Sad Sunflower Story

Oh people, I am sorry to have to come here and tell you that I think our sunflower shade circle is not to be this year.

I could blame the caterpillars or slugs who seem to have made a meal of a few of the seedlings that did manage to push through
but I really feel that I must take the blame on this one.

Firstly, I didn't really prepare the ground for planting. I didn't shave the area cut the grass to define the circle so that trampling feet would avoid it and to ensure that enough light would shine on the ground to warm it and nurture the seedlings.

Secondly, I dug with a spoon. A spoon, I tell you! I should have used the proper tools which would have been more effective at digging sunflower seed-appropriate planting holes.

Finally, despite Z1's excellent planning and helpful diagrams, I did not carefully space the seeds and make sure they were evenly distributed around the circle. I did things hurriedly and haphazardly and my punishment shall be no shady, sunflower circle for me or the Zeds this year. Alas and alack.

Having said that, there is one seedling doing quite well, reaching up tall against the odds so I think we shall have a solitary sunflower. This strong sunflower will shine as a beacon to remind us that next year, if we prepare and plan AND execute the plan correctly, we could be the proud and happy cultivators of a shady, sunflower circle fort.

When Sunflowers Are Too Slow

There are at least four sunflower seedlings bravely pushing up through our increasingly meadow-like back garden lawn. I fear for their safety when we next decide to cut the grass as interest in them and their not-as-rapid-as-the-grass growth has waned and they could be mown down without a second thought.



Just peeping out

I do go and check on them quite regularly and pat down the grass around the plucky little seedlings to allow the sun to get through the dense grass forest that surrounds them. There has been rain and sunshine too so they are getting what they require. One has been partially eaten by a slug, though.

In light of this, and to halt the endless flow of Netflix-streamed children's programming into the house yesterday afternoon, Z1 and I embarked on a flower craft. I'd had this one in mind for quite a while - before the blossoms even came on the trees, in fact.

 

 



Fully grown

The ingenious bit is that the straw is inserted in a hole in the bottom of the cup and can be pushed up to let the flower 'grow'. I also like our use of brown paint (actually, we got very resourceful here and mixed red and green to make brown) and tissue paper for the earth.   Z1 enjoyed it but lost interest fairly quickly as there were other things going on in the house.  I had many further grand plans - decorating the outside of the cup, multiple flowers in the same pot, more glitter glue on the flowers... (I know some people have a a bit of a horror of glitter glue but it's definitely still one of my favourite things to use for craft. Ordinary glitter is a bit troublesome in its ability to get everywhere and never be fully gone leading to a high likelihood of heading into work with inappropriate glitter on one's cheek or eyebrow*, however, I find that this is not such a problem with glitter contained within the goo of glue or paint.)  I guess simple and rustic is good too.

We actually made two flowers and Z1 wandered around holding the other one for a couple of hours a bit like a wand.

 

 

*On this note, how sad it is that glitter should ever be inappropriate

 

 

 

Sunflower Seedlings Succeeding

I must admit, I was a little incredulous that the seeds I shoved crudely into hurriedly spoon-dug holes in our lawn would actually grow. Z1 seems to have mostly forgotten about the project despite her detailed and meticulous plans but I have been regularly checking the small, barely uncovered earth patches in our rapidly growing grass.

I am pleased to report that at least two of the seeds seem to be succeeding in growing. Now, I am aware that two seedlings does not a sunflower circle fort make but there was lots of rain last night and lots of sun forecast today so we might get a few more.

Diagrams and digging

The idea of planting a circle of sunflowers as a sort of shady den for the summer came from Pinterest though I had seen and loved a sunflower maze in Dublin Botanic Gardens and loved it. It just hadn't occurred to me to translate it to my very own garden until Pinterest.

I had spoken about it quite a lot and the Zeds and I tramped out the circle in the long grass on Saturday. Husband then cut the grass so we got to tramp it out again which was a good thing as the Zeds are big fans of running, skipping, marching and jumping around in a circle. I got a bit dizzy.

Z1 then took it upon herself to draw a diagram to plan the circle out. We currently only have a temporary fence on one side of the garden so crayon drawings are allowed. The parameters she planned to illustrate were the size of the circle and the height of the sunflowers. She also had a separate table where she planned how often the sunflowers would need watering. Apparently they will require watering 6 times on Mondays. This was a very serious project.


On the right, you can see that the upper circle has a tick and an arrow - this is the required size of the sunflower circle. It also has 2 flowers in the middle which show the location of the circle as there are two orange flowers on our lawn. The circle below has been crossed out as too small.

In this diagram, you can see the height she wants the sunflowers to be (8 units, units not specified) and, in the righthand panel, you can see she drew a picture of herself for comparison. As she is about 3 feet tall and the sunflowers can apparently grow up to 10ft tall, she may get her wish of the sunflowers being twice her height as illustrated.

We had misplaced our trowel when the time came to plant the seeds so we made do with a spoon. Z2 was napping and Z1 took charge of choosing the seed for each hole and watering each seed after planting. Now we must wait and see if they grow or wether the birds ate the seeds immediately after we planted them.
 

Stopping to watch the woodlice

In the mornings, we have a short walk to the bus stop. Well, it should be short but we have a five year old and a nearly three year old so the walk that takes an adult nine minutes (according to googlemaps) can take up to half an hour with the Zeds.



I find myself enticing them to walk a bit quicker by saying "Come on, I think there are more woodlice across the road" and "ooh, let's see if there are any dead worms up there, near the wobbly wall". In winter, it tended to be more about finding a really good crunchy iced over puddle or a crystally icicle.



 


It's the preschooler/kindergardener equivalent to stopping to smell the flowers, you see,  and I try to encourage it in general but, you know, sometimes we really do need to hurry up and get on the damn bus. However, I do like to stop and smell photograph the flowers.

No children were harmed in the making of this craft

First you must cut out your fishies

No children were harmed, indeed, since no children were involved. Between Pinterest and this blog, I have moved on from merely saving cereal boxes for future use to sitting down at the table while Z2 napped and Z1 watched...erm...probably Gnomeo and Juliet, not too sure as I was busy...to do a crafty thing.



Then you must glue your silhouttes
to the background

Z2's bedroom is painted blue, glossy blue, walls and ceiling. It makes it rather dark but I have decided to go with it and I call it the pond room and he has some mirrors in the shape of frogs on the wall and also this rug which I do love quite a lot. I decided he needed a shark poster which gradually evolved into me making these fish silhouettes.


This craft was a nice mix of being prepared and just making do with whatever I had to hand. Preparation included printing out the fish silhouettes. Making do included using a black marker to colour in the watermark bits as the silhouettes were from a stock picture library type thing. I also had carried them around in my bag for a few days so had to choose the non-crumpled fish to use. The frames were ones that I found about the house and the blue backgrounds are a blue card and a blue envelope which I also found around the house.



Then you must display them with Z1's flower display
and a piece of her art in the background*

I am quite pleased with the finished results. Z1 was impressed and Z2 admired them. However, they are rather small for the expanse of bedroom wall so I may have to get my scissors out, find a few more frames and  do a few more. Or I might just buy the shark poster after all and hang these on either side.

*If you do not have any original Z1 artwork or flower displays to hand, you can improvise with art and flower displays created by yourself, your own child/dog/hamster or even shop-bought displays.

A book review - Survival of the Ginnest (with brief musings on internet friends)

Survival of the Ginnest ©

I shall be honest from the outset - I know Aimee Horton of Pass the Gin. She is an internet friend. Those of you who don't have internet friends may think that internet friends are not real or that it's a little sad and pathetic to have them but you are very, very wrong. Internet friends quite often know things about you that real life friends don't and you don't have to worry about them popping 'round for a cup of tea before you have managed to make some attempt at tidying up. (Not that my real-life friends would worry too much about the state of my house but I might.) So there you go, she's an internet friend and I offered to review her book but I hereby promise that, having been honest about my relationship with her, I will also be honest about the book.

Also, in the same week as I offered to review this, I was awaiting my copy of Parenting: Illustrated with Crappy Pictures by the very amusing Amber Dusick from crappypictures.com. I say this to show you that my standards are high for humorous, irreverent, honest parenting blogs and books. Amber makes me actually laugh out loud quite regularly as well as nodding along and inspiring my infographic posts.

Survival of the Ginnest is written entirely in Facebook status updates. This makes it very readable by a) those of us who like Twitter and Facebook and b) those of us with jobs/small children/too little time. I chuckled out loud to myself several times and silently many more while reading this on a rather dreary wintery day in spring. I think that alone should be enough to make you want to spend a small bit of your hard-earned cash on it but I shall continue. I love Aimee's affectionately grumpy nicknames for her children and I like how she writes "pooh" not "poo" - I feel it expresses the disgustingness rather well.  I thought that I would tire of the status update format but, in fact, it just kept me reading as there is always time to read just one more sentence, right? I will warn you that you are likely to end up craving alcohol or pizza or Haribo or possibly all three as you read. In fact, I had to interrupt my reading to go in seek of Haribo and was rather sad to have to make do with Maynards Sour Cherry Blasters. So yes, go out there and follow Aimee on Twitter but also, go and get her electronic book 'cause you won't regret it. You can buy it here - http://t.co/EQumosdlzx .