Adventures at Greenacre: Gardening tips

Showing posts with label Gardening tips. Show all posts

January 11, 2014

Summer Garden Dreaming

This barren garden will look like this in 6 months time,

blooming with colour and life.

This Winter has been the worse as far.

Starting with the ice storm that decapitated quite a few trees at Greenacre.

What took more than 50 years to grow was destroyed in a few hours.

Blizzard after blizzard. White out after white out.

Winter blasted my door and yes it is still sporting Christmas decorations.

We were experiencing a 3 day blizzard and -40'C technical difficulties

This popsicle making weather,

had me dreaming of my Summer garden.

Then the reality that 6 months is a long time sets in.

So why not just add colour to the snowy backdrop instead?

Make up some lovely urns filled with life and offer them to old man Winter in hopes he leaves early this year.

HGTV has a great post called Winter Landscape Brighteners on how to beautify your garden this time of year. Click on the pictures to get redirected to the original post.

This wonderful garden chalkboard quote is a free printable by Shelly Renee offered at Canter Lane Design.
It will digging time before y'all know it!

The first day of Spring is Thursday March 10, 2014

Spring Countdown

Ephemeras Vintage Garden's Printable Botanical Postcards are beautiful reminders at what lies ahead.
Why we dig and spend hours tending our plant babies.

No time like the present to get your seed on!

Mother Nature Network has a list of 17 easy-to-start seeds for beginner gardeners

Print these butterfly colouring pages I made for my little ones
because nothing can get done unless they are occupied.

Hopefully these will do the trick whatever you decide on doing.

Sending y'all Summer Garden love from Greenacre!

Get 10% off grow tent kits when you shop at www.AccessHydro.com. Valid until February 2014.

April 29, 2013

Evicting ants and deterring bugs from your home

Spring has sprung after a week of rain.

These springful delights of colour.

Remind me of the glorious season that comes behind it...Summer.

My husband came home with these fabulous signs and I am debating on whether or not to change our Asian themed bedroom to a beach theme. I love the tranquil blue and neutral palette. Perfect for relaxing!

Which is not something I have been able to do since I found ants roaming around the house.

It's almost insulting that they are even in my house because I am extremely clean.

It's not uncommon for us to see a couple around this time of year but I always put out a couple of ant traps and they are gone within days. This year the traps became water coolers and the ants got bigger. That really got me worried because I thought they might be carpenter ants which would mean a worse problem then just regular ants.

After goggle searching what the difference between black and carpenter ants .I breathed a sigh of relief because they are not carpenter ants. Yay!

Some of the differences just in case you too have this concern are;

that the carpenter ants have heart-shaped heads'
a smooth thorax
and carpenter ants can be black, brown, red or a combination of these colours like this one pictured below.

Some tricks I picked up on the Internet are to place bay leaves in the cupboard.
because bugs don't like the smell of it. So I have one on every shelf in my pantry. So far so good. (touch wood)
Ants and cats are supposed to be repelled by coffee grounds. Turns out I have one big ole'can of coffee grounds with their name on it.
You can also sprinkle cinnamon, mint, chili pepper, black pepper, cayenne pepper, cloves or garlic in the area where you've seen ants and along your home's foundation to deter them.
I literally poured some cinnamon spice in a small crack I follow the ants too and that was the end of that. I was very but very liberal with the cinnamon!!

Click on the picture and read more information from Wikihow on how to stop ants coming into your home

and how to get rid of them once they are already in your home.

Click here for Wikihow tips on how to get rid of ants naturally

I am doing whatever I can to evict the ants for good!

Or at least until next year. At this point...I'll take it.

Oh my lovelies....Spring brings joy and vermin.

Such beauty..

just bursting with life and colour.

Beeeeeeeeeeeautiful!!!!

Just don't understand why ants would my prefer my kitchen over living out here with their compadres.

They must be the suicidal ants is all I can come up with.

April 03, 2012

Tuesday's Tips

Spring cleaning has left me with alot of baby clothing that the girls can no longer use. I don't know of any one that is having a baby girl to pass them on to. So I have come up with a couple of ideas that allow me to teach the girls about recycling and re-using things instead of throwing them out.

The first one is to use the clothing for dolls.

Lucky for me I have 3 girls and LOTS of dolls they can dress up.

Try sewing some blanket's together to make a big blanket you don't have to worry if it gets ruined.

These are my favourite! The twins wore them on their first birthday and it killed me to give them up.

First I turned the shirt inside out and sewed along the bottom.

Then I sewed up the sleeves, stuffed them and sewed up the collar.

As soon as Cesina saw them, she wanted all her t-shirts were to become pillows.

Seeing as there is no room for so many pillows, I decided a manicure would make her just as happy.

She came up with the rainbow nails and different stickers idea. The stickers can be found at dollar stores but make sure you use a clear coat because they tend to come off really easily if you don't top coat them.

The Halloween costumes also came out as the Spring closet cleaning continued and I was surprised that a size 7-8 fit the twins so well and they are a size 2T.

How perfect...a LPS bunny costume.I think I will have Cesina wear this as she hunts down the Easter baskets.

These are the tips I found online to deter snakes from your yard;

Remove vegetation from your home
Kill any rodents you find outside of your home
Place a mothball and water mixture in coffee cans and poke holes in the top of the cans. Then set the cans out to deter the snakes.
Seal any cracks around your home. Rattlesnakes tend to search for cooler, damper areas
during the summer so it is advisable to cover existing crevices around garage doors or
beneath basements to prevent them from entering these areas.
Water or swimming pool pumps should be properly covered as well.
Moist places in your yard, such as water fountains in your garden or any existing ponds, are ideal places for rattlesnakes
Eliminate rattlesnake homes and nesting-sites. Which includes such things as wood piles, rock piles, garbage piles, long grass, brush, undergrowth, piles of building materials, animal burrows, etc.
Think about the places that would be cozy for a snake to move into and remove them.
But be careful when you remove them! There may already be a rattlesnake in residence.

I thought I might add praying to the list because I can not control the rodents, or do anything about the tall grasses around the property. The moth balls might not be a good idea until the twins are older. Yep...praying...my best option!

With Easter on our doorstep, I wanted to share these amazing free printables and ideas I found.