Chuck Porter

That's right, we're scaping the land around here.

Last summer, in our efforts to experiment with gardening, we totally neglected the flowerbeds in front of the house. We talked about them occasionally, but it usually amounted to this:
Wife: "We should totally get some flowers or something for these beds."
Me: "Yeah, ok. Great!"
Wife: "Yeah."

We never acted on these discussions.

Finally, 4th of July weekend opened up on our calendars, and to the local Blues and Oranges we went. In retrospect, we should have started at the local nurseries because they had way better deals and heartier looking plants, but that's how hindsight works, and we'll know better for next year.

Anyhow, we planted some knockout roses, and roses, and black-eyed susans by the shed. Black-eyed susans are our state flower, by the way. We also planted a whole bunch of impatiens and such in front of the house to liven it up. Again, hindsight tells us that we should have mixed up our color a little bit more, but again, we'll know better next year.

Take a good look at the rose pictures. Those bushes will probably never look this good ever again, now that they're in our care.

At any rate, it all breaks up the sand that we had fronting our house previously.



Scaping some land.

We live on a long and winding road, and so occasionally people have trouble finding us. Hopefully these beauties will help.

Maybe we'll even landscape around it or something. Who knows?

Next up on our improvements: the mailbox!

I don't deal with spare time very well.

I have to be busy, always flitting about from one project to the next.

Today's project is screen printing.

I picked up a silk-screen skit at a craft store in Ohio over the holidays. I had been looking for one for years, but apparently they aren't in high demand on the Eastern Shore of Maryland because nobody has them.

Today, I finally got it out and started working with it.

I started by finding some source pictures on the internet. I wanted to do some birds and also I wanted to experiment with some wind turbine designs. Then I traced those designs right onto the screen with a pencil. I filled the outlines in with "Drawing Fluid." After that stuff dried, I squeegeed the "Screen Filler" across the screen. After that dried, I washed out the "Drawing Fluid," and I let the screen dry again. Then I was ready for a test drive!

I have six flour-sack towels that I use to dry my handmade papers. I often get confused mid process about which towels are wet and which are still dry because they all look alike. I was thinking about just Sharpie-ing some numbers on them, but with the screen, I had a better idea. I used the towels as my test runs to see how the screen printing process would turn out.

After moderate success with a couple of the towels, I tried a handkerchief or two.

Here are some snaps of the results!

I think I was rambling off topic, so I deleted this, but it's too good to not share... or at least my 2:15 a.m. brain says it is.