Du Jour Means the World

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Coral Honeysuckle Vine. Native to many southern states. A favorite of the hummingbird hawk moth, its larval plant source. I’ve also seen many a hummer visit. It has berries in the fall that birds love to eat. Even my father, who thinks I plant weeds, approves.

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Cold winter, great for first spring flush.

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First portrait

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The three brothers at the end of our street came up with a pretty good likeness of Akash.

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My community plot is a cutting garden for zinnias.

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Zilker Fairy Garden

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Apple pie: Ida Red, Golden Delicious, Jonathan

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Blackberry Apple Pie First pie I've baked in eight months. I have been experimenting with cutting out the sugar in baked goods. This pie uses only 1/2 a cup of sugar. I think the filling tastes plenty sweet and the fruit is really more present. I also put some Mexican Mint Marigold in the filling. For those of you living in hot climates, this is an excellent substitute for tarragon.

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Pac-man Olive Oil Meyer Lemon Cake This year we were lucky to get a lot of Meyer Lemons from our tree. I searched quite awhile for a recipe to use them in and found this lovely cake. http://hilahcooking.com/meyer-lemon-olive-oil-cake/ It's not too sweet, has a pronounced lemon flavor, and more importantly has a high taste to effort ratio. I was able to make it while the baby napped (which isn't long these days).

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Paper Crane Mobile

Since I don’t sew or knit, I really wanted to make something for the baby that involved some other skills. I decided to make a paper crane mobile. Never mind that I also didn’t know origami. I enlisted the help of my sister, the expert origami folder. Over Fourth of July weekend we folded 60 paper cranes. She folded 3 cranes to my 1 and I had to look at the YouTube video each time (really).

Next I had the help of my husband in creating the frame. We used embroidery hoops that we wrapped in yarn. Karl then linked the hoops with dowels that were also wrapped in yarn and hot glued to the hoops. I then strung the cranes on to heavy duty thread with a needle and knotted the ends. I decided to do a capiz shell chandelier type of design with three different lengths of cranes for each hoop. I was done knotting and had moved onto tying when I went into labor one week before my due date.

Fast forward almost three months later — the baby can see across the room so I decided to finish the mobile on Christmas Day before I went back to work.

So after nearly six months and the efforts of three people, it is done. The baby loves his mobile, which makes it all worth it (I find myself saying that a lot these days). I will post more pictures of it hanging in his room later. The ones you see are of it hanging from a stocking holder on the mantle (a good place to make final adjustments with minimal tangling).