Twin Mix II

This work is a collaborative effort between Karen and I. Our inspiration, the Gulf Fritillary Butterfly and the beautifully intricate passion flower.  We have so many of these Fritillary Butterflies in our side yard, the reason we have them, is because we have several passion vines planted. These butterfly lay their eggs on the leaves of the passion vine, they are very small yellow spheres, which eventually produce the caterpillar. These guys have a ferocious appetite and could easily strip all the leaves on the vine. The leaves grow back, and the vine continues to produce its beautiful flower, as the chrysalis transform into the Fritillary butterfly. It is spectacular to come out in the morning and have 30 or more butterflies scurrying about our yard. Plant some passion vines, if they will thrive in your area,  you will be providing much needed habitat for many varieties of Fritillary butterflies. Check out this web site for butterfly conservation www.butterflyrecovery.org

Check out www.lunaazulstudio.com for more of our artwork.

Passion flower and Fritillary in side yard

In the beginning

We have a small area in our side yard that we are going to turn into a garden spot. We had a couple of tomato bushes and some onions last year, but the roses around the area did not allow for much sun. So we have moved the roses and made a space around 8 x 8. We would like to grow tomatoes, oni0ns, and put a trellis for zucchini and squash. I also have some strawberry plants I would like to put in the center in a raised bed, still working on that idea. We have put a four foot fence around it with a gate to keep out the dogs, rabbits, etc. This was made out of left over cedar pieces that our contractor friend had. We now have to put in the boards to keep in the soil and then add organic soil. Come spring, we will plant our little garden. I can already visualize the paintings from the produce and the good tasting homegrown veggies on the table.  We’ll see how that works out. I’ll keep you posted.

New fence out of cedar scraps

Lets Celebrate the Turkey!

Nothing is possessed save in appreciation, of which thankfulness is the indispensable ingredient. But a thankful heart hath a continual feast.

View our Turkey Photo Gallery below;

Beautiful Turkey Feathers

Turkey in the Shade

Magestic Turkey

Turkey Strutting Along!

Scotch Brite Scrub Pads

These wonderfully green scrubbing pads can do the work of about 30 rolls of kitchen paper and as it says on the packaging;

“You don’t have to give up cleaning performance to live a greener lifestyle”

These scrub pads have a durable rough side shown above and a smoother wiping side shown below…

The Smoother Side of Green Cleaning

We’ve been using these new biodegradable scrubbing pads on our dishes and for general kitchen cleaning and we can thoroughly recommend them, we won’t be buying regular sponges anymore, we’ve seen the green cleaning future and it is Scotch Brite!

We bought ours at the local grocery store but you can read more about these and other green cleaning products here;

www.scotchbritegreenerclean.com

Photo by: Momster

Its almost Halloween and along with the season comes the carving of the pumpkin.  The pumpkin carving ritual isn’t complete until you have cleaned out all those seeds. Here is a great idea, recycle and reuse them, by roasting them in the oven. Roasted pumpkin seeds are packed with nutrition and low in carbs. For 1/4 cup, it is about 5 grams of carbs and 2 grams of fiber. They have a nutty flavor and are packed with protein. You can salt them or better yet flavor them with your favorite sweet or savory spice. The smell and crunch of roasted pumpkin seeds will add  new dimensions to the carving experience!! Of course when possible, by an organically grown pumpkin for organic roasted seeds!

Here are the directions to roast those seeds!

Ingredients:

Photo by: kzimmer

• Pumpkin or squash seeds
• If you want to add salt or seasonings, you’ll need a bit of oil so it will stick

Preparation:

Preheat oven to 350 F.

1) Clean the pulp off the pumpkin seeds, and dry with paper towels.

2) If desired, toss with a little olive or other oil. You only need enough to barely coat, otherwise, they will be greasy. Add salt and any kind of seasoning you want – garlic powder, Cajun seasoning, dried chili powder, or whatever sounds good to you!

3) Cover a baking sheet with parchment paper and spread the seeds out in one layer.

Bake for 3-5 minutes, until seeds just start to color and are fragrant. Sometimes I use a longer but safer method of using a lower temperature. If you roast the seeds at 250 degrees F., you don’t have to watch them as carefully. It takes about 45 -60 minutes.

By the way, did you know the origin of carving pumpkins? The story of the Jack o’Lantern comes from Irish folklore. Jack was a crafty farmer who tricked the Devil into climbing a tall tree. When the Devil reached the highest branch, Jack carved a large cross in the trunk, making it impossible for the Devil to climb down. In exchange for help getting out of the tree, the Devil promised never to tempt Jack with evil again. When Jack died, he was turned away from Heaven for his sins and turned away from Hell because of his trickery. Condemned to wander the Earth without rest, Jack carved out one of his turnips, took an ember from the devil, and used it for a lantern to light his way. He became known as “Jack of the Lantern.”

Help us pick the best of the bunch by taking our Top 10 Halloween Pumpkin Carving poll… First, let’s check out the entries…

Spooky Pumpkin Carving #1

Our first pick is a spooky pumpkin with a very “Day of the Dead” feel to it, we loved the intricate carving and details in this one!

Pumpkin Eating a Pumpkin! #2

A popular trend in 2009 is the “pumpkin eating a pumpkin” design and we especially liked this one, there is even some pumpkin pie in the background!

A Pair of Carved Pumpkins #3

This pair of carved pumpkins shows how a family can take on different levels of carving, the spider was fairly simple but has lots of impact whereas the face is more detailed and subtle.

Pirate Pumpkin #4

Everyone likes pirates, right? This pirate skeleton is ready to set sail…

Wild Eyed Pumpkin! #5

We loved this wild eyed pumpkin design, he is smiling big but with a very sinister twist!

Starry Eyed Pumpkin #6

Another big smile but this time with some very detailed starry eyes… We can’t even imagine how long this took.

LED Symbol Pumpkin #7

This is definitely a pumpkin for all of us nerds out there! It represents the electrical symbol for a Light Emitting Diode and instead of a candle it uses, you guessed it, and LED!

Wordpress Pumpkin Design #8

We just had to include this one! Blogging is such a great pass time and this pumpkin celebrates the “WordPress” blogging software…

I Want My Mummy Pumpkin! #9

We loved how clean and crisp this mummy looks, I might try this one myself.

Celebrity Pumpkin #10

Our final entry, can you guess who it is? Doh!

Our Guide to No Gas Beans...

Let me start this post by explaining that our household is 50% vegetarian, my wife loves to eat lots of veggies and that means when I’m at home my diet is mainly fruit and vegetables. One of our favorite dishes is slow cooked Lima Beans and it’s definitely our favorite on a cool Sunday afternoon. Many people get discouraged from eating beans due to their unfortunate gassy side effects. Yes, lets come right out and say it, beans give you gas! The main reason that beans cause flatulence comes from the gases that they produce once inside the stomach.

Before we share the news of the new “super bean’ here are some useful hints and tips for reducing the gassy effects of beans in your recipes;

If you are using dried beans you should never cook them in the same water that they soaked in. After a long soak the soaking water will contain lots of indigestible sugars and should be discarded. Soaking the beans is important because it begins to dissolve the starches that cause stomach aches.

Soak the Beans but Discard the Water

Most recipes call for soaking the beans overnight but we’ve found the best way is to put them in cold water and bring to a boil, whilst the water is boiling skim off any foam or scum that forms on the surface of the water. This foam contains more of the indigestible sugars mentioned in tip#1! (Note: If soaked too long, they may ferment, which affects their flavor and makes them difficult to digest.)

Boil and skim off any foam

After bringing your beans to a boil and skimming off the foam turn off the heat and let them soak for 1 to 2 hours, after the 1 to hours have passed drain the beans and discard the water.

The soaked and drained beans

Common bean cooking times

NOTE: Don’t add salt or anything acidic like vinegar or tomato juice during the final cooking. These ingredients will only slow down the cooking of the beans and should only be added at the last minute for flavoring.

If you follow the above guidelines your cooked beans should leave you almost completely gas free! But our final note is a new type of “Super Bean” which is truly a “No Gas Bean”;

The manteca bean was discovered by Dr. Colin Leakey in the country of Chile. It is a small yellow bean which can be put into recipes and is completely flatulence free. It is very easy to digest and is now being grown in Cambridgeshire, England and the Channel Islands. You can find this new no gas bean if you look for manteca beans or Jersey yellow beans. Keep a watch out for these new gas free beans at your local farmers markets or natural food stores and enjoy your new flatulence free bean recipes!

If you have any tips for our readers about cooking with beans, please leave a comment…

The Raw Spirit Festival, Prescott, AZ

Map & Directions:

View Larger Map

Venue Map

You can view a more detailed venue map of the Watson Lake Park below;

Raw Spirit Festival Map, Prescott, AZ

Mushrooms on our lawn

This morning while taking the dogs out, I noticed an interesting development on our lawn over night, a few little toadstools had magically appeared. I guess while the frogs were singing their chorus around the Koi pond, late last night, the fairies must have been dancing.  Well, it could have had something to do with all the rain we have had lately, and I’m hoping it has something to do with all the great organic matter in our soil, or perhaps they appeared as an advertisement for National Mushroom Month coming up in September.

I guess they could be there because the devil churned his butter on our lawn last night, but I’m not sure the devil even likes butter, not to mention he’s not welcome at our house, so I think that’s highly unlikely.  I’m pretty sure these are poisonous mushrooms, and not the ones purported to give you super human strength or immortality if you eat them. Well, these guys aren’t going to be here long; besides, I think they make nice additions to our lawn, a little natural decoration. As far as I’m concerned they can hang around as long as they like, and the Fairies may dance on our lawn any time they want, however the frogs singing their chorus, well that’s a different story.

Is that a fairy?

IDENTIFYING YOUR LAWN MUSHROOMS:


We took photos of the two kinds of mushrooms in our lawn and then went online to try and find out what type of mushroom they are and more importantly, are they poisonous?
This is the first mushroom in our lawn;



Lawn Mushroom - The Green-spored Lepiota

We used various fabulous websites to determine that this first type of mushroom is most likely a Green Spored Lepiota otherwise known as Chlorophyllum molybdites.



Mushroom#1 in Our Lawn - Chlorophyllum molybdites

We found out the following, quite disturbing, information about our first type of lawn mushroom;

Description: The cap of this mushroom starts out looking like a ball and is 2 to 4 inches in diameter (See one of the younger ones in our lawn here)



Poisonous Texas Lawn Mushroom

These mushrooms eventually expand until nearly flat and attains a diameter of 6 to 10 inches or more. They are dry and white, finely fibrous, and has brownish patches that develop into scales, especially near the center of the cap, as it matures.
The gills inside the cap are initially white, becoming greenish to greenish gray as the mushroom matures, and sometimes staining yellowish, pinkish or brownish where bruised. The gills are initially covered by a white, membranous partial veil that usually persists in mature specimens as a ring of tissue around the upper stalk. The ring is generally flared slightly open at the top, and develops a brownish color on the lower surface. In some specimens the ring eventually becomes moveable.
The stalk is smooth and white, usually staining brownish where bruised, 3 to 10 inches in height and about one-half to one inch thick, sometimes slightly thickened toward the bottom end.



Texas Lawn Mushrooms

Toxicity: The Green-Spored Lepiota contains proteins or amino acids that are not tolerated by the digestive system of humans or many other mammals. If ingested the symptoms can become evident within 30 minutes to one and one-half hours (but sometimes as much as several hours) following ingestion of the mushroom (either raw or cooked). The typical symptoms include nausea, vomiting, diarrhea and abdominal cramping. Symptoms often abate after a few hours of suffering but sometimes can last for as long as two days. As with other mushrooms containing similar gastroirritants, in some cases the victim’s vomiting and diarrhea are severe enough to require hospitalization to prevent life-threatening dehydration and electrolyte imbalance.
Exposure factors: Sometimes mistaken for the Parasol Mushroom or the Shaggy Parasol mushroom and sometimes sampled by infants, toddlers and domesticated dogs, this handsome but toxic mushroom is very common on lawns throughout much of the United States. It is most common in the southern states, and is especially frequent from late summer through fall. It typically grows in “fairy rings” or arc patterns.

The Chlorophyllum Molybdites mushroom shown above IS POISONOUS and you should treat them with alot of caution, do not let your pets or children eat them!

The second mushroom we found is shown below and luckily it is non-poisonous;



Common Lawn Mushroom - Common Psathyrella

It is much smaller than our first mushroom and was very hard to spot without taking a closer look.



Our Second Type of Lawn Mushroom

MUSHROOM FACTS AND REMOVAL:

The part of a mushroom above ground is called the “fruit” and may contain thousands of tiny seeds which are called spores. Each spore grows a root when it hits the ground, and these roots can produce a hidden underground structure. Whenever two roots from different spores meet they will often join to make a new mushroom!

Tip1: The only sure fire wat to get rid of your mushrooms would be to remove all the dirt that contains either roots or spores! This is impractical and very difficult and you may be spreading the roots and spores when you shovel the dirt!

Tip 2: Even if you found a product, chemical etc, that would wipe out this batch of mushrooms, airborne spores of the same species (or another species) could easily grow more mushrooms in the same spot as long as conditions are favorable so we need to focus on creating a yard environment that doesn’t favor the growth of our fungal friends! Read on….

Note: Because mushrooms are simply the fruit of fungi, removing them does not kill the underground network of roots from which they are growing. Picking mushrooms as soon after they appear can prevent the spores from spreading to parts of your lawn, however, because most spores are wind-blown they can easily come into a lawn from any neighboring areas.

Tip 3:Fairy Rings:

If you have circular or semi-circular green bands of grass in a lawn this may be caused by the fairy ring fungi. Rings may be from 1 to 12 or more feet in diameter and mushrooms may or may not be present. Fairy rings get their name from the ancient belief that mushrooms grew in circles where fairies danced. All grasses are susceptible to fairy rings and several species of mushroom-producing fungi may be involved.

Sometimes you can escape this fairy ring with just extra grass growth which is caused by the release of plant nutrients as the fungi decompose organic matter in the soil. In other cases the soil just inside the ring may become so permeated by the fungal growth that water cannot penetrate and the grass in that area grows poorly or dies. Fairy rings often continue to enlarge for many years. As the ring expands, the older portions of the underground mushrooms die, leaving a larger area in the center where weeds and undesirable grasses may become established so it is essential that you manage them quickly;

Tip 4: Fairy Ring Management:
IF you notice extra grass growth in a circle then increasing fertilizer and irrigation will usually mask the effects of the fairy ring mushroom symptoms.

Removing Other Mushrooms:

Tip 5: Aerating the soil to improve water penetration may help in some cases, you just need to get grass growing again instead of the shrooms!

Tip 6: You can sometimes eliminate mushrooms growing from organic matter by applying nitrogen fertilizer. The nitrogen should be readily available and not slow-release or water-insoluble formulations. Go to your local garden center and look for lawn fertilizers with 21-0-0 blend or 16-6-8 or 27-3-4, basically get one high in Nitrogen. Fertilization with Nitrogen hastens decomposition of the mushroom matter.

Our Favorite Mushroom Identification Books:

The North American Guide to Common Poisonous Plants and Mushrooms:


Mushrooms Demystified:

So, have you had fairies dancing on your lawn lately? Let me know, I’d hate to think we are the only ones they are visiting!

The Biofall

We have had a Koi Pond of one kind or another for about 10 years, we even had a three quarter of an acre pond put in on our 38 acre tract of land in Centerville Texas, and stocked it with fish, but that’s another story. The first Koi pond we had was one of those black plastic tubs that we put landscape blocks around with a small filter and aerator, we were hooked. We then move on to the in ground type, that you can have professionally put in, which we did, then it wasn’t big enough so we had it enlarged. When we moved the folks who bought our house didn’t want the Koi pond (haven’t a clue what was wrong with them) so we had to remove it, fill it in with dirt and sod. We carried all those rocks to our new home where we had another Koi pond put in one week after we moved in. We prefer the biofall skimmer type pond set up; they just seem to work well for us, so all my information will be geared toward that type of pond.

Where we now live, we have an annual garden tour of homes; our home has been on the tour for the past two years. We have a small side yard, ten feet wide and probably forty feet deep on the side of our “Garden Home”, we love it and have transformed it into our own little oasis. As people have walked through on the tour, one question always seems to come up, when they see our Koi pond, “How hard is it to maintain your pond?” My answer is the same, it really is fairly easy.

We live in North Texas so spring is when we encounter the most algae growth. I like to be as chemical free as possible, in this small of an ecosystem, maintaining a natural balance can be challenging. The string algae can quickly take over a pond if you don’t do something. Hand pulling the large pieces will work well if you stay on top of it, I have also used a brush (toilet bowl scrubber works), if you stay keep at it and don’t let it get ahead of you, it is not too bad. The small Barley bales also are a useful natural method for reducing algae growth. Your Koi, which should all have names, will nibble at the algae, but they alone cannot keep it under control. I like the short green algae that you will find growing on our rocks; I think it gives the pond a more natural look. One of the major factors in the whole algae picture, is how much sun the pond gets. Our first pond was in full sun all day long; I can definitely say I worked harder at keeping the algae under control in that pond than I do in our current pond, which is in shade/part sun. Having a pond with a bio fall, means I have the lava rocks in a mesh bag in the bio fall, this is where your good bacterial growth will be.

I use Microbe Lift PL liquid and I use the Microbe Lift spring/summer packets together, available at http://www.watergarden.com/

Our Koi Pond

Having aquatic plants in the pond is definitely a key to success. These take out harmful toxins put off by the fish and decaying matter and help keep your water clear. I have a couple of plants in my biofall, two water lilies in the deepest part of my pond (also gets the most sun), some dwarf cannas along the margins and a couple of other marginal plants. It is best not to plant your plants directly among the rocks or on the bottom of the pond (however I have, but its probably not a good idea). There is a good chance the roots will grow between the rocks and cause them to become loose and perhaps fall off. It is better to keep plants in pond planters that allow the roots to grow out, but keeps the plant growth manageable.

I think the key to a chemical free Koi pond maintenance, for me, is to be consistent in keeping up with the good bacterial growth, make sure I have healthy plants in the pond, and stay on top of the string algae. We enjoy our pond so much, it is a beautiful addition to our home and we are continually learning better ways to maintain it.  We welcome any thoughts or suggestions you might have on maintaining a chemical free Koi pond.