Diagrams and digging

The idea of planting a circle of sunflowers as a sort of shady den for the summer came from Pinterest though I had seen and loved a sunflower maze in Dublin Botanic Gardens and loved it. It just hadn't occurred to me to translate it to my very own garden until Pinterest.

I had spoken about it quite a lot and the Zeds and I tramped out the circle in the long grass on Saturday. Husband then cut the grass so we got to tramp it out again which was a good thing as the Zeds are big fans of running, skipping, marching and jumping around in a circle. I got a bit dizzy.

Z1 then took it upon herself to draw a diagram to plan the circle out. We currently only have a temporary fence on one side of the garden so crayon drawings are allowed. The parameters she planned to illustrate were the size of the circle and the height of the sunflowers. She also had a separate table where she planned how often the sunflowers would need watering. Apparently they will require watering 6 times on Mondays. This was a very serious project.


On the right, you can see that the upper circle has a tick and an arrow - this is the required size of the sunflower circle. It also has 2 flowers in the middle which show the location of the circle as there are two orange flowers on our lawn. The circle below has been crossed out as too small.

In this diagram, you can see the height she wants the sunflowers to be (8 units, units not specified) and, in the righthand panel, you can see she drew a picture of herself for comparison. As she is about 3 feet tall and the sunflowers can apparently grow up to 10ft tall, she may get her wish of the sunflowers being twice her height as illustrated.

We had misplaced our trowel when the time came to plant the seeds so we made do with a spoon. Z2 was napping and Z1 took charge of choosing the seed for each hole and watering each seed after planting. Now we must wait and see if they grow or wether the birds ate the seeds immediately after we planted them.
 

Bring on the minuses!

Tempting fate with green water-filled
balloon over my head. Mopping up.

We moved to Canada in April of 2011. I was dreading the winter but Toronto gave us a mild one. As this current winter started and progressed, I had been quietly thankful for each day that went by where the temperature was above -10C or so. I'd check the forecast and then check it a few more times to see if it had changed when any temperatures below zero were predicted.

The day I decided to do this project, it was a balmy 13C (only days after my personal record low temperature of -21C which we survived with minimal digit loss).

Careful placement; in the bowl, ready for placement;
striking a pose to show the arrangement off
(so mild no coat was needed!).

The forecast, as I formulated my plan, was predicting a high of -2C for the next day. I was pleased. I checked later and it said a high of 8C. I was dismayed but committed to the project so we went ahead anyway. (I also checked another forecast which still said a high of -2C - hurrah!)

That was quite an introduction without getting to the point, wasn't it? Well, the plan was to make these icy colourful marbles.

I was genuinely excited about doing these and was disappointed when Z1 and Z2 were busying themselves in the garden. I told them when they had finished playing, we'd do the water balloons. Z1 told me "We are not playing, we are taking care of the worms." and that I could do it myself.  So I did, I started by myself with a green one and went to take it outside to show the Zeds to see if they'd be interested now that there was something to look at. (I had a minor panic when Z2 could not be located - he'd wandered off behind the shed and was not responding to being called.) He was thrilled to see a balloon and happily followed me to the front to help me put it in the grass. Hurrah. Z1 soon followed when she saw that her brother was interested so we retreated to the kitchen to prepare a few more.

Here's the how to. I saw this on Pinterest and didn't read any instructions before starting. The one I did on my own was a good practice: I filled the balloon with water by stretching it over the spout and, when I removed it, water spurted out everywhere, forced out by the balloon contracting back to its deflated size, I suppose. I was not expecting that. Lesson learned.

I had a dropper to drop food colouring into the balloons before filling so the Zeds could help with that by squeezing the dropper. After that, they were guardians of the balloons as I filled the next one. We had an incident where I tied a knot too hastily and put the balloon into the bowl where it promptly splooshed its (thankfully not very brightly coloured) contents onto Z1's coat and the floor. Paper towels were promptly employed. We did a few greens and a few reds. I only had a small bit of blue food dye left which we divided between an attempt at a purple one (mixing red and blue) and a just-blue one. It may be rather pale. I didn't fill them as large as they look in the Pinterest picture as I was fearful of balloon breakage and also thought that it would be good that the smaller ones would freeze more quickly.

They are outside as I type. Current outside temperature is 12C (at 9pm) though it is predicted to be -3C by 8am which is around when we will be leaving the house. I cannot wait to poke them but I suspect the big reveal (cutting the balloons off) will be Friday or possibly even Saturday. There is also snow forecast so we might have to dig them out to see them. Bring on the minuses!