So I'm taking advantage of what's in our yard ! They look much better on Bernadette. And I just remember I stuck some on the sea shell picture to fill in a void which I lost a couple of pieces in the process of building the picture!

  Now I'm working on a few sets for the kinfolks. I wonder if Bernadette expects some for the males also? 

The first sets were so long they kept bumping her knees! I'm working on that right now...

 

That is some nice stuff you are doing with these. How do you treat them so the outer shell does not drop off?

Gerald, I cross my fingers among other things!

What sort of nut is that Jess?  It's nothing I recognize, and I know a lot of nuts

Caesars Palace on Las Vegas Blvd. use to have the most beautiful sites when driving or walking down the street....with their old roman type buildings and the landscaping using many cypress trees out front is what made the area beautiful and made people want to go in and look around.. .... and that is what the owners wanted was to get the people inside to more or less relieve them of some or all of their money. And make the customers happy to be loosing their hard earned cash....while doing just that!

   Italian Cypress grows fast and mostly up and not out. All the trees we have are a mess come fall but the skinny cypress only takes a small popcorn bag of trash to clean up under them...Actually we have never had to clean up around the trees in the 20 years they been growing and maybe 30 foot tall but only about 3 foot wide. The zero turn can touch the trunk all the way around the tree so its nothing to keep the area looking great.

  Last fall I decided to pull off a bunch of cones as see if I could do something with them. Lots of options to think about but earrings was, I thought, the least amount of work involved to make a few bucks ....Wrong wrong. It will take a few hours of typing to tell all the procedures I go through and all of this was with no instructions just trial and errors.  I don't do you tube so I have no idea if anyone else has messed with these things.

Neighbors have ask how often I have to trim them to keep them looking great and skinny. Never touched them yet.

  By the way, there is no trees out front of the casino anymore, just more buildings all the way to the road.

  You might remember back when I showed a picture of a wheel barrow with a tree growing up through the middle. and buck said that tree will die growing like that, well Buck, its the tallest Italian Cypress we have growing on our land..

 

Edited December 29, 20205 yr by Smallpatch

What are those nuts?

 

Cliff they are like pine cones for they have a hundred or so seeds in each cone and are cones off an Italian Cypress

tree. 

The thin trees are Italian Cypress.

Thanks for the info Jess.  I've studied quite a bit of landscaping methods and materials and have never heard of Italian Cypress.  Must not be a good match for our southern climate.  But I will look into them further, just to know about them.

And tell Bernadette hello for us!

Cal that first trip to Las Vegas in the eighties was maybe the first time I had really paid attention to the Italian Cypress. It might have been an area 100 acres or so in front of Caesars Palace with lots of concrete walk ways and fountains and small rivers and 10,000 of those skinny trees, simply beautiful......I might be off a few on that count.

 I planted a few at the go-cart track and mini golf in Odessa and still thinking about them when we moved here at the lake so there is a few here and there. They don't like to be surrounded with bushes for they loose their bottom limbs and look awful but they never need any other attention all year long. No pruning and no raking...............Phoenix and Tucson has lots of them so by that they must be a dry area tree. You came down I-20 going home and there are lots of big homes way back off the highway and the roads to their houses are lined with them. But just like wife and I, we never noticed there are birds everywhere until we moved here. Age does change peoples ways and how they are thinking.

  In a picture there are some cones we just this week pulled the off the tree, the open ones are from last fall and the ones being converted on to another life and will be carried around hanging from a pretty girls ear. That kinda sounds awful..

  I'm thinking there are certain times and how the cones have been stored has a lot to do with being able to drill into the end of the cone about about 1/2". 
The cones we picked up off the ground will fall apart with that size bit. And they could have laid there a year or two or more..I screwed up a couple days ago and mixed the ones I had pulled last year and have been inside since then but I mixed that bunch that had been picked up and wow that was a good learning...Just go to the trouble and bring any home that had been on the ground....

   So yesterday I played it safe and went down in size on the drill bit to where the small wire I had twisted will slide in to that small hole then using regular glue. After I glue the wire in with a ring on the end I then take a syringe with a long small end full of glue and coat all the areas around the inside the cones. This makes the cone ridgid and can be dropped on to the table without breaking. And after I apply the glue I use glitter as a type of stabilizer for the glue or else it will run out the bottom end after it is laid there to dry...

The 1/8" dowel is good for after the glue dries I drill a real small # bit hole and glue a pin with and eye in the middle of the dowel. All the earring stuff I bought at Hobby Lobby. Walmart has some stuff but not a complete selection. 

  I noticed some guys are buying high end water base paints for crafts. Thats fine but I have about 60 different colors and can not tell the difference because of price. These last 2 oz. bottles were like on sale for 1.29 regular about 1.99 at Hobby Lobby. I also bought a few high priced name brands. Wife or anyone else could not tell me which was which....I think the metallic acrylic is the way to go and not the plain acrylic...but some colors one has to  buy the regular. Michaels seems to be a tad higher but if its a few miles farther probably not worth it. But I also find Michaels does not restock often enough and the things I need the holes are empty lots of the times.

  If anyone is starting to mess with these cones give me a shout if you run into trouble and have questions.

My ginny pig keeps hers on all the time.