So there is a place in Benton called the Glass Haunt.  My earliest memory of this house was from elementary school and walking past it on the way to the 4H petting zoo day at the local high school.  Of course we drove past it countless times, but walking past was the first time I really noticed the beautiful brick home with its winding driveway and the iron benches that sat under huge trees in the front yard.

During high school, this house went up for sale and Mom picked me up one random lunch hour with a ‘if you want to see this house you better get in the car’ mission.  The furnishings were long gone, but the mission style interior was lovely and intact.  The house eventually became a health food store and then a few years later the Glass Haunt.

I’ve always been fascinated by stained glass, perhaps for the same reason I like jewelry or why I was an Art History major.  Physical colored light.  So I wanted to try it for myself, but was weary on taking on yet another craft.  However, curiosity got the better of me and I went in a couple times to meet the staff and gauge if I wanted to take it on.  Being underemployed at the time, the time and cost were things to consider, but after steady employment was secured and during a visit with my good friend Audrey in May, we went to one of the open workshops to try our hand at it.

We opted to work on a pre-designed kit with a quilt block pattern.  I thought this would make Mom a cute birthday present.  We were walked through the process and spent the afternoon cutting glass to fit the pattern.  It reminded me a lot of sewing – definitely a measure-twice-cut-once activity.  The glass was surprisingly easy to work with, and it was inspiring to see all the different projects being worked on.

We were the obvious newbies that day, and it was exciting to see the advanced projects.  Everything from full windows to sun-catchers.   The kits we picked out, which I thought would be quick since they had straight lines, took quite a while to cut out, so that’s pretty much all we got done on the first day.  My block was composed of purple, green and yellow.  Audrey opted for blue, green and yellow.  She’s pictured at right measuring pieces based off the print-out pattern.

Though glass is easy to work with once you know how, it’s important to cut the glass a certain way so you won’t get hurt.  Everyone had their story and ‘war wound’ to share and Audrey got hers on a corner piece at the very end of the day.  Bandage time!   It didn’t crimp our fun and at the end of the day we put our stuff with the other student projects and continued with our weekend of Shakespeare and fun in St. Louis.

JUNE

Toward the end of June I returned to the Glass Haunt to continue with my project.  I really wanted to get this done for Mid-August and with a busy July ahead of me I needed to get crackin’ to get this done.  I finished grinding the edges of the pieces and ‘foiled’ them  to prep for soldering.  It took several hours to get all the pieces to fit just right, but I was pleased with the result.  That Saturday was a slow day and for the most part I was by myself and got to work one-on-one with the shop owner, Ruth.

AUGUST

That’s right, week of Mom’s birthday.  How did I run out of time?  I had a Wednesday afternoon before Mom’s b-day free and so I checked into the Glass Haunt to get my project done.   On to soldering!   I think this ended up being my favorite part.  Once you got the hang of it, soldering can go pretty quickly.  I had a hard time remembering to use the Flux at first, but it was easy to fix the problem areas and move forward.  I started with the ‘front’ of my piece and flux/soldered in sections, covering all the copper foil with lead metal.  Don’t touch the molten metal!

Then you put the border metal on and solder the back and all the corners.  The back didn’t come out as well as the front because of air bubbles that form where the pieces met.  Will have to be more careful and slower next time.  After everything is soldered, you clean off the flux and then burnish the metal to give it a uniform look and wax to give it some shine.

We debated on how the piece should hang and decided to hang it from one of the corners.  So we attached some lead loops for hanging.  So over the course of 3 days,  the project took around 12 hours.  It was satisfying to complete and I look forward to my next project, esp since I have all kinds of supplies now.  Audrey needs to come back soon to finish hers!!

Current plan for the garden.

One of my summer projects this year has been to ‘redo’ my mother’s perennial flower bed.  This bed, including the bushes around the outer edge, is a little shy of 3000 sq. ft.  A pergola, wide paths, and over 200 plant types…needless to say, a bit of an undertaking.   This bed was installed in 3 phases spanning 6 years.

Phase 1 – 2006
Brick around Beds A-C installed
Beds E – K put in

Phase 2 – 2007
Beds M & N put in

Phase 3 – 2009
Pergola (Bed O) Built
Bushes in Bed P put in
Bed L put in

Phase 4 – 2012

2012 marks the fourth phase where previous beds will be revisited, divided as needed, and inventoried.  Bed D was installed with irises and Beds M & N will be rearranged to make walking through them easier and incorporate Bed P better.

The goals of this ongoing project are:

1) Weed
2) Preen and Mulch
3) Mark
4) Inventory (markers don’t last forever, whatever cute marker you make off of Pinterest)

Thanks to the mild winter, we began with revisiting Phase 1 beds in late February/early March.  This part wasn’t too bad since most of the beds were in place, they just hadn’t been weeded for a couple of years. Extra plants were also removed that had sprouted or reseeded from parent plants.  Regardless, there were many discussions of ‘Is this a plant?’ so flags were used to mark them to watch them grow.

Yellow = ‘Yes, it’s a plant’
Orange = ‘Yes, it’s a plant but it’s gotta go’
Pink = ‘Yes, it’s a plant but it needs to be moved’

The picture on the right shows the number of plants that were removed out of the bed.  It was ridiculous.

Beds A-C include a bricked-in area that contains large container plants which are wintered over, ground cover, a red bud tree, and a new lawn swing.  South of Bed C was an area covered in Ivy and Periwinkle.  Mom has spent the past year or two killing it off, so we made it into an iris bed – shown as Bed D and contains about 24 different colors of iris.  Bed D still needs to be lined with weed paper and mulched – this area will need to be watched since some weeds didn’t appreciate being vacated this year.

Other Tasks to complete, some may have to wait till fall or next spring to complete.

• Bed L will need to be redone yet, this involves moving a hardy hibiscus and some tiger lilies, so that won’t happen till this fall or perhaps next spring.
• Break up Beds M & N.  Create walking paths into Bed P.  Divide and add additional day lilies.
• Move plants between Beds J & M to make wide main path.
• Level, plastic/paper, preen and mulch paths between beds.  Will need to be mulched again in the spring.
• Move additional bushes into section P.
• Dig up remaining periwinkle.

So needless to say, still lots to do.  But here are some images of what we have done so far.

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