I recently purchased the wide angle/macro lens to use with my iPhone. I bought it specifically for the macro lens as I find that the built-in camera lens is wide enough. There are other cellphone lenses available; however, I bought this one because it was affordable at $20 for the pair and looked to be of good quality.
Delosperma
Japanese Maple and Persicaria virginiana flower
Here’s how it works:
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I can’t seem to help myself from bringing home plant bits from here and there whether its on a trip, out on a walk, or from my own gardens. I am in awe of the architectural shapes and designs found in nature and I want to have their beauty around me at all times of the year. It is the same with rocks, shells, and sticks. The world is full of beautiful and incredible things and I am constantly amazed by it all.
I bought this homemade display cabinet rather impulsively for $15 at the flea market a few months back. It’s meant to sit flat on a table rather than propped up as I have it now. Davin could not see its potential and wasn’t particularly excited about carrying it all the way to the car, but I persuaded him to give it a chance. I could see his point as the plexiglass front is scratched and worn from its original use as a flea market stall display (it sat flat on a table rather than upright), and the thing is awfully large and heavy. Still, I think he was eating his words once I got it set up and filled with random seedpods, leaves, and dried flowers we have collected over the years.
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I’ve been sick with a virus this last week, hence the lack of posting. As it is hard to do much when you are laid up in bed with the plague, I spent much of my quarantine watching historical re-creation reality shows on YouTube. It began with a re-watch of my favourite show in this genre, Tales From the Green Valley and spiralled into a marathon viewing of every one that I could find online: The 1900 House, The 1940s House, and Coal House at War. I even made my way through the less educational and more socially dramatic American programs Frontier House and Texas Ranch House.
Unfortunately, these shows (other than Tales of the Green Valley) are disappointing in their lack of information, re-creation, or experimentation with historical garden practices. I would have loved to have seen the people of the “Texas Ranch House” using the garden that was provided for them and exploring the wild edible possibilities in the landscape around them. There are a few shows that do delve into gardening and kitchen gardening more specifically. The Victorian Kitchen Garden is one that I have enjoyed in the past. Also in this series are The Victorian Kitchen, The Wartime Kitchen Garden and The Victorian Flower Garden that I am yet to watch in full.
If you’re interested in farming shows that are also educational and along the lines of “Tales of the Green Valley” (including cast members) I’d also recommend The Wartime Farm, The Victorian Farm, and The Edwardian Farm.
Plenty to entertain and educate yourself as you lay on the couch choking up a lung or blowing your brains out through your nostrils this fall and winter season.
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Perhaps it is the cold weather that brings them indoors in droves or a last push to procreate before the end times come, but the fruit flies are taking over my kitchen right now as they do every single fall. They are everywhere. They settle on anything that doesn’t move (edible or not) and alight like a cloud of horrible little monsters when the cupboards are opened or a light wind disturbs them.
I invoke the spirit of my grandmother and shake my fist at no one. “I cast yee out foul things! Satan, I rebuke you!”
Not surprisingly, it doesn’t work. What does work is a homemade system invented by Davin that we call “The Carrousel”. Its name is inspired by the classic Sci-Fi film from 1976, Logan’s Run. In the film, citizens of a Utopian/dystopian future who are over a certain age are entered into a death machine called the Carrousel under the guise of reincarnation/rebirth or “renewal.”
In our version of The Carrousel, fruit flies are lured into a jar of no return via a funnel system that leads to an intoxicating lake of old red wine. To make your own simply:
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It is a chaotic blanket of thin, tangled branches smothering the lilac bush. A wild thing in a garden that has gone mad with wild things and wildness. And once it got going that poor potted dahlia hardly stood a chance.
I’ve realized that it is a living approximation of my grandmother’s “Christmas tree.” My garden’s tribute of sorts to the mass of potted tropical vines and houseplants that she decorated with small glass balls and assembled into a triangular “tree” shape each December.
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