While making items for my wedding last summer I used a lot of nautical themed papers made by Canvas Corp. I saved a lot of the paper scraps to use in one of my favorite card-making techniques. I like to glue paper scraps onto narrow strips of scrap cardstock then apply rubber stamping ink to the edges to unify the strips. They make interesting parts to use in all kinds of paper crafts. I’ve previously written other articles that show this technique in action.
Materials and Tools
Canvas Corp paper sheet Sand & Sea Art Pages on Kraft CCP2883
Assorted paper scraps with a nautical theme, mostly from collections by Canvas Corp
Scrap cardstock
Black permanent rubber stamping ink
Permanent rubber stamping ink in colors that complement the project
Strips of light colored scrap paper that harmonize with the chosen paper scraps
Pieces of cardstock that harmonize with the chosen paper scraps
Clean scrap paper
Scissors
Glue stick
Paper cutter
Computer with scanner and graphics software
Eraser for stamping the edges of the paper
These very detailed strips tend to look good in designs next to areas with less detail. To make thank you cards to acknowledge wedding gifts and other help people generously gave us for the wedding, I made some scrap paper strips edged in red and scanned them for use in a digital file which I had printed on cardstock at a copy shop. I spelled out the word “THANKS” in nautical flags by making little flag collages with Canvas Corp nautical themed papers and scanning those as well. After digitally manipulating the scanned paper pieces, this is the digital card design I came up with.
The red-edged strips that I scanned were now free to use in actual handmade cards and not just the digital design. I decided to combine the strips with imagery from the Canvas Corp paper sheet Sand & Sea Art Pages on Kraft CCP2883. The six images on the paper sheet are just about the size of the cards I want to make and the subtlety of the designs will really set off my paper strips. I decided to make six 5.25″ x 4.25″ cards. I selected six pieces of cardstock and cut them to 5.25″ wide and 8.5″ long then folded them in half to make the cards. Next I selected strips of light colored paper in colors that harmonized with my color scheme and stamped the sentiments “just a note” and “thank you” with black permanent ink. I made more strips than I thought I would need so that I would have lots of options. Also, I can use the extras for making other cards and for the card making classes that I teach.
To begin assembling the front of the cards, I cut each of the six images on the sheet Sand & Sea Art Pages on Kraft to just a little bigger than the card front. I cut the image in two then I inserted a strip with the words “just a note” then a scrap strip edged in red between the two pieces of the image. I glued the parts to the front of the card with a glue stick then trimmed away the excess. Then I glued the circular paper punched out piece with the stamped words “Thank You” onto the front of the card.
In the spring of 2018, before Tom and I were married and I wasn’t yet living at his house, I started making a garden plan and beginning work on what would become our garden. I could see right away that drainage was a big problem in his yard and the garden plan would need to address it. Tom and I were also very concerned about the state of his basement. There were numerous large cracks and a couple of small rivers that ran across the floor every time it rained. Shortly after our marriage in August of 2018, we hired an engineer to tell us how serious the problems were and what should be done about them. The engineer confirmed our opinion that we needed to keep water away from the the house foundation and seal the cracks. He said this would probably be enough repair if we fixed the drainage problems on the outside of the house. If it got worse, we might need about $10,000.00 worth of pier work. We had the cracks fixed and next went to work on fixing the drainage issues.
Here are three photos of cracks in Tom’s basement that I took on July 29, 2019. The left photo shows a repair that was done some time before I knew Tom. The two right photos are repairs that were done in September 2018.
The garden plan I came up with is mostly my idea and I take responsibility for it. I based my plan on the following sources of information:
2. Completion of training to be a St. Louis and Missouri certified Master Gardener in 2016. (Link to photo of certificate). I have kept my certification current which involves at least 10 hours of continuing education and 40 hours of volunteer work per year.
3. I have attended workshops put on by MSD to learn proper techniques for managing stormwater runoff. Here is an article I wrote after one of the sessions I attended – MSD’s Project Clear and Our Local Water Issues
Relevant quotes from the MSD web page on Rainscaping (link here):
“Stormwater runoff is created by hard surfaces that cannot absorb water, like concrete, the footprint of a house, and compacted soils.”
“This (rainscaping) can be done through any combination of plantings, water features, catch basins, and permeable pavement, among other activities.”
“In a properly designed rain garden, water will soak into the ground within a day or two, long before mosquitoes have the opportunity to breed. They can be designed to attract the kinds of insects and wildlife that feed off mosquitoes, reducing their numbers around your property. Rain gardens can also help eliminate yard ponding, in which water can pool long enough for mosquitoes to multiply.”
“A rain garden gives water runoff a beneficial and safe place to go, helping to keep it away from your foundation where water problems can occur. It can also help reduce or eliminate water ponding on your property. Since rain gardens reduce the amount of stormwater entering the sewer system, they can help prevent basement backups and sewer overflows.”
Rock weirs – I have installed two of them at the Southeast corner of the property so that if there is any runoff that overtops the dry well at the end of the rain garden, soil will not be lost into the street.
Bioswale/Rain Garden – I have made several of these and am in the process of planting them with rainscaping plants to absorb more of the rainwater than the clay soil can currently absorb. Quantities and names of rain garden plants that I have added:
Lawn alternatives – we are allowing four different kinds of water-loving groundcover grow in place of turfgrass in parts of the lawn close to areas that collect water.
Soil amendments and mulching – we have added 13 cubic yards of soil (that’s a whole dump truck load) from St. Louis Compost that is 50% compost to improve the water absorption ability of our clay soil. So far we have added half a pickup truck bed full of mulch with more to come.
5. I read over the St. Louis County guidelines for land disturbance. We are within the guidelines because we are disturbing less than 30 square yards, less than 2000 square feet, are doing residential landscaping in a one family dwelling and have provided safeguards against erosion (the dry well and rock weirs).
6. I consulted with the owner of a landscaping company that I worked for part time for two years doing consulting and labor on client’s properties.
Here are some pictures that document what the yard looked like before we started working on it:
North West and North areas of our yard on March 27, 2018 showing that we had problems with standing water before I started any rainscaping. Also note that the neighbor’s yard accumulated standing water before I did any rainscaping. Here is a link to the shared photos to prove the date I took the pictures: Tom’s Yard March 2018
The image on the left of this pair shows water collecting around the house foundation on March 27, 2018. The right photo shows water collecting around the house foundation on November 1, 2018. Here is a link to the shared photos to prove the date I took the picture on the right: Tom’s Yard November 2018
Here is a graphic that shows where the neighbor’s water discharge pipes are located (red) and the area of our yard that was prone to collect water (blue) before I started rainscaping.
Yes I drew on the satellite picture where the neighbor’s drainpipes are and where the water collecting areas were. Don’t just take my word for it. Here are some videos showing the water flow happening in real time during a rainstorm. These videos were shot on July 1, 2019.
https://youtu.be/UIGlDAK3McY – the two back downspouts in the neighbor’s backyard are shown. I don’t know if you can tell from the video, but in addition to the drainpipes being aimed at our yard, the neighbor’s yard is sloped downward to drain directly into our backyard.
https://youtu.be/usO0kYKr7Ko – this video shows how the front drainage pipe is aimed right at our driveway. We had to have our driveway replaced in November of 2018 due to cracks and damage caused by years of this water flowing over it and freezing and thawing in the cracks.
Here is a link to photos I took on November 1, 2018 showing new driveway and other pictures around the house foundations. November 1, 2018
https://youtu.be/Up2nHlhyf_c – here is a video showing how wet the backyard gets and how I connected the neighbor’s low spot to ours to faciliate drainage of her yard and to avoid interrupting the flow from one yard to another.
These photos were both taken on July 1, 2019. As you can see, the area was dry before it rained. Here is a link to the photos I took on July 1 before and after it rained so you can verify the date and that the photos were taken on the same day and that the rain garden areas do drain in between rains like they are designed to. Also note that the neighbor’s yard and our yard drain better than they did before I did any rainscaping work and the areas of standing water are smaller than they were on the March 27, 2018 photos. As I get more plants in the bioswales and rain gardens and the existing plants get bigger and the soil continues to improve, the ground will absorb water even faster in the future. As I add plants I add humus and the plant roots penetrate the clay below to facilitate drainage. The 235 plants I already have are doing a good job. More are coming, but it’s not easy to get anything to grow in clay and you can’t do transplants into clay and expect them to live during the hottest time of summer. July 1, 2018
My garden plan was designed to help alleviate the following problems:
1. Soil is almost all clay and absorbs very little water.
2. Clay soil not only resists absorbing water, it expands and shrinks in wet and dry weather causing cracking in the foundation.
3. The existing soil cannot absorb the runoff from our own house. In addition, the majority of the drainage from the neighbor’s property to the west is directed onto our property so that we not only have our runoff to deal with, we have most of hers too.
4. Our back patio and back sidewalk were tilted toward the foundation directing water right into the cracks and making them worse. In addition, since they were solid concrete they inhibited water from being naturally absorbed into the soil.
I decided to draw up a plan that addressed these issues and employed rainscaping techniques because my conscience will not allow me to direct water right into the storm sewers when I know that MSD is spending billions of dollars to try to alleviate flooding in our area caused by too much storm runoff AND I’m well aware of how to manage our own storm water responsibly and avoid contributing to flooding and poor water quality downstream from us. How much damage has been done across the Midwest this spring and summer by floods? We’re trying to deal with our excess storm water in a way which does not just push the problem onto someone else. I know most people don’t take our neighbors downstream from us into consideration when making landscaping choices but we are not those kind of people.
Here is a 3 page PDF file showing the first citation, the summons to go to court, and the second citation. We took care of the invasive honeysuckle within two weeks, and the bricks before sundown the next day. Please note the dates of these three documents – May 20, June 25 and July 23. I am confused about why we have to go to court when we fixed the problems mentioned in the first citation in the time limit set by the county. The court summons was issued on June 25 when the work was completed by May 31 (to clarify, the bricks were fixed by sundown May 4 and the invasive honeysuckle trimmings by May 31 as required in the first citation). Furthermore, I also don’t understand why we got another citation before even having the court date yet.
Here in summary here are the reasons why I do not believe we deserve any citations or fines from St. Louis County:
The next door neighbor who called the county to say she doesn’t like our garden admitted to me that she called because she thinks it’s ugly, not because it was causing her any problems. She revealed this after I offered her some of the dirt we bought from St. Louis Compost to help her raise her wet spot (which existed before our rainscaping as you have seen) and some premium grass seed with really long roots to help absorb water. You can’t get this grass in big box stores, the hybrid is only sold in select garden centers. I couldn’t understand why she was refusing and she said she just thought our garden was ugly. Her yard is much uglier in my opinion and one of the reasons I’ve planted plants along the fence is to hide the view of her yard. You can see from the videos that her yard is full of invasive weeds, concrete, trash cans, brush piles, yard tools and the like.
Ugly is kind of in the eye of the beholder isn’t it? This photo was taken on July 30, 2019. On the left is a very nice Assumption Lily in our neighbor’s yard with invasive weeds (Mimosa, Japanese Honeysuckle) around it. On the right we have an unplanted area on our side of the fence in the foreground and an herb garden barely begun behind it. So far we’re growing in this section Bronze Fennel, Garlic Chives, Peppermint and Korean Hyssop and protecting the soil in the unplanted areas with mulch. Which side is uglier? If different people were to give different answers it would not surprise me.
We could have sued this neighbor for ruining our old driveway. We didn’t do this because we thought peaceful relations with neighbors were more important. This is what we get in thanks for that. I never spoke to her until I went over to ask her why she called the county on us instead of just asking us to fix what she didn’t like. It’s not like I went out of my way to cause problems with her. My computer desk faces her back yard and I’ve observed her glaring at me before through the window but since we never spoke I had no idea what her problem was.
We have improved the drainage in her yard and the neighbor on the other side of us no longer has our runoff going over his driveway, therefore we have helped the lifespan of his driveway and possibly saved him thousands of dollars. (We know how much it costs because we just got one.) We disagree that we have caused a drainage nuisance to our neighbors, rather we have provided a solution to an existing problem and both of their properties have been helped at no cost to them.
Water does not stay in the rain garden areas long enough to grow mosquito larvae so we don’t agree that we have caused a nuisance there either. As you can see from the photos I showed you, we already had a worse standing water problem BEFORE the rain garden was started. Some breeds of mosquitoes can breed in as little as a teaspoon of water. You can see from the photos that we had a lot more than a teaspoon of standing water BEFORE I started the garden. It also hung around a lot longer than one or two days. As a precaution I also treat the water when it occurs with BTI (Bacillus thuringiensis serotype israelensis) just in case we have more than a normal amount of rain for a few days. This makes our yard and neighborhood SAFER from mosquitoes than before we did anything – therefore we believe we should receive commendations for what we have done, not citations. Since we have improved the existing situation, we don’t agree that we have created a nuisance.
Here are three areas of the rain garden that I consider finished or nearly so. These photos were taken July 30, 2019. They have been planted with plants that can take varying water levels and clay soil. Their roots improve water penetration into the ground. I also added some better soil and mulch after planting. As you can see there is no standing water, even though it rained at least three times yesterday.
The day before we received our first notice from the county, (May 2) I was out in the front yard working and I saw a St. Louis County work truck slow down in front of our house. The driver stared me down and gave me a foul look. She stepped on the gas and sped off. She didn’t even stop the truck all the way. If this is what passes as an inspection it’s no wonder the inspectors don’t understand the drainage situation and how the rain garden fixed most of it (still have to work out the driveway pipe situation so our new driveway doesn’t get ruined – was hoping to do it peacefully but quickly losing hope for that.) Note that the first inspection document says the yard was inspected on or around May 20, but the day we actually got the citation on our door was on May 3. (Strangely enough, on a Friday, the only day of the week we are both gone all day at the same time, and also the day after the county truck came by – suspicious enough behavior that I made a note of the date.) If everything is above board, why is stealth necessary? How do the inspectors know if there is standing water if they “inspect” on May 2 or 3 but claim it’s really May 20, when we go through long periods when it rains nearly every day? If the inspectors make a point of only coming on days when it rains or are not truthful about what days they come of course they can make claims that are misleading (if that’s what they are trying to do). Yesterday (July 29) it rained three times. There will probably be a time when we won’t have any standing water even during rain – when our soil is better. Remember we were starting with clay – we did not strip off good soil and cause these problems, the problems were decades in the making and started when these homes were built (in the 1950s). We paid over $350.00 to St. Louis Compost to ADD good soil.
Improving our soil. From left to right: Taking delivery of a full dump truck of 50% compost soil from St. Louis Compost on May 2. A full dump truck load is 13 cubic yards. 2nd photo – Tom spreading soil over where the old concrete patio was on May 6. We took out the concrete patio to make the ground more permeable so there is less standing water. Soil and mulch will be here until we are ready to install a new patio. It will be made of permeable pavers or mulch so we don’t bring back the previous drainage problems. 3rd photo – Picking up mulch in a rented pickup truck. Mulch makes soil drain better and protects it from erosion and compaction.
The large hole next to the future patio will become our new pond and waterfall area. We will stick to the county determined limit of 24″ of depth. It will have a liner, filter, aquatic plantings, two waterfalls and all the bells and whistles. We wish it was done already too. It takes time and money to build. For example I could have been working on that the last couple of days but so far I have spent 9 hours working on a defense for our court date and I’m not done yet. Plus there is the time we have to actually go. That’s a lot of hours that we aren’t getting useful work done. Edit: total time I spent on defending us in court was 17.4 hours.
The inspectors, if they come at all, seem to only come by when we aren’t home. Our neighbor can easily tell when we aren’t home and can tip them off. Therefore they can’t ask us questions and we can’t explain. That makes me suspicious about what is really going on. Yes completing our garden plan takes time. I don’t know of any construction sites that look good during the whole project. If construction sites had to be shut down every time it rained and there was a puddle or it looked ugly to someone nothing would ever get done. I think we are being treated unfairly and unethically and are not guilty of any violations. I’m considering setting up a webcam to see what the county people look at in our yard assuming they come at all so that we can defend ourselves more effectively. Should I spend this money on more garden improvements or more surveillance technology? Which will protect us more from fines and having to go to court? Questions I’m asking myself.
We don’t mind dealing with our neighbor’s runoff responsibly when she won’t, because the most important thing is that it gets done, but I think it’s wrong for us to be punished for it. When I talked to her to try to work out what she was really upset about she complained that our garden was ugly, that she had water in her basement, and her property taxes were too high. I can do something about making the garden less “ugly”, but I can’t do anything about her basement or property taxes. I don’t see why we should be punished for those things. We had the same problems in our basement and instead of attacking her we just fixed it and now we are being dragged into court for it. I have a co-worker who lives a few houses away and has water in his basement too. The whole neighborhood probably does because the whole neighborhood is built on clay. We’re trying to do something proactive and neighborly about it.
If we have not already addressed all the court’s concerns please inform us of how you would like us to proceed in order not to be fined. We’d rather spend the money on garden and property improvements. We still have a lot to do. My garden plan was intended to be a multi-year project. Phase 1 was expected to take three years. The more times we have to stop and go to court the longer it will take.
Update July 31, 2019
Last night in court the charges against us were dismissed. As for the second citation from July 23, it appears that our neighbor waited until we were on vacation and there was a day with a lot of storms to call the county inspector again and say there was standing water in our yard. Of course there is when she has directed nearly all her runoff to our yard. I thought of filling the bioswale areas that didn’t have plants in them yet with mulch so this didn’t happen when we were gone, but I wanted to be home when I tried this in case the storm water pushed the mulch around too much and made dams that would cause worse problems. I did expect her to try something when we were on vacation but I’m surprised the county inspectors go along with it and don’t see what she has done to us by directing her runoff to our yard. The county is displeased that we interrupted the flow of water from her yard to ours, but her entire yard is a barrier to water flow. You can see from the satellite photo that it is concrete from one end of the yard to the other, and we got taken to court for about 10 bricks in a raised bed that took 10 minutes (or less) to remove. Well the inspector was also on vacation last night, so the county inspector helping out in court last night gave me his email address so I forwarded the this article to him. I had no way of contacting him before to explain what is going on. I hope after this he will just talk to us. In the meantime, I have no problem with putting some mulch in the bioswales that don’t yet have plants and don’t yet absorb water very well. They would still be porous and function as designed until I can get more plants in. It will take a little time for new mulch to get “sticky” and “spongy” and absorb water well so I’ll need to keep a close eye on it.
Update August 15, 2019
This was left on our door August 15. This is promising. I have a specific person I can contact with a phone number. I’m going to call him tomorrow morning. How do you think the conversation will go? Any predictions? I’ll let you know what happens!
Update August 19, 2019
I called and left a message for Anthony V. and he called me back within an hour or two. He sounds like a great guy, nice and reasonable and professional like the other inspector who helped us out in court on July 31st. At first he was talking to me about a different property and then he remembered which was the right property and told me I have to fill in the rain garden. It’s clear he didn’t read the article above that I emailed to him, or if he did he didn’t remember it. I explained to him the drainage issues the rain garden was designed to repair. I explained the damage to our house and driveway and how we had already spent thousands and were trying to prevent spending thousands more. I explained how the neighbor’s runoff is directed into our yard. I asked him to email to me a copy of the St. Louis County policy on rain gardens so that I could see what I was in violation of because I know of many rain gardens in St. Louis County and some of them are huge and they don’t seem to be a problem. He said that was covered under the land disturbance guidelines and I told him I had read those and I was following the restrictions in there. (I have a link to the Land Disturbance Guidelines above). He said he’d talk to his supervisor and get back to me. I missed his next voicemail which was not too long after and I gave him a return voicemail message so we are playing phone tag. I don’t know what the message is other than to call him. I gave him my email address so he can email me the statute I’m violating (assuming there is one). If I’m going to fight it in court I need to know what it is first! I’m very glad we can communicate instead of Tom and I just finding “nastygrams” saying see you in court that are dropped off when we aren’t home.
Before we got off the phone, I asked him how to report the neighbor’s drainage pipes discharging onto our property. He said to report any that are closer than 10 ft to the main office. So I measured the four pipes in question and there are two closer than 10 feet. I opened my measuring tape to 10 feet and took these pictures to illustrate.
I reported to the Neighborhood Services main office. I know it seems incredibly stupid and petty to be measuring the neighbor’s pipes and reporting how close they are. This is what I’m forced to do because our neighbor was not content to let us deal with her excess stormwater at no cost to her. She is the one who involved the County, so now they are involved. I would have much preferred to not involve the government and waste taxpayer’s money, I’m sure they have much more important things to do. I’ll let you know what happens!
https://stlouisco.com/Property-and-Roads/Neighborhood-Services
Total time I’ve spent up to this point on our defense: 18.5 hours
Update August 20, 2019
Here is the answer I got from St. Louis County about the neighbor’s pipes being too close:
“St Louis County has no jurisdiction in Marlborough you will have to contact Marlborough concerning this matter. St Louis County only covers unincorporated areas .”
I thought we were in an unincorporated area, but if we are not, why is St. Louis County hassling us about our garden? Why is St. Louis County in charge one day and not the next day? When I have time, I’ll put in calls to Anthony, St. Louis County main office at the County and Marlborough City Hall and see where that goes.
Turns out don’t need to the above that just yet – response from County is we are unincorporated, St. Louis County has jurisdiction, and the complaint has been entered.
A little later I got a voice mail message from Anthony saying he talked to his supervisor and we have to get rid of the rain garden. I left a phone message for him asking him to send me a copy of the specific law we are violating and the name, phone number and email address of his supervisor. That’s the second time I requested a copy of the specific law. I have searched for things like “rain gardens St. Louis County guidelines” and “rain gardens St. Louis County restrictions” and I have found nothing.
Total time I’ve spent up to this point on our defense: 19.5 hours
Update August 23, 2019
Over the last couple of days I have contacted a lot of environmental organizations who might have in interest in this process and I asked them for advice and also if they have heard anything about rain gardens being illegal in St. Louis County. So far no one has let me know that they have heard it’s illegal. Some people are still looking for information or people for me to contact. I’m following up on contacts people have given me. So far the most specific advice is to request a copy of the actual law they think I am breaking. I have requested that twice this week and still don’t have it. I have asked the inspector I’ve been dealing with to also send me the name and contact information of his supervisor. I don’t have that yet either. He has my email address, I have given it to him at least twice, once by phone and once by email.
“Hi, inspector Anthony Vecchio left a notice on my door on August 15 saying he wanted to talk to me about our property at 7405 Rockwood Drive. I have spoken to him on the phone and he says that his supervisor told him that I have to get rid of my rain garden. I have not been able to find any information online about what my rain garden is violating. He said it was covered by the Guidelines for Land Disturbance which I have read and I haven’t been able to find anything in that document that we are violating. I asked him twice earlier this week for the specific law and I also asked him for the name and contact information for his supervisor. I have not received either yet.
I have contacted a great number of environmental organizations in the area for advice. I have also contacted MSD, Project Clear and Missouri Botanical Garden since they advocate for building rain gardens and I know that MSD has spent a lot of money testing and promoting rain gardens. What I have heard back so far is that they don’t know anything about rain gardens being illegal and I should request a copy of the specific statute that they are concerned with. I have requested that twice, on Tuesday and Wednesday and I don’t have it yet. I’ve also requested the name and contact information of the supervisor of Anthony Vecchio and I have not been provided with that information yet. Can you please send me those items ASAP? Thank you very much for your time!”
It rained a lot on Wednesday evening (Aug. 21), enough to necessitate the City of Brentwood (where I used to live and still own a condo) sending me flash flood warnings on my phone and in my email. I checked the rain gardens and bioswales to see how they were draining. They did look like they were probably on track to drain within 1 to 2 days if it didn’t rain again, but I realized I needed to take action because Tom and I are both going to be at work on Friday and I thought it likely that on that day we would get another inspection to try to catch us out and accuse us of having stagnant water. The last time I got a flash flood notice (July 22 when we were in Yellowstone National Park) we got another citation (see the July 23 document in the PDF file linked above) the day after. AND it looked like it was going to rain again. I can’t skip work to intercept the inspectors and try to explain the situation so I did my best to give the rain gardens a prophylactic treatment just in case.
First I put BTI in all the areas where water was present on August 22 (the day after the heavy rain) as a safeguard against mosquitoes. This biological control needs to be reapplied every couple of weeks and these areas have been bone dry for awhile so I wanted to re-innoculate. The BTI is the brown crumbles floating on the surface.
This area tends to collect water when it rains because I had to make it big enough to completely drain the wet spot on the neighbor’s side of the fence since the county has made us responsible for the runoff from the yard to the West. I have planted some water loving plants on the edge and more are coming to help dry this area faster. That has to wait until the weather is cool enough for transplants. Hopefully won’t be too long.
The next thing I did to speed up the drying in spots like the above was to weed along the edges so that more sunlight can get to it when the sun does come back out. I also made the bioswale that drains it a bit bigger to draw more water out into the grass.
Until I can get more transplants in, I have to make the clay soil more permeable. I used a metal pole to drive holes into the bottoms of the bioswales and rain gardens. Then I sprinkled in some organic matter in the form of wood chip mulch and dried up plant debris that we use as mulch. I kept adding organic matter until the water disappeared. Unfortunately it started to rain again before I could finish and the water level went up again, temporarily. The rain fell slowly enough that I didn’t inadvertently cause dams where I didn’t want them. In time micro-organisms and fungi will help the mulch stick together and be more sponge-like.
This picture was taken after poking holes and applying BTI, but before adding mulch and organic matter. In the spring I created meanders in the bottom of this part of the rain garden to slow the water further. Meandering streams run more slowly and deposit more silt than straight streams. Kind of fun to make this happen in miniature!
I can speed the process up some by adding organic fertilizer that contains nitrogen and maybe an innoculation of untilled mature soil or a product designed to accelerate compost. When it dries out a little I’ll try this. I have some blood meal and a really good product called Love Your Soil by Jonathan Green that helps loosen bad soil. I did this process once before in late spring or early summer and it helped a great deal. Over time, as I drive in more holes the plants will have more soft spots to push roots into and break up the clay. Some of the native plants I’m putting in are adapted to penetrating clay with their roots alone which can only help.
Total time I’ve spent up to this point on our defense: 25 hours
Here is some correspondence that will catch you up on where we are today:
August 23rd, 2019, Anthony Vecchio to me
Mrs. Winklemann,
In regards to your inquiry regarding the notice of violation you received for the trenches dug around your property, the code violation specified is listed on the notice that was posted on your door and mailed to you. No grade may be altered in a way that prevents the natural flow of water or causes stagnant water theron. Should you have any further questions, please contact my supervisor Mr. John Gieler. He may be reached by calling 615-4100 where you can be directed to his extension.
Sincerely,
Anthony Vecchio
Inspector
August 23rd, 2019, Me to Anthony Vecchio
Mr. Vecchio,
We have not prevented the flow of water or caused stagnant water. Rather we have prevented standing water and facilitated the flow of water from one property to the next. The water flows better than before, therefore we have not made the problem worse or created it. If we fill in the rain garden the problems that you think we caused will come back and then we’ll get in trouble for that. The evidence is in the document I sent you on July 31. Here it is again:
If you have not done so, please read it, look at the pictures and watch the videos. Then you will understand what is going on. Then please send me the rules I am violating. It’s not in the Land Disturbance Document. There is nothing in there that says you can’t have a rain garden, there is nothing in there that says you can’t fix existing problems with standing water and there is nothing in there that says you can’t make the water flow better and stop puddling in the neighbor’s yard. It does not say you can’t capture your runoff to keep it from going on your neighbor’s driveway so it doesn’t buckle like ours did. What you are saying we did is what it was like BEFORE we started fixing it.
If you send me the email of your supervisor I will send him a link to it also. I got his name from someone else at the county and I have his phone number. I can’t call him now because I am at work. I have contacted him on Facebook and LinkedIn in the meantime. I will call him Monday if needed. We are not willing to go back to having a wet basement and the house falling in. There are cracks upstairs that have not gotten worse since we fixed the drainage problems. We put a piece of tape at the end of one of the cracks to check. We care a lot about keeping our house erect and intact and we like the dry basement. I don’t think it’s legal to occupy a house falling in either. We would be negligent if we did not fix it.
Thank you very much,
Carolyn Hasenfratz Winkelmann
This is the site of the future pond. I’ve been filling it in with mulch between rains until we get it done. This makes more work for us and makes it take longer to get done, but it’s what we have to do. Does every construction site in St. Louis County have to fill in every puddle between rains, even if they dry up in a day or two? This photo was taken on August 25, about 24 hours ago. It’s rained three times since then. If it’s not dry right now, about an hour after the rain stopped, should we have to go to court again? What do you think?
August 26th, 2019, John L. Geiler to me
Mrs. Winkelmann,
I have contacted the County prosecutors and we will refrain from pressing charges at this time. The ordinance number that you have not been looking at is:
SLCRO 1110.507.1 General. Drainage of roofs, paved areas, yards and courts, and other open areas on the premises shall not be modified or altered to discharge in a manner that creates a public nuisance.
Should a complaint come in about a public nuisance created by the ditches you’ve dug in your husband’s yard we will be required by law to re-issue the NOV and seek compliance. If you want to create a “rain garden” at some time in the future, and the necessary changes involved with that process are in violation of County ordinances, you will need to seek a special use permit or a zoning variance. Those actions can be taken by visiting the Public Works office in Clayton and presenting plans for your installation.
John L. Geiler
Assistant Chief Residential Inspector
St. Louis County Public Works
Code Enforcement
(314) 615-4191
August 26th, 2019, Me to John L. Geiler
Hi, thank you very much for your reply. I read the ordinance many times. The neighbor’s yard has drained completely every time it rains since May 3. (my edit – that’s the day after her complaint and therefore the day I started checking after each and every rain). Her yard used to collect water as ours did BEFORE I did anything. She told me the reason she complained is that she thought it was ugly. I will concede that most construction sites are ugly when they are in progress.
She is the one who caused a nuisance for US. It’s actually the other way around according to the law you cited. This blog post will explain. I couldn’t get Anthony to look at it as far as I know. Mike looked at it and he understood it. That’s why the charges were dismissed.
I’m sure you are very busy today with the flash floods and all. Please look at it when you have time. If someone would just read it and look at the pictures and watch the videos they would understand the situation. At any time you are welcome to make an appt. with me and I’ll show you around personally.
I hope someone is addressing my complaint about her pipes discharging water into our yard and contributing to the destruction of the foundation of our house. There are two that are closer than 10 feet.
Thank you,
Carolyn
Here are some pictures of cracks in our bedroom that the engineer we hired told us were caused by the foundation shifting from bad drainage. We put that piece of tape on one of them last winter to see if our rainscaping had halted the damage or not. No movement since! These photos were taken on 08/25/19.
Total time I’ve spent up to this point on our defense: 27.81 hours
While going through some old papers recently, I found a partial draft of an artist’s statement paper I wrote in the early 90’s when I was applying to the Bachelor of Fine Arts program at SIUE. I don’t remember what portions of this draft ended up in the finished paper – I did not find a printed copy. I’m sure I have the finished paper saved on a Commodore 64 floppy disc somewhere! In college I sometimes hand wrote drafts, but I typed up all finished papers on the old Commodore 64 we got for Christmas in 1983. (Yes I still have it and yes it still works but I’m sorry it’s not for sale! If you have working Commodore 64 joysticks or a “Give My Regards to Broadstreet” Commodore 64 game I might want to buy those though!)
I could go off on a tangent and write a little bit more about the Commodore 64 and why it’s so special to me, but I want to get back to my artist’s statement draft because Father’s Day is coming up. I wrote about my Dad’s influence on my work and I think he’d get a kick out of reading it. My Dad’s name is Don and you’ll find out who “John” is as you read. I also will enjoy remembering what my artistic passions were so long ago. I hope you will too! Contemporary additional comments of mine are italicized.
B.F.A. Paper Draft Part 1:
“While looking back on my artistic influences I can’t help but reminisce about my childhood and the factors that must have had some kind of influence on my artistic interests today. My father has had a lifelong habit of picking up every little nut, bolt or other piece of hardware lying on the ground and taking it home in the hope that it will come in handy to fix something someday. He is quite a handyman – after he fixed our old Ford Maverick with an old pencil and a piece of wire my friend exclaimed “Your Dad IS McGyver!” Whether we were on our way to church, to the store, or on vacation he would never let one of these little objects pass without picking it up. Over the years he has acquired a huge collection of such objects, many of which do eventually get used. If he knew what the objects he was picking up were, he would explain them to me but if he didn’t know he would take it anyway.
I was always encouraged by my father from a very early age to watch him work at his bench in the basement and learn the uses of all the tools myself. I remember burning my hand rather badly with a soldering iron building an electromagnet for the science fair at school while Dad left the room mistakenly thinking that I had the hang of it already (I was six years old). I haven’t touched a soldering iron since (no longer true as of the early 2000’s) but I did continue to hammer, saw, drill and glue on my own projects while my Dad repaired appliances or built furniture. He used to turn over his box of junk to me and supply me with odds and ends of wood, nails and glue plus drills and hammers to use. My favorite things to build were model ships for some reason. I have always loved water and boats and I used to create floating monstrosities studded with junk to play with in wading pool in the backyard or in the bathtub. Long nails became masts, brackets became the bridge, bits of tubing and pipe became smokestacks. When I was tired of the boats I would pull all the parts off and build a new version. The use of found objects in my art is just a continuation of one of my favorite childhood pastimes.
Another formative influence from my childhood was John Brower, the contractor who built our house and most if not all of our neighborhood. The neighborhood kids all called him “John the Builder”. He lived about four lots away from us in a very mysterious house that was surrounded by huge old trees. It was one of only two older houses in this part of the subdivision, which was still under construction when we moved in. Vacant lots flanked our house on two sides and these and the other future home sites in the neighborhood provided endless hours of fun for the kids. Huge weeds, mounds of fill dirt, wood piles, abandoned vehicles, vast puddles of mud and bits of old junk protruding out of the ground created an endless variety of play situations. (Not SAFE play situations mind you, but more FUN than I can describe!)
John the Builder was one of the most eccentric people I have ever known and as a result among us children he was beloved. He refused to paint his outbuildings, trucks, or equipment any color other than Pepto Bismol Pink, Decayed Neon Orange or Pea Green. He routinely painted new homes in putrid shades of Lavender or Lime Green with glitter mixed in! We never could figure out if he just had weird taste or was color blind. His own house was given the same treatment so we assumed that he considered it attractive. (The house to our right when new even had, I am not kidding, glitter Lavender metal banisters!) Despite this, all the houses were quickly sold as they were built and promptly repainted by their new owners!
To us kids, John the Builder was a godlike figure. He rarely drove down the street without a crowd of children running alongside his car yelling “John! John!” We loved him because he allowed us to play on his vacant land with all it’s fascinating “forbidden” features. In return for us staying away from the current, active construction sites he would save special dirt piles for us to use. We turned one into a mountain environment for Hot Wheels, complete with tunnels and winding roads. I don’t know if I’ve worked on a more enjoyable project in my entire life! Many times we came home covered from head to toe in mud and had to be hosed off in the yard.
John the Builder also endeared us to him by occasionally letting us “work” for him by holding up surveying posts while he took measurements, or by carrying his tools. He would pay us each a quarter for such a task and at a time when that amount was a whole week’s allowance it was quite a boon to get one. The quarters he handed out were always encrusted with gunk and very old, usually from the ’40’s or ’50’s. We used to take them home and put them in vinegar to bring back the shine. We usually intended to keep the oldest ones for our “collection”, but they inevitably ended up at the Quick Shop along with all our other money in exchange for candy, paper kites, or little toy boats.
(Notes to self) Write about – Tire moving and fires, outbuilding moving, Dad being sprayed with tar, haunted “crashed” bus, Ruth back in time.”
That’s where Part 1 of my draft leaves off. Someday I might write about those tantalizing topics hinted at at the end of part one! I still know what those notes mean! Part 2 of my draft deals more specifically with art influences. I’ll share Part 2 in a future blog post.
I wrote about Dad and John together because they had quite a bit in common. Dad was maybe not as eccentric as John but they were both into collecting old stuff and creative re-use before it was a “thing”. They both taught me to appreciate the old, the grungy, the humble, the simple pleasures of life. They also showed me the fun of building things. I had a very involved Dad of my own but John was kind of an additional father of the whole neighborhood because of his kindness to the kids and his willingness to teach us things now and then when he had time. Dad and John were friends and had a good understanding of each other I thought. I associated the two together in my mind even when I was very small. One of my favorite things to do with Dad at a certain age was sit in his lap and play with his hair. They both had black hair, but John’s was receding while Dad had a full head of the same wiry, wild, thick hair I have (that we both got from Grandma Ludwig). In the 70’s Dad had a big thatch of it on his forehead that was kind of like bangs – the closest thing to bangs our type of hair could get anyway! I used to push this section back to show his forehead and say “John!” then let it down and say “Daddy!” I’d do that over and over until one of us got tired of it! (Dad I’m sure got tired of it quicker!) John’s wife Ruth was just as kind and was very motherly to my Mom as well as welcoming to the kids.
I think both Dad and John had unusually laissez-faire attitudes toward kids, even for the 1970’s. Can you imagine anyone today letting kids do what we did back then? I will admit, everything we did was not necessarily condoned, but that which was tolerated would probably be considered child neglect or abuse today! There were so many things that could have gone wrong – pits of water and mud, mounds of dirt, climbing-sized old trees, rusty nails, splintery boards – they are genuine hazards. Despite all this, I never got any injuries that Mom couldn’t fix at home with Bactine or Campho-Phenique. I’d get hosed off, maybe tweezed a bit, smeared with anti-bacterial stuff and sent back out to my activities. It was worth it – has any kid ever had more fun than I did growing up? I seriously doubt it!
Do you like adult coloring but don’t feel completely satisfied coloring someone else’s designs? Here is how you can use scrap papers and cardstock along with stencils to make custom homemade coloring books that reflect your own creative point of view.
What you will need:
Pencil
Scissors
Glue stick
Paper cutter
White or off-white card stock
Hole puncher
Black ball-point pen
Black Twin Tip Sharpie Permanent Marker – Fine/Ultra Fine
Tape
Bone folder or burnishing tool
Clean scrap paper
Metal ruler
Metal binding rings
Assorted found papers that relate to coloring (pictures from magazines, old books, catalogs, etc.)
Assorted black and white images on paper (scrapbooking papers, found images) Assorted stencils (hand-cut from your own designs, commercial crafting stencils, or a combination)
Instructions:
1. Cut out two pieces of cardstock 8 1/2 x 6 inches for covers. Select some found images that have to do with coloring and make collages on the front and back covers by gluing these images down with a glue stick. Put a clean piece of scrap paper over your collage and rub well with a bone folder or burnisher to make sure the papers are glued down flat.
2. Cut a bunch of 8 x 5 1/2 inch pieces out of white or off-white card stock or paper. I’ll walk you through using a combination of found papers and stencils to create black and white designs to color in later on these pages. It’s intimidating to have a bunch of blank pieces of paper staring you in the face, so to begin tear some papers with black and white designs or printing on them into strips using a metal ruler a guide. Glue some of these pieces on several of your blank pages in random places and directions.
3. Further build up your designs by using a variety of stencils to draw shapes randomly on your pages. Add black and white collaged images or textures to further enhance the pages.
Coloring pages are very appealing when you use different line weights to outline areas to color. I suggest you proceed by marking some areas with a heavier line first then progressively moving down in line weight as you add more detail.
A. Outline some areas from bold stencil designs using the “Fine” tip on the Sharpie marker.
B. Go back through your pages again and add more stencil designs outlined with the “Ultra Fine” tip on the Sharpie marker.
C. Go through the pages a third time and use yet more detailed stencils to draw on the pages with the black ball-point pen.
As you build your compositions, I suggest laying pairs of pages down on your work surface that will be opposite each other in your finished book. See if you get any ideas from how they look together. Here are some examples of pairs I made to complement each other.
4. If any of your pages are made of thin enough paper to let some of the marker lines bleed through, don’t get discouraged. Redraw the design in reverse on the other side of the paper to disguise the bleed-through and create some accidental compositions that could be very appealing and lots of fun to color.
5. Punch a top and bottom hole in the cover pieces and each page and connect with binding rings to make into a book. In order to get the holes to line up correctly, you can trace the holes in the first page you punch onto subsequent pages, or make yourself a template out of scrap chipboard.
6. Have fun coloring your pages. I like to use a combination of colored ball point pens, gel pens, markers and colored pencils. If you experiment with a lot of different media and practice you will develop your own style of mark making. If you would like some inspiration for coloring styles and techniques, I have examples on an Art Journaling Pinterest board that should help you out. The most important things to remember while coloring are to have fun and don’t let expectations of how your work is supposed to look be a damper on your creativity and expression.
My husband Tom and I each colored one of these pages.
I’ve been wanting to try reverse applique for a long time. I also like piecing together fabric scraps to see what I can make with them. I decided that pieced fabric would be interesting to sew behind the front of an apron with a large Easter Egg shaped cutout on the front. Here is how I did it.
First I gathered together some fabric scraps. I picked out pink, blue and green pastels and decided to add some navy blue and red to the mix also. Why add those colors to the traditional Easter pastels? Right before I started sewing this apron, I stayed for the weekend at a home with a great art collection that included several prints by my all-time favorite artist, Alexander Calder. One of the things he was known for was the use of primary colors with black. Here is a composite of some selections from this collection, with a couple of other artists’ works (Joan Miró and Roy Lichtenstein) thrown in that use similar color schemes.
You never know where inspiration is going to come from!
Here is some of my piecing shown from the back.
I dyed a pre-made blank canvas apron a very light citron color with Procion dye and I draped my piecing over it to check and see if the colors are ok together. To the front of the pieced section I sewed some translucent yellow trim and a piece of pastel rainbow rick-rack to tie the colors together.
Next I ironed a stabilizer to the back of the pieced section then made a paper egg template. I cut out a pieced fabric egg shape with about a 3/4 inch margin all around.
I pinned the paper egg template to the front of the apron and taped the apron to a window so that I could use the light to line up the fabric piece behind the apron. I sewed all around the egg with dark blue embroidery thread then cut out the egg shape from the front to exposed the pieced section.
The finishing touch on the apron was to sew a row of rick-rack to the top edge of the pockets.
As you can see, I made more pieced fabric than I needed just for this apron. That’s because I have another idea for using more of it. What will it be? I have a pretty wild idea. If it turns out well you’ll see it here on this blog someday!
One of my all-time favorite novels is “Duane’s Depressed” by Larry McMurtry. I’ve re-read it enough times to have it practically memorized. At the beginning of the book,
the title character is in his early 60’s and is the owner of a small oil company in Texas. One day he comes to the realization that he can no longer tolerate his current lifestyle. He decides that he has spent way too many decades of his life driving around in pickup trucks trying to accomplish things that haven’t meant anything to him in a long time. His house is too large, too crammed with stuff and too full of family members who drive him crazy. The town is too full of people who expect him to serve on committees, solve problems and listen to complaints. He doesn’t want to deal with the oil company anymore and eventually turns it over to his son. He abruptly parks his pickup truck, walks out to a simple cabin he owns outside of town, and abdicates nearly all of his responsibilities, despite protests from practically everyone in his life.
Duane has decided for reasons not known to him yet that he is fed up with motorized transportation. The new life he has begun has been simplified into figuring out how to meet his basic needs while walking everywhere he needs to go. His cabin has almost nothing in it so when he decides to clear some brush and stockpile some firewood, he walks to a convenience store with a small hardware department to get tools since he can’t stand the thought of having to deal with the people in the town and in his house to get the tools he already owns. The store owner tells him he is acting like Thoreau so he later seeks out a copy of “Walden” and reads it to see what the store owner is talking about. This is part of his process of seeking an explanation for his behavior that he can’t give to all the people who are bugging him about it because he doesn’t yet know himself.
A lot of the book deals with Duane’s thoughts as he’s working on his new activities. Later in the book he does engage in actual gardening but while he is still just working on firewood he considers walking to the store to purchase a wheelbarrow so he can work faster. Then he asks himself why he needs to work faster and decides that acquiring stuff so he can work faster is a slippery slope back to the old life he doesn’t want any more.
I think a lot about the decision of this character not to purchase a wheelbarrow while I’m out gardening. I own a few power tools, but I usually prefer to use hand tools when I can. I do not have a philosophical or moral objection to using power tools. I will use them when I think they will help me out. One of the reasons I use a lot of hand tools is that sometimes it takes more time to deal with batteries and rechargers and extension cords and power outlets than it does to just grab a hand tool and do it. I like the exercise that comes with hand work. Probably the biggest reason is that when I’m working on my own garden, I’m working for different reasons than for a client garden. Timing IS important when working on gardening and landscaping projects even if you don’t have a deadline or have to work in the most cost-effective way possible when working on a project. Sometimes you have to whip out the power tools to get things done during the right season or in the right order before something else can be done.
An invasive hedge we are removing bit by bit with hand tools.
I’ve been periodically working on removing these invasive honeysuckle bushes and vines in our backyard for some time. I’ve been making a big push the last few weeks and last night my husband Tom joined in. So far all of this work has been done with hands, a bypass hand pruner, a small pruning saw and a pair of loppers. Yes we could get this done more quickly if we borrowed, purchased or rented a power chain saw. But if we did that we could not converse while we work or enjoy the bird sounds. The task would become just another chore instead of a restorative activity that makes us feel good physically and mentally. Another factor to consider is the apartment complex that is adjacent to our backyard. I hate it when weather nice enough to open your house windows finally comes along and you have to abruptly close them because all you can hear are leaf blowers, saws and lawn mowers. This is less of a problem if your property is large but as you can see ours is not and we have extremely close neighbors that I would rather not disturb if it’s not absolutely necessary.
Like the title character in “Duane’s Depressed”, I appreciate taking time when possible to do things the slow way and the simpler way. When I first read “Duane’s Depressed” 20 years ago I had not heard of mindfulness. I don’t think the word mindfulness is even in the book but that is part of what Duane needed without knowing it. Gardening is one of the things I do to help achieve it – when I’m gardening all I’m thinking about are the sights, sounds, smells, textures and sometimes even tastes I’m experiencing. The effect on my well being is almost like magic!
No, I haven’t yet read “Walden”. The character who mentions Thoreau to Duane refers to him as a “Yankee a**hole” and Duane’s therapist calls him “that gloomy man”. Not exactly a ringing endorsement is it! Have you read “Walden”? If so, what did you think? In this novel Duane also reads “Remembrance of Things Past” by Proust which he hates 90% of, so I haven’t picked that one up yet either!
Class by Carolyn Hasenfratz Winkelmann – Image Transfers on Wood Jewelry
Date:
April 25, 2019
Time:
5:30-7:30 PM
Place:
Schnarr’s Hardware, 40 East Lockwood, Webster Groves, MO 63119
I’m teaching this class again for the first time in three years! Make amazing lightweight pendants by transferring found images onto wood. You will be supplied with the materials to make a necklace for wearing your interchangeable pendants. You will learn the basics of transferring images with tape and gel medium and attaching a clasp to a cord necklace. I will have a selection of transferred images on hand for you to use at the beginning of the class, then while your pendant or pendants are drying, I’ll show you two different techniques for converting found images into beautiful embellishments to add to wood pendants and other art and craft items.
Each class attendee will receive a printout with a written tutorial for that class so if you forget anything we learned you can refer back to it later. Jewelry tools will be available to borrow during the class and some tools and supplies will be available to purchase if you want to continue working on your own.
At each class, there will be at least one door prize randomly awarded to an attendee – probably a craft supply item of some type that relates to the theme of the class. Past prizes have included a necklace kit, a polymer clay frame kit and a craft stencil. That’s my way of saying thank you for coming!
What to Bring
It’s not necessary to bring anything but it’s a good idea to wear old clothes in case there is a glue mishap. If you have found images on glossy papers like magazine or catalog cutouts, or laser printed copies, you can bring those as a source for images.
What’s Provided
I will provide wood pendant blanks, gel medium, images, packing tape, findings and parts for at least one necklace. I will have tools to borrow during class.
Last fall during the Old Webster Fall Art Walk, I demonstrated making pages for an art journal with paper collage work and stencils at Schnarr’s Hardware. I added in some paint samples to pay tribute to the hardware store atmosphere and remind me to have fun with colors. Later on I added some image transfers I made with clear packing tape. Learn how to make image transfers and add them to your art journal pages on the Schnarr’s blog:
Juicing oranges and lemons to make Tequila Lime Chicken
At this time of year, if I want to use Cilantro in a recipe I can’t just go to the garden and pick what I need. Usually when I buy a package of fresh Cilantro from the store, there is a lot more than the recipe calls for in the bunch. In the past, if I have time I have pulled the leaves off the extra Cilantro and frozen it. Cilantro is best used fresh, but frozen is better than dried (I’ve tried that too). I have heard of preserving fresh basil, another herb that is just not the same when not fresh, in olive oil and freezing it in ice cube trays. I decided to try that with today’s leftover Cilantro.
I coarsely chopped the leftover cilantro and it’s going to be blended with the citrus pulp in the small dish which I made in ceramics class a long time ago.
I’m making a recipe for Valentine’s Day today from a book that Tom and I were sent as a wedding gift from an anonymous giver – Tequila Chicken from “Barefoot Contessa Family Style” by Ina Garten. I had to juice enough limes, lemons and oranges to make a cup and a half of juice and I have a lot of pulp left. Citrus and Cilantro taste great together – what would happen if I pulverized the leftover Cilantro with the leftover pulp and froze it in ice cube trays to flavor future recipes? I’m already going to have to wash half my kitchen implements today – colander, salad spinner, garlic press, juicer, salad dressing emulsifier, George Foreman grill, mortar and pestle, etc. so what is one or two more?
Oh yeah that works, and it’s a lot less time-consuming than stripping all the leaves off the stems. I added 1 TBSP of grapeseed oil to help it stick together. I even have a fun little citrus wedge ice tray to freeze the mixture in! In the future I’m going to have a lot of fun adding these little wedges to soups, dressings, marinades, stir-frys, pilafs, sauces and who knows what else. I guess I just made Cilantro pesto, which is probably already a thing.
Last fall Tom and I had our first party at our house. It’s a shame that my photo of the drinks table didn’t turn out because I served some cranberry orange tea punch in Tom’s amazing mid-century modern punch bowl with molded decorative ice floating on top. I froze cranberry juice to make the ice and as a garnish I included fresh cranberries and orange slices. I had some fruit left over so I froze the remnants. I knew I’d think of something to do with them eventually.
As Valentine’s Day approached, I decided to make something in my Mom’s vintage heart copper mold. Tom likes gelatin (I’m not using Jello brand, there is nothing wrong with it but I shopped at Aldi, so I guess it’s proper to say “gelatin” and not “Jello”) and fruity flavors seemed to be something that would complement the chicken. I cooked the leftover orange slices and cranberries to make an infusion to use as the water in the gelatin recipe. That should pump up the flavor! I froze it until ready to use and then made the gelatin with it.
After filling the heart mold I put some of the leftover gelatin in the glass footed cups below. I remember my Mom getting a whole set of dishes in this style in the 1970s from Liberty supermarket. As I recall there were parts of the set that you could get each week if you spent a certain amount. Mom got tumblers in two sizes and plates in two sizes too. How do you like my space age retro hand mixer? It belonged to my Grandma and Grandpa Hasenfratz. It’s a little beat up looking but it works and I love it! I appreciate being able to incorporate retro items handed down from family members in my cooking. It wouldn’t be as meaningful or as much fun without them!
Final menu:
Cranberry/white cheddar cheese with sliced pears dusted with Fruit Fresh, cinnamon and stevia, with a glass of Italian spumante malt beverage
Salad greens with Creamy Mustard Vinaigrette (also from the Barefoot Contessa book)
Tequila Lime Chicken
Grilled asparagus
Strawberry/Cranberry/Orange Jello with fresh raspberries and whipped topping
That was fun to make and even more fun to eat! Looking forward to taking care of those leftovers…
Tom and I will be celebrating our sixth month anniversary of being married in less than a week! We renewed our marriage vows for the first time at mass this past weekend as part of World Marriage Day. Also Valentine’s Day is in two days and I’m planning the home cooked meal that Tom requested for his Valentine gift as I work on my projects this week. Love is definitely in the air!
Renewing our vows is a good reminder that love is a verb and marriage is something we celebrate and practice every day…so I don’t feel too bad that I’m still working on a couple of projects that incorporate greeting cards that we received for our showers and wedding. (Cards are still trickling in, actually, so I’m really not behind!)
The number of cards we received is astonishing. My Mom kept her wedding cards in a scrapbook. I like to scrapbook, and working cards into scrapbooks and journals is something I’ve been doing for awhile. I love to make handmade books and journals of all kinds and I’ll use almost any excuse to make one. I wanted a guestbook to use at our picnic wedding reception so I naturally made my own. I decided to work greeting cards from our showers (we’re spoiled, between the two of us we had three!) into the guestbook pages. At one of our couples showers there was a fun activity where the other shower guests wrote marriage advice on pieces of paper and we read them out loud. I put those paper pieces in the guestbook also. I intended for the unfilled parts of the guestbook to function as a photo album too, so whenever we look at our wedding photos (which I haven’t even gotten printed yet) we will remember greetings and wishes of happiness from our loved ones.
I was able to incorporate nearly every card we received prior to the wedding day into the wedding guestbook/scrapbook which is at the right side of the photo above. I made the covers from scrap mat board which I covered with map patterned paper to fit our nautical theme. The picnic reception was at a lake and Tom and I brought our kayaks. I made nautical themed collages for the front and back covers of the guestbook, protected them with a layer of transparency film, then attached them with decorative metal brads. I used metal binding rings made by 7gypsies to hold the book together at the spine. Before I fastened the collages in place, I scanned them for use as background graphics on our wedding web site. Papers for the collages came from Canvas Corp, their brand 7gypsies and other sources that I’ve collected over the years.
Here are three examples of 8.5 x 11 inch pages from the guestbook. On some pages I covered nearly the whole page with cards, notes and assorted embellishments. Other pages had blank areas for messages and later photo mounting and journaling. I used a lot of nautical themed paper from Canvas Corp, assorted goodies from my extensive paper stash and added in a little traditional wedding related imagery to blend with the greeting cards. My new Mother In Law is very talented, she painted the card with the two kayaks. She also gave us a great watercolor painting with nautical flags spelling out “Love Lives Here”. A most thoughtful and personal gift that we will always treasure!
At the wedding and since the wedding, we have received many times more cards and if I did what my Mom did and mounted them all on scrapbook pages, I would be making several huge books that would take up a lot of space. I very much wanted to keep all the cards. So I started thinking – several sides of these cards are either blank or have minimal content. What if the cards were not mounted into a book, but instead became the book? Then I could use empty space on the cards to write or mount photos or other memorabilia and embellishments. The cards could become a memory book for reminders, experiences, meditations, thoughts and much more.
I had in my stash some clear tag shapes for making handmade books that were about the size of the cards, so I used one of the plastic tags as a template and I started tracing around important sections of the cards to make tag-shaped book pages.
On sides that had something I wanted to cover up such as card manufacturer information on the back, I laminated with glue some paper with lines printed on it to make a good journaling surface. The example below left is paper from Canvas Corp. I bought a bunch of that design because I make a lot of journals. Some card backs like the seashore themed example below right are good for writing on or adding small photos just as they are.
I have not done a lot of reading yet on Love Languages, but I’m aware of what they are enough to know that one of my ways of giving love and feeling like I am loved is gift giving on special occasions. The gifts don’t have to be expensive, they can be handmade or simple. A good gift for me or Tom could be an experience like a Birthday hike. Tom and I also both think acts of service are a way to give love and to feel love, so when giving gifts to Tom I try to work that in there somehow. The image below shows an example of that on the left – Tom is sporty and we both like to participate in fitness activities so I made him a set of two-sided “coupon” cards good for a workout with me. The idea is to put a date on the cards as they are redeemed and put them in little pockets in my initial tag book. On the right below is an example of a tag page that I have treated like a scrapbook or journal page by using graphics from card parts, scrapbooking-type embellishments and patterned translucent vellum paper so that the cards are visible after they go into a pocket.
Realizing I would end up with enough tag shapes to make several books, I noticed a card with a graphic of a piece of toast on it. I decided it would be cute to cut the toast shape out and use it as a template to cut some of the cards into pages for one or two toast shaped books.
I’m going to keep our wedding memories alive for years as I use these little books to document and journal about our marriage. Happy Valentine’s Day and Anniversary Tom! I love you!
