If you love decorative corn, you should try growing the variety called “Glass Gem” — the kernels come out in all kinds of wild colors, mixed around on each ear seemingly randomly. They dry well and make a very interesting autumn decoration and conversation piece! Here are some things to know about growing corn: Corn is pollenated by the wind.
These two tiny toadstools poked up through the fallen leaves to bask in the pale, late-autumn sunlight for a bit. They were so fragile that I doubt they lasted for an entire day before they crumbled away to nothing, so I feel very fortunate that I was even around to see them, let alone have my camera there to get
This is an original painting by me, acrylic on canvas. I was inspired by a very fuzzy bee that I spotted and took a picture of on one of our wild-colored sunflowers. She looked extremely content, all fuzzy and golden in the warm sunshine, and wandering around the face of the sunflower in a leisurely manner. I hoped to capture
This is a goldfish painting on a rock, this version original by me, but based on a canvas painting that I did during a guided painting class. For rock painting, I clean and dry the rock, then use glossy acrylic paint to create the art. I coat the entire rock in paint to help keep a seal, then after the
Summer might just be a memory, but this is the time of year that here in the U.S.A. we celebrate the things that we are thankful for, and we celebrate with food and our bountiful harvests from the previous growing season. This year, 2020, may have been a strange year, but one thing that I am thankful for is that
Ever have those summers where you’ve got so many tomatoes that you don’t know what to do with them and you can’t even give them away? (It seems like that happens to me every year now-days.) If this sounds like a familiar problem to you, you should try making tomato sauce… It’s really easy, takes only a half hour, and
Making homemade raisins takes a lot of work and takes a full two days of running the dehydrator on medium-high heat, but the raisins are so flavorful and different than what you buy at the store! For these raisins, I had two paper grocery sacks of purple seedless concord grapes, a full stack of 10 dehydrator trays, and that equated
I was waiting for an appointment in a parking lot that is located several blocks south of a small municipal airport, when I heard what I thought was a helicopter coming in for a landing. When this strange contraption appeared from behind the trees, I was too stunned to take a picture of it. I thought I had lost my
This is an original painting by me — Oregon Berries, acrylic on canvas. I was inspired to create this painting because I love taking drives up into the mountains in early summer to pick berries. The Cascade foothills in July in western Oregon are full of red huckleberries, red and orange salmonberries, wild strawberries and Salal berries. Not only are
Basil I have found to be one of the trickier herbs to preserve by drying. It is fragile and has a tendency to mold, turn black or lose all flavor and taste like ash! There are so many times I have wasted a good batch of basil harvest to poor drying results… Blegh! So here is the most reliable way
Every year we have more herbs in the garden than we can use up before the weather turns and the leaves get gross or drop off the plant. Most years we dehydrate (or dry) at least a little bit of our harvest in the last couple of weeks that we have nice weather so that we can enjoy the herby
This year was a great year for pumpkin farmers! (Ok, I’m just guessing on that one, but the pumpkin patches around this neck of the woods were bursting at the seams with families hunting for the perfect jack-o-lantern material this year–saw it with my own eyes!) Because we weren’t sure how Covid was going to affect Halloween, people planned a
This is another harvest-themed painting that I borrowed the idea from one of my rock groups… thank you, fellow painters! This fall-festive painting is not on a rock, however, but instead is acrylic on canvas. Feel free to borrow this design for your own painting experiment, and add your own twist!
Here is a painting I made of a cat sitting on a pumpkin, staring into the starry night — a Halloween-ish themed painting idea that I borrowed from one of my rock-painting groups. (Thanks, folks!) This painting is not on a rock, of course, but is instead acrylic on canvas. Feel free to borrow this one for one of your
Last fall we tossed a bumpy green pumpkin out into the garden to compost (and get picked apart by animals) and this spring, up came a squash-y looking plant near that spot. Several months (and many flowers) went by and eventually the little plant put on one, medium sized, olive green pumpkin. We left it alone until the cold weather
Poinsettias are a classic, festive indoor plant to have in the house during the holidays. Most people enjoy them for a month or two while they bloom, then the plants begin to drop their leaves and they begin to look tattered and tired. At this point, most people chuck them in the garbage can. It doesn’t have to be that
Even with the chickens running around all spring, when I put in the garden, I always have to bait the heck out of it to keep the snails and slugs from eating every leave that comes up. I really don’t like spreading poison around, and I’m always looking for new ways to keep pests at bay without having to poison.
Right up until a couple of weeks ago, we were still getting a beautiful harvest from the garden, when a hard freeze was forecast for the evenings. Then we knew we were either going to lose all of the hot peppers (which had not yet ripened) and the rest of the basil, which was not yet bolting. Since we were
Today I’ve been working on getting my business website’s online store up and running. So far, so good! Just running into a few issues, but almost there. I predict it will be ready to go by the end of the day. When all is said and done, there should be an easy way to pre-purchase a half hour or an
It’s been a long time coming… but I’m finally re-inventing Madlantern Arts… And I mean it this time! It’s been too long. Since this whole thing started in 1999, Madlantern Arts has been my playground, expression zone, experiment house, thought barn, brain circus, and many other mad things. The last few years, though, I haven’t quite known what to do
