Inside the ghost watermelon and the end of summer harvest

I "ghosted" the watermelon after the disappointment of finding white flesh inside it's sister melon (picked the same day, before it had ripened). Well then as murphy's law would have it, after opening this one Nov 1st, I found some pretty nice red flesh. Not super sweet, but we ate every bit of it. The man said he actually liked the tartness. What a nice surprise!
The eggplant is the only plant from summer that is still flourishing. It has 6 fruits on it now in various sizes; the largest should get plucked soon. Another lesson learned - eggplants apparently need cages or stakes. This one is following in the path of the summery cherry tomatoes and toppled over the retaining wall. It just kinda grew that way, didn't end up there with a catastrophic fall the way the cherries did, so I haven't done anything to try to straighten it.

And here's a before/after shot of the flourishing squash/melon box vs. the way it looks now. There's only a tiny bit left alive on the hillside from the bits of butternut squash and watermelon vines that haven't petered out yet. In the center box are the eggplant, the swiss chard and tatsoy; which seem like they'll never die, although eventually I will retire them in favor of something new.

Cutest kids costumes

Check out these adorable kids costumes sewn by people posting on wardrobe refashion and burdastyle:

• Scroll down to the second photo of these 3 musketeers (barbie style). Double-click on it to make it bigger... link to blog
• This may be the best father and son duo I've seen - pirate and parrot... link to blog
• Where the wild things are inspired this one... link to pic
• Dr. Seuss (complete with green eggs and ham props)... link to pic
  
• And the classic Star Wars costume... link to pic
• Mario bros (several kids)... link to pic
• A baby snail... link to pic
• And finally, I'll leave you with the king (Elvis, of course)... link to pic
  

Ghosts from the garden

I carved my halloween watermelon today. It got this job a few weeks ago when I cut open its sister watermelon and discovered mostly white flesh - due to my eagerness I had cut it off the vine way before it was ripe.
So fast forward to now, and what do I find but some pretty dark pink flesh only 1/2 inch under the skin! Well, I carved it anyways and if no one steals/smashes it tonight I'll cut it open properly tomorrow...
There's no light inside, the flash in the photo just caught it in a contrasty way that shows it well.

Halloween projects

I love halloween, mostly for dressing up, but pumpkins and bats and glow in the dark bugs and all are quite fun. My neighborhood has lots of houses that set out gravestones and spiders and hang spooky things in the trees. While I haven't done that, I did sew a little mat to put under the bowl of candy (I'm usually out and about on halloween and not home to pass out treats). I used stash fabric, but not the candy corn and black cat stuff that was in the box from my Aunt's house that sparked the project.
My idea was to make something similar to this wall hanging I made a few years ago for my mom.

But this time it was a little more simple and I'm not quite as fond of it. I might like it better if I go back and add some layers and quilt it so the pumpkins pop out more. But first we'll see if it survives the night. Two years ago I returned home halloween to find not only the candy gone from the porch, but the bowl holding it was gone, too. Last year the bowl was still there. I'll take it as a compliment if it disappears - that means someone likes it I guess.

Well, Happy Halloween and have a spooky time with your local ghouls and goblins.

50's fashion done to perfection

While I've never seen the show Madmen, I'm loving the 50's and early 60's fashions that are popping up. Be it the cartoon images people have on facebook (like me) of the 50's icons, or the dresses that people are buying and sewing - I love 'em!
This is one of the things I fell in love with when checking out dresses to buy:
I love this kind of belted dress: link to dress at Avenue.com
And then even better, and more authentic than the purchased 50's dress is the home made retro dress, like this one at megannielsen.com. This is the epitome (in a good way) of the gorgeous, classic dress. Awesome. Someday, when I get back into sewing for real, I'll try something like this. Anyway, Megan is kinda my sewing hero. She sews a lot and posts on Wardrobe Refashion and Burdastyle (which used to be crack for me but between me getting a job again and them changing their format is a place I got to maybe once a week). Back on track... Megan is the Queen of making things out of pillowcases she finds at second hand stores. Pretty awesome. Who knew there could be so many options and permutations out there!
Cheers and happy sewing, be it with retro 50's style, or pillowcases, or anything at all.
Speaking of which I have 5 days left to use that candy corn fabric before it sits in the drawer for another 10 months...
I am so close to re-fashioning some of my clothes, but first I must tighten the top I bought for my Peg Bundy costume - loose is not character appropriate. I need to pull in the seams in the arms. If it's not skin tight, no one will know who I am! That and I think I need to buy Lee presson on nails.

Costume ideas

I have way too many halloween ideas and wanted to share... I'm committed to Peg Bundy (Married with Children).

• The progressive insurance lady. Brown wig and headband. White apron with progressive logo. White clothes. Red lipstick. Carry around a price gun or "box" of insurance or remote control. Be obnoxious. For extra credit, look like the progressive lady but change the company name to something else snarky.
• Be a facebook profile pic. Wear a box around your head with facebook written above a square cut out for your face. Have a dry erase board or magnet/word thing below your face to track people who "like" it with a thumbs up and/or so people can "comment" by writing on the dry erase word or playing with the magnet words.
  
• Be Blagoyavich (the disgraced Illionois gov). Wear a dark brown elvis or donald trump wig. Act obnoxious and crazy. Talk about conspiracies.
  
• Daily show staff. Wear a business suit and/or khaki vest with a name tag "Sr. (insert word) correspondent. Carry a microphone and tell people you're report "live" from locations across the world.
  
• Couples - Kayne West and that blond country singer would be funny. She'd carry around a microphone and he'd repeatedly take it away.
  
• Couples - that governor dressed up to hike the appalachian trail with a woman from brazil
  
• Zombie killer with a banjo (a la woody harrelson)
• Balloon hoax guy/family. Act crazy and try to get as much attention as possible. Carry around goofy homemade balloon.
  
• Mike Rowe from dirty jobs. Wear a baseball hat, waders or some sort of protective gear, and cover yourself in dirt. Add more people to the mix by making them the camera/sound crew. Or make someone the crazy goose farm lady who spews off sexual innuendo line after line when they're stuffing pillows with feathers and has no idea she's being funny.
  

Gardening score: 27

I'm not terrible, but I'm not yet that good at this gardening stuff. Definitely have not researched as much as I should, I've been using simple logic which doesn't always work. I harvested this stuff on Saturday.

The squash are fine, but the watermelon are not so fine. Between the colder temperatures and the rotting small watermelon, it seemed to make sense to harvest the big watermelons. But no. The first one is no where near ripe. The second one will be turned into a jack o lantern. If only I had used a successive approach. Meaning I should have picked the first one, cut into it, then only after seeing that one, determine whether or not to cut the second. Hopefully next year I'll raise my gardening score by at least 10 points. To say I've learned a lot this year is a tremendous understatement. And between the dog (who was happy to eat chunks of the unripe watermelon) and the compost bin, most of the mistakes have been put to good use.

At long last

These cacti I bought nearly 6 months ago are finally, firmly planted on the hillside. I made trenches on the high side above the plants so that they can get a little water. The only one that didn't get planted was because of a somewhat big pepper tree root that got in my way. Hopefully the day laborer will help me remedy the situation next week.

Now let me tell you about pepper tree. Someone who lived here before me planted it and it sent runners everywhere and my dear neighbor and I spent almost 2 years spraying the sucklings with extreme poison to try to eradicate them. Finally the plant is dead, but we'll be digging out the roots forever. Don't every plant one! They are on many state/county lists as illegal because they are so invasive.
Sometimes I wonder why I even buy and install new plants. This hot pink-flowered plant is covering about 15% of my yard having climbed the fence from my left neighbor.
This pretty blue chalk stuff joined the party from under my fence and the red flowered stuff is coming over my fence from my rear neighbor.
The neighbor on the right contributes purple lantana through the chain link fence.

Spiders, spiders everywhere

There are two species that seem to specialize in eating bees. The first one makes visible supports on its web that look like embroidery stitches to me. It also has a nickelodian-like green egg sack. I moved pots and relocated this one into a cardboard box with its egg sack. Was terribly afraid I had ruined it when it didn't move for 10 minutes, but later I found it eating its bee like business as usual. The second is a green on that doesn't seem to make a web. It just waits in lay on the plant near the blossoms. I found it first on the blackberry blossoms, then later on the eggplant (bottom shot).