Grab a spoon and head to the garden?

Spring is solidly here! Birds are chirping. Blooms are sprouting. Rebirth and renewal abound. This year I am determined to grow a reasonable crop of fresh veggies & fruit. There’s nothing quite as delicious as something you grow with your own two hands, nurturing and cultivating over time and producing something you can prepare for your family or for giving home made gifts to your friends. This year the orchard trees that we planted last year seem so happy and full of potential. Darling little pink and white flowers dot their branches with a promise of something wonderful to come. My one little raised garden bed is planted and I’m eager to see the sprouts popping through the soil soon. The sense of self-sufficiency is rewarding even before it provides results.

In another step toward self-reliance, my husband and I purchased chicks that we hope will, one day, produce real chicken eggs that we will steal from them and scramble, poach, fry, and boil. Right now they are basking in our garage in a child’s plastic swimming pool with a warm caressing heat lamp toasting their downy feathers. My husband thinks that music is an important component to raising happy and friendly chickens, so a radio plays lightly in the background, tunes my husband prefers from the 1970’s. Songs like, “Everybody was kung-fu fighting…” and “Stairway to Heaven” and tonight when I checked on them, in an interesting twist of fate, the Beatles were playing, a song called “The Walrus” which has a reference to “the egg man” while our little Rhode Island Red stood proudly, for the first time, on top of her water bowl. If the chicks are this cool, I can just imagine how rockin' they'll be as hens.

Spoon Garden Markers

This upcycld craft is for marking your garden space.

Step 1) Gather together some old spoons that you don't use anymore. Bent stems are fine because they'll be buried underground.

Step 2) Trace the head of the spoon on a piece of paper. Be creative! Be imaginative! I used white but you can use magazine clippings, scrapbook paper, anything to make your garden markers interesting. Cut the tracing and remove a little extra so that the paper will fit on the spoon. You can also use the inside of the spoon or the outside, whichever you prefer. I used waterproof pen to outline a little design and watercolors to add a little color.

Step 3) Paint some glue on the back of the clipping and attach to the spoon.

Happy upcycling!