Let's make a Garden in a Shell.

I'm so excited... we've been wanting to make shell gardens for ages.

If you are like us, you are longing for Spring to arrive. We've had a number of lovely sunny days here in Southern California but then a cold front has visited, the snow has fallen on the mountains and the freezing wind has returned, driving us back indoors. We have been looking forward to gardening... looking forward to planting sweet peas, ranunculus and poppies but the cold has kept us out of the garden. Today was wonderfully sunny and as I was cleaning out our shell shell display that lives in the garden, I remembered a photo I had seen a while back of a little garden planted in a shell. Kitty and Teddy were just as excited as I was to give it a try.


We chose two of the largest shells we could find (yes, that is an earthworm in the shell... it's Teddy's new pet and he was very worried that it might escape while we were 'photoing' the shell)


He was much more comfortable 'photoing' the smaller shell while holding his earthworm in his other hand.


As our shells have no drainage holes in them, we decided to use succulents that don't need to be watered very often. It's easier to prevent the shell from becoming water logged if you plant something that doesn't require frequent watering. I took some cuttings from the succulents we have growing on our deck... cuttings work very well; simply stick the cutting in the soil, give it a little water and roots should sprout on their own.


We put a little carbon in the bottom of the shells. Carbon helps to prevent mold and other unwanted organisms from taking over your shell. It's not absolutely necessary but I had some on hand and so decided to use it.


We covered the carbon with a little soil and packed it down firmly.


Then we planted our succulents.


Our shell gardens really are amazingly beautiful. We've put them on our outside deck cupboard, where they are sheltered from wind and rain and we can watch them grow every day.

You see, you can still garden even when Spring hasn't quite arrived yet :-)

Blessings and magic,
Donni

How to make Miniature tools for your Zen Garden.

I promised to show you how we made our Zen Garden tools.

We needed our trusty glue gun, our garden scissors, some sticks and twigs, an acorn cap and a shell.

First, the rake. I used my garden scissors to cut a twig for the handle, a smaller twig for the rakes head and 5 tiny twigs for the rakes teeth.

With my glue gun, I stuck the head of the rake to the handle...

Then I stuck the 5 teeth to the head and...

Voila! The rake was complete.

Then for the acorn scooper...
I used my good 'ol glue gun to stick the acorn head to the stick handle... Now this must be the cutest little Zen Garden tool ever! It scoops sand wonderfully and makes lovely moon shapes in the sand scape.

Now for the shell spade...

My friend the glue gun once again did his magic by sticking the shell to the driftwood handle.

Zen, isn't it?!
So here they are, the twig rake, the acorn scooper and the shell spade. All have been played with endlessly in our Miniature Zen Garden which you can see here.

Blessings and magic.

How to make a Miniature Zen Garden.

Yesterday we thought about the wisdom of ancient Tibet when we painted a lovely rainbow with our colorful sand.

Today, we talked about Buddhism as we made a miniature Zen Garden.

We learnt that a Zen Garden is a place of meditation and we experienced how calming it is to work with sand... to rake it, let it run through our fingers, watch it change shape as we move it with our hands.

This is what we needed to make our Miniature Zen Garden...

A glass, wooden our metal container

A spoon

Sand (we used some of the beach sand that we colored the other day)

And Zen treasures, we decided upon pretty rocks and earth-colored marbles.

We put the sand in the dish. The green and purple sand mixed together to make a lovely pink. We used the spoon to make the sand level.

We took our little rake and made a spiral marking in the sand. We positioned our Zen treasures in our Miniature Zen Garden, making use of the spiral markings to maximize our gardens aesthetic appeal. We placed and removed our treasures many times until we thought it looked just right.
Mr T was very impressed!
And then we played in it... for a very long time... raking, placing treasures... covering treasures, making markings in the sand... arranging treasures again. We 'meditated a lot!'
Can you believe that we made the Zen Garden Tools too? You won't believe how easy they are! Have a look at the link above to see how we made them.

Blessings and magic.