Hello Anyone and Everyone!
Allow me a short introduction. My name is Martina and I was born and raised in Berlin, Germany and I am the proud mother of 9 awesome children, the proud 'owner' of one husband, and grandmother of 2 rambunctious little boys. I am 48 years old and have often been 'accused' of being too blunt, hence I nicknamed myself "The Mean German." I am speaking what is in my heart and am pretty transparent. Raising 9 children on a shoe-string-budget, combined with the engrained philosophy of my German Grandmother to 'waste not, want not,' yet having expensive taste at the same time, I have learned to be very creative and inventive. I am passionate about color, gardening, and creating energizing, yet soothing and healing environments. I am very opinionated on certain subjects, but also like to explore new lines of thoughts and experiences. Since I am at home for the last 10 months, with more time than I had been used to in the past, as well as the fact that I often find myself 'teaching, motivating, and encouraging' an imaginary audience, I finally decided to make these 'talks' available to anyone who would like to benefit from them.
This here is my amazing family, and as you can see, I truly do love color!
Since there is snow in most regions of the country, I thought I cheer you all up with some of last year's shots from my garden and a little advice on how to keep your dogs, (we own a sheltie, named KILLER, by my son Rocky) from using your prized plants as a cooling resting place in the summer: Collect glass bottles and stick them upside down into the soil around the plants that you are trying to protect, it looks prettier than stakes and the animals will not bother your plants anymore. (Most people think of wine bottles, but Syrup bottles from Torani, or Vinegar bottles, etc., work just as well). You can also fill the bottles with water, sand, gravel, glass pebbles, and the like, BUT you have to watch out for freezing temperatures as this will lead to shattering of the bottles.
The story of the MONSTER TOAD:
This 'little' guy came into being because of my son Rocky, his faith in me, and a resin toad that had fallen in love with at SHOPKO, but didn't want to spend the $90,- !!! Little did I know then what I was in for when my dear son decisively declared "You can make one yourself mom, and you can make him much better and bigger than the one at the store. I help you." What he actually meant was: I help you pay for it. Well, we set out to get what I thought we needed. two straw bails, one roll of wire-mesh, and 12 bags of cement (at 80 pounds each). I started by putting down one whole bail of straw and surrounding it with the wire-mesh, shaping it into a toad-like body. Then I filled in the spaces with loose straw and proceeded to slab cement onto the top. That was an experience! The cement does not want to stay in place easily, I had to mix it to a real thick consistency in order to aid the process of keeping it from sliding down. That, however, made the concrete dry too fast and I had to work quickly. Easier said than done. Add to this the extreme weather changes here in Yakima, Washington--from warm and sunny, to freezing rain and stormy winds, only to change to blistering hot a day later. Because of all these unforeseen, and unplanned for, circumstances, the toad grew, and grew, and grew.... Another 36 bags of cement later, I was ready to put the eyes on the body. out of the leftover pieces of wire-mesh, I crudely shaped the eyes and attached them with wire ties to the body, than proceeded as I did with the body. Last, I made forms out of aluminum flashing for the feet and filled with cement. Then came the winter, and the next summer, I covered the beast with small tiles and glass pebbles. It took almost 2 years and came out MUCH bigger than I had originally intended, but it was a fun experience and has given me great, and fun memories with my son.
Moving the veggie garden!
I don't know if you are married to the same species that I am married to, but this hubby of mine will not believe my advice easily ;) When we moved to West Valley and started our gardening life there, we had to truck dirt in, because the land we bought was mainly rock and weeds, but mainly rocks. So of course money was a huge consideration, but so was speed if we wanted to get produce that year from the garden, I always say to spend a little more time, effort, and money in the beginning (DO IT RIGHT THE FIRST TIME), and less time and money later, but NOOOOO, I was "being unreasonable." Did any of you out there ever find yourself in a conversation like this with your loved one? Ha, ha, NEVER, right? :D Well, after having his way, meaning throwing the nice freshly delivered dirt, wheel barrow by wheel barrow onto the weeds (without killing them first or some kind of weed block underneath) and battling the weeds growing in this garden for 8 long years, my dear man was finally ready to listen. So we moved the garden onto cardboard and weed-fabric (about a 100 feet away from its original spot), closer to the part of the property that gets a lot of water run-off from watering my flower beds, since we live on the side of a hill.
In order to save on watering and weeding while at the same time save money, I talked hubby into making a couple of trips to the local tire stores where we got everything for free we needed: Truck tires, car tires, and even a few Tractor tires. We filled the tires with soil, and filled the walkway with gravel. We had a fantastic yield of strawberries, tomatoes, bell peppers, hot peppers, sweet potatoes, beans, leaks, onions, herbs, and more. My husband spend more time in this veggie garden just for fun and much less time weeding and watering. He gratefully admitted, after grumbling throughout the whole process, that he had lost his joy of gardening and not only got it back, but has never before loved as much as he did now. WOW, now that is what I call success ;)
