Glass Flowers

A few weeks ago I got to try my hand at glass sculpting. I bought a coupon for a class at Tulsa Glassblowing Studio making glass flowers. After some minor delays in getting our class scheduled, my friend Amanda and I went and learned the basics of working with glass.

My flower, loved the colors.

Working with the liquid glass was interesting, you dip some out of a large kiln with a long metal rod. For the glass (which has the consistency of honey) to keep its shape you keep turning it and reheating it often since the glass tries to solidify as it cools.

With flowers you start out rolling the glass into a fat stem-like shape, although it looks more like a fat sausage at that point. The colored glass is a bunch of small shards in separate bins. You roll the glass in the color for the stem, add more glass from the kiln, then smash the new glass straight down into the color for the petals. After that you use a jack (like giant tweezers) to pull the glass out in the petal shapes. Our instructor finished the flowers by letting the stem stretch and twist before breaking the flower off the pole.

Amanda's flower, thought it would be perfect for her office.

The process was very cool, but I could tell it would take a lot of practice to be able to control how the piece turns out. Amanda and I chose different colors, but even the shapes turned out completely different. And looking at the flowers on display in the studio I didn't see any that were alike.

The studio does demonstrations during the monthly First Friday Art Crawl in the Tulsa Brady Arts District (where they are located), which is fascinating. When we went for our class Amanda and I convinced our instructor to show off a bit to give us an idea of how to use the tools we didn't need for glass flowers. He made a clear glass vase which was pretty cool. But during the First Friday demonstration I saw they were working on a couple of pieces that were a lot more complex, requiring multiple people to create. 

My flower on display.

In addition to glass flowers the studio offers other beginner classes where you can make anything from a paperweight to a Christmas ornament or flowers like we made. They also sell vases, bowls, jewelry and other items made in the studio.

I'd love to go back and make ornaments around Christmas time. I'm thinking about suggesting it as a group event to my book club, but I need to research the cost for a class without the coupon and see if there is a limit to how many people can come. My guess is that there is since the studio isn't large and they have to provide and instructor.

I managed to get a few pictures of us making our flowers. Check them out below!

Me watching the instructor stretch my flower's stem.

Heating the glass after adding color.

Rolling the stem in color.

We had to make a cut in the glass
for where the stem would break off the rod.

Using the jack to pull out petals.

Stretching the stem on Amanda's flower.
There's a very short window to do this before the glass hardens.

Our instructor making a vase.

Amanda checking out the shop items.

Warmer Weather

This month has finally seen the temperature creep into the upper 60s to 90s with fewer freezes. Which meant I could finally get serious about planting things in my new flowerbeds!

You may remember me posting about Dad helping me build flowerbeds with landscape timbers and re-bar. Until now they've sat empty except for some dirt and weeds.

This weekend I went to Southwoods Nursery with my mom and grandmother and they bought me some azaleas to plant in the flowerbed against the back wall of my house. Of course, the planting couldn't be done without hitting a few snags. Apparently my sewage pipe is located in the flowerbed. Right where my perfectly spaced azalea needed to go. So instead of perfectly spaced plants I adapted my plan and planted the pink azaleas closer to the azaleas on each end.

I've heard that azaleas are hard to maintain, but the one I planted two years ago couldn't be happier and has required practically no work. To plant them I just dig a hole a little bigger and deeper than the plant. Fill it up loosely with peat moss (azaleas like acidic soil which is what the peat moss is for) and add water until the hole is filled with a soupy mixture. Then you plop the plant in, cover the edges with dirt and you're done.

The next flowerbed we built is at the end of my deck and I haven't gotten it filled yet, but my grandmother did bring me some jasmine from her house that I planted in it. Eventually it will grow up the side of the deck.

Before I could plant anything though I had to line the edges of all the flowerbeds with landscape fabric. Because we used landscape timbers to build the beds the soil can wash out the spaces between the timbers without something holding it in. Since the plants need to root deeper than the beds I couldn't cover the bottoms which made cutting the fabric to size a little tricky.

The last bed we built is in the sunniest corner of my yard and is for vegetables. It's funny that this is the sunniest area since when I moved in there were bushes growing along the back fence that made that area one of the shadiest parts of the yard. After cutting down the bushes and finally digging up the roots to prevent them from growing back the bushes are finally gone for good. I want to plant something else along that fence eventually, but something that won't destroy the fence.

This was actually the first bed I planted anything in since I went to one of the local herb festivals and stocked up on tomato and pepper plants. We have a lady in Tulsa that grows and sells heirloom tomato and pepper plants, The Tomato Man's Daughter. She has a great selection and I almost always buy my tomatoes from her.

Once I had everything planted the tricky thing was rigging a fence that would deter Ollie from jumping on the plants while he barks at the neighbor dogs. That corner is where my yard meets up with the others so Ollie likes to race through it, which may not matter once my plants are bigger than him, but for now I don't want him stomping on my plants.

I barely got my tomato and pepper plants in the ground before we had another freeze though! I cut the bottoms off of some milk jugs to cover the plants overnight so they didn't die. It actually didn't get as cold as the weathermen predicted which was good.

I'm excited to get everything growing, here's to hoping I actually get tomatoes and peppers and even blackberries this year! The last few years were so hot and dry so early in the season that everything dried up too fast.

In the front yard I bought some bushes to replace those that died a couple summers ago and Grandmother bought me a couple of new plants to go in the pots on the front porch with my silver sage.

Hopefully they'll survive, I think it looks pretty nice all together!

Other pictures from this spring:

St. Francis looked pretty nice with my tulips
blooming this spring. Irises and dahlias
are starting to come up now.

The garden bed has some sort of purple flower
that grows along the fence. Lovely (and invasive).

Ollie thinks he's a rabbit.
Or at least runs like one.

Titan, my brother's cat, enjoying
geraniums at my mom's house.

I know dandelions are weeds, but don't they
look pretty making a path to the forsythia?

I hate to mow, but Ollie loves a freshly mowed yard.

Spring Makes Me Smile

Well, I'm jumping in again. Somehow the warmer weather encourages me to spend exorbitant amounts of money on plants for my yard despite my distaste for actual gardening.

Something New
This year I have a few plants that need replacing (whether my lackadaisical watering habits or survival of the fittest is at fault is still up for debate) so I bought a couple of new bushes and a yellow forsythia that should grow up to 8 ft. tall. Hopefully it will block my view of this:

You can see my forsythia bush waiting to be planted. Also, that
pool to the right? Nothing but a mosquito breeding ground since
I've moved in. Makes being in my backyard almost unbearable.

I've thought forsythia is pretty for a while, but I didn't have a good place to plant it in my yard. Then PSO came out and massacred my trees (you may remember me posting about that here) and now my back fence-line gets a lot of sun! So this year I am planting forsythia, sunflowers, blackberries and my tomato and pepper plants along the back fence. The positive effect of my trees looking lopsided?

I'm really excited to try blackberries. A Southwood's employee found a plant for me that should produce fruit this year and told me how to train the plant to grow on my fence. He also suggested using some peat moss when I plant it, which is perfect since I have an enormous bag of it left from when I planted my azaleas. I'll have to stay vigilant with my blackberries or they might take over the whole yard.

Random Fact: Did you know blackberries only produce fruit on second year vines? After it produces fruit the vine dies.

Enjoying Past Picks
While it's fun to plan new things to plant, I'm also excited to see some things I planted in the past couple of years start to come back.

I bought these daffodil bulbs last fall from a co-worker. Her kids were selling them for a fundraiser and I wanted some daffodils anyway.

For a few days I only had three flowers and I worried I would only have a few flowers blooming at a time, but now it seems like every morning there is a new flower out there.

I planted the daffodils with irises. Irises bloom in May or June--which I didn't know when I planted them. I can't decide if I'm glad I'll have plants throughout the spring or sad that I won't have the contrasting yellow and purple blooms I had pictured. Hopefully the daffodils will multiply over time so they don't look so sparse.

I didn't actually plant this redbud tree. It's not even my tree, my neighbor planted it on our property line who knows how many years ago. But I love how the branches casually reach out over my driveway with their lovely lavender buds. 

I love that Oklahoma's state tree is the redbud. So pretty.

My daylilies are also coming up and my monkey grass is starting to recover from the winter. Plus a couple of bushes I thought were dead for sure are growing leaves. Spring just makes me happy with the plethora of color that bombards me whenever I peek out a window.

What are you planting? What plants make you happy when you see them come back each year?

Creepy Crawlers

Black spot that caught my attention.

I've spent the last few days trying to decide what to post about next. Today my question was answered. I was in the kitchen when I noticed a black spot on the ceiling of my laundry room. My first thought was that a wasp had gotten in, not fun, but nothing to panic over either.

A closer look, however, revealed that the spot was actually a crowd of small, black ants coming in through the molding of my house. YUCK.

I believe I mentioned in a previous post that I absolutely loathe roaches. The few times I've come across one or two in my house I was ruthless. Ants are a close second to being the most dreaded infestation though.

I've had some trouble with ants for a couple weeks now, but only in my bathroom. I had high hopes that the problem was under control. Finding this nest was the last straw. I bypassed the corn meal that is supposed to kill ants naturally, gave up on the traps that have food for the ants to take back to the nest so the whole colony dies. I went straight for the "kill the buggers on contact" spray. And I coated them.

Of course, that sent the few that survived into a tizzy and a few seconds later this happened:

The battle truly begins.

I know the picture is a little fuzzy, but this is the corner of the laundry room ceiling, about three feet away from the first picture. My best guess is that the ants were in the molding along the entire wall and began looking for a second exit when I poisoned the first one. At this point I was wearing a towel over my face to avoid breathing in the ant spray and trying to block any new routes by spraying a perimeter.

The picture doesn't do this situation justice. Not only do I have live ants trying to escape, but I have dead ants stuck to the wall with the spray and more dead ants dropping from the ceiling. I seriously hope that they are all dead and that I don't continue to have problems. Ants give me the creepy crawlies.

Oh, and I hope that the spray doesn't damage the paint.

Options for Termination
From here I have a few options if the problem isn't solved.

1. Continue to spray live ants I find and hope the situation doesn't get worse.
2. I plan to head outside with a rake as soon as the weather gets warmer and rake all the leaves and undergrowth away from the house.
3. Spray outside of house with some sort of insecticide.
4. Make sure all food products are sealed and that rooms (especially the kitchen) stay clean.
5. Hire an exterminator.

Any suggestions are appreciated!