Building a Garden

One of the big projects we tackled recently was building a raised garden bed for vegetables.

We drafted and redrafted plans for it, figuring out how tall and how wide and how deep, and we wound up with a very tall planter - out of the reach of the little bunnies and just high enough to make gardening very easy on my back.

It was the work of a very long day, but we built, installed, filled with dirt, and planted our seedlings last Sunday.

That poor red-stemed dogwood never stood a chance.  The plan next year is to build an identical planter that will nestle directly to the right of this one, and sooner or later bean trellises along the back to give a bit more (green) privacy to the fence.

Eagles of Prairie du Sac

Last weekend Richard and I took a quick trip to Prairie du Sac, just a bit west of Madison, to watch the eagles and get away for a night.  It was really amazing to see so many bald eagles congregated in one place, and I even got a few good photographs.

It snowed the entire day we came home.  Big, heavy, wet flakes.  It was beautiful but a little hard to drive in.  On the way home we stopped at Hawks Inn, where we got married, just to see it in the snow.

Milwaukee City Guide: American Science and Surplus

At the risk of exposing one of my quirky supply secrets I just want to tell everyone how much I love American Science and Surplus. It has been a while since my last trip out there, to be honest its been at least two months and I kind of ache to get back there. Whether you're looking for Canadian forces brass buttons, test tubes, microscope slides or an overrun of promotional boxes from Victoria's Secret - this is certainly the place to go. Every time we have friends or family visiting from out of town this is one of the places I love to take them.

My husband Richard introduced me to this wonderful store, and even has a method of perusing the rows to be sure he doesn't miss anything. I certainly can't fault him for that, as I have a set path when it comes to each particular thrift store. This is the place I get quirky packaging supplies for Suitcase Art as well as little lovelies, like those tiny little compasses, as special little freebies in my packages.

One of the best parts are the signs created by the employees for each item. All of them are certainly descriptive but most are also a little tongue-in-cheek. Like the following for a rubber komodo dragon

REAL ONES TASTE LIKE CHICKEN!

This one tastes like rubber, so no snacking. This very realistic Komodo dragon model, made by Safari, is 10" long, and has its accurately forked tongue sticking out. Our favorite carrion-eater comes with a tiny fact sheet from the Carnegie Museum of Natural History.

93624 KOMODO DRAGON

If you can't make it to the Milwaukee area location, they also have locations in Geneva and Chicago, Illinois as well as a rocking website where you can order many of the items they have in the stores, I recommend visiting the "Must Go" section first for great deals on ridiculously strange clearance items