something to the effect of, "I think you might need a few more feathers and a stronger support for those feathers, but go play ...

After a very rainy couple of days, on September 1, the kids were very excited to start school.  My sister, Auntie Lynn, is their bus driver, as well as the school cook. Two of her children are on the bus, and the kids just think this is a fabulous connection to have.   There are only 30 plus children in the entire grades K-8 school, and only 3 classrooms.  Grades K, 1 and 2 are together, grades 3, 4, and 5 are mixed and then the grade 6, 7 and 8's make up the last class. Their old school had about 70 kids in one grade alone and they were separated into 3 classrooms.  So this is a huge change.  But they are adjusting very well, and have even told me that they really prefer this school to their last.  Nearly 3 weeks has passed since their first day, and they are feeling right at home.  Their bus ride is even shorter out here than it was in Cold Lake.  A total of 35 minutes a day was shaved off their daily riding time.  So much fo...

The threat of an early frost had us fleeing to the pumpkin patch to save our crop. We came home after enjoying a supper with relatives and after being given some serious advice, we were out there with flashlights unil about 8pm (yes, it is getting dark that early already), saving all that we could find. There were only about 6 plants all together, but the patch grew massive, bearing nearly 100 fruit. We took off about 75, and left the small ones to weather the storm. We did not get a frost that night and that was over a week ago. Upon closer inspection in the daylight, we have found at least another 25 pumpkins and squash. We will let them grow until the threat of the next frost and then in they will come. The morning after picking was spent washing each individual with a bleach solution, and then placing them in their own space (not touching their neighbors) on wooden pallets. Now, hopefully, they will last to be carved for Halloween. To date, the most pumpkins we'...

I've been doing this bouquet every October for several years now. I simply carve out a pumpkin, slip in some floral foam, and start arranging. I tidy it up every couple of days, adding fresh water and removing the faded blooms, and once it no longer looks that great, it is very easy to clean up...just toss the whole works into the compost. Just be sure to remove your foam...it definitely is not biodegradable, unless of course, you have discovered the relatively new foam that is. Hopefully this healthier for us and our Earth foam will be become readily available soon. It also doesn't hurt to find out whether or not your florist is into the composting habit. There is a ton of waste in the fresh flower industry, and every little bit helps. My florist even encourages her clients to bring in their own, reusable container for a discount on their next arrangement. Reduce, reuse, recycle and create beautiful dirt whenever possible....