Strawberry Patch🍓 Decoys

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I had a beautiful green ceramic strawberry pot, with 🍓plants that survived from year to year.

my 🍓decoy

I kept it on our front porch and invited guests to help themselves. There wasn’t much fruit as our summers can be brutally hot, but we thoroughly enjoyed its presence.

Well, it broke early last spring ?? and I hastily planted them into an already established raised garden bed. They took off nicely but I had a LOT of competition for the berries. I couldn’t begrudge the tiny bunnies or the squirrels, but the birds have feeders.

More plants, I thought. More plants and there will be enough strawberries to go around. The runners from the original plants obliged me and I have a nice little patch this year.

But then I saw the birds going after the berries that haven’t even begun to ripen. What to do?🤔

And THAT’s when I thought to paint some small pebbles red like strawberries 🍓. Birds don’t like pecking hard things with their beaks. They’ll peck the rocks and not like it very much and leave my soon-to-be ripe berries alone. Right? right??

My strawberry 🍓 patch WITH decoys 😂

Worth a try and if nothing else I had a good deal of fun doing it.

Wish me luck and I’ll keep you posted

Giant Hand of Vyrnwy

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So, the tallest tree in Wales was hit by lightning, but instead of tearing it down, the artist Simon O’Rourke transformed it into a magnificent sculpture.

With a CHAINSAW.


Artist Simon O’Rourke used a chainsaw to carve a giant hand emerging from a tree stump.
Creating the piece was an intense process. O’Rourke worked in a scaffold and formed the hand over the course of six days.

The sculpture is now near Lake Vyrnwy, a reservoir in Powys, Wales where everyone can enjoy it.

https://mymodernmet.com/simon-o-rourke-chainsaw-carving-hand/?fbclid=IwAR2H0HmvVv1KDzpNCZc2q2b5jUwXiSFG1jabKWNqkdVu6AcRBT2C4uxrcEo

I be jammin’… 🍓🍯

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What ELSE would I be doing in a blizzard?

I love my Ball brand FreshTech Jam maker & it’s perfect counterpart, the BALL Fresh Tech canner. It makes an easy task of homemade jam.

I came across my favorite recipe quite by accident. I wanted to make low sugar strawberry jam, but I miscalculated the amount of strawberries I needed. So I added raspberries. Still not enough volume (3.25 cups needed) I threw in the blueberries.

Perfection 👌🏻

Very Berry Jam – it’s the house specialty 💙

You start with 3.25 cups fresh crushed fruit over 3 Tablespoons of Pectin. Add 1/2 teaspoon butter (or margarine) to prevent foaming. Wait 4 minutes for the beep to add sugar – it’s jam in 21 minutes.

All finished with a great vibrant color ❤️

Stained Glass Cabin

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A miniature house made from glass shows off expert construction and dazzling motifs seemingly ripped from Alice In Wonderland. Covered with stained glass, the house sits on a property in Mohawk, New Jersey. Neile Cooper, a long-time stained-glass artist and jeweler, considers the Glass Cabin her most ambitious work to date. The sharp right angles of the house juxtapose with the swiveling oversized leaves and the curving wingspan of butterflies, accentuating the fantasy house. “The Glass Cabin is my dream project, my creative sanctuary in my yard in a lovely lakeside town,” the artist explains.

“It is made almost entirely of reclaimed materials. Rafter beams from some fallen trees, lumber from a neighbor’s storm-damaged porch, and many, many old window frames. The cabin’s front-facing wall measures 8-feet by 12-feet. The cabin is small but the views from within are spectacular and kaleidoscopic,” explains Cooper. Indeed.

Cooper explores many of these same motifs in her popular jewelry designs. You can see more photos of Glass Cabin on Instagram. (via This Isn’t Happiness)