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Archive for the ‘Garden’ Category

Brought to you courtesy of Apple

02 May

At last, I’ve gone over to the other side – I got a Mac. (And an iPad, but that’s a story for another day.)

Rock cress

Rock cress

Setting up the new machine, and playing with years of digital memories in iPhoto, has gotten my creativity raging again, and since the weather is so incredible, I’ve been out in the garden. NOTE: “Setting up the new machine” actually consisted of copying my photos, music, and knitting patterns.

The rock cress, phlox and late primroses are in full bloom. I love the carpets of color in the rock garden! Everything now is in shades of pink and purple, except for a few tulips hanging on. I’ll never be rid of the grape hyacinths – they’re pretty, but there are so many of them.

The daffodils are nearly all gone – it’s time to clean up the spent blossoms. Our tiny azalea is showing some magenta, though it looks dead 11 1/2 months of the year. The roses are budding, and wisteria is blooming. Though nearly every lilac in the city is in full bloom (today Walking in the woods is the best day to visit Highland Park, but the Lilac Festival isn’t until next week) ours is at least a week away.

Yesterday, we went south to Cumming Nature Center in Naples, NY. The boys had fun herding snakes, tracking muskrats in the pond, and generally horsing around. The place is a bit meh, though the location is interesting – there’s a beaver pond, a stand of Norway pine, wetland, grasses, and more. A woodpecker (or yellow-bellied sapsucker? don’t know, never saw it) was working away somewhere in the treetops, and a pair of Canada geese were having some kind of debate on a log in the middle of the pond. The beavers moved on decades ago, but we spotted a muskrat building his cattail lodge.

Today is heavy, waiting for the rain. We’ll be visiting Corrie & Bowden later this afternoon, and Staffan is rehearsing his newscast for homework. Meantime, I’ve got Faces to confirm.

 
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Posted in Garden

 

Are you ready for some FOOTBALL?

08 Sep

Trent Edwards Under Fire
What a fun game! Very entertaining, with so many highlights. Here are my faves:

Roscoe Parish’s punt return
Lee Evan’s great catch
Marshawn Lynch running, and running, and scoring
Trent Edwards does it all

As for the garden: I did a little research on cucurbits, primarily because all my early squash blossoms have just fallen right off their stems*. The answer helped with the cuke-bounty problem in my last post: many or most of the cucumber blossoms are male blossoms, and cannot produce fruit. However, a quick check revealed over a dozen fruits growing, and there’s still 6-8 weeks till the first frost.

 
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Posted in Garden, Weaving

 

Blog? Who, me?

25 Jul

I actually remembered the day this year though – happy 6th blogiversary to me. If the last year had been more than monthly posts, I’d be prouder.

I’m on vacation, probably for the rest of the summer, so I’ve got time. Enough for a little blogging, a little picture-downloading, and some great gardening skill-building.
So what’s been good, these last few months?

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A thrilling trip to FL where I drove from Tampa to Orlando through incredible driving rain. Makes me wonder what a hurricane must be like. Then back to Clearwater for a visit with Adam, Molly and Lisa (plus Jake the talking wonder-cat, but no pictures.) Wonderful early-morning trip to Honeymoon Island, where we looked and looked for the beach cleaner – but either he was on vacation, or he hadn’t been kept after all.  We made several trips to Lisa’s LYS, doing much damage to my charge cards, including 4 oz of this beautiful BFL from Gale Evans, destined for sock yarn. (I just started spinning this yesterday, 1 1/2 oz done, and I think I’ve got the hang of it.)

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Immediately upon my return, spring was almost done springing. You can’t blink your eyes in Rochester, I tell ya. I did get a couple pictures near the end – our tiny Korean or French lilac (no matter what its provenance, it smells like absolute heaven), and a rare shot of Tuna rolling in the warm grass. Since that day, she’s only gone outside to eat the grass, and remains on the cool kitchen floor the rest of the time.

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Next up: Two graduations – Paul’s nephew Scott (Hobart & William Smith), complete with pipes, drums, pomp, curcumstance, and light rain; and my niece Brianna (Wayne Central), during a much better stretch of weather – and under a covered amphitheater. Much more sensible! The lily is from my garden, and it’s called Mona Lisa – for the two members of the family who couldn’t be with us on this special day.

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Several adventures, to Stonybrook Park, Keuka Lake, and out to visit the grandkids. Too busy playing to take any good pictures of them, natch. But an awesome shot of their captured cicada (and yes, we sent him off to … do what cicadas do. Mate, lay eggs, and wait seven years underground, right? At least this one got his 15 seconds of fame…

So, I’d better think about making myself presentable, eh? This lying-about-until-noon is delicious, but not getting any weeds hoed, packages mailed, porches swept, laundry folded. But taken in moderation, it is good food for the soul.

 
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Posted in Garden, Spinning

 

Fixed – Orenburg-style shawl pattern

21 Jun

FINALLY I’m sitting at my computer this morning for my own pleasure, and I figured out what was wrong with the pattern link on the Orenburg lace page. The pattern itself has not been updated – there’s a little “issue” with Acrobat on my new computer. But I’m testing OpenOffice.org, which has a built-in PDF exporter. I’m also looking at cutting down the size of the chart, but that might be tricky. The center section doesn’t have a handy repeat.

In garden gnus, the sugar snap peas are blooming! They’re taller than me (and the trellis/netting they’re to grow on). According to my calculations, I should be expecting to start harvesting July 4th.

The roses are at their peak, and as beautiful & aromatic as ever. I think I’ve figured out why they’re so much less prolific than they were when we moved in. The maple tree, in the back corner of the yard, has at least doubled in size, and (now that I’ve seen the yard in mid-day sunshine) the roses, raspberries, peonies and Shasta daisies are in full shade. I should say, ex-Shasta daisies, because they were very thin 2 yrs ago, almost gone last year, and completely gone this year.

I’d hate to have to lose that tree, and the nice shady corner in the yard, but we’ve less than 1200 sq ft of backyard. Now, 700 sq ft of sunny yard. I’ve got to put in some raised beds, to make better use of the space.

 
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Posted in Garden, Lace

 

The bottom line

05 Mar

The storm was far less severe than my hysterical imagination predicted. Being the 17th anniversary – to the day! – of the Big Stormâ„¢, and seeing how quickly my windshield iced up driving home from Avon last night, I was fearing the worst.

I had fun at dinner last night, because Staffan wasn’t around in 1991, and apparently he hasn’t heard the stories too many times … “You lived at Grandma’s?”, or “You had a dog?” made me feel like I’ve shortchanged him on the family history. OTOH, he may have heard and discarded it all several times before. He remembers things very well, but selectively.

No knitting so far this week, aside from a row or two on the cabled socks. I’m too tired when I get home. This recovery rate is hard to plot: so much slower than my expectations the first 2 weeks, then so quick last week that I thought I was all better; but now I’m still not 100%. I haven’t been back to the gym, for example. All the rates are in the right direction, though – so I’m not complaining! And by the time I can get out and dig in the garden, I’ll be 100% again.

Speaking of the garden – I can’t wait to see daffodils and primroses. Another six weeks, right? Big plans this year include: snap peas, green peppers and sweet potatoes. No annual flowers out back, at all. We’ll put the peppers in pots on the deck, again. It worked really well for water control there (peppers like it hot and dry, and our yard is too wet) and besides, it looks good. The sweet potatoes will go in where I’m clearing out that tall phlox-y weed-y flower, the one that’s taken over the east end of the center bed. And the peas will go way out back, where the strawberries have petered out. Yeah – like 25 feet from the deck is “way out back”.

So many plans! I hope by late April I still have this much enthusiasm.

PS – Lisa, click here to see how cute baby knitting can be. (This is not pressure, though! I am totally happy to wait for grandmacity grandmotherishness grandmomitude becoming a grandma.)

 
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Posted in Garden