It should be spring!

All around the garden, I'm seeing new things pop up. My daffodils are peeking up, my fig tree is starting to bud out, my forsythia is sneaking out a couple of blooms, I've got a crazy sedum, and my japanese maples are starting to look alive.

I also got my new toy in yesterday, and I hope to be introducing some new upcycled plastic creations to my fluffnfixings shop soon!

Snow!

Alright, not really.

Monday night, we had some freezing mist, and the little fluffy balls of ice piled up on the ground. I didn't notice it sticking all that well, but Tuesday, around noon, I went to check the mail and saw this!
I love snow, and the South has totally cramped my winter style. Seeing this made my day...well, that and a handful of sales! I guess holiday shoppers are hitting etsy, finally, and the past couple of days have kept me busy. I've had to set up two custom listings and my Erlenmeyer Terrarium Kit sold. I was kinda sad to see it go, but I'll fix another up sometime this week, I think.

Of course, I've conveniently run out of bubble mailers and bubble wrap to make more mailers, so I'm waiting for both of those to come up. If I get any orders between now and when I get my supplies, I'll have to break down and see what I can find locally. Can't complain too much! :)

I'm back! -- and eggs

As you may be able to tell, I'm back from our quick, Thanksgiving jaunt. I packed up five orders today and they'll all be going out Monday to their new homes.

I spent some time shopping around Etsy today, and decided to go for two eggs from SwedishDesign. I got a Santa and a Snowman, and I can't wait to get them! They're wonderful illustrations and will make excellent gifts for my sets of parents.

I spent a lot of time going through some incredible work by several very talented egg-workers, for lack of a better term. I thought I'd share some of these amazing creations with you.



Here's a wonderful pysanka ornament by doreseggs. The colors and patterning are captivating.









This artist, PysankyPanky, has too many incredible pieces to pick a favorite from, but this one is at the top of my list!










Here's a little wonder by 1eggman. This artist has the most amazing carved eggs I've ever seen!




Check out my favorite items and favorite sellers for more incredible egg artists!

New things!

I decided to change my avatar. I may change it back to the one I've had since I joined (over a year now!), but I figured I'd give this one a try for a little while and see if I adjust. Talk about living on the wild side, eh?

I've decided to do a fluffnflowers sale from 28 Nov.-1 Dec. in honor of Black Friday and Cyber Monday. If you haven't already checked out my shop, you might want to take advantage of this sale before the spring rush!

Buy 3 packs of seeds or $9 equivalent (not including S&H) and get a free pack of seeds! AND 15% off of any CUT GLASS growing kit.

I made it out alive!

I'm back home and comfy after my heart surgery. Sadly, the procedure wasn't as successful as we'd have liked, but we'll know better what the course of action will be in a month or so.

For now, I'm thrilled to be home, and I've been pretty busy. I've redone a couple of listings, added a few new listings, and have been getting together more promos to send out for the next big rush.

I spent some time before I went into the hospital cutting and finishing a bunch of glass bottles, so I've been taking pictures and introducing these 'pinch' garden kits. The containers are small, so I've chosen seeds that do well in tight quarters for several months. Spicy Globe Basil, Fern Leaf Bleeding Heart, and Jewels of Opar are some of the selections I've made.

Things are slowing down.

Winter is obviously starting to set in. All of the trees are losing their leaves and plants have stopped their furious growth. I've been pulling in seeds, and I'll be lifting some of my cold-sensitive bulbs shortly. Entertainingly enough, everything is slowing down, but a handful of weeds are going insane.

Thursday (I skipped the 11th!) is the big day, and I hope I'll be back in fine form shortly after. Supposedly, the procedure is easy and has a fast recovery, so keep your fingers crossed that my heart is thumping the right way soon!

Today, while I was cleaning I found more of my business cards! I thought I was out, but I apparently just misplaced 100 of them. So, now I can staple together promos while I wait for my 1250 others to arrive.

I also ordered 100 post cards. I'm not going to mail them out and intend on using them on thank-you notes, actually. I normally use large note cards to write the thank you and tape seed packs to the back. These will be pretty and serve the same function. Woohoo!

'Black Pearl' Pepper

I've had this plant listed in my shop under it's botanical name, Capsicum annuum 'Black Pearl'. I changed it to 'Black Pearl' Pepper when I thought about it and realized that most people aren't going to know what the botanical name is. I've had more hits after changing it, so I'm patting myself for being clever. :)

This has been my favorite plant for several years, but I fall even more in love with it every autumn when I bring it in. The black, sparkly foliage is enough to make most people take a second glance and ask about it, and it's even more eye catching when it's covered with bright, red peppers.

It does wonderfully indoors in the winter and blooms and peppers all winter in my bright, south-facing window. That means that those tasty little balls end up in my soups and other dishes all winter!

End of harvest.

It's nearing the end of my harvest season, and I've been spending a lot of time sorting seeds, packaging seeds, and planning out next year.

New things for the week:

Seedpods! I sent some of these off to a friend to see what magic she could work with them. If anyone else wants them for whatever reason, I'd be happy to send some off to you. :)

My lawyer gave me the free-and-clear (and a handful of free templates found online with the same layout), so I also placed another business card order, today. I added another flavor to my stash, so I now have five different images. I hope to be able to continue adding variety.

Health news, my heart appears to be clear from obvious defects, so here's to hoping there'll be no exciting surprises during the surgery. I should be scheduling the procedure next week.

Summer is winding down.

The nights are now in the 60s and the days are cooler (only reaching the mid 80s), and summer is obviously winding down. Leaves are starting to fall and a second rush of seed collection is happening.

I wasn't sure whether I was going to list seeds from my Northern Sea Oats plant this year or not, but I decided to go ahead and go for it. It's a fantastic plant, but I don't know how well ornamental grasses go over on etsy. You can see the listing here. It's one of the more attractive grasses I own, and I have plans for expanding it's growing area next year.

I also spent some time today breaking up another one of my monster lemongrass plants that was trying to anchor itself to the ground through its pot. People seem to find them appealing, which I think is fantastic. Not only are they attractive, but they're a joy to cook with. I'd love to know how people use them! :)

My kava got split up, but I don't know if it'll be listed this year. I'm trying to make up my mind, but that's sometimes difficult.

Tomorrow is my dreaded follow up appointment with a doctor that I've never met, so keep your fingers crossed that things aren't as bad as I fear! :) Hopefully, I won't have any blip in my online time.

Some pretty Etsy things.

I haven't written much about my joining up with the Interior Design Team on etsy, so I figured it might be a good time to show some of the interesting and truly great things I've found through this group.

First would be MatthewHamblen. I can't even begin to explain how NOT an art critic I am, but I can't find one thing in his shop that doesn't pull me in and entrance me. Truly a beautiful tour and a wonderful artist.

Another fantastic shop is hillspeak. I'm not usually a fan of the 'shabby' look, but the mosaiced bird houses in this shop get lots of smiles from me. This is my absolute favorite.

I've come across BrazanDesign a handful of times and I always am completely drawn in by how clean and classy this shop is. I finally found a nightlight that my SO can sleep with, or one of these lovelies would be MINE!

Just a quick scan, for today. :)

alysonscure

A great etsy seller, MeridianStudio, has organized a shop to help the family of Alyson, a young girl with lymphoblastic leukemia.

Please check out the beautiful contributions of other etsy members in the shop alysonscure.

I have donated a new project, an etched glass, upcycled herb garden.

Beatin' back the thug.

Today I got to yank my heart monitor off, and I was free to go outside and get nasty and sweaty. Hurrah!

The first order of business was to get the chocolate mint under control, and it proved to be a bit more of a task than I thought. I ripped up about five buckets of runners, made two pots of tea, and have a ton dehydrating for this winter.

It took me about an hour and a run in with a lovely black widow, but I'm glad it's done. The runners are ready to go in the ground and I have no idea what I'm going to do with them!

I've got a promotion going in my shop for a free chocolate mint runner with a purchase of three packs of seeds or the cost equivalent -- $9. Check it out! :)

Some fun newness!

I haven't been feeling well over the past week or so (cardiologist appointment on Tuesday, woot!), so I haven't been up and about in the yard as much. Yesterday, though, my guy was cleaning up the office and was trying to figure out what to do with his old 14" long 3.5" floppy file. I looked at it and was inspired!

It's a HUGE step up from my prior 'organizational' method -- the seed baggies were just tossed in a box. Now, each flavor of seeds has it's own pocket and the pre-packed bags that are ready to be shipped out are easy to find and I've got MUCH better inventory control.

Having everything so organized made me realize how many seeds I've actually collected this year! This 14" long file is completely stuffed, and I still have vials of bulk seeds not packaged yet.

Other than that, my winter basil is coming up. My Red Rubin didn't go to seed this summer after my guy conveniently mowed it down, so I started another pot with last year's seeds to keep indoors this winter. The little sprouts are so cute! I love the color that these have and they make such a great addition to pestos. Purple pesto rocks!

If all goes as planned, I should have plenty of seeds from these lovelies available on etsy for next spring.

Treasuries!

In honor of the More Meaningful Gifts BNR, jvdarcy set up this treasury. Thanks for including my violet photograph! Here it is!

Hot Cherry Peppers on Stage!

I really need to get Flash working (this is what I get for being a geek!) so I can click and comment on treasuries!

Here's a lovely treasury that has my hot cherry pepper seeds in it that was put together by VintageScraps. Thank you! :)

But they're PLASTIC!

I got my latest order of seed bags in, and my SO asked me a very interesting question while I was working on putting together little promo packs.

Why do you use plastic bags rather than paper seed packs like you used to?

The switch to using the plastic zippy baggies came easily, for me, after a couple of seasons using the paper envies. I could never find a way to seal the paper envies well enough so that I could open and close them whenever I wanted and not lose any seeds. I'm not a person who normally uses an entire pack of seeds at once, so I found myself using three, sometimes four, paper envelopes over a couple of weeks for the same pack of seeds.

I got a trade in the little plastic baggies and I've been a convert ever since. For my personal use, I'll even reuse ones from other seed varieties. I also think it makes people feel more confident with buying seeds, because they can SEE them before they buy. I can open and close them whenever I want and have fewer lost seeds because of it.

I do miss the breathability of the paper envelopes, and it's now absolutely imperative that seeds are completely dried before packaging, but I've come to terms with that and think the benefits more than outweigh the extra day in the vent chamber of doom.

Instead of spending weeks making seed envelopes or buying 5000 a year (plus smaller emergency orders occasionally), I'm down to ordering 3000 a year and still having some leftover. Good thing all around.

Some hard decisions and some good things.

Fabulous! My toad lily has been blooming for the past two days, and here's a pic of one of the blooms. What I think is absolutely wonderful about it is that it's got blue on it. Not the wannabe blues that you see on most flowers, but true blue, dyed in the wool BLUE. I'm lovin' it lots. This is now my favorite flower, I think.

Besides that, I made the difficult decision today to cut back on the amount of recycled packing materials I use. A guy on freecycle asked if anyone had any spares, so I bit the bullet and put two large boxes out for him. He shreds them and uses them for other packing needs, so they're not just getting thrown away.

Most of them were too old and fragile to be reliable. His request came at a great time, because I'd already decided to stop using the ones in good shape. Why? you ask. Because, after three months of charting postage costs for private trades, I've found that reused bubble mailers increase the postage cost somewhere in the area of .16-.55 a mailer.

While it hurt, it seems like a good business decision and a good healthy home decision. I eliminated a large, ugly clutter that made me avoid my sewing room, and I'll now be able to reduce my shipping costs.

And the sugar on top is that I don't have to be concerned whether people are put off an old mailer, even if it was safe to ship in, and I don't have to worry about throwing away mailers I receive -- cuz I got the hookup, now. He gave me another box and told me that, as soon as I fill it up, he'd be happy to come and pick it up again.

As soon as I use up the stock of new mailers that I've been hoarding, I'll invest in some new bubble wrap and start making my own mailers to send my seeds. Using salvage plastics and saving money is even better than saving money! :)

The hacking of the lemongrass

Today was a very happy day for one of my lemongrass plants.

I love lemongrass, I really, really, really do, but it's a weed! Like any grass, it grows as much as it can and that can is quite a lot. I've got two monsters in 15 gallon pots that I divide down to 1/4 of the original size each autumn, and they've filled the pots again by the end of the summer.

I usually start a bunch of divisions for trades and plant sales, and I ended up with an extra two or three this year. Instead of throwing them out, of course, I kept them. One is in a 5 gallon pot and the other has been trapped in it's one gallon pot since February.

It's only grown 5 growths because of it's captivity, but they're nice, fat, healthy stalks with a handful of leaves each. Today, I took it out, attacked it with pruners, and divided it up into single stalk divisions, pruned the roots and foliage.

I swear, I think that the divisions have already started growing and have halfway filled up their 12 oz cups with roots. I expect that, by next week, I'll see the roots punching out braille 'LET ME OUT!!' in the styrofoam.

I wish that the beasties would live outside and survive the winters because I'd have some honkin' specimens after a year or two. These divisions are located in my etsy shop here.

Shiny objects...

Got distracted again. There's been a lot of stuff going on recently, and it's been a bit tough to keep up between doctor's appointments, imaging appointments, and life in general.

The EtsyOrganicTeam is off to a good start, and I've, apparently, been given full reign of the blog. So far, it's been a lot of fun, but not having flash really prevents me from keeping up with treasuries and that sort of thing.

It's also harvest time in them thar gardens. I've been doing a lot of seed sorting and harvesting, cropping and pruning, rooting and moving. It seems that fall is in the air, so it'll get really busy in another month or so. I've got a ton of bushes that I need to move to new homes.

I've also been dealing with a piecing nightmare. I came up with a pattern for a pair of pants and it's truly one of the most annoying things I've ever done. I haven't decided what's going to be victim first: the sewing machine or the square. Luckily, I bought 6 yards (a whopping $4.81 at 5% of the original price!!) so I've got some room to play with it.

Tool review and little notes

For my birthday, my awesome mother got me this awesome tool. I went out and took some pictures of it yesterday, and I decided to post a review on it today.

The tool in question is a DeWit Half Moon Hand Hoe. I love DeWit tools, and there's not much else to it. I've visited their factory (who does that???) and have an assortment of their stuff, but this handhoe is probaby my new favorite.

It's well-balanced with a long neck. I'm pretty clumsy and have terrible visio-spatial skills, but I can wield this hoe like an extension of my arm. That's quite an excellent thing when you're not interested in crawling through expansive beds that can't really be compressed without damaging the plants.

xp

With this lovely, I'm able to sit on my stool and hack away. The small head makes it ideal for whacking around in between plants. For those of us who have limited mobility, it's an even sweeter deal, since not having to squat or kneel can mean actually being able move the day after a rigorous gardening session.

When the blade starts to lose its impressive edge, you're able to regrind and sharpen it without voiding the product guarantee/warantee.

What else is going on in my little world? MORE RAIN! The Weather Channel says that we've gotten only 1.5", but there's been an 8" increase in my collection pans -- without the funnel on. It looks like we're going to get more rain tomorrow, but I'd be very thankful if we got a couple of days to dry out so everything doesn't rot. Please?

Also, I got a little plug for my other shop, fluffnfixings, here.