DIY Cement Garden “Hands”

At first, I was a scared little girl when it came to working with cement. It seemed so permanent and could be a colossal waste of time if I screwed it up. Which I do often. Then, I had an epiphany. Cement is no different than cookie dough-other than the whole edibility issue.

So, I opened up the creative floodgates and made a cement hand (or two). This little hand will be perfect holding birdseed, or just adding a little pinache to my flower beds. And it cost almost nothing to make.

Here’s all that you’ll need to make your very own cement hand:
Bucket and access to water
Rubber gloves
Sand/Topping mix
Hand shovel or garden trowel
Cooking oil and paintbrush

Pour a cup or two of the Sand/Topping Mix into a bucket. Add a little water and begin to mix-just like cookie dough!

The cement needs to be the consistency of thick dough. Do a test by pushing a little to the side of the bucket-if it stays in place pretty well, it’s thick enough. If it slumps right back down, you’ll need to add a little more of the Sand/Topping Mix.

Turn a rubber glove inside out and pour a tablespoon into it. Clamp the end of the glove and give it a good shake, until the whole glove is coated inside with oil.

Fill the inside out rubber glove with cement, squeezing it to the tips of each finger.

Prop up the fingers into the desired shape and let dry overnight.

Once the cement hand is completely dry, remove the rubber glove carefully by cutting and removing sections a little at a time.

That’s it-you’re done! Easy as making cookies, wasn’t it?

 

You now have a one of a kind art piece with which to decorate your garden, your fireplace mantle or even use it to hold your business cards at work.

Take that, normalcy!

It’s getting hot in here, so take off all your…

Today, the high will be a balmy 104-which translated into Tulsa’s humid temperatures, means 110. My poor little garden is persevering through the heat, like a bunch of state champs. However, the brown and crumbly tips of my squash plant cannot go unnoticed.

I have found more than one rotted out, burnt to a crisp little crookneck squash-that had started off with so much pizzaz and promise. It breaks my heart.

And a couple of my lettuce plants had to be put down. We’ve still had more than enough for the two of us to eat huge salads every day-and share with others. But, it’s so hard to say goodbye to yesterday’s lettuce. You eat some, you loose some.

Fighting the heat and the dang squirrels over my tomatoes is a daily struggle. Cute, furry squirrels can’t get enough of tearing off perfectly green tomatoes, taking ONE bite and then tossing it to the side like a fickle woman shopping for shoes. How wasteful you are, little creatures. If only I had a BB gun. Oh wait, I do. And a heart of stone in order to be able to kill you. Oh wait, I don’t. You can have the tomatoes…

But, if I’m going to endure this heat every day while pampering, clipping, weeding, harvesting-I want to get to this point with my tomatoes. So back off, heat. Back off, squirrels. A girl can only be pushed so far and then she snaps. (Insert BB gun deployment noise).

New Garden, Same old Sinful Weeds

Back in January, I planned my garden to the “t”. I plotted out the spacing, ordered the seeds, tilled the earth, and removed all the weeds in preparation for squash, broccoli, peppers, tomatoes and-oh-so-much-more.

Although the bunnies decimated the broccoli and a couple of tomato plants, things seemed to be right on track. The rain came, the seedlings grew and soon, I had lettuce on my table. All of the work, the planning, and the plotting brought about the fruits of my labor.

But, like a bad habit-the weeds returned. (You can see them in the upper left hand corner.) Each year, I look for solutions to stop these invasive, icky weeds. Biceps and I will spend hours pulling them up by the roots, and a few weeks later-we are right back where we started. There’s just no easy, non-toxic way to organically rid my garden of weeds once and for all.

It got me thinking about my own heart and my own weeds. I carefully pull up the weeds (sin) by the roots in my own life and for a few weeks, my garden (my life) is free from my bad habits. I even have a few victories-much like my lettuce, there is a harvest for my labor. I see myself respond to a situation with a godly attitude, I am more patient, I am kind when I don’t feel like it. I am so proud of myself. (ironic, isn’t it?).

But then, I’m in Wal-mart. (Almost enough said there.)

And that lady with the four screaming kids stops in the middle of the gosh darn aisle and takes FOREVER picking out a bar-b-que sauce. And I say all sorts of things to her in my head-as I smile, move her cart out of my way, and in total, undeniable frustration, power-walk towards the vinegar.

I don’t think about the fact that she’s probably worn out and taking forever looking for bar-b-que sauce because her mind is overly distracted by her four screaming kids. And that a kind word from me would have possibly made her day-rather than my obviously fake smile. But, I don’t care about that. She just cost me 20 seconds in that aisle. What’s next?! A minute lost trying to get around her again in the spice aisle? Why yes, as a matter of fact.

By the time I leave Wal-mart, I’ve encountered her exactly four times. And each time, my blood pressure rises as I increasingly reach the point where I want to yell at her, “DON’T YOU REALIZE THERE ARE OTHER PEOPLE IN THIS STORE TRYING TO SHOP?!!!!”. But, I don’t. I smile that fake smile again, move around her and mumble something under my breath her youngest hears but doesn’t understand-thank goodness I speak German when needed.

Icky, gross weeds. They’re still there in my life.

As I’m loading my groceries into my sweet ride, I see her barely making it through the automatic doors with all four kids intact. She hangs her head, sighs and heads through the obstacle course towards her car. I smile once again as she passes me and she sees the church sticker on my car. She tells me we go to the same church and that she gave her life to Christ at that church.

Ouch. Double ouch. Triple, icky weeds ouch.

I may have a brand new garden, but those icky weeds need to be consistently pulled. There’s no easy way to do it. Each time, there are less and less weeds-but they’re never fully gone. They are still there, trying to choke out the harvest. My job is to continue to pull them up, one by one, until my Maker completely removes them from my life and I am with Him.

Praise the Lord my garden in heaven is going to be awesome and weed-free.

Le Garden is in. And so are the bunnies.

Dear Bunnies of Oklahoma:

Right now, you are totally on my naughty list. True-you are really fuzzy and cute. True-you have adorable, tiny noses that spazz out over the simplest smell.

And, true-your jet black eyes make my heart melt.

However, cute little bunnies-after I have tilled the soil…

…planted dainty little plants…

…why do you don ninja masks and incessantly choose to nibble on my plants in the darkness of the night?!

You kind’ve make me feel like this. And I don’t like feeling like this. Don’t make me get the rubberband gun. 

Sincerely-

A concerned gardening citizen