My Auntie’s Garden – Part 6 – Even More Small Flowers

I am back from the holiday with my friends from the university but unfortunately, I did not bring back any pretty pictures. There were no pretty sceneries, cute animals, or interesting flowers. There was a lot of talking since we did have some catching up to do – we did not meet for over two years, even more with some.

But there are still some more pictures from my aunt’s garden so there will be several more posts of that. I am very busy in my own garden right now too so I do not have much time to write.

Art: Combining resin and beads

It was just a matter of time, wasn’t it? And with the installation of actual working lights in our cellar, I had not just enough illumination, but also work space again to do some resin work.

Now, in between the last time I did this and now I invested into two things:

1: sanding paper up to 200 grit for the small disk sander that I have

2: A small bench grinder to polish the pieces.

Between the two of them, it saves probably 70% of the annoying work. Instead of having to start hand sanding at about 200 grit, I started at 2000. Now, there is even finer sanding paper for the machine, but that wouldn’t be very helpful, since the sander is, of course, a flat surface and I want the pieces round, so a few, really just a few minutes of hand sanding with the paper on a soft sponge are needed. Then polishing is a treat (provided I hold tight on the pieces and don’t have them shot into orbit).

With the resin done it’s always a question of how to turn them into pendants. When they come out of standard moulds, they fit standard bezels, but these here don’t. Wire wrapping is an option, but being no good at it the results are often not satisfying. It also takes the focus away from the resin pieces I think. Now with the beads bringing me so much fun, why not combine?

Round resin piece with a beaded bezel. The resin piece is brown and blue, like continents and the ocean

This is one of those “sea and land pieces” that I love so much, even though I’m not completely happy with it. I shouldn’t have added the metallic pigment, because there was a layer of flitter that settled somewhere in the middle that makes it slightly opaque. The bezel is made from seed beads in two different sizes and some small crystals.

Round resin pendant in a blue beaded bezel. The resin piece resembles mountains with a sky

This one is gorgeous, and I can’t decide which side I love better. I think I’ll try something similar again with the attempt at creating northern lights. This started out rectangular, btw.

The last piece defied my attempts at beading, because the curve gets too narrow at the top.

Tear shaped resin pendant with brown on the outside and blue within

It has the same issue as the first one, but look at that shine!

My Auntie’s Garden – Part 5 – More Small Flowers

My Auntie’s Garden – Part 4 – Small Flowers

Just some small flowers of different colors.

My Auntie’s Garden – Part 3 – Pansies

The Czech name for these beauties is “maceška” which is a diminutive form of the word “macecha” (stepmother). Don’t ask me why, I have no clue. These were not grown in the rock garden itself, they are in old ceramics throughs near the steps into the house.

My Auntie’s Garden – Part 2 – Tulips

Not the biggest collection imaginable, but the strategically put tulips here and there resulted in quite a few various pictures.

Degupdate: Candy is back, and this time she brought reinforcements!

After our sweet Estelle passed away, it was clear to us that since we didn’t want to give up Candy, we would need new friends for her quick. Thankfully our breeder agreed to take her in and socialise her with two young degus. This went really well and left us just a week to get Degustan back in shape again*, since Candy and Estelle had eaten away quite a lot of the wood holding the wire in place. Of course we ran from problem into trouble, since most parts are cobbled together from leftover pieces, so what used to fit the last time doesn’t fit now. But we finished yesterday and went to pick up the crew today. So please meet Candy, Sky and Lulu.

An adult brown degu, a juvenile white and a juvenile brown and white degu snuggled together in a carrier.

When we brought them home they were a bit shaken from transport, so the two babies snuggled close to Candy.

Juvenile brown and white degu held in hand

Lulu is a shy little girl. She has already claimed what used to be Estelle’s favourite spot: behind the running wheel.

Juvenile white degu sitting on a girl's upper torso. The face of the girl is not visible, only the mouth

Sky, on the other hand, is more like Candy. They will probably have some fights about who’s the boss when Sky grows up. It’s funny how much juvenile degus look like adult mice.

Adult brown degu nose to nose with juvenile white degu in an enclosure.

Here you can see Candy encouraging Sky to go exploring. It is clear how much comfort her presence gives them. When Candy went on a short trip outside of the enclosure, they both hid and only came out after Candy returned. Now, please, let those three have a long and happy degu life, my heart can’t take any more breaking.

*I’m afraid my colleagues think I’m crazy. We were chatting on Friday, with me mentioning that I need to finish the project and a colleague shared that yeah, with his hamster he always had to replace the wooden boards not just because of gnawing, but also because of the pee. I said “oh, that’s no problem for me, I put down tiles” and they all looked at me like I had sprouted an additional head…

My Auntie’s Garden – Part 1 – Introduction

Very rarely do I have an opportunity to visit my favorite aunt in the spring when her rock garden is in full bloom, so today year when I got lucky I took a ton of pictures. I will post them piecemeal over a non-specified period of time.

This is the outside view of her house and the garden. You can already see the multitude of shapes and colors.

And to start things first a picture of a small pond with water lilies. They are not blooming yet, so just a little anecdote to amuse you: When I was a little kid, I liked to play in this garden by running and jumping on the rocks. My aunt did not mid as long as I did not damage any plants, which I somehow managed. But she did warn me to not do it near the pond because I could fall in it. So of course I ignored that instruction and one summer day I did indeed fall into the pond, butt first. There was laughing and Itoldyousoing on my aunt’s part and wailing and gnashing of teef on my part. Luckily I did not hurt my self nor the water lillies.

Mighty Kites

For me, a true sign of coming spring – a red kite sitting on the huge ash tree behind my house. They are magnificent beasts and I do wish they would sit still long enough to get really up close and in focus pictures.

I have realized that I have not posted any bird pictures for a looong time. Unfortunately, there are very few birds around lately and even fewer opportunities to take pictures.

A Day at the Zoo 3: Because the Night

Night zoos are one of my favourite things because they have the coolest animals. They’re also bad for taking pics. Even my most light sensitive lense isn’t much good, mostly because it’s too dark for the auto focus but also too dark for me to use the manual setting. But there are some acceptable pics.

The tree porcupine was kind enough to step into the little light and my focus. This is where digital cameras with their near limitless image storage play to their strength: I probably deleted 100 blurry images to walk away with about 6 decent ones.

Very dark and blurry picture of an echidna

Nope, that’s not a worse pic of the same animal, that’s actually an echidna. No, I don’t care that the father next to us told his kid it was a porcupine. Zoos offer many learning opportunities, but obviously no learning obligations.

And now, are you ready for one of my absolute favourites? The aardvark!

We were very lucky: on our second visit to the night zoo, the aardvarks (3 wonderful animals) had their enclosure cleaned and the caretaker had turned up the light there. They didn’t mind (they could have gone to their dark burrow) and posed for some nice pics.

Aardvark in action!

Look at that snout!

There is a story that goes with the aardvarks: The zoo in our state capital also has a night zoo with aardvarks, but while this here has the glass all up the enclosure, our zoo only has it about a metre high, just enough so the aardvarks cannot escape. Some years ago when we visited the zoo, Mr looked at the aardvarks, not realising that there was nothing between him and the animals at the level of his nose. Well, the aardvark obviously thought it was only fair game that if Mr got to look at it, it got to look at Mr, went on its hind legs, put the front legs on top of the glass and put its snout almost into Mr’s face. The look on my beloved one’s face was something I still treasure to this day.

Mini Holiday 2: Fishes!

Aquariums are always cool. Fish are cool. Glass fish are double cool, just hard to take pics of.

A tiny but relaxed blowfish.

The head of a fish üoking out of the ground

What’s up?

Nobody ever told me that piranhas are sparkling!

A striped scalar with several smaller fish around

No trouble finding Nemo here

All of Frankfurt is decorated in support of Ukraine, and it seems like even the fish are showing their solidarity.

Mini Holiday: A Day at the Zoo 1

For the easter holiday we wanted to do a day trip with the kids, but given the ongoing pandemic we didn’t want to do a theme park with all the screaming and close contact that entails. But even my two very cool teenager can be lured into a nice zoo with interesting animals. This time we chose Frankfurt. It’s easy to reach by train, not too far for a day trip, and the train tickets were still in the affordable range, though they only were because the kids were free.

And my camera got something to do (it’s getting bored in here), with the stalker lens giving insecure men inferiority complexes. So stay tuned over the next days for a lot of animal pics.

A male lion lying on a stone, looking relaxed.

This chill boy has his enclosure near the entrance, and showing off his amazing talent of chilling 20hrs a day, he didn’t move once between us arriving and leaving.

I saw a sloth! At least that’s what the signs claim. But it had moved from the canopy to a location unknown between our first and second visit.

A binturong family with 2 babies on top of mum

Look at those babies! Binturongs are seriously cute, even though they always look ancient, even when they’re babies.

Gingerbread Houses

These are the more “traditional”

gingerbread houses my mother made this year.

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My Auntie’s Garden – Part 6 – Even More Small Flowers

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Art: Combining resin and beads

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My Auntie’s Garden – Part 5 – More Small Flowers

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My Auntie’s Garden – Part 4 – Small Flowers

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My Auntie’s Garden – Part 3 – Pansies

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My Auntie’s Garden – Part 2 – Tulips

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Degupdate: Candy is back, and this time she brought reinforcements!

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My Auntie’s Garden – Part 1 – Introduction

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Mighty Kites

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A Day at the Zoo 3: Because the Night

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Mini Holiday 2: Fishes!

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Mini Holiday: A Day at the Zoo 1

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Gingerbread Houses

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