Garden, garden, garden (and sun dye/print, too)

Sunday was an absolutely perfect autumn day.  What's incredible is, I am seeing so many blogs where autumn is in full force.  Here the trees are just beginning to turn.

Some of you went to the zoo with me and saw the Keeper of the Plains plaster statue.  You can read about the original and see the installation, which sits at the confluence of the Big and Little Arkansas Rivers, here.

My next door neighbor is a genius when it comes to metal working.  He made this in his shop in his back yard.  I took these photos from my driveway on my way to

my herb garden, which I hoped to put to bed on Sunday.  I had already removed three pots to the house, when I heard it was supposed to freeze Thursday night.  Both Thursday and Friday nights we had frost, but no freeze.

My friend Sally gave me lots of cardboard to spread over the garden so I could renew my lasagna garden.

For those of you unfamiliar with lasagna gardens, they are weed free, maintenance free, and pH neutral.  This makes them organic, earth friendly, no-dig, and no-till layering.

It had turned dark before I was finished.  Before I put my hose away for the winter, I watered the garden well AND cleaned a few of my mini blinds

including the ones seen here.  Right after I brought all the plants in and put them in place, I decided to take a photo, even before vacuuming.

Two weeks ago, Deb at Learning to Just Breathe found four ball and claw attachments at a sale.  I promised to show what mine looked like.

The ball is glass and each ball has at least one bubble in it.  The claws are brass.  They attach to the legs of my library end table.

After all my hard work, I vacuumed and finished cleaning.  I also made sure all the mini blinds were straight.  That's how I spent the majority of my Sunday.

In the glare of the early Monday morning light,

you can see I still have a lot to do before putting this bed to bed.

I didn't realize I had left such a mess Sunday night.

I used just enough mulch

to help the bottom layer decay.

I hope to get newspapers from my friend Sally so I can place them on top of the mulch to help even further.

I also removed all my flags from the porch and you can see I've put my hose away for the winter.

It will soon be time to decorate the porch for winter.

Last night

I was out chasing the Super moon.  

No tripod, no steady cam, just me pointing at the moon.

Personally, I was disappointed because it didn't look much different from the moon shot I took for Rinda's challenge.

Several of my dear internet friends are looking for photos of my grape dyed fabric.

Here it is after I washed it, but before it's been ironed.   Personally I was disappointed.

It was so sticky with syrupy juice, I had to wash it.  When I did, I think I washed out some of the pale color.

Those spots were on the fabric (this had been a bed sheet I bought at the second hand store) before I dyed it.  The grape juice intensified the spots.

Although I tried and failed to color correct the lighting from my craft room, this is as good as it's going to get.  I somehow doubt I'll use grape juice again to try to dye fabric.

It's amazing how warm it has stayed after a frost Friday night.  This autumn's weather has been so up and down.  I brought my flowers back out to soak up some sunshine and decided to allow the sun to work its magic on fabric once again.  In case you missed how I sun dyed/printed fabric before, please go here.

This time I started with a white bed sheet and two different fluid acrylics.

Once the paint was on the fabric, I brought out several of my beloved rocking horses.

I got a bit overenthusiastic and removed the rockers a bit too soon.  I was able to return the wooden one to the fabric and place it back in the sun.

The reason I got overly anxious was so I could sun dye the inside cover before the sun was too low to do any good.

Although this was all I was able to accomplish today, I'm still quite proud of all I accomplished over the weekend.  I was thrilled that it was warm enough that I was able to sun dye one final outer and one inner scrappy book cover, this time with a rocking horse theme.

This is Day 16 of AEDM and I truly appreciate you stopping by for a visit.