garlicky garden and wool

There are things growing! The garlic I planted last autumn is looking very happy! I'd done a bit of research before planting the cloves. Several places said the most important aspect to planting garlic was to make sure the root end was pointing down, so as to not make the plant wind around when growing. Of course after I'd planted it, a bit more reading also said that you must have all the papery skin totally intact and that there must be a bit of root left on each planted clove. I was a tad worried because I know that some of the cloves didn't separate properly and that on a couple of them, the root end just popped off completely. I'm thinking that the latter instructions aren't quite so important as the first ones. It looks like pretty much all the cloves of garlic that I planted have come up, regardless of minor imperfections.

The rhubarb looks pretty happy as well. I'll have to find some yummy rhubarb recipes as I've never actually had a rhubarb patch before.

The Feverfew is starting to run amok. It's very pretty and of course useful I guess, if I harvested it for it's medicinal uses. However, it is fairly persistent as a weed. I've also found the poppies are running rampant and there is a cat nip patch, that I want to get under control before the lawn and flower beds are just bits of colour peeking out between the catnip. It's in the mint family and has similar growth habits.

I spun some white Shetland rovings for some dye sampling that I'll be doing next week. I'll admit that I don't normally like to use hand spun yarn for general dye sampling. It seems to be a little overkill and a waste of time. However, in this case, getting 100% wool would have meant a trip to a city. I really had no other errands to run to make it a worthwhile use of gas and time, so I spun it up myself. It certainly seems like it will do the job, regardless.