Over the last several (really long) months three of my kids have developed an interest in plants and gardening. Cassie has a house full of the healthiest, lushest plants I've ever seen, Ian has a new home with floor to ceiling windows along one side and an ample sized balcony - leading to lots of plantings along the window edges and a vegetable and large plant garden on the lanai, And River took a merit badge class for Boy Scouts where he was given bags of seeds which he planted in little cups all over our lanai - and because he failed to mark the cups with what he planted we're both waiting with bated breath to see what the heck he's going to grow and harvest.

I, personally, do not have a green thumb. At all. But for some reason our citrus trees and banana plants have gone nuts this year and have a record amount of fruit (that's our fruit in the picture above). Many years ago we got four free citrus trees from our local Lowe's. I can't recall the details of how we got them - something to do with a gardening club but how they told me about them is beyond me - but we had these tiny little trees, which we happily planted. Over the years we lost one and one bore a few oranges a few years in a row (very sour oranges, but still!). This year all three remaining trees have fruit - sour oranges, pink lemons(!), and we're not yet sure what the last tree is but the fruits have a super thick skin and take longer to ripen. The banana tree grew out of control and turned into many, many stalks some of which were as tall as our two story house. Unfortunately, we didn't brace the stalks that had bananas this year and they all fell over and died. :( The thing about banana trees is that they aren't the prettiest thing - lots of dead leaves mixed in with the live ones and they do expand as new shoots grow. So we decided to chop them all down about a month ago ... and within days they were growing back, and within a month many of the stalks were 4' tall. Almost creepy! I've given a bunch of the stalks away and am going to let the remaining ones regrow ... we'll see what we end up with next summer.

But back to the obsession ... somehow my children's love of greenery and gardening led me to deciding to play with molds and concrete, and to try my hand at making little concrete planters. They looked so fun! And they are! I've had a blast creating these and I can't wait to make more! Even more fun than making is them is taking pictures of them - so different from taking quilt pictures (love those too, but a change is nice).

All the little pots (and they are little with most less than 2" tall) are sealed with concrete sealer and some come with options for finishing.

To support my habit I must sell some of these and they're all available in the Jude Harbor shop here.

And just for fun, here's my very enthusiastically growing banana plants one month after chopping them all down (with a machete, but that's another long story ... but to make it short - banana plants are super easy to chop and one pass with the machete fell 20' tall plants) ...