Joey, Kam and Raven

I think, at a child's birth, if a mother could ask a fairy godmother to endow it with the most useful gift, that gift should be curiosity.
-Eleanor Roosevelt

Vegetable Grafting

Early this spring I discovered a gardening technique that I had never heard of before.  I'm sure most of you know about grafting with trees, but did you know you could do it with vegetables too?  Tomato grafting allows you to combine the best characteristics of two types of plants into one.



 I read about it over at A Way to Garden and I totally geeked out.  Two parts of my personality, the avid gardener and the nerdy biologist, were jumping up and down inside my head. 
 
Most gardeners are well aware of the tomato blight, viruses that are destroying tomatoes around the country.  And it's also true that heirloom tomatoes, the best tasting kind, in my opinion, are particularly susceptible.  Really, that's one of the reasons why they started breeding hybrids, to make them more resistant to these viruses.  The problem is that hybrids don't taste as good as the heirlooms.

So what to do?

Armed with a razor blade and a silicone clip, you can take two seedlings and combine them into one super tomato plant via razor blade surgery.  One seedling should be disease-resistant and prolific.  This becomes the rootstock (the bottom half) and controls overall how the plant grows.  The other seedling should produce fruit that taste really yummy.  This becomes the scion (the top half) and controls what the fruit look and tastes like.

It really is just about that simple.  In theory.


I especially like this picture (above) because it shows how the rootstock on the bottom is attempting to grow itself some leaves while the scion on the top is attempting to grow its own set of roots.  All of these will need to be pulled off to keep that from happening.  If these were allowed to grow, it would ruin all the hard work, producing grodey hybrid fruit and reducing the disease resistance of the plant.

I actually managed to create 6 successfully grafted plants on the first go.  I felt a bit like a mad scientist during this entire endeavor and may or may not have had the words, "It's Alive!" go through my mind every so often.

I started with 12 seeds of Maxifort for the rootstock, which is resistant to F2 (Fusarium Wilt 1 and 2), N (Nematodes), TMV (Tobacco Mosaic Virus), V (Verticillium Wilt), PL (Corky Root Rot) and FOR (Fusarium Crown and Root Rot).  I also started 6 each of Brandywine and Ace (These were the heirloom seeds that I already happened to have).  With Jeff's help, I grafted 7 plants total.  One of which came apart after the first day and started growing quite an impressive set of leaves from the rootstock.  (I won't be planting this one.)



The silicone clip fell off of this guy (below) early on, but the two parts somehow managed to stay close enough together to fuse.  It's definitely less pretty than the others that were held closer together, but I still think it's amazing.



I won't go into the specifics right now as I am miles away from being any sort of authority on the subject.  Though I do promise to include more info as I figure it out.  I basically followed the instructions in this video for the top grafting, not the side grafting that he starts out explaining.






Oh, I almost forgot.  I have seen grafted tomato plants for sale at a nursery or two around town.  They were running about $12 for a gallon size.  So depending on how many you want to grow, this might be a more economical solution for you.

Mini Murals

I finished another little painting in Joey's room.  This one is from Lu and the Swamp Ghost, written by, strangely enough, James Carville.



I've done quite a few of these over the years.  Luckily, Joey's still excited to come home from school and see that I've finished another one. 





All of the mini murals I've done come from her favorite storybooks.

 

I scanned the pictures, played with them in photoshop to show as much of the basic outline as possible (I think I used the stamp effect), and then printed them up on overhead projector sheets.  You can cram quite a few of them on each one.



Then I projected them onto the wall and traced them in pencil.



You can barely see the penciled versions unless you're right up close.  That way, I can finish them when I have time. Though this technique may have given me way too much time, since I've been working on this project for like ever.  And there are still more pencil drawings than finished paintings.

Our favorite part is deciding where to put everybody.



Like this little guy who is in the corner, behind the door.



And this bunch who are all hanging from a long rope I painted in.

I use plain ol' acrylic craft paints, thinned with water, letting it dry between coats (sometimes speeding things with a blow dryer).  This allows me to more easily do shading on the sort of difficult pieces.  I traced quite a few of them at the end with a super thin, black marker.



The Wild Things' hair and scales were done mostly with the marker.  It gives you a lot more control that way.

People Eggs

It's almost Easter.  Which, around here, means it's time to add to our collection of blown eggs.

So how about some cute little people eggs?



I did the first version of this 13 years ago, when Joey was just a baby.



As you can see, I've improved on my technique somewhat.  Having the Pysanky supplies instead of the crap-tastic wax crayon in the kit helps, but so does having Photoshop and my own printer.  (The original was done before I had a digital camera or any type of processing software.  I snapped several pictures, dropped off the film at Walgreens and used whatever came back in that envelope.)

No real tutorial on this, just some tips.

Tips
-Print out the pictures of the faces before you start drawing on the body.  It really helps to get the sizing right.
-I printed one page with lots of cropped faces on it, doing several of each person because I expected to screw most of them up.  Surprisingly, I didn't.

-Before I cut anything out, I lightly sprayed the entire paper with a matte fixative spray.  This does two things: it sort of protects the ink and gives the paper a little more body so it stands out from the egg.  You could alternately print the pictures on paper that's a bit stiffer.
-Dye the egg with little bodies and no heads. 

(If this looks uber impressive to you, you have got to get yourself some Ukrainian egg dyeing supplies. It isn't difficult at all.)

-You can also put names on the back of each egg, like so. 
 
-When they are completely and totally dry, attach the heads using hot glue or Museum Wax.  You really don't want to use water based glue because it tends to warp the paper or make the dye on the egg run.


Good luck.  And as usual, send me a picture if you make these yourself.

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Related Posts-
Easter Prep (for Blown Eggs)




Ukrainian Egg Dying

Less Frustrating Ways to Dye Blown Eggs

Egg Drying Rack

Hanging Blown Eggs

Indoor Easter Garden

Day of the Dead Sugar Skull Costume

Here's something we threw together before school in like 20 minutes.

Hope you all have a fun and safe day!

My Not So New Job

Ever since I started this job, Joey's been giving me grief for not telling you all about it. I think she feels I'm somehow being dishonest for not sharing such an important aspect of my life (and the possible reason why my posts are sometimes months apart).

So what is it that I do?

I'm on the ground crew for an airline, babysitting planes and chauffeuring baggage. The pay isn't great, but my whole family (Jeff, kids, parents) and I can now fly for free. Once we can synchronize our schedules, that is. Since I got out of training 6 months ago, Jeff and I haven't had a single day off together.


(Last plane of the night, getting ready to push)

In theory, I got this job so we can fly for free. In reality, though, Jeff is the only one who's actually gone anywhere.

It does give me a chance to take pictures with my phone, most of which are of sunsets. Cause man we have some nice ones out there.


(After a particularly fierce rainstorm, when they called a ground hold for lightning.)


(Leaning out the galley door. This is the place where I most often crack my head.)


(Pulled over while running bags to photograph the sunset. Because I have my priorities.)


(While gassing up my tug. I love how the sun is shining straight through the windows on the closest plane.)


(Waiting for international bags in the bowels of the airport. Just out of frame is a family of chuds.)

Jaden and Joey

I'm not going to change the way I look or the way I feel to conform to anything. I've always been a freak. So I've been a freak all my life and I have to live with that, you know. I'm one of those people.
-John Lennon