Gnome Week: Day 3

To start out, the premiere of Gnomeo and Juliet came out last night and it did not disappoint.  I arrived an  hour early to save us ten seats.  I was the only person in the theater for the first 3/4 of the hour.

 This is what the Schmidt's camp at the theater looked like

This is us after the movie in our 3-D glasses.  We had a blast at the movies.  I won't spoil it for you but the story line stayed pretty true to the original story of Romeo and Juliet.  They kept most of the main characters of the play and added some new faces.  It was also fun to pick out the voices of characters.  One of my favorites was Dolly Parton's character.  That's right, Dolly Parton was a gnome.

Gnome Quote of the Day:  "Gnome body gnomes the trouble I've seen"

Gnome of the Day:  Gunter

If this slightly chunky looking fellow looks like he just ate a very large meal, that would be because he was caught stealing food from the house.  I came home from work to find a trail of blueberry juice from the fridge...with the door left wide open...through the living room and outside to the back porch area.  There were blue berry finger prints all over the glass door.  Gunter loves to eat and loves fruit.  He must listen at the glass door for when new groceries arrive and then sneak in at night to eat the fruit and other goods from the store.  I've also notices that the dried cranberry treats for the bunnies have been disappearing at a faster and faster rate.  I keep telling him he needs to start taking better care of himself but its no use, he thinks he will live forever, well at least 400 years like the other gnomes.

He's so full he can't move from the deck

Gnome Lesson of the Day:  Lady Gnomes

The women folk are very shy and stick their own kind.  That's why it is rare to see a lady gnome, more so than the males.  The are trained by their mothers the proper gnome manner to tend to a home.  They are inclined in the arts of weaving, sewing, playing music and singing. 

Young female gnomes are distinguished by their green hats and braided hair.  After marriage they wear plain, camouflage attire and tuck their hair under scarfs and dark colored caps.  When they reach 350 years of age they start growing a light beard. 

Female gnomes always give birth to twins and their pregnancy lasts 12 months at the least.  For most of their lives the women stay close to home and do not wander about like their husbands and brothers.

Behind the Scenes: Gnome Village

Part of gnome week, as you may already know, we dedicated our newsletter to gnomes.  To prepare for this email I built a gnome village out of items we already had on hand at the store.  So here are the rest of the photos that didn't make the email but that are still worth taking a look at.

 Gustav just got done planting his spinach that he "borrowed" from our greenhouse

 This guy is harvesting some mushrooms.  The bright colored mushrooms we have on sale at the store that this gnome sold to us for a pretty steep price.  F.Y.I. don't do business with gnomes, they'll swindle you out of your last penny.

 I'm not sure what this one is up to except daydreaming and smelling the flowers

 

 Always hard a work, this cheerful fellow is always willing to lend a hand.  Right now he's helping pick mushrooms.

The gnome house was just made out of a cardboard box.  I taped the roof together with packaging tape then painted a red roof with shingles.  Then I cut out a few squares for holes so the gnomies would have some windows.  I don't know if you noticed the gnome that is climbing out of the top window.  My guess is he didn't want his parents to know he's sneaking out of the house.

 The clothes line is just a piece of string with paper clothes cut out of different color card stock

 This tree gnome door is one I made for my own garden.  Its layered balsa wood that I painted and used guerrilla glue to stick together.  Then I sealed it with a polyurethane.

 Just waiting for the birds to arrive to share the bird seed with.

                                         

  Swinging from the bird feeder

                                               

These three must have done something bad to one of those nasty Siberian gnomes.  I found them yelling for help locked in the upstairs freezer

  

Here they are huddled together for warmth 

 These ones have already invaded the store and set up camp in our houseplants.  By the end of the day the are in our bulbs, our birdhouses, on our bookcase, you name it, they've colonized it.

Gnome Week: Day 2

Gnome Saying of the Day: "To Gnome me is to love me."
Gnome of the Day:  Aberforth

Aberforth

You might not see this little gnome right away.  He's not as outgoing as some of the other gnomes that live in the yard.  Don't be fooled into thinking he's the shy type.  He's actually an intellectual and prefers reading over conversations.  Before migrating from his home country, Albania, with his slightly older twin brother Albus (description located in Day 1 of Gnome Week) Aberforth was a scholar and spent most of his time at the Library reading every topic from ancient traditions of the gnomes to new developments in working the land.  He teaches the young gnomes of the neighborhood about their rich culture and how to be responsible young adult gnomes by respecting nature and fulfilling their roles as guardians of the animal kingdom.  When he is not teaching he can be found in secluded, quiet spots in the garden where he can reflect on life and study nature without any distractions.  Here, he has a lantern so that he can keep reading after the sun sets on top of this lawn chair/bird bath.  


Gnome Lesson of the Day:  There are Six types of Gnomes

 The most common is the Forest Gnome who rarely comes into contact with man.  His physical appearance resembles that of the ordinary gnome. The Forest gnome is a terrific woodcarver and flute player.  They live in trees and, like other gnomes, can run as fast as 35 miles per hour.

The Garden Gnome lives in gardens and lawns.  His nature is on the somber side, and he rather enjoys telling melancholy tales. If he begins to feel too closed in , he simply goes to the woods. But, as he is quite learned, he sometimes feels out of place there.  In order to keep your gnomes from getting bored provide them with different types of entertainment such as flowers to plant and water, veggie gardens to till, a bird bath to swim in, bird feeders to feed the birds....you get the idea.

Dune Gnomes are slightly larger than their woodland brethren and choose remarkably drab clothing. The men usually dress in gray and the women dress in khaki. 

House Gnomes have the most knowledge of man, often speaking his language. They know the most about mankind and gnome leaders usually tend to be House gnomes for this reason.  The House gnome is good-natured and likes to tease and prank others in a friendly way.

The farm gnome resembles the house gnome but is of a more constant nature and is conservative in all matters.

Siberian Gnomes have been more interbred than other Gnomes and associate freely with trolls. They are much larger than the other types and have an infinitely more nasty nature. It is best never to evoke the ire of such Gnomes for they delight in revenge. In certain regions there is not a single gnome to be trusted.

Gnome Week: Day 1

Today is the first day of Schmidt's Official Gnome Week.  Its our version of Shark Week from the Discovery Channel.  Gnome Week is our way of celebrating the little guys in the garden and their extraordinary work they accomplish that usually goes unnoticed..  Why gnome week?  Well, working at a garden center and seeing all the fantastic gnomes that travel in and out of our store, our staff has become more than a little obsessed with all things gnomes. Its our way of saying thank you for all the joy you bring us.  We decided they deserve their own week so we can explore the complexities that make up this small yet important being.  Its such a special week that I've even added a few extra days.  Heck, gnomes probably run on their own time system so its probably a regular week for them.  During the week of gnomes each day I will bring you information you may or may not gnome (he he) about my special friends in the garden.  Each day will have a gnome saying of the day, I will introduce each one of the gnomes occupying my garden and bring you more information than you thought existed on the subject. 

Gnome week also coincides with the opening of the new animated movie Gnomeo and Juliet.  The story is about two feuding yards between the blue gnomes and the red gnomes.   They come alive when no one is watching  but while they are battling each other two young gnomes fall in love from opposing sides.  The movie opens Friday Feb. 11th.  The Schmidt's staff already has their movie tickets so we can do some serious gnome "research" and report back to you on Saturday. 

Movie Poster

                             

 Gnome Lesson of the Day:  General Gnome Information

For today's lesson I thought I would give some general information about gnomes.  Garden gnomes originated in Germany in the mid 1800's.  They were made of terra cotta and featured conical hats and solid color clothes and wore white beards.  Gnomes are always born as twins.  They have a life span of 400 years.  They are able to smell 19 better than humans and are 7 times as strong. They can predict the weather and have ESP capabilities.  They love to dance and smoke pipe tobacco.  Gnomes are guardians of the animal world and protect and live peacefully among them.  Their enemies include trolls, goblins and cats believe it or not.  Tomorrow I will explore further into the gnome world and give a more detailed description of these garden inhabitants.

Gnome Saying of the Day:  "There's gnome place like home."
Gnome of the Day:  Albus, the gardener


Albus the gardening gnome



Albus is not afraid to get his hands dirty.  As you can see he keeps himself busy bringing in fresh veggies from his garden.  He migrated here from Albania where he was under constant fear of being eaten by a dragon that lived in a cottage cheese cottage and had a sweet tooth for gnomes.  Albus was so petrified of being eaten by this dragon he left his home country with his brother Aberforth (discussed in tomorrow's gnomes) and fled to America.  After settling in Oregon, the older of the brothers, Albus, found he could now relax without fear of always hiding from gnome eating dragons.  He began to spend all of his days outdoors, enjoying his new found freedom and discovered the joys of tilling the earth and growing his own food.  He made many friends right away with his easy going attitude and his willingness to help a friend in need.  He can be found in other parts of the yard helping out the other gnome inhabitants with their own gardens and any miscellaneous projects they have going on.  Once in a while I will even find a basket of fresh veggies at my own door that he has picked and prepared for me.  This is Albus.

A note to readers:  Albus and Aberforth are brothers from another story.  You may have heard of it.  Its quite famous.  Its a book called Harry Potter. I am also a Harry Potter nerd as well as a gnome geek.

Life is a garden...even in January

Today has been a great day so far.  I just got done working in the garden for the first time this year  (and its not even February yet).  I bought some cold hardy plants from the garden store this weekend and planted them in my planters today.  It was chilly outside but this dry weather we've been having gave me the itch to get outside and play in the dirt.

 This is the first batch of plants I bought.  I had intended on putting them all in the same container but my eyes were bigger than my memory and they didn't all fit.  Which was fine with me, that just means I could buy more plants to fill another pot :)  I bought two double flowering helleborus, three cyclemen and three english daisies. 

 Here is my planter after I planted them.  It turned out pretty nice I think.

 It was nice enough that even the bunnies came outside for awhile and played in the dirt.  Last year we constructed a bunny pen in the shaded corner of our yard with chicken wire.  We had to make it high enough so Cocoa couldn't jump over it.  I tried using a nicer looking rabbit fencing that had larger holes, but Cocoa can jump right through it. 

Oreo behind a tree

 After I finished my first planter I headed back to the garden center to get more flowers and a shepard's hook for my large green pot.  My plan this summer is to grow flowers to attract birds and bees to the yard.  So with my giant green pot I put a shepard's hook and hung a hummingbird feeder on one side and on the other I will put a hanging basket with flowers hummingbirds like to visit.  For spring, I am going to plant flowers and vines that will attract the hummingbirds inside the pot and make a hummingbird "station".  Plants like trailing nasturtium, cape fushia, foxglove, and trumpet honeysuckle.  The honeysuckle is a vine and I want it to grow up the shepard's hook and fill in the space between the pot and hanging feeder/basket.  Right now I just have some pretty daffodils, cyclamen, pansies, left over english daisies and oxalis.  I also put another bird bath on the porch hoping to get some birds up close.

 Peeking from behind the log

 I used last year's dirt that I had used in a potato pot.  I switched out the dirt so I can use fresh soil for potatoes this year.  While I was digging out the other pot I found three large acorn nuts that the squirrels had hidden inside.

Pretty Spring flowers

New Blogs!

Schmidt's Garden Center, the wonderful business I am apart of just jumped on the Blogging boat.  I have a separate blog from this one that is more about gardening and the wonderful things going on at the store.  Any crafty things I work on over there will probably be posted on this site as well.  If you want to check out my new blog, or anyone else at Schmidt's go to http://schmidtsgardencenter.com/  On the homepage scroll down and click on the person's blog you want to see and it will redirect you to the new gardening blogs.

Thanks for checking it out!

Headbands

I just finished making a ton of headbands and hairclips.  I just love these.  I made them using felt and buttons.  They are for sale on my etsy shop. I've posted pictures below of some of them.  Go to http://www.etsy.com/shop/bunnygirl7 to check the rest out.