Garden and fibre update

I've been digging in the garden.  The May 24th weekend is generally the weekend that we plant our gardens.  I'm usually away on that weekend so I generally wait.  This year, the long weekend was early by almost a week, so I held off planting anyway.   We had some coolish nights, but some early May weird frosts and I'd rather be safe than trying to find new plants.   I don't usually plant cucumbers, zucchini, pumpkins and other squash until June, after having a huge problem with squash bugs from planting early.   

Mortgage Lifter Tomato seedling

My son in law started some tomato plants for me this spring so I've planted two varieties, Mortgage Lifter and Black cherry.   Most are planted and seem to be doing fine.  I'd looked for a couple more of the large tubs to add to my pots and raised bed collection, but no stores around here seem to sell them this year.  If I wanted fancy, expensive but not quite big enough pots, there were a fair number but of large garden planters there were none any where.   So Monday I'll grab some of husbands 5 gallon syrup collecting buckets, drill holes in the bottom and use 2 or 3 of those instead.  They'll require more frequent watering, but should do fine for my peppers, kale and Swiss chard.

The garlic is looking really good this year, with strong, thick, dark green stems.  It's in the front of one of the raised beds.  Behind it I've planted tomatoes.   In the other raised bed, the front is full of lettuce, a couple of volunteer onions, cilantro and a hot pepper plant.  Once I know the weather is consistently warm enough at nights, I'll plant green beans in the rest of the raised bed.  Once the garlic is harvested, if I have enough time, I'll replant beans in that space, otherwise, I'll plant  salad greens.

The blue gradient shawl is almost done.   Because the yarn had very distinctive colour changes, I wound cakes of each separate colour and dressed the loom in stripes.   The downside of this is that the weaving is all the same.   I did start with the darkest grey for weft, transitioned through to the dark blues.   If I can trust that the shawl will be about the length that I've actually woven, with about 2 inches wiggle room, then I've succeeded in using the remaining yarn from the weft.  Otherwise, I'll have lost at yarn chicken and have to use that medium blue for the last couple of inches.  My brain is telling me that I might look odd with only that little bit at the end.  I'm happy to get this one off the loom though, because there wasn't a lot of interesting colour changes weaving this.   That's why I like colour effects like short colour changes, log cabin and things like that.  Lots of interesting things happening without a lot of effort weaving.

I've been washing more fleece.  One of the new fleeces was a little musty smelling.   The fleece was strong and not damaged, so I washed it all up over several days.   It washed up nicely.  The only issue is my own fault, because the lingerie bags I was using were fairly fine meshed and probably took an extra wash to get them clean.   If I processed them with combs, all the trashy vm bits would come out, but I've run some of it through the drum carder to make batts that I've been then hand carding.  Mainly this is because I'm doing a demo of spinning, possibly on a great wheel, and it's easier to  make the rolags with pre-carded fibres when you have to talk with people at the same time.

There is usually a larger patch of poppies but this year there were only 3 buds.  The first one to bloom was the prettiest.   I think the last one will bloom tomorrow.  With the Allium, some sort of little white star shaped flower, the woad and the lilacs, there are lots of little and big bees around,  I hope they stay and do their pollinating thing!

Inside and Outside

 I made sourdough bread.  It turned out perfectly.   It had a crunchy crust and a soft, open crumb.   I had tried a new to me formula for making bread.  I passed the info on to my daughter who makes bread too and she sent me a photo of another perfect loaf of bread.  It's good to know that the recipe will work for more than just me.

 This is the brown cotton ready to process.   I found a green cotton skein that I hadn't finished up, so I popped it into the pot at the same time.    When I did my Master Spinner, we had to wind the skein onto a specially prepared PVC pipe that had holes drilled in it.   I did this for all my class samples, but it was a pain.   Now I just toss the skein in a pot.  I've not noticed a ton of difference.   You are also supposed to add a bit of baking soda or something to make the water a bit alkaline.  Although it is supposed to help the processed colour last, I've not noticed a lot of difference, so I don't always use it.   After photo coming as soon as the skeins are dry.

 The chooks have been locked up since early last fall when we had the raccoon issues. They've been itching to go outside as the light has increased, with much noise, clucking and admonishment every time I go into the barn.   Since I'm pretty certain Mr. Raccoon has moved on, and since the hubby is out boiling sap again this weekend, I let the girls out.  Oh, they were happy and content chooks.

I pruned the gooseberry bush.  I started a bit last year but wasn't certain what I was doing.  It was so overgrown that I was a bit worried.  I am not sure it had ever been pruned and it's probably 30 or 40 years old.  There are a lot of videos out there.  Most I saw were from the UK and many had plants which seemed to grow from a central stalk, which didn't apply to my shrub. I couldn't fathom trying to work that out with this overgrown gooseberry.

  Finally I found some instructions on how to prune my type of gooseberry.   I did worry a bit about taking off too much of the old growth, but the more I cut, the more young growth I found.   This is after 2, yes 2 wheelbarrow loads of clippings.    I could take a bit more, but I think I will leave it like this for this year and see what happens.   I've been suggesting that we need to dig it up and replace it for a few years now, but we've never gotten around to it.  This is my maybe we can salvage it attempt.   The fruit is small and a lot of work to clean, but I like gooseberry jam.  Gooseberry jam isn't something you can just buy in a shop around here. But if pruning will help increase the size of the berries, then Yay!

Garden update, and New Chooks!

My two new girls are Leghorns - white chooks that lay white eggs.  They just started laying a couple of days ago and right now they are laying the tiniest little pullet eggs I've ever seen.  Their eggs will get larger as they mature.

When you move a grown hen to a new location, you need to keep them locked in the coop for about a week so they learn that this is their new home.   After that, you can let them out and ostensibly, they will come home each night and lay their eggs in the nesting boxes.

For days after I'd opened the coop door to the outside, they didn't venture outside anymore than to peek out the door and run back inside.  Finally though, they came outside.  They don't go all over the place yet, but stick close to the barn.   They haven't yet melded as a flock with the other chooks, so they keep to themselves.

One of the grey girls who lays the green eggs has decided to lay them outside.   I hear her egg call when she lays, but I've not yet found her nest.  That is where the ostensibly part comes in.  Sometimes a chook or 3 get it in their minds to lay outside.  Then it's like an egg hunt to find their hidden nests.

This is a photo taken though the screen door.  There were three little cardinals who had just fledged and were practicing their flying.  They went from the tomato cage to the deck railing, to the top of the gazebo and back.   The cats spent many hours watching them excitedly.   This was the best photo I could get of them.  They were very timid and if I was outside, they would squawk and chitter and fly away before I could get a photo.  After about 3 or 4 days of this practice flying, off they went to do whatever young Cardinals do this time of year.

I finished planting the potatoes.   I put in about 22 lbs of Yukon Gold seed potatoes.  For the second time, when chatting with people about our gardens, I've had a person ask me why?  The first was an old gal who was disdainful about her friends garden and her efforts to plant potatoes and who kept saying horrible things about why would anyone even bother.   After several attempts at explaining, I ignored her dribble until someone walked by and interrupted her diatribe with "oh, growing potatoes is such fun".   I wish I'd thought of that one.

  This time it was a bizarre question as to why I would plant so many?  I mean, what does it matter how many I plant?  I have the space and we like eating fresh potatoes for as long as possible.  Does it really matter that I planted more than a couple?   Sheesh - it does get odd when I end up spiraling into weird conversations like that.  Really, I'm interested in what you plant and if you have an enormous garden, that's way cool and if you have a single planter box, then that is pretty awesome too.   That we have a common interest is a nice starting point for a conversation and I don't want to pass judgement on what or how much you're growing.  I just like it that you are growing stuff.

Geranium slips and socks

Every spring I plant a couple of Geraniums.  They come a variety of shades, especially shades of pink and they are readily available.  I found that for years, I would miss the sale where the potting Geraniums are on sale for .58 cents.   I decided one fall, that I was tired of that and took cuttings of the plants which were colours that I liked.  There are always pink Geraniums available, but some years they aren't actually pink!   They can be peachy pink, or pale pink, or stripey pink.  I had the perfect pink Geranium that year.  I loped off a bunch of stem pieces into 3-5 inch lengths.  I snipped off the flowering bit, trimmed off any leaves from the lower half of the stem and stuck them into a little jar of water.   I stuck the jar in a sunny window and about half of them rooted.  I usually put them into the front bathroom window, where it is very sunny but quite cool.  I've found however that I tend to forget to water them, which adversely affects the rooting rate for some reason.

Bright Pink Geraniums

I've found out since then that I get better rooting rates if I just stick the cuttings directly into fresh potting soil.  It's fast and easy.  I don't use rooting compound because I've read that Geraniums don't need it.  The fact that it's not actually easy to find, helps with the not using it either.

Dark Pink/Burgundy Trailing Geraniums

With the temperatures dropping and getting close to first frost, I figured it was time to snip my summer's plants and re-root them.   I got out my secateurs (don't you just love that word) and went to work.   My pink Geraniums cuttings are in a rectangular planter box.  I put one extra cutting into a pot, along with a rooted Geranium which I cut severely back and repotted.  Not only did I trim back about 2/3 of the branches, but I trimmed the roots back a few inches as well.   This is my security plant, in the event that for some strange reason, all my cuttings fail this year.  I also put the pots in a sunny window, in the livingroom, where I'll remember to water them!
I've had this sock yarn in wait for a while. It's bright, it's soft and it's a tad thicker than I normally use.  I had to go up a needle size and use a slightly smaller stitch count.   I'm doing a simple spiral pattern with a single traveling/cable stitch.   It's fast, interesting and unlike cabling with multiple stitches, I don't need a cable needle.   The downside to this yarn is that it was a gift and it had a few moth nibbled breaks in it.  Regardless, it's still sturdy everywhere else, it's bright and an interesting colour that I might not have chosen for myself.

Colour outside

I finished the shawl. It was 34 x 108, not including the fringe,  off the loom, having rested overnight before I measured it.   My tape measure wasn't handy while I was weaving and I was sure I knew better than to really need it.  I had really, put only enough warp on for the shawl and the loom waste.  I'd even calculated most of the fringe to come from the loom waste, so shouldn't have finished up with a shawl, quite that long.  It's not a problem as wet finished it's 32 x 101 plus the fringe.  I could run it through the washer again and full it a bit more, as it's quite softly wet finished.   It's drapey though and it's soft.  It wraps around beautifully and feels like a giant hug.  It is definitely pink, no doubt about that one :)

After I set it outside to dry in yesterday's lovely weather,(today is wet, cool and dismally grey), I grabbed my big girl camera with a 50 mm lens and explored the garden.   Not much yet, but enough to think that perhaps spring is here.
 I want to find more of these for the garden.  It's some variety of Scilla, (siberica?).   I'd love them to be strewn throughout the gardens and yard.  They are exquisitely blue and fresh.

These are another variety of Scilla as well.  Pretty, blue and starshaped, they have started to migrate from this little patch.  I'd put in more of these as well, although I don't like them quite as much as the other ones.

I didn't get around to planting more Crocus bulbs last fall, although I had that activity in the plans.  Even less came up this year and most were crushed by a wet, heavy and late snow fall.  These were later blooming and caught me by surprise.  Still pretty though.

The garlic is up!  It's looking strong and healthy, although buried in the snow, it was a sad picture, that I refused to take.  It looks like virtually every clove that I planted has germinated this year, so I'm hopeful that we'll have lots to harvest.

Something has eaten every last strawberry plant and the bunnies got the blueberries, which are showing no signs of recovery yet.  I haven't checked the raspberries but at least a few of the blackberries made it through the harsh winter.  The black current bush has lots of leaf buds, and I'm hopeful that there might be a few berries to harvest this year.   Last year there were 3 currents on the bush, so more would be a good thing.

On Cats and Gardens and Other Projects

 Yesterday my poor kitty was unhappy.  He's fairly routine oriented and his routines have been pretty much shattered of late.  I woke up yesterday to a kitty who I think was showing major signs of separation anxiety.   At one point he was actually hanging on my arm and trying to pull me toward him.  This is a cat whose human touch needs are fairly minimal.    He wanted non-stop attention and even when he'd settled a bit, if I'd move away from "my" chair, he'd give me the evil eye and stare at me until I'd sit back down.   If I didn't he come beside me and fuss.   This morning however, it has paid off and he seems to be back to his old, active, talkative self and his routines are back in place.  Now to deal with a day and a half's worth of emails and other chores.

I started a new pair of socks.  The colourway is nice enough, though I'm not sure about the pastel greeny blue colour.  If I were dyeing it, I'd have likely used purple there.  The last pair of 3/1 ribbed socks I made with 64 stitches, turned out a tad looser than I like, so I made these with only 60 stitches.  Of course they are a tad tight.  I 've had to redo the toe 3 times already, so this one better work.  I could have left the last one as it was a fitting issue.  However then the socks would have fitted my daughter, rather than myself.

Cotton seedlings are on top with the large, round leaves.

I found the small packets of cotton seeds that the Master Spinner 2 class had been given.   There were green and white cotton seeds.  Because we live in a cold climate, where cotton cannot be grown as a crop, there are no issues with growing coloured cotton here as it won't contaminate anything.  They'll pretty much be house plants anyway.. big house plants hopefully and with any luck, set a few bolls later this fall.  I've no expectations that they will produce a lot, but I hope they'll grow and survive long enough to produce something.  It could be a fun experiment. 

I'd planted Wild Indigo, but nothing has germinated.  Some Weld has germinated, but I don't know whether it was purchased seed or donated seed as I planted both.  Woad, both regular and Chinese are growing and Dyer's Knotweed seed has come up although somewhat unevenly.   The Purple Calabash and Black Cherry tomato seeds did nothing, but the Black Krim, Red Robin and Orange Sun Salad toms are doing well.  I'm a bit disappointed in the germination of the peppers as only 3 hot chili peppers germinated out of 9 pots and only 7 of the mixed colour sweet bell peppers.  Coreopsis, some herbs and some buttercrunch lettuces are doing well.  It's still too early to plant the cukes, pumpkins and zuchinnis.  Anything else I need, I'll buy.  I planned that in this year as the allure of garden centres is always too much for me to ignore.

The fabric store was having a sale of cotton yardage for $6 a metre.  I loved the black print and have been eyeing the blue with brown dots for a while.  They went nicely together and I added the others.  The little square print is an animal print which I would normally avoid like the plague, but it had the right colours and was the only thing I could find that worked.  I would normally not choose these colours for myself, but I've found that stretching colour choices can be a very good thing.   I've been wanting to make small project, just to practice machine quilting skills.  It's easier on a small quilt.  This will be a table topper, just under 1m in size. 

The blocks are half done. They still need trimming before I can assemble them.   The colours are pretty and work well together bu for the life of me, I cannot think of where I would put this piece.  I guess I'll have to wait until it's done.  I am a little ticked because although I measured at the machine, the seams are a tad too wide.  The 8 1/2 inch blocks will have to turn into 8 inch blocks.  I wonder if they still make feet compatible with this old machine as a 1/4 inch foot could be useful.

Crazy Early Spring

We've had delightful, unseasonably warm weather.  It's felt like summer, day after day.  The ground has dried up, much yard work has been accomplished and some gardening.  I've gotten some of the peas planted.  Even if the weather turns cold, they'll be fine as they prefer cooler weather and are quite hardy.  The lettuces in the cold frame are starting to germinate.   With the long range forecast for a warmer than normal spring, I broke down and started many of my garden seeds a week early.  It doesn't seem like a lot, but it can mean the difference between leggy, overgrown seedlings or having to re-pot them before planting. I checked and I've enough larger pots should I need to go the second route but even getting plants in the ground a week early could make a huge difference to garden results.   I've still a few things to plant.  Curcurbits (cucumbers, squash etc) only need to be started a few weeks before plant out date, so I'll wait until my normal time for those.   

In this crazy weather, flowers which should be blooming a month from now, have graced us with their beauty.  I popped out to do some errands this morning and came back to this show in the front of the house.  So pretty.  The flower beds in the back have dried out and the sandy soil has been a hit with the chooks.  They've sunbathed in a good portion of the back beds, decimating most of the perennial flowers there.    I'll be fencing in my gardens soon enough I suppose, just to keep the chooks at bay.  Yes, it might be easier to fence the chooks, but they'd be unhappy about it for sure!


I've had a few false starts on projects lately.  I wanted to have a not quite plain pair of socks on the needles.  However the patterns I chose, turned out to need more concentration than I was willing to put into them.  First the colour I chose didn't show the pattern up and I couldn't easily follow it.  The same pattern in a different colour showed up fine, but required me to constantly think about it.  When outside, trying to keep the chickens from drinking my tea, while I was knitting, proved to be too much of a distraction to keep up with that pattern.   These pretty orange socks are using Cookie A's BFF.  I've done it before.  It's an easy 6 row pattern with only a couple of odd pattern rows at changing points.  It makes a lovely sock, pretty and useful everyday type pattern.  The only slow row is the cable row, every 6 rows.  Not so bad and suitable for dragging to meetings and knitting outside while shooing chooks from one's tea!

Garden update...

The hot weather has set the garden to growing.  Last year our tomato plants were huge, green vines with little fruit which then got attacked by blight.  Apparently blight is an issue in this area.  I had planted the tomatoes in the new garden, which was heavily mulched and probably nitrogen heavy due to the loads of composting leaves and grass clippings.   This would have resulted in the massive amount of green growth with little fruit.   I moved the tomatoes to the old garden this year.   I lightly composed it before I planted the seedlings and have heavily mulched it with straw.   I worried that the plants were hardly growing, but most of them have started to catch up.  Next year I'll remember to provide early protection; planting them under plastic or insulated in some way.    There are 4 different varieties of tomatoes - a small fruiting hybrid which has mega disease tolerance, including some blight resistance.  It's fruits are bigger than cherry or grape tomatoes, but smaller than regular tomatoes.  There are plum tomatoes for freezing and canning, orange and sweet 100's cherry type tomatoes for general salads and out of hand eating.   We'll see what happens this year.  They are well spaced for air circulation in order to combat disease and I'm hoping the straw mulch will have a 2 fold benefit.  First of course is helping keep the weeds down.  The second is that disease like blight are supposed to be soil borne, and splashing of the dirt on the leaves helps cause it.  By putting a heavy layer of straw down, I'm hoping that the soil won't splash on the leaves, thereby helping the plant avoid soil borne diseases.

In previous gardens, the only peppers I've had do well, were some hot peppers which were purchased by accident.   I'd tried them covered with a makeshift plastic dome and they did fantastically.   This year, I planted 2 types of peppers - sweet yellow banana peppers and a shorter season sweet pepper, which unfortunately happened to be yellow as well.   I'd forgotten that when I purchased the banana pepper seedlings.  I was going to put them all under plastic, but just after I'd planted, there were a couple of days of hot, hot, dry weather, which stalled my doing so.   The weeks of cool, wet weather right after slowed things down, but I think the plants are catching up.   The banana peppers are loaded with fruits and the other peppers have just started flowering!

The peas are almost done fruiting.   I've had a tasty snack every day for a week and a half.  Yesterday there were enough ready to harvest to add to a tasty bulgar salad for dinner.   I shelled over a cup of fresh peas, which were so yummy.

The Scarlet Runner beans are flowering.   The yellow pole beans are about to flower and the regular green pole beans are slightly behind that.   There are only a few yellow beans because the wild beasties seemed to enjoy feasting on the seedlings as soon as they were sprouting.

The first zucchini should be ready to harvest soon.   I hand pollinated it just to be certain.  :)   The cucumbers have started producing as well.  These are regular old Straight Eight's, a reliable standard.  The fruit will take a bit more time to mature though, since it's a regular old slicing cucumber and nothing fancy or special. 

The rest of the garden is doing just as nicely.   The beets are growing well.  We might have some carrots too.  The potatoes should be ready to harvest in a few weeks and the garlic is almost ready to dig up and dry.   The early lettuce I planted has been delicious.  We've eaten salad almost every day.  I'm amazed that it still isn't bitter or going to seed although the second crop is growing.   We've harvested more arugula from that and the lettuce may be ready to start harvesting next week.   We've eaten radishes (daikon yum), fresh onions and will harvest some Swiss chard for dinner tonight.  Since I didn't have any Swiss Chard seeds and there were none available when I looked for them, I've no idea how it got there.  However I'm not looking a gift horse in the mouth - we'll eat it anyway, despite my not planting it and it being in not quite the spot that I'd have chosen.

Off the Needles and playing in the dirt.

The sockettes are done!  Of course footie socks are only half socks, so didn't take as long as a full pair.  It took one skein of yarn and an extra metre or two.  These are from Paton's Kroy, so are shorter skeins, but a skein with a few extra metres would mean I'd get both from one skein.  That is handy.  Luckily, I had the leftover bits  from a previous pair of socks from this colourway.  I'd bought a bag of 6 skeins from the outlet store.  While you get a bit of a deal on price, it does mean that you either have lots of socks in the same colour or you need to trade them off with someone else.

Potato flowers are so delicate and pretty.   I've got two varieties planted this year, Kenebec and another variety, either Chieftan or Russet..  Normally I plant Yukon Golds but decided to get wild this year and try something different!  The little mesh bags holding the seed potatoes weren't labelled, so once you grab a couple of bags and set them on the counter, there is no telling which was which.   I planted this row early and while I worried that the wet, cold spring, would rot the potatoes before they had a chance to grow, they are doing really well.  The other two rows were planted later and are definitely playing catch up.  It will be interesting to see whether they do indeed catch up the the earlier planted potatoes.   I wonder if there will be a difference in amounts of potatoes harvested or if we just get to enjoy an extended harvest of fresh potatoes?

Weeding seems to be an endless task this year.   It was a great year for the Maples to produce keys and those keys have decided that conditions are perfect for growing.  I'm plucking out hundreds of Maple seedlings from my gardens this year.   I swear that I pull them out for hours and by the next day, there are more growing in their place.   It feels like I am weeding the same patch over and over again. ( It kind of looks that way too and is probably fairly accurate)   The only good thing is that the spots that have a heavy straw cover have few to no weeds.  It's only where I haven't mulched yet or where it's thinner, that there are problems.    Of course you can't use the straw mulch on seeds until they've grown substantially but on planting seedlings, it's been a huge help.

The Petunias are doing well. I plant Petunias in memory of my mother, who loved them.   These are in half barrel planters.  There are regular and Wave Petunias. I'm hoping the Wave Petunias will drape down the sides of the barrel dramatically.  I've never tried them before, so it could be interesting.  Usually I just toss some Marigolds in with the Petunias as it makes a pretty colour combo, with the added bonus that I can snip off the Marigolds for dye plants.  Yep, it is a year for shaking things up in the garden!   Different varieties of potatoes and Wave Petunias?  What next?  hehehe

Lots of little projects

The vegetable garden is planted!  There are still a few things that I've planned to do multiple sowings, like salad greens and the such, but all in all, it's done!   Well, except that pumpkins and squash, which were supposed to go into new raised beds, which haven't happened yet. Somehow painting the deck trumped making new raised beds and I've no idea how that happened.  

In between I've been waiting for the next Stanley Cup Playoff - tonight so spinning wasn't a priority.  Instead I've been embroidering - it's taking forever.  When I first started this sort of embroidery, my friend assured me it would get faster, but I don't think it has.   I'm going to extend this piece just a bit and turn it into another cuff.  I may use the same pattern for the second one, or go with different birds.  I'm not sure yet.

I've also started winding a warp.  I'm going to weave a bag or a purse, specifically a pilgrim type satchel for camping with this summer.   I thought I had enough leftover Harrisville Shetland kicking around and might actually have had enough, if I'd not decided to make an extra bit of yardage for either a second bag, or a hat or something else.  For some reason, I also thought I had a whole whack of  white in a bin, but I've not yet figure out where that might be, if indeed I have any left at all.  I found a bit of blue and a bit of brown, small partial cones; one of each.   Now I either have to scramble and ask friends if they've any leftovers I can scrounge, order some or spin something similar..  Why didn't I think this one through before I started it?

The Poppy to be is now flowering.   The big heavy flower drooped to the ground.  My sweetie mowed down most of the patch, in his good intentioned efforts to keep the Creeping Charlie at bay.

The Bachelor's Buttons are blooming a tad early.  I love the shades of blue in the garden.  So very pretty...

Bleeding Hearts are finally blooming as well.  It seems like so many plants are blooming in a weird order this year.   Even the pear trees - so late in blooming this year but because there was no risk of frost and a myriad of pollinators out and about, there are way too many fruits on both trees.   If I decide to dare the ladder, I should be up there plucking off a lot of the small fruits before they sap most of the energy from the tree and we get a huge harvest of tiny pears.   Less fruits to grow on the tree, the larger the fruit!

FOOL and Flowers

We had our local SCA event FOOL - Fruits Of Our Labours, a weekend of hands on classes and activities.   I brought my camera, because people do lots of uber cool things, but neglected to take the darned thing out!   I'm home again and still exhausted.  What is it about running an event like this that you have a great time, nothing goes drastically wrong and you're still tired?   The only glitch, was that the site is having it's 30th Anniversary Open House next weekend and the low spot to the camping area turned out to be mushy and leaving tracks, so we ended up closing it to vehicular traffic.  There were carts and wagons to haul gear in.   People grumbled a bit, but I don't think anyone wanted to leave the site with big tire tracks just before an open house.   We want to go back

I came home to find our chickens had doubled in size.  I swear they had and a few of the meatie boys are starting to act a bit roosterish.  Nothing that an apron skirt or feed scoop won't stop though.

Chitted Potato - fancy name for sprouted

Today I got a good start on the garden.  I planted the rest of the potatoes.  They were all pretty  much chitted, which I don't normally bother with.  However, it's been cold and damp, so they sat around sprouting, regardless.  I planted the tomatoes but due to the blight we had last year, I not only moved them to the secondary garden, but spread them out a lot.  That used up a bit more space than I'd planned on, but I think we'll be more likely to get a good tomato harvest.   I've got 3 zucchini seedlings planted as well.   I'll put the peppers in tomorrow when I can get some help to make a plastic hoop cover to protect them as I've found that peppers and cucumbers seem to do a lot better started under mini greenhouse conditions.

Then, after all that digging and planting, I took a wander around the garden to see what else was happening... 

Soon to be Red Currants

Pink Geraniums

 I'll have to admit that I love Pink Geraniums - no other colour though, just the pink ones.  They seem to glow in the sunlight.

Chinese Woad - Isatis Indigotica

Last year I planted the first Isatis Indigotica seeds and only had 3 germinate.  This year I tried again and only got a couple to germinate again.  However, these flowers will give me a huge amount of fresh seed to try next year, so hopefully I'll have a good amount of leaves to try out then.

Pear blossoms against the blue sky.  I thought I might miss them this year as they just started to bloom before I left for the weekend.   The Bartlett Pear tree has only a few blooms left, but the other one of some miscellaneous variety, is still blooming.

A poppy to be.   These are all standard orange /red poppies.  They are overgrowing the flower beds.   I'll have to dig them up shortly.  I have some new ones to plant with them,  pink of course :)   

Back in the real world

The wild storms we had last week, knocked out the local Internet Relay thingies in our county.  The one servicing our area, was down for nearly a week.  I really hadn't realized how much our connection intertwines with our lives, for little things like "what's the weather tomorrow, honey?".   Oh well, we're back.  I found myself reading, just for fun, which was, well, fun!   Gotta love a trashy novel once in a while.

While we couldn't stream the Stanley Cup games, I still kept up with my Stanley Cup spinning.  I really wasn't sure if it should count, since there wasn't actually a game on in the house.  However, I've been figuring game coverage is normally 2 - 2.5 hours, so I tried to get that in on game days.   I missed one, but the two bags of rovings are finished.  I went looking for some fleece to card and found, hidden away, a bag with 1.9 lbs of lovely white Shetland rovings.  That is my next effort to spin up during games.  I do hope Vancouver makes it to the next round though.  I was a tad disappointed when the Habs didn't make it through. 

Spring is trying so hard to make an appearance..  It mainly feels springlike.   The ground has finally dried enough to not feel like one is walking on sponges.  The garden has been turned and ready to plant, when the time is right of course.   

Winter Sown Experiments: Success!

The Winter Sown bottles have been a success.  I planted Golden Marguerite, Icelandic Poppies, Red Yarrow, Rudbekia Goldsturm, Black Hollyhocks, Single Hollyhocks, Lupins, Gaillardia and something else I think.  Only the Red Yarrow and Rudbekia have not germinated.   It's last year's seed and they didn't germinate last year.  I am wondering if the seed was old or bad.   I'll be looking for actual plants this year!  Otherwise, I'm thrilled with the results.

Last year's pot hyacinths, planted in the fall.

 I had bought several pots of forced Hyacinth bulbs last spring.  I kept the plants growing until the foliage died back and let the bulbs dry out.   I planted them in the fall.  Although not all of them survived, enough did to make a pretty little patch of colour.   I'll do the same with the ones I bought this spring as well!

The Lilac trees have tiny leaves and little flower buds.   It's so reassuring to see them.  Despite the fact that they are white, they are still one of the sure signs of spring that I remember from my childhood.  I'd rather that they were purple, dark purple or even pink, but they are mature, so the blooms are lovely.     If the breeze is right and the day warm enough, the scent of the Lilacs is intoxicating.

Peas!

The peas have finally started to show.  So much for the cool weather issue.  We've had so much rain that I feared they had washed away.  Nope, still there, just a tad delayed.   The onion sets are up,  the garlic seems to be hale and hardy.  It's about a foot tall now.   The tomato plants are looking fine and should be able to go in the ground in a couple of weeks, along with the cucumbers, squashes, zucchini and peppers, etc.

The Green Haze of the First Young Leaves

The Willow trees are among the first to leaf out.  The soft green haze glowing  amongst the brown of the rest of the trees is one of those heart pitty-patty making signs of spring.   I do find the first sight of emerging leaves so exciting.

Remember, it's almost Dandelion season.   Pick off the flower heads and use them in a dye pot.  They produce a beautiful shade of yellow.  Dandelion flowers also freeze well.  Toss them in a freezer bag and you can use them at your leisure!