Making Moss

mossgraffiti: "Moss Graffiti" is something I've tried before, but not with such an easy recipe. Time to try again. there are times you want to dress down your pond area and things like that.... gardeners like things like moss and lichens:)
moss art

The basic recipe is as follows, with more detailed instructions here:

1 can of beer
1/2 teaspoon sugar
Several clumps garden moss

a plastic container (with lid),
a blender and a paintbrush
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To begin the recipe, first of all gather together several clumps of moss (moss can usually be found in moist, shady places) and crumble them into a blender. Then add the beer and sugar and blend just long enough to create a smooth, creamy consistency. Now pour the mixture into a plastic container.

Find a suitable damp and shady wall on to which you can apply your moss milkshake.

Along with the unique idea given, a gardener might want to hurry up the 'moss process' for any number of decorative projects. Giving character to pots and urns, a natural appearance to rocks around ponds, fountains, or making a rock or wall look like it had been there forever.

In growing a moss garden, Joni Blackburn, in Mad About Moss, said,

although I was curious to see if the often prescribed blended-buttermilk-and-moss method would work, I couldn't bring myself to sacrifice my only blender to a botany experiment.

She does, however give a springtime "tonic of manure tea"; also recommended was a book,Moss Gardening: Including Lichens, Liverworts and Other Miniatures

Ferns and moss naturally grow together and make a peaceful green garden. As long as there is little foot traffic, I think it would make a very low maintenance garden for the right conditions: a shady side yard that has sufficient moisture. Add a few stones, a fountain or garden ornament, a bench, and it could become your favorite place to sit and meditate. a small Serenity Garden.

TIME LIFE PLANT ENCYCOLPEDIA

True mosses grow 1/16 to 24 inches tall. They have many tiny flat leaves and stems that are often too closely packed to distinguish. The leaves expand when wet and close up when dry. Thousands of plants bunch together to make a patch of moss. Like ferns, mosses grow from spores. The spores develop green threadlike branches called protonema, which push into the ground and eventually develop leaves. The plants do not have true roots but attach themselves by tiny rootlets to the material on which they grow. By absorbing water, mosses allow moisture to soak into the ground gradually and help enrich the soil when they decay.

More ideas for growing and decorating with moss

Technorati Tags: moss, serenity garden

In celebration of the spring rain

Gentle rains fall to soften my garden beds. The very atmosphere seems pregnant, imparting everything with fecund potential. My heart and mind soar in such enveloping mists and soak in the droplets of the magnified clarity it gives to the light, filtered and diffused in the tenderest way possible. The purples and lavenders glow in this light, the greens deepen and become velveted, the whites glisten and then fade at the edges... nothing is harsh or disordered while the colors of the garden are washed into each other with rainbow gradations.

I imagine my newly planted seeds welcomed in the moist womb of the garden's earth. Every petal of the blooming flowers is preserved in the momentary embrace of the sweet moisture, the prepared soils open and inviting to every growing thing and to my feet as they press upon its spongy surface. Sweet and fresh, the air surrounds with a cooling fragrance and invites my lungs to breathe deeply, glad to be alive. Glad to breathe, glad to smell, glad to take part in today's growing and emerging.

Technorati Tags: ode to rain, I love the rain

It's Been A Hard Day's Work...

And if I believed in such a thing, it was jinxed! I wrote a page on Kitchen gardens- which I hope to make into a series of two more pages and felt like making my own vegetable patch prettier this year. So I hilled up the broccoli beds a little more edged them with lettuces and started digging a straighter edge around the plot- which I will do something with- just not sure yet! Digging is always a little hard on me- I use my right leg, and it gets a bit overworked... but it was in weeding the side garden that I had the most trying time.

I attempted to put up some planters on the trellis. Sounds easy right? Not with mine, couldn't figure out the hanger, then tripped when I stepped backwards (on the basket), slid -just barely breaking the fall, went inside to clean up the blood. Kept at things for about twenty more minutes before giving up, not having accomplished anything. Except sawing away a bit of the trellis (oops), I was getting nowhere and wasting lots of time doing it, so decided to move on. That's when I started the actual weeding and came upon a load of poison ivy under the Thérèse Bugnet Rose. Being spring, the oils are very potent on the shiny leaves. I mashed it all over me, trying to pull it out. Normally I am not allergic to it, but I don't want to test that too thoroughly, so I had to take a shower and wash my hair (yes, I pulled it all over me). Followed up with some trim mowing.

A word about the Thérèse Bugnet Rose. It is a very beautiful, hardy, fragrant, full blooming rugosa rose. That is a picture of it at the top of the post. Most years it is simply covered with roses of a very pretty bright lipstick pink which scent the air in garden with the most delicious sweet smell. It does have its faults, however. It spreads widely and takes over. I have started pulling it up just to keep it in line, but it pops up ever further from its alloted place. I noticed it was full of tiny pointed rosebuds, so I can't bear to part with any until after it blooms.... then without mercy! And yes, this does mean it can prove invasive under the right circumstances.

I will take pictures this year- I've been a little better about that. I have some of my magnolia stellata that I just need to upload...

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Wild And Windy

No, not me, the weather. I am amazed at the bloom on my apple and crabapple trees this year, the frost did not seem to have affected them. Of course with the weather as it is I am mostly looking at them through the window.

As a friend mentioned to me, when I asked her if she was in her garden lately, she is mostly trying to keep up with the grass. It is that time of year, the warming, yet still cool temperatures and spring rains spell fast growing grass. I am very remiss in mowing, but it is looking a little shaggy even for my tastes. I would have mowed the other day, but misplaced the keys to the tractor. I am always doing that, but this time I outsmarted myself. It seems like a game with me and my mind.... hiding things from each other. I am going to check my jeans pocket.... maybe I left them there. I think we have several keys, but I also think I have managed to serially misplace each one.

Let's move on from the story of me and keys. I was out on Wednesday,driving to Curves for my exercise regimen, and noticed that the Burr oaks have leafed out, further than the mouse ear size that phenology lore mentions is the start of the corn planting season. I have seen farmers out in their fields, but with the change to 'no-till' practice the fields look disheveled and unkempt, difficult to tell if anything was planted yet. I like the traditional method of plowing and harrowing the soil, but it does result in some soil loss. I saw a number of Holstein herds, their striking black and white patterns against the velvet green of spring pasture and the still beige frass of leftover winter bareness. The farms around here switch out their herds, so that different areas might have a herd of cows one season and none the next. I miss the Jersey herds that used to be on some farms in the area, here. Jerseys are the most beautiful cows, ever, with fawn soft coloring and huge dewy eyes rimmed in black lashes and white liner. There is something demure and sweet about such cows. Not like the chunky Angus, or awkward Holsteins which are presently the cattle population of the county. I would have some Jerseys myself if I was up to the animal husbandry. But I'm not, so I enjoy them vicariously when the neighbors own them.

Everyone, including me, has been busy getting out the outdoor furniture and planters. Front porches are being readied for the season, and this year we have scraped the front porch in preparation for a new coat of paint. What I would really like is a new front porch- this one has always look like it was smacked on as an afterthought, the result of of some sloppy Amish owners who had demolished the former porch for whatever odd reason. And in its present ramshackle shape, it is even worse- I ought to at least be pushing for some spindles and rails, and surely put the trellises back up (never did get to that nuisance job).

Not all the Amish are master builders, some are just like many of the "English" who try their best, but just aren't up for proper remodeling. Although, if I could afford to have it professionally built, there are some contractors from Amish/Mennonite background that I would hire because of their expertise. Because when they are good, they are very good.

This is May... I hope to get my tomatoes and peppers in soon... I am getting antsy. The word choice could get me talking about ants now... but enough!

til later, friends.


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