1. Gladiolas (“glads”). Back in May I planted a few bulbs in our tiny little flower garden, because my grandfather Bob used to grow them. They finally started to bloom this weekend.
2. Wildflowers.
3. Wildflowers with a bee.
4. Inside a squash blossom.
5. Cherry Roma tomatoes are starting to ripen!
Turns out? There is such a thing as the United States Botanic Garden, and it was conveniently located a few blocks from where I was attending a conference. I had time during a lunch break to slip in for a few minutes. It’s a small space, to be sure, but it deserves more time than I had. That said, it felt SO GOOD to use another part of my brain!
Tuesday night I walked from the Capitol down to the Washington monument, and despite the heat and my black work dress (I did have the sense to put sneakers on) I decided to keep walking down to the Vietnam memorial. I didn’t know that on the way that I would pass the World War II Memorial, which I had never seen before (and is probably the one thing Bob Dole ever did that didn’t offend me in some profound way). My grandfather fought in Germany during WWII, so it was a poignant visit for me – especially seeing the Maine granite column:
Finally, I made it to the Vietnam Memorial just as the sun began setting. It’s a difficult thing to photograph; the panels of names are built into the side of a hill, and for me it’s the most somber of all the monuments. My dad’s two tours of duty in Vietnam have a lot to do with that, I’m sure.
On Saturday I surveyed the garden with much dismay; other than one lone pepper, it didn’t seem like much was happening there. While things were blossoming, no other fruit was setting. Meanwhile, I could see my neighbors pepper and tomato plants full of fruit, and I was insanely jealous — despite knowing full well we put the garden in a few weeks late because of the move. (Patience is not my strong suit.)
At any rate, four days later I came home to this:
The cucumbers have taken over everything, including the squash plants, and are spilling over the raised bed. Also, we are now the proud owners of one enormous tomato jungle at the back third of the garden; they’ve gotten so big that they are starting to uproot the cages. Apparently, as it turns out, you’re supposed to prune tomato plants. I somehow missed that in my book. It’s a big mess, frankly….but happily, much to my surprise I discovered today that we are getting some fruit:
My pepper has gotten much bigger, and I’m happy to report that it now has some smaller siblings. And then, there is this cute little thing:
A baby watermelon!
I stopped knitting for awhile. Some of this was because the combination of moving, crazy work hours, and the garden project were sucking up the majority of my energy. (Not to mention the Cat Wars.) But mostly I just sort of lost the desire to knit.
Some of that was because of this project – the “Welcome to the Flock” sweater I’d started months ago. I’d knit up to the point of having to join the sleeves and then knit the colorwork sheep, something I was not looking forward to. Carrying three different strands of yarn across without it turning into a tangled mess is a challenge.
I’m not sure what flipped my knitting switch back on, but last week I picked this project back up and suffered through the colorwork. It’s not that hard, just time consuming, although a good knitter will be able to tell from the photo that my threads (floats) are a little tight…
Finishing this opened the floodgates, so to speak, and now I’m suffering a huge case of startitis, where I want to knit All the Things right now. First up?
Socks. I lost my sock knitting mojo a couple of years ago, but sadly I’ve had to retire several pairs due to being completely worn out. This means a few new pairs need to be knit before winter howls back through in a few months. I bought this yarn a few years back at the Mass Sheep & Wool Festival, it’s from Into the Whirled in the “Nebula” colorway. It’s knitting up much differently than I expected – not a bad thing, just different. (I use Stephanie Pearl-McPhee’s “basic sock recipe” from her book Knitting Rules.)
Also begun….
This is the beginnings of what may or may not become another Purl Dreams. The yarn may want to be something else, though. We’ll see.
Finally, this:
This is a beautiful skein of merino wool from A Hundred Ravens, which is close enough by to be considered local to me. It’s in the Eos colorway, which to me just screams spring crocuses. I am not sure what this will be…most likely socks. The yarn store lady thought it would make a nice shawl, but I’m not sure I’m a shawl person. Not yet, anyway.
All of this is coming with me when I leave for a work trip to DC in a few hours. I do hope it’s enough for a 3-day conference. (Ha.)
Our first field trip this weekend was right around the corner to the farmer’s market, where along with some gooseberries (blech…very tart) we found a small box of pickling cucumbers and some dill, just enough to make a quart jar of fridge pickles. The cukes were cut up and are now merrily marinating in a bath of water, cider vinegar, garlic, salt, and peppercorns. We tried a few tonight and they are well on their way to yumminess.
Field Trip #2: We were at the library a few nights ago (looking for Under the Dome, Part 1 of which I read yesterday, laughing at all the Western Maine references I grew up with) and noticed they had passes to the Tower Hill Botanic Garden for check-out. I’d been wanting to go for awhile, so we borrowed a pass and trekked out to Boylston this morning before it got too hot. We had a nice walk around the property – there’s about a mile or so of a loop trail that goes out through the woods. It actually wound up being quite a nice day, albeit windy, which helped keep the bugs at bay but also made it difficult to take pictures. This hummingbird got swooped around on the wind so badly it looked like it was parasailing:
Mostly, though, it was more of the usual:
1. I have recently become obsessed with HGTV, specifically the shows “Love It or List It” and “Property Brothers”, the latter of which I have taken to calling “The Hot Guys Show”. They are horribly formulaic, to the point where “open concept floor plan” has become a running joke around here, but I kind of can’t stop watching. One of these days Erik is going to come home and find that I’ve installed a bathroom upstairs.
2. From watching these shows, I’m pretty sure that putting in an upstairs bathroom is not even possible. We live in a duplex built over 100 years ago, and our existing bathroom very clearly got carved out of our neighbor’s side. To run the plumbing upstairs would most likely mean tearing apart adjoining walls and all sorts of chaos would ensue. Plus we’re renting, and while our landlord has been super great about all manner of things, he would most likely draw the line at a major renovation.
3. The cats continue to hate each other. On the advice of the vet, my cat is now upstairs and E’s cats are downstairs. We’re in the process of slowly moving E’s cats food station up the stairs, so that we can hopefully re-introduce them through the screen door we installed. Neither of us is holding our breath. Last night we tried bringing each of his cats up to the door and both cats flipped out and ran off. My cat just sat there. She has conquered her world.
4. One would think with 3 cats around the local squirrel population would have taken a hit. But no:
So far I have not seen them near the garden. They stalk the bird feeder, eating whatever the birds drop, and occasionally climb the feeder pole to try to shake the seeds out. While I’m not thrilled with this, I’d be less thrilled with them chomping my plants. It’s a bargain I can live with, anyway.
5. Meanwhile, with the squirrels and birds running amok nearby, Cleo shames her entire species by opting out of all the cozy spots in the house and instead sleeps on the cement walkway:
6. On Sunday my iPhone suddenly stopped charging, and after about a hundred hours at the Verizon store I waltzed out with a new phone. And a new number, because BLAH BLAH BLAH RULES. (Trust me, it’s complicated, having to do with moving me onto E’s plan because he gets a company discount.) There I was, standing in a Verizon store, calling Verizon customer service, with the store guy telling me what to say to the customer service guy. Apparently they work for the same company and are not allowed to talk to each other.
7. After finally escaping Verizon’s clutches we meandered over to Great Brook Farm State Park. It was hot and I was grumpy and it smelled of manure badly, but it was a nice walk and there was this:
The garden remains an ongoing experiment, which is a nice way of saying I continue to realize I have utterly no idea what I’m doing. My father helpfully told me tonight that his first garden didn’t produce anything; I hope that wasn’t supposed to make me feel better. (Although, so far we’ve harvested exactly three strawberries, all of which tasted quite delicious, so it won’t be a total loss.)
***
I planted 4 winter squash that I started from seed. The packet contained 4 varieties, so I picked out 4 seeds that looked reasonably different from each other and planted them; hopefully I’ll get at least one acorn and one butternut. Once in the garden, two sprouted blossoms and, save some yellow leaves, seem to be doing quite well. The other two…not so much. I read that the yellow leaves may indicate a lack of nitrogen in the soil, so I added some fertilizer yesterday. We’ll see if that helps.
[You’ll notice grass clippings. One thing I never thought about was that when the lawn gets mowed, the clippings get into the raised bed. I think the answer, in part, is to mow the lawn before it is taller than the raised bed, but alas I have happily abdicated/assigned all lawn mowing responsibilities to the VEB. As such, I shall not nag. (Ha.) And yes, these photos were before a session of weeding.]
On the tomato front — I wound up with a total of six plants, five of which I started from seed and one I bought. I’m pretty tickled that they all survived being transplanted, and have grown quite quickly. What were initially very leggy, spindly plants have filled out quite nicely. However, only the purchased tomato plant has blossomed yet, and yesterday I found what appeared to be fruit flies on the plants. So, I’m not out of the woods yet. I have big plans for homemade sauce though, so fingers are crossed.
The pepper plants I bought are also flourishing, which for some reason surprises me. These plants have also gotten quite tall, taller than I expected anyway, and may need to be caged at some point. I also have two watermelon plants that seem to be perking along, and while the strawberry plants aren’t producing a whole lot, they are sending out runners.
Not pictured? my very sad cucumbers. All 4 of the plants I started from seed and transplanted are struggling, to the point where I am very tempted to pull them up and put them out of their misery. I did buy a cucumber plant at the nursery, which seems to be doing okay so we should get some cukes. Still, I’m disappointed; of all the things I planted I thought the cucumbers would be the no-brainers. Apparently they don’t like being transplanted, though. I’m entertaining the idea of direct sowing a few more seeds into the garden, just to see what happens, but it is admittedly a little late for that.
Meanwhile, our local farmers market started this past weekend, and while it is too still early for a lot of produce Balance Rock Farm was there with what we call the Magic Piggy Bacon. I don’t know what they feed their pigs, but it is worth every blessed penny.
