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Begonias, sour and tasty, if you find the right variety.
Also in the picture is oregano, Mexican mint marigolds, tomato, willow and French marigolds. Cilantro flowers are also quite a delight;
Celery Flowers;
Marigolds can repel bugs and are tasty!
Even lettuce can be pretty when it goes to seed.
Bob I find a magnifying glass can on occasion really help me know what I am doing. I found a really cheap magnifying glass, that had a deep field of view, focused well, and could be moved to a decent base. The original base was too ugly to use. I think that is why it was inexpensive.
This is a very important part of my sharpening tools now. Here is a gouge made from a punch that was left over from a set used to make draw bars.
This gouge is easy to sharpen because it does not have a channel cut inside of it. The disadvantage is that it only works well when you cut with the grain. One small problem with the metal from the punch is that it seems to hold onto a feather with great tenacity.
With the magnifying glass, I can see that feather, and make sure I strop it off, before I snap it off trying to use it. Bob ——————– I am not fond of fire ants, but they did get rid of the chiggers and ticks. I miss the horned toads however. Still It is nice to have them in a corn patch. They will eat one or two kernals from an ear of corn, and will eliminate the worm that would otherwise eat half the ear. No pesticide needed, to double your harvest!
This swiss chard is growing fine in a pot that has become an ant bed. Note that the leaves are perfect. They patrol the leaves. I have to be careful when I harvest, but some plants do well with fire ants. No need for pesticides here!
I had a kind of 3D idea for the handle from combining different pictures of them in my head. After getting the basic shape, I grabbed the handles and started removing what felt wrong. Here it is held, and the Cedar shavings below were indeed made by the tool:
Any uneven qualities are in my hands, because this was shaped to fit. Oddly the fit is good so the grip feels kind of soft. Even though I have secure grip and control. Here are two more picture to get the feel of the rams horn kind of twist I made.
Here is a slightly fuzzy close up of the mouth. The finish is the paraffin/safflower/turpentine mix I am fond of. The working areas are sanded to 400 grit, the handle is sanded to 220 to leave a touch more grip. The plate is osage, the rest is brass and ash. This should hold up rattling around in the tool box, for a long time. This one has worked out really well, Usually you use a chair devil or spokeshave type tool on narrow sections of wood. This means you don’t have to worry much about clearance. One of the advantages of the form is, once the knack for finding and holding the angle is learned, you can adjust angle on the fly. The rather large flat plane on the body helps me to find that angle initially, but then I can adjust it a bit as the wood grain shifts angle. I wanted a tool that I could use as a spoke shave, but on a wide section of wood. I thought about it, and I decided that while I wanted the actual grip higher so it would be clear of the surface, I also thought it would be best if the handle was directly centered over the blade. Since the normal forces are indeed going to push backward and try to rotate the tool as you pull it towards you, I made sure that my thumbs would be right there to prevent the spin. In practice, I can use this tool in one hand. It has great control. I am not taking a huge shaving with it, but it seems to work every bit as well as I envisioned it to. I don’t have much call to use a tool of this form, in fact one of the projects I that I made it for has turned out to be a failure. Such is life when you imagine things and try to build them. Even though I don’t use this sort of tool much, if I lost it, I would try to make another one just like it. I think it will be perfect for it’s intended purpose, to make a track for a marble to follow. Bob Some plants raise themselves. These make the garden a dream. Here is some Chinese celery that have naturalized and decided they can do alright next to the pond.
Here are some wild onions that crossed with one of the members of my domestic onion collection.
I don’t know if I will get another cross with them however because they are now, viviparous.
Instead of making seeds, this guy now makes little bulbs.
The dewberry is a native treat. I would be hard put to not have it grow here.
This lovely flower is borage. The taste of the flower is like sweet cucumber. Quite nice really. I planted some years ago, and a few plants have come up each year, ever since.
Bob |
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