Hats Off to Public Transit (NYC - Field Trip)

While Rosalinda is involved with her new graduate studies, I've taken in a fewwww New York City sights. Headed through downtown Manhattan, on the R train, and bound for the free Staten Island Ferry past the Statue of Liberty, I spotted some lovely art work at the 23'rd street station. 
 
If you follow my sewing blog, and/or listen to my sewing podcast, you know I love hats. So on the way back, I hopped off to check out these subway tile beauties.

Still Holding a Torch for You (New York - Field Trip)

Remember folks, The Bronx is Up and the Battery's Down

I've been on a prolonged visit to New York City, helping my beloved daughter, Rosalinda, move into her new apartment on the East Side of Manhattan.  Rosie's come to take a bite out of the big apple and pursue a graduate degree. I've come along for the ride. As much as I'm looking forward to returning to my California home, I've been savoring this ultimate big city experience.

One of my favorite discoveries was learning that we got an excellent view of  that celebrated Old Lady - a.k.a. The Statue of Liberty - from the cafeteria window at Ikea! Hey, don't you think the Old Gal must be getting tired of holding that torch up for everybody by now?

 ~ ~ ~ How to Acquire Apartment Furniture in NYC ~ ~ ~

Many of us are familiar with that new-apartment dwellers-shopping utopia, Ikea. Back home in California, we use our own car to load up our purchases. Over here in the land of 8.8 million people, it works a little differently for those without a car - which seems to be the majority.

Here's how my daughter acquired an assembled bed, compact eating table with two chairs, and a desk.

-  We called ahead to get advice on ordering on-web versus going to store. Nice man told us that if we ordered on-line, it would take two or three weeks, but that by visiting the store we could get a delivery date of our choice. Not wanting to sleep on the floor in Rosie's new apartment, we went to the store. - Give yourself a solid day. We went late morning Tuesday and it took us about four hours - though we did eat lunch first in the cafeteria. Yes, my daughter had already identified the names and product numbers for the furniture she wanted. Thank goodness.
-  Locate the various free Ikea shuttle stops in (our case) lower Manhattan. You can take a bus or subway to those. The MTA website might help you find them. There is also a water taxi which, I believe, leaves from Wall Street. Sounds fun but we were too exhausted to locate it after we heard this fun fact in the Home Delivery line.
- You might want to pay to have your items pulled from the shelves in the self serve warehouse area. We did not. The mattresses were really shoved in tight and I was glad I'd had a nourishing lunch, as I slammed my body repeatedly against one to make way for another to come out. Other bed pieces were pretty durn heavy. Between the two of us we just managed it - oh and my daughter had a stress fracture on her foot. Normally here, I work on being her feet, but there we were - us and those big heavy cartons that had to get into the carts. I do not recommend moving in this temporarily disabled condition. Given that fracture, we should have paid the forty bucks to have somebody else pick the furniture.
- Once Rose paid for the furniture boxes we'd struggled to load into and onto two carts, we thought we were all set. 

Har de har har.

It took an hour and a half to get through the Home Delivery line. Funny, it didn't look that long. But we moved at a snail's pace. It was like a Disneyland queue were they forgot to keep folks going.
- Rosalinda got the date and delivery window of her choice. The two men that came, schlepped the stuff up her five flights of stairs, assembled the furniture, and carted the boxes back down to her recycling area, were really nice. I practiced my Spanish with one of them. The other, who spoke English as his first language, communicated effortlessly with his non-English speaking helper. He looked to be of Italian ancestry. I've noticed many, many non-Latino folks in the area speak excellent Spanish. No, I didn't know before that 25% of people in the area are of Hispanic ancestry.
- Flat delivery fee at this time was $99. What a deal! Rosie also paid for the assembly - I think it's calculated based on weight. I've seen my husband assemble Ikea beds before and knew it was a big job, so I was really glad we didn't have to deal with it on our first day in.

 

Making Trouble in California - We call it Highway Ice Plant

Don't we all just love those good old succulents? How about this rather pretty little plant,  Carpobrotus edulis, also known as Highway Iceplant? It's been planted generously round many parts of California  since the early 1900's, up until citizens in the 1970's finally spoke up and said it was a really bad idea. 

Unfortunately Carpobrotus edulis is a really bad neighbor, moving in from lands afar and then taking over. It's a coloniser, yah know how that is, right? Those folks come with beads (or in this case seeds!) in hand, and the next thing you know there's no room for the old folks to roam. You'll find large mats, like the one above at lovely local beach sites, along highways, and old railroad tracks - where it was planted to keep our soils from rolling down hill. It did do that, but it also spread, spread, spread. And it just keeps on spreading.

You can read more about highway ice plant invasion problems at this Invasive Plants of California Wildlands site.

Road to Half Moon Bay - Sanchez Farm (field trip)

Stock blooming at Sanchez Farm

Highway 92 cuts across one of the narrower sections of the Santa Cruz Mountains, past Skyline Boulevard and then on down to Half Moon Bay. Before reaching our destination we stopped off to buy peaches and admire the in-bloom stocks.

Inspiration for a garden -Japanese Tea Gardens, Golden Gate Park - San Francisco Field Trip

I'm quite interested in creating themed gardens at home these days - whether in a pot or larger gardening space. Recently my daughter and I went up to the Japanese Tea Gardens in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park, and you can bet I was thinking the whole time about elements for the perfect mini tea garden at home!

Do you think I can manufacture something for a large pot garden, or a stretch of yard, as perfect as a drum bridge?

I've seen miniature bridges, but none as perfectly rounded as this. Kids love to climb over this - and I've had a lot of fun on it as a no-longer-a-kid myself.

Hummmm I think I'm going to need some green glass to give a watery look, something along the lines of this lantern and a lovely orange lily. I have a lot of chasmonti floribunda that's overgrown my yard. It has a lovely orange flower and similar lily foliage. 

I might not be able to squeeze in a temple in a pot, or in my yard for that matter, but these burnt reds contrasting with green are certainly something to think about when it comes to plants, and or a ceramic pot or tile.

How To Invite Fairies to Live in your Garden (Tutorial)

There are Fairies at the Bottom of My Garden!

Fairy magic adds enchantment to my gardening life

Wegman's Nursey ( Redwood City)  helped me prepare for fairies

How To Invite Fairies to Live in your Garden

Ice plant and succulents enhance this tea party garden

1)Find a nice pot - I got mine in my Wegman's Fairy Garden Class /Workshop.
 You might get creative here and re-purpose a pot, large bowl, can, or any open vessel you already have. Fairies are not picky. Make sure you have a hole in the bottom, or some kind of drainage.
2) Fill the pot nearly full with potting soil

3) Decide on a story you want to tell in your garden - the sleeping green fairy below had a very warm bike ride to a cool lake. He parked his cycle, walked across the stepping stones over the lake, and is enjoying a  snooze next to some frog friends on a leaf that's big enough to serve all of them as a little island bench in the lake
4) Pick out a few little outdoor or indoor plants to enhance the story. Tiny ground cover  plants might work well. In my Wegman's class, I included Australian violets/Australian bluebell and some Irish moss. I had some spider plants at home that had shot out spider plant babies, so I added several of those as well. 

In other fairy habitats - such as the tea party themed one above - I've been using (flowering) ice plant, thyme and a lot of the succulents I've been repurposing from pots. With these I often use pea gravel to fill in as a natural stream or landscape. Non-miniature plants like geranium/pelargonium and iris stems can stand in for trees.

5) Find a fairy, and some items that she or he might enjoy. I used a

There are Fairies at  the Bottom of My Garden

fairy, a leaf bridge with frogs, and a fairy bicycle. You could also use little toys - like tiny dolls. You don't even have to include a fairy. Just creating the perfect environment , may well encourage a fairy to move in with you. Just because you don't see one, doesn't mean they aren't living there.
 6) Rocks, gravel, broken pottery shards, sand and other textures add greatly to the story. In the Fairy Garden class I went too we had access to crushed blue and green glass (you can buy bags of it) and broken shards from a turquoise pot. Those items made me think lake when I spotted them.

Waiting for fairies Just because you don't see them, doesn't mean they aren't living there.

Fairy garden is in-progress - keeping my eyes peeled for additions

If children live in or visit your house, make sure they have access to and maintenance rights over the fairy garden.

My fairy gardens live on my patio. I hand water them when it gets dry. Small garden like these are great during our drought, because they takes very little water. In fact, when we often re-purpose leftover water from other domestic events for watering our pots.

Books

Both these Disney Garden books inspire my theme gardening style, which is so vital for a fairy gardener. I like the tabbed-cookbook style of DISNEY'S GARDENING WITH MICKEY when I want to quickly review the steps for creating a hanging basket or well illustrated how-tos for small topiaries. (There's lots of good info for larger topiaries and garden sculpting as well - I just haven't tried it out) In addition, there is good gardening (yard or pots) basic techniques as well as many recommendations for plants that work well for specific themes and temperatures. I highly recommend it, because I have used it a lot over a period of several years.

I also turn regularly to my Secrets of Disney's Glorious Gardens book. It has a lot of similar techniques and information as DISNEY'S GARDENING WITH MICKEY and it also has lovely, lovely photos that inspire me. So when I want to sit down and just get ideas for themes or gardening styles, I pour through the photos in this book.
                

Fairy magic is adding enchantment to my life, when it comes to gardening.

~ ~ ~

There are Fairies at the Bottom of My Garden

California Summer at the Beachside Boardwalk in Santa Cruz( SF Bay Area Field Trip)

Back around the turn of the 20'th century, amusement parks were a big summertime draw for regular folks - middle class and the lower middle class. With the railroad making close by day trips doable - people took weekend trains out to the edges of urban areas to ride fast rides, eat funnel cakes, compete for cheap prizes and enjoy a little fresh air at a plethora of public amusement parks.

The railroads, having acquired massive tracts of territory
through power private and public land grabs, often owned these temporary fun towns. The trips increased train ridership, 
even though the actual take at the gate didn't provide much in the way of profit for these major corporations.

A Trip to the Boardwalk inspires thoughts of Appliqué

The Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk was a part of a chain of seaside parks along the West Coast of the United States. Built in 1907, it is the oldest such park to survive, and, though no longer accessible by train, it  still makes for a wonderful weekend field trip from the San Francisco Bay Area.

~ ~ ~
Sewing - Inspiration for Appliqué http://meencantacoser.blogspot.com/2015/07/applique-inspiration-summer-at-hte.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santa_Cruz_Beach_Boardwalk

Great public radio podcast - Amusement Parks History and More http://www.stitcher.com/podcast/public-radio-international/pri-to-the-best-of-our-knowledge/e/amusement-parks-38106844