Gardening, Pets & Cooking Blog

If you love creativity, beauty and nature, then WELCOME!  Here you will find my real life comedic inspiration – two Bourke Parrots, a 120 pound Leonberger dog and a 10 pound Chihuahua-Pomeranian-Papillion-One-of-a-Kinder-dog, and a patient husband – behind my artwork, books, music lyrics and green organic gardening adventures (and cooking mishaps).

My garden is my secret haven, and much of my recent artwork is inspired by the garden. My organic vegetable garden has 4 vegetable boxes (count ’em – FOUR)- which produce just about enough to keep the gophers and squirrels and blue jays fed! For example, every year I try corn – which the gophers appreciated until I added in wire screening to the bottoms of the boxes. The raccoons cheered the addition of the wire screening to the undersides of the veggie boxes, because now the raccoons have their chance to get all the corn. With great optimism I plant numerous species of heirloom tomatoes, kale, Swiss chard, beets, leek, peppers, spinach, romaine, etc., and frequently we are lucky to be able to share some of the bounty – once the garden critters are well fed! The berry box often yields luscious strawberries, a few blueberries, raspberries and blackberries. We’ve also planted many fruit trees – from Asian Apple pear to several varieties of apple, orange, avocado, apricot, cheery, donut peach, kiwi, and more. There are also lovely ornamentals – WE enjoy searching out rare beauties like trees with trunks that look painted and trees that flower in clusters like Christmas ornaments, and trees that have lovely leaf color changes. The blog shows pictures of these plants with information.

We have happily been composting in our organic garden – which we love because it eliminates so much waste that otherwise would be lost in a landfill, and turns everything from coffee grinds, eggshells, and unwanted veggie leftovers into precious nourishment for the plants. Even fruit that falls from the trees and would go wasted gets tossed in the composter. We call the compost we make “Garden Gold.” After quite a bit of research and advice from friends already composting and from Green Thumb Nursery, we chose a tumbling composter, and liked it enough to purchase a second one. The yield on our fruit trees has increased considerably! Apparently our exact Tumbling Composter isn’t available any more (poooey)! For those curious on how we compost for our garden, you can learn more at this link: How we compost.

Here are a few garden related blog posts that either relate to art inspired by my garden, my gardening attempts and rare triumphs, or garden products that use my art:

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Below is screen show of some additional posts on a variety of things that might interest you – you can click on whichever post interests you to read the full post – ENJOY!

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Nicole's Leonberger Art - All sorts of fun Leonberger-themed merchandise available at Leonberger.org - great gifts for humans, dogs and more!

 

Link to find Nicole’s Leonberger dog artwork and merchandise: Leonberger.org

 

COFFEEEEEEEEE!

It just so happens I LOVE COFFEE!  Rarely do I create a painting without a handy cup of coffee standing by, and of course my iPod playing tunes!  I created a Coffee Carousel website with all my favorite coffees for each of our three (3!) coffee machines – enjoy at CoffeeHound.bz!

Here is a poem I wrote for my java habit:

Daily Ritual

Every morning
Sleepy out of bed
Tussled head
I stumble to the kitchen sink
Seeking one precious drink
Ever so slowly from my mug, sip by sip
Savoring every dark, rich drip
Precious nectar, warming heart and waking mind
That magic potion that fuels mankind…

Coffee

Wonderful Coffee
Warm Coffee
Aromatic
Sensatic
Irresistible to this java addict
Coffee.

Our wonderful Leonberger dog waiting by our vegetable garden


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