Giant Kaleidoscope in Twin Falls

Links to News Coverage
about our Twin Falls, Idaho installation...

Rolling-Waters-kaleidoscope-unveiled-in-downtown-Twin-Falls 

new-interactive-art-installed-in-downtown-twin-falls

Big. Heart. Smiles. 💓

Giant Kaleidoscope in Twin Falls, Idaho by Mary Elizabeth and Eddie Phillips.  Photo by KLIX

Winter 2018 Florals

Here's a wrap up of the 2018 Floral Series! NOTECARDS and PRINTS will be available soon!
Time to start the 2019 pieces...

Be sure to follow Lil' Blue Goat on Facebook and Instagram for the most recent updates and photos!

A Mid-Winter Ritual to Warm the Soul

Fire, Ice, Radiate, Grow 

We thought we would share a quick lil' ritual that helps us feel positive during the cold and dark of winter.  This practice is quick, easy, and able to be done using stuff that is laying around your house.  Best of all, it really helps focus and hone those New Year's Intentions!

Each part of Fire, Ice, Radiate, Grow can be done on different occasions, or they can be combined into one event.  Leave slips of paper and empty jars on your counter and invite some friends over to make this into a fun get-together, too!

Fire: Purge yourself of everything you would like to release and eliminate from your life.  Write these things on small pieces of paper, and (safely!) burn and surrender them to a higher power with love and peace.  A small metal or ceramic bowl and a lighter or match is all you need to burn tiny pieces of paper - just be sure it isn't windy and that you don't have any embers left when you are done!

Ice: What do you have in your life that you desire to have less power over you? Write it on small slips of paper and set them in ice cube trays or small plastic baggies then freeze them.  With love and grace, you are symbolically 'freezing' controlling influences that you want to remove...

Radiate: Write down that which you are grateful for.  Lovingly decorate your list, or script your entries with a beautiful pen or marker.  Take a photo of it, and share it either publicly or privately with friends and family.  Let your love and gratitude radiate outward into the world!

Grow: Write down the things you would like to attract and/or manifest in your life.  Use small slips of paper, and then plant them in a garden bed or houseplant.  As they decompose they will transform into the energy of growth!

With Love,
MEP

Kaleidoscopes

Giant Kaleidoscopes measure 5'-10' tall and can reach even larger!

Perfect for Botanic Gardens, Main Street Attractions, Restaurants and Private Collections

email us for details and estimates - maryphillips8888@sbcglobal.net

10 ways to LOVE YOUR MOTHER in MANSFIELD!

Earth Day is next week! 

...so we compiled a list of 10 activities right here in our home town that can help launch your "Love Your Mother" lighter-footprint lifestyle! 

Make a newspaper pot and plant a seed to take home! 

1. April 19th: 

Visit Lil' Blue Goat during Third Thursdays Mansfield to try one of our wooden pot makers.  Use a piece of our recycled newspaper to make a pot and plant a seed to take home with you! We will have soil and a selection of seeds that I've saved from our own garden - come get your hands a lil' dirty! Free family fun! 

Extended Saturday Hours at Lil' Blue Goat

2. April 21-May 26:

Lil' Blue Goat will be open longer hours for Downtown Springtime Lingering-n-Shopping! We will bring our best selections of Mansfield friendly perennials that grow crazy-well and super-easily in our very own garden, and there's usually a good amount of live-painting and wine drinking happening as well!

First ever "OPEN STUDIO" day at our home studio garden... 

3. Sunday, April 22 - Official world EARTH DAY!

Visit our HOME STUDIO in Historic Mansfield to see the 'before/in progress' gardens, as well as what it is like to live/work in a messy pile of creation all the time! It should be perfect weather for porch-sitting...

Mansfield's own food co-op!

4. Ongoing:

Buy local food from our very own food co-op.  A carefully curated group of local farmers producing organic foods! Check out the order forms on Monday, submit each week by Wednesday, and pick up on Saturdays! Easy peasy!

Shop local foods and vendors while enjoying music and community! 

5. Saturdays, April 28-October 27

Don't let your hamburger come to you from the other side of the planet! Save that energy and get family raised, healthy options at our own farmer's market - now in its 14th year! They also have carefully selected vendors who make/raise produce, eggs, local breads, jellies, baked treats, soaps, and other artisan crafts.

Free family fun for Earth Day! 

6. April 28:

Join the fun at the Chris Burkett Service Center to learn about and participate in activities that support a healthy planet! Brought to you by the hardworking volunteers at 'Keep Mansfield Beautiful"!

lavender and texas primrose blooming in our urban garden

7. Ongoing:

Follow along at home as we keep you updated and inspired on our trials of native and Texas adapted plants for your home garden! We are currently playing with ways to create biodiversity and habitats in smaller and smaller spaces - zero lot line homes and apartments for instance... Facebook continues to be the easiest way to announce news, exciting happenings and pretty pictures, so be sure to update settings to see our posts in an increasingly complicated technological world!

Get outside as often as possible! 

8. Ongoing:

Speaking of an increasingly technological world - put your screens down and get thee OUTSIDE! Walking and biking are good for you, and they also slow you down to a pace where you really NOTICE YOUR COMMUNITY!  Look at the spaces around you, absorb the beauty of our parks and trails, check out local businesses and SUPPORT THEM, see what your neighbors are successfully planting in their gardens, pick up a piece of litter.... Learn to love LIFE IN THE SLOW LANE! 

Learn how to work with - and therefore make positive changes to - our local climate! 

9. Ongoing:

Listen, Learn and PLANT! While you are out enjoying your walk or bike ride, you may notice that it sure is HOT IN TEXAS much of the year! But by learning more and more about what sort of plants thrive here with minimal resource input, you can help steer the local climate into something more hospitable for everyone! Plant trees for shade and learn about native varieties, petition our local government to plant more native shade trees in public spaces to increase walkability! Learn about planting windbreaks, butterfly gardens, making rain barrels, and composting.  How? Lil' Blue Goat is always ready to chat gardening, so stop by when we are in... Together, not only can we make Mansfield more beautiful, but also MORE COMFORTABLE and SUSTAINABLE! This Earth Day - 2018 - vow to do just a few small things to GET GROWING and support a stronger city! (For awesome ideas on sustainable growth in general, we recommend following Strong Towns!)

10. Ongoing:
Follow our city's events - they offer Earth Friendly services and activities year 'round! From FREE MULCH to classes on gardens and rain barrels to toxic waste disposal, you wont want to miss their announcements!

Happy Earth Day everyone! xoxo

Heirloom Seeds Now Available!

"To plant a seed is to believe in tomorrow" 

Some folks attribute this quote to Aubrey Hepburn.  

Others claim it is an ancient Greek proverb.

Either way, we find it to be true.  

Planting seeds is an act of hope, faith, and confidence. 

Which is why we are SO EXCITED to announce that we have been approved to be dealers for Baker Creek Heirloom Seed Company's seeds this year! 

6 of the 11 varieties we carefully selected to help assure success in our area!

All seeds are priced exactly as Baker Creek prices them - but they come with local knowledge, my own 'plant binder and planting guide' that is available to browse through at the shop, and you don't have to pay for or wait for shipping! 

Not wanting to 'over-do it' in our first order, we CAREFULLY SELECTED 11 VARIETIES that we have personally experienced success with here in our part of North Texas.  

If you are looking to start a vegetable garden in the Mansfield area, these seeds are your best bet!

We have started with:

- Amaranth - Love Lies Bleeding (beautiful flowers, grain, and deliciously edible young leaves) 

- Beans - Roma II Bush Beans - flat Italian style green beans that produce prolifically. 

- Tatume Squash - a vining summer squash that tastes like a round zucchini and is more pest resistant than typical summer squashes. 

- Butternut Squash - grows all summer and stores well for winter

- Yellow Pear Tomatoes - small yellow tomatoes for salads and salsas that produce during our long, hot summers (and often reseed themselves!)

- Okra - hill country heirloom red - perfect for Texas!

- Watermelon - Art Combe's Ancient variety, especially adapted for the Southwest

- Cucumber - Mexican Mini Gherkins - the size of a grape! We call them "Barbie Cukes" 

- Cosmos - Bright Lights - an easy, self-seeding, orange annual flower to help attract pollinators

- Chard - Perpetual Spinach variety - I planted some seeds in semi-shade back in 2015 and the plants just keep on producing chard leaves for me year round!

- Pepper - Chinese Five Color - ornamental AND edible, without being 'too hot'.  

For all of the TRUE GARDEN GEEKS out there - here is a wee something I wrote about the "Sacred Season of Seeds"... It reads: 

The Sacred Season of Seeds

Potential energy is the defining force of our Seed-Selves.  When our hearts are clear and connected, and when energy pours into us like a shower of light, we find ourselves refreshed, restored and recharged.  This is the season of the MIND, when we translate this sacred energy and give it words.  It is the season of language.  What is a seed, after all, if not a set of instructions for BECOMING?  Our will is beckoning, and we find ourselves experiencing a powerful CREATIVE LONGING.  We are bursting forth with new ideas and have readied ourselves for the right conditions to germinate!

Take the time to breathe deep and truly experience this time of divine coding and language: emerging green growth, eggs, tiny tendrils and buds, and – of course – the seeds you sow for your own unfolding life.  Connect with it and allow yourself ‘thinking time’.  Clarify. This is the time to TUNE IN to all of your heart’s desires and to give words to that which wishes to be planted in the richness of your heart.

-M.E. Phillips

Texas Primrose

What a Survivor!

So we started about 70 seedlings of Calylophus (aka Texas Sundrops or Texas Primrose) last spring...They looked weak and rather pitiful in their 6" pots all summer and we didn't sell a bunch - but after tossing some out at the sunniest, driest corner of our garden in July (in Texas - insert eyeroll here), they really took off.  

Survived winter in 6" pots... not looking much different than all last summer...

But THRIVING out by the street corner! 

 The street corner in full sun in Texas has to be one of the most difficult places to naturalize - and I call this a winner :)

No pics of our own when they (modestly bloomed) last summer, but this is what we look forward to~

 All summer they have lovely yellow blossoms and require little care...

Example of dry landscaping this variety thrives in!

Don't let their feet stay too wet - give them plenty of sun - and Stand Back! "Texas Sundrops" - easily one of our new favorites!