Thought I'd show you what's going on on my deck -- the frugal stuff

Welcome to my back deck. The deck is on the south side of the house and gets quite a bit of sun, even with a yard surrounded by enormous evergreens. 

This is the one place on the property that I can successfully grow basil. I plant this trough with basil, started indoors from seeds, every year. Before I planted out the basil, this year, I was planting the tomato plants that I started from seeds, and I had these 2 leftover tomato seedlings. Not knowing what to do with them, yet, I just popped them in the trough. They've grown well and now I don't have the heart to rip them out. So, to the left, a bunch of basil, doing well now that it has warmed, and 2 tomato plants to the right. Battle of the Mediterraneans. We'll see who wins out.

Also, due to being the sunny spot, I have a couple of heat traps on the deck. I can't grow peppers worth beans, in the garden, so I'm trying some pepper plants, started from seeds, indoors, in these large pots. I will be thrilled to get some peppers this year. I'm sure you'll hear about it if I get any.

 Over near the shadier side of the deck (though still sunny for half the day), I have this small area, marking the entrance to the sitting area.

In the large trough, I have English thyme, started from some old seeds (about 6 or 7 years old), indoors. Thyme is known to be difficult to start from seed in the garden, itself. So, I seeded these into a small container and kept under lights for early spring, and moved out to this trough about a month ago. The thyme seems be to doing well, so far. My other thyme is in the herb garden, in a pot. I never get quite enough thyme from that pot, so this trough will provide the rest of what I need.

Just in front of the trough is a terra cotta pot with a begonia plant in it. Begonias are not hardy in our area. They either have to be dug up in fall, and stored in a dry place for winter, or started new each spring. I bought 2 tubers and planted 2 pots of begonias a year ago spring. I didn't have time to dig them up, last fall. So one day before a heavy frost, I pulled the 2 pots into the garage, and just kept them there. I didn't water them until I moved them back outside in early spring. I didn't know if they would survive, but they did. Surprise, surprise. So, moral of the story is if you can't do the best thing for the plants, do the next best. The other pot doesn't look quite as good. It's suffered with an infestation of slugs. Every time it gets one little hint of a flower bud a slug comes along and chomps it down. I slug baited yesterday and hope to bring that pot back to full life again this summer.

And behind that spot is the sitting area. It's a pleasant place to sit in mid-afternoon, when the full heat of the sun  has passed.

In the back corner of the sitting area are 2 more troughs, one planted with rosemary, the other with lavender. In front of the troughs are the pots of geraniums that I brought indoors for last winter. The pink geraniums I brought inside, pots and all and kept in a south-facing window all winter. The white geranium, here and in 2 other pots, I dug up and put several into a pot together. Then in spring, I divided the clump of geranium plants and repotted. They were leggy in spring, so I trimmed them back and they've been doing well.

 

The rosemary, in the left trough, I bought as plants a year ago, spring, after unsuccessfully trying to start from seeds. In fall, I dug them up and potted in smaller pots to bring indoors for the winter. IN spring, I replanted them, gave them a trim to remove legginess and they've popped back to freshness, nicely. The lavender, I left in the trough (also planted last spring), as I simply ran out of time last year. I just hoped for the best, and pulled the trough right up against the house. It survived, and gave me a lot of buds to cut this year.

At the top of the steps to the patio, I have my 2 4th of July pots. At Home Depot, a month ago, I found some potted petunias on the clearance rack. In each pot were 2 red, 2 pink and 1 white. So, I bought 2 of those pots, plus a small pack of blue lobelia. I planted the all of the pink petunias and 2 of the red petunias in urns in the front yard. And with two of the deck pots, I planted red and white petunias, plus blue lobelia (red, white and blue). Sadly, I only have the one little flag, so I'll be keeping my eyes open for a second for the other pot. (I got this one as a freebie on the 4th of July a couple of years ago.)

The clearance pots of petunias did not exactly scream 4th of July to me. I had to think, a moment, how I could use the red, pink and white flowers. And as I also came for flowers for the front urns, it occurred to me that I could put the pinks out front, and the reds and whites on the deck.

Just below each patriotic pot is a pot of Asiatic lily, violas, and the mums that I bought at the end of last summer.

Again, I brought the pots of mums indoors for the winter, and kept in a sunny window, until it was warm enough in my plastic greenhouse on the deck, where I put them for March and April. I trimmed off their legginess, and am hoping for pots of blooms for fall.

And this is one of the white geraniums that I had dug up and put in a pot with several others, for the winter. they're in a small-ish trough which is too big to bring indoors, as is. So I'll have to dig them again this fall.

I'm guessing you see a couple of frugal themes, here. One, as much as possible, I start plants from seeds. It's the cheapskate way to grow veggies and herbs. Two, as much as I could, I brought flowering plants, which are supposed to be annuals where I live, into the house for the winter, so I wouldn't have to buy the same plants for this summer. And of course, three, I always check the clearance rack of plants at Home Depot for annual flowers. You just never know what you're going to find.

You know, you really should have seen my kitchen and living room windows -- filled to the brim with plants for winter.

Cheap 4th of July decor -- 3D star decorations made from magazine or catalog covers

If you'd like to see how these stars look spray-painted in silver for Christmas decor, check out this link.

Remember a while back I showed you a 3D star I'd made from a catalog page (well, 2 pages actually). These make great and *free* 4th of July decorations, to hang from a tree's branches, or the eaves of your house, or inside, from the kitchen or dining room chandelier-style light fixture.

Catalog (or magazine) covers work best, as they're stiffer than the pages inside. you could also use craft paper, like construction paper or scrapbook paper. But I used catalogs. (Go search your recycle bin!) I saved catalogs for a few weeks, to amass enough covers to make several stars. You'll need 2 pages to make each 3D star. And with a catalog or magazine, you're in luck, as you'll have 2 matching sized pages to use for each star (front cover and back cover). Different sizes for the stars make an interesting arrangement, so don't feel like your catalogs have to all be the same size. Get your older kids to help, as this is a fun project (and keeps them busy for a little bit).

What you'll need:

old magazine or catalog covers (thicker paper works better)
scissors
glue stick
hot glue gun

Here's the how-to:

Tear off the cover, front and back of a catalog. Fold one edge over, on the diagonal, as so:

Unless you're working with a square page, you'll have a rectangular section that is single-thickness, with a triangle that is double-thickness. Cut off the rectangle section, leaving you with a folded over piece in a triangle shape.

Open up your page, and fold/crease in the opposite diagonal direction

Open up, turn your paper over so the nice side of the page is facing you, and fold that nice side to the inside, on the rectangle, this time.

Open, and fold on the rectangle in the other direction.

When you open this again, you'll see that you have a square divided into 4 squares, and each square divided into 2 triangles,with folds.

Use scissors to cut, almost to half-way to the center (so only about 1/4 the way across the page) on all 4 of the straight folds (not diagonal folds).

Turn paper over (nice side down), and fold points on all 4 corners, bringing edge of paper to diagonal fold lines, crease.

Now, take your glue stick and cover one flap of each point with glue,

and pull the edge of the unglued point over the glued point, completely, and stick together. Use a pencil or tip of scissors to press the inside of the glued point together, if needed.

When you're done, you'll have something that looks like this on the underside,

and this on the top side.

Okay, with me so far? Now take the back of that same magazine or catalog cover, and repeat. You should have 2 matching, 4-point stars. (I timed myself on one of these 4-point stars, and it took me about 3-4 minutes. It only takes making a few to get the hang of them and be able to do them this quickly.)

Now, heat up your glue gun. Take your 2 stars, put a dot of hot glue in the 8 places where I've marked the underside of one star with a pen in the photo.

Working very quickly, put the other star's underside up against the hot glue spots, but with a point radiating out from an indented place between two points on the opposite star. What you wind up is a complete star with alternating points, with the 2 undersides of the stars attached.

Use thread or fishing line to suspend from overhead. Simply thread a needle and stitch through one of the points, leaving a long-enough thread for suspending. That's it! If you want them to all look uniform, you can spray paint them. That's what I had thought I would do. But I changed my mind once I got them all finished.

I did these assembly line fashion, making all the folds at once, all the cuts at once, all the glue stick for each star at once, then all the hot glue for each star at once.

The wonderful things about these stars is they cost practically nothing (glue stick and glue gun),  they don't need to be perfect to look good, but if you mess one up, no biggie as they were practically free to make. And they're like everything else in life, the more you do the faster you get.

Happy folding!

p.s. if stars for the 4th of July aren't your thing, you may want to hang onto this idea for Christmas. Smaller versions of these are beautiful in place of bows on gift packages, especially if made with white card stock, or silver or gold scrapbook paper.


Again, here's the link to these stars used as Christmas/New Years decor, painted in silver.