Cabin Crafted

Category: crafting

  • Pre Freeze Salvage

    Yesterday was in the 70’s and pouring rain from Zeta going just south of us. In the afternoon it partially cleared with some sun peeking out, a gorgeous nearly full moon last night until just after 9 p.m., then the wind kicked up and it poured again as the front moved through to drop the temperature into the mid 40’s where it is staying under thick cloudy skies today. Tonight it is going down to around 30 f. The peas have pods and they can take that cold if it isn’t too windy. The peppers and ground cherries won’t, even covered. After a run out to grab drive thru lunch and go to pick up my sewing machine that was kindly repaired by a friend’s Mother-in-law, a former “Home Ec” teacher, I pulled up my hood on my wool, grabbed a basket, clippers, and sheets of plastic and headed to the garden.

    The fig was covered again, the figs still aren’t ripe and may not ever ripen, but I’m going to keep hoping. The peas were covered to protect them from the wind tonight. The pepper plants stripped of all the ripe Thai’s, all of the Serranos and the Jalapenos. The still green Thai’s were cut in branches and all brought in. I am a popsicle, though I need to go do a better cover job on the peas.

    The basket was sorted, the ripe Thai peppers will be strung, the ripe Serranos were strung, the Jalapenos and still small green Serranos will be pickled, maybe a few chopped and frozen for winter use.

    The green Thai peppers still on the branches were strung across a rod and hung over two hooks in the windows on the north side of the utility room to ripen or dry green. As they ripen, I will pull them and string them. The red Thai peppers become the crushed red peppers and used whole in stir fry, ground to make chili powder as a substitute for cayenne. As there will be 8 or 9 strings of them, Son 1’s family will get a couple for their use. They had a new garden this year, but somehow ended up with mild Jalapenos, mild Habeneros, and very hot Ghost Peppers, so some hot peppers will be welcome in their household.

    This morning, I emptied my 4th spindle onto the bobbin of singles and chain plied the yarn on the bobbin. I haven’t measured it out yet, but it is 7 WPI so Aran or Bulky weight, a good weight for a Monmouth style hat. And while my spindles were idle, I decided on November’s spinning challenge fiber.

    The two Aegeans, the larger two will be used to spin the “Apple Picking” braid of Merino/Baby Camel/Mulberry Silk. The Honduran Rosewood Finch will work on the Alpaca/Coopworth fiber that is white and burgundy and I want to learn to ply on the fly with it. The Olive wood Finch will continue on the rare breed mixed Jacob. I want to end up with enough of it to make a Monmouth hat and a pair of fingerless gloves. I had decided that those 4 spindles were enough to keep me busy when the Jenkins group posted a pop-up lottery of 11 Masur Birch spindles and two of them are Aegeans in the weight I like, so needless to say, I put my name in for the two I would like a chance to purchase. The drawing will be Monday. If I get lucky, I will have to decide if I want to keep all three or let one go, that is going to be a difficult decision because I love the two I have.

    In the meantime, I will knit on grand daughter’s sweater. The sleeves need another inch plus then knitted on to the body and continue on up to the neck and the hood. When it is done, the Christmas stocking for Son 2’s youngest born January 5 needs to be made. Each grand gets a Grandmom made stocking for their first Christmas.

  • Who needed electricity?

    The leather drive band for the old treadle sewing machine arrived today and since it is gray and drizzly out, I fought with cutting it shorter and putting in the staple that holds it in place. I think it is still a bit too long, but it was adequate to tackle the last three masks for hubby. Because the belt was a little loose, it caused more work on my part, but there are three completed masks.

    I would love to know the age of this machine. The machine is a Minnesota brand from Sears, Roebuck Co. The wooden cabinet has the Sears tag in it. I have tried in the past to figure the age based on the Model number. I can identify that is was manufactured by the Davis Company in Dayton, Ohio in the early 1900’s, as a catalog sale for about $18, but that is as close as I have been able to get. It works beautifully when the band is tight enough and it is clean and oiled. There is a box of attachments in the cabinet drawer, but as the needle hole is a single hole, I don’t know that it can do much more than straight sew.

    Somewhere along the way during one of the moves from the house we sold to a rental, to storage, to here, the square knob on the right hand drawer was lost. The veneer on the top isn’t is perfect shape, but the machine works. So it is at least 100 years older than my electric singer that is broken for the 4th time though it gets only light use.

    I think I will just keep using my foot power when I need to sew. When not in use, it is a downstairs hall table with a sculpture done by DIL 1 and a small wicker sewing basket that belonged to great grandmother atop.

  • I Fibbed a little

    and my obsessive compulsive side partially won. As I pulled the rough, quick, down and dirty basket down off of the refrigerator to take out a couple potatoes tonight, I decided I couldn’t live with it that way. Not having a finishing rim on it and the ovalish shape, bothered me. I had plenty of the thicker reed that is flat on one side and curved on the other, and I didn’t like the tall handle that was disproportionate to the diameter of the basket. While waiting for the oven to heat, I soaked a piece of the thick reed and a couple strands of chair caning reed, cut the handle off level with the top of the basket, bent the heavier reed around the basket and anchored it on with the caning reed.

    Still far from perfect, but I’m happier with it, it is more round, more rigid, refilled with potatoes and covered back with the tea towel on the top of the refrigerator.

    Only two hens are laying, two Olive eggers, so all eggs are green and have good hard shells. With the extended free range time, the yolks are dark orange, firm and round, but because they are feasting on grass seed and insects all day, they don’t want to go to the safety of the run before we let the dogs out to run.

    Another basket of peppers were picked and strung yesterday. There are at least 100 ground cherries, but they are all too small to pick and it is going down to 31f Friday night, so I guess this isn’t the year that I get to try them. I will plant early next year. The pepper plants will be pulled Friday afternoon and hung upside down in the garage so the remaining peppers will ripen. The peas will be covered with plastic in hope for some fresh peas as the daytimes will still be mild.

    The bees were busy on the marigolds, the only flowers still blooming except for one errant Stella day lily.

    The lawn area should be mowed one last time before freezing nights. That means purchasing more fuel and pumping up the tire again. It may get done, it may not.

    I finished the monthly Jenkins spindle challenge with 182.04 grams of singles spun for the month. The entire 4 ounce braid of Shenandoah colorway purchased at the virtual fiber festival with two small samples of BamHuey, a bamboo/merino blend, and 4 turtles of rare breed fibers, Moorit Shetland and mixed Jacob to round out the month. Now on to ply the Shenandoah Falkland on my wheel in preparation for the November challenge. The scale says 187.04, but I had to subtract the weight of the two plastic cables and two paper tags.

    Another month in the life on the farm with the fading garden, many walks while the weather is nice, lots of spinning, a bit of knitting, and sewing mishaps. The sewing machine that wouldn’t work is being checked out, the new leather band for the antique treadle machine should be here tomorrow and I will finish sewing the masks cut out over the weekend using foot power instead of electricity.

    Stay safe everyone. “Chose science over fiction.” Joe

  • Market Day and Repairs

    Another week has drifted by in isolation with a few woods, pond, and rail cut walks. Another gray and drizzly market day. It was raining lightly when we left the house, but it hadn’t reached town when we got there. There was still some sunshine and a few broken clouds, but it was raining lightly by the time the market pick up was done and breakfast in the car eaten. There were more vendors at the market today and more people that were just browsing, too many people not respecting social distancing. Social distancing is difficult when you stand back 6 feet, then have someone “cut” in line in front of you because they don’t realize there is a line as happened to me today. I allowed it to happen instead of saying something to the two young women who shouldn’t have been there when I was as they hadn’t pre ordered, nor were they 55+ years old. Then a young man, also not meeting the prerequisites to shop that hour stepped right up next to my shoulder, again, no respect for distance. Everyone is masked and I know the young volunteers at the information table don’t want to challenge everyone with a question about whether they had pre orders or were old enough. Today made me somewhat uncomfortable in the crowd. I guess I need to go back to the beginning of the first hour and take my chances that everyone is set up. But this below is why I like our Farmer’s Market.

    This is a sampling of the goodness that was brought home today, thanks to Riverstone Farm and Greenstar Farm for the veggies, Whitegate Farm for the butter and sausage, and Williamson Farm for a pound of grass finished ground beef. No bread this week since I baked during the week. As we were heading off to get breakfast, I was discussing with hubby how some of the issues could be handled, not that anyone asked me. There are three rows of vendors in an L shape. One row is under the shelter below, facing the green.

    The second row backs up to them and the third row is across the lot from them, no cars are permitting on Saturday mornings except for the vendors to unload in the morning and reload in the afternoon. About where the roof changes heights, there is a two way opening to try to direct traffic that causes congestion and has people coming and going between the rows. My idea is to close in the first row with vendors filling that opening and the corner opening and making traffic one way. You enter at the first vendor in that row anyway. If they did that and shifted the last vendor in that row a couple of feet to open a path to the rear rows as the exit is currently in line with the entrance behind the first row. One way traffic would help alleviate some of the congestion.

    Once the goodies were home, a basket to hold the potatoes on top of the refrigerator was sought from my supply. It needs to be away from the sunny window where the wire hanging tiered basket is that holds onions and garlic that isn’t in a braid. The one I was going to use was one of my earliest ones made and stained with Walnut stain. I used to be very good about hosing my baskets off about once a year to remove dust and dampen the reed to keep it from getting brittle, but I don’t think that most of my handmade baskets have been given that treatment since moving in to this house 15 years ago. I had noticed some broken reeds in the weave of several of the baskets, but that one was the worst. When in the basement to pull out ceramic pumpkins and the ghost to decorate with a couple of weeks ago, I spotted a plastic bin with a partially made basket and reed in it. That unfinished basket must be 18 to 20 years old. I remember the day I was teaching Son 1 and friends how to make baskets, in the back yard of the house we sold in Virginia Beach prior to building the house here. We spent a couple of years renting while plans were made, house was started, and finally completed.

    The reed was checked for soundness and size. I needed narrower reed than what was there, so after soaking it and the most damaged basket, it was cut to width and the basket was repaired. That inspired me to inspect the other baskets and do more repair. There was some narrow chair caning reed that worked perfectly on the blue and natural apple basket that was made by my friend that took the class with me. The wider reed was right to repair the largest basket. The odd shaped unfinished basket was made into a very crude, misshapen basket that went on the top of the refrigerator for the potatoes and covered with a small tea towel.

    Two baskets still need a rinse, but they are too large for the sink, so they will go out to the yard and get a quick hosing down. It would have bothered me when I started making baskets to not make the one on the right perfectly shaped and properly edged and the unstained reed on the stained basket would have stressed me, but it shows that repair and keep using is more important than perfection and I kind of like it.

    The two winter squash with the last pumpkin from last year’s harvest were put in a wooden trencher that hubby gave me years ago from a craftsman at a fair. They will be used for meals in the next week or two and the pumpkin will make pies for our isolation holiday meals as we can’t have our kids here and since the garden did not produce pumpkins this year. The local pumpkin patches are open but they aren’t any fun without grandkids along.

  • Fiber Intervention

    I don’t need to buy fiber for years. In the past two weeks, I bought Shetland from a friend who is thinning her fiber out, it is about a pound and a half, traded some fiber for some Moorit Shetland, bought the Shenandoah braid and the two 4 ounce bumps of Coopworth from vendor friends at the Shenandoah Virtual Festival. I still had a 4 ounce braid I had bought a couple months ago from Corgi Hill Farms that I was going to spin this fall. Then there are bags of Jacob that I washed from two raw fleeces that I use when I can do living history, and random bags that need labels, each with a few to 4 ounces. My storage cubes don’t hold it all.

    Some sorting, re bagging, and labelling later, it is mostly contained. Some of those books have been shelf weights for too many years and need to be donated to Friends of the Library or the YMCA Thrift shop. That would give me one more bin for storage as the remaining books could go on another shelf or on top.

    Spinning on the spindles will continue with the pretty fibers, making thin yarns that may someday sell or my arthritis will permit knitting lacy knits. Much of the Shetland, Jacob, Coopworth, and a mystery soft brown fiber will be spun thicker, probably on the wheel with the idea of making Monmouth or Freedom caps and proper fingerless gloves to sell at Living History events. I’m leaning toward only doing historical knits for vending in the future. If some of my finer lacey knits ever sell, I may return to making more of them from the colorful yarns.

    Yesterday, I finished the first color band of my Shenandoah braid, about 18 grams spun. Today I will begin on the browns that match the spindle.

    With the first of October and a concession to a changing season, the fall decorations were brought out for display. There are two rotating fall table cloths that are used instead of the daily woven placemats, followed by two Christmas ones.

    The house was damp mopped to try to reduce the dog hair load, they are shedding like it was summer time, and all the wood furniture was given a good clean and wax with a beeswax based polish. It is so futile because within minutes, there is hair everywhere again.

    Tonight, I will have to cover the ground cherries, peppers, and tomatillos to protect them in case we receive frost. The peas that are finally blooming should be okay and the beans are only setting seed at this point, so they will likely be left uncovered. I have had beans survive light frost in the past with just some leaf edge burn. As the weather chills down, each trip into the house requires brushing off the stink bugs that are gathering trying to find entrance. They are heavy this year and if the winter is mild as currently predicted, they will be worse next year. I wish they had a natural predator here.

  • In the dark

    It rained and rained and rained, all day yesterday. We had just finished eating an early dinner when the power went out, no good reason we could see. Yes it was wet out, but we never did have wind. The predicted repair time was 12:30 a.m. today, so I dumped the ice from the icemaker into a huge bag and a cooler, turned off the icemaker, so we didn’t end up with water dripping through the basement ceiling.

    By battery lantern, I spun on my spindles for a few hours to try to finish the fiber that I have been working on since the beginning of August. The last 20 some grams were spun last night before I turned in with the lantern and my book.

    The morning brought thick fog, but the rain had stopped. We made a quick run to the Farmers’ Market for my preordered goodies but again, two of the vendors I shop weren’t ready, one was before I left, but the other was still setting up. I was hoping for some carrots, but came home without.

    We drove back home, unloaded the goodies into the refrigerator and freezer, loaded the trailer on the Xterra and returned to town to pick up the mowers. They are home, but the grass is too wet to mow with it as tall as it is. When I start, I will have to raise the deck as high as it will go and mow half width passes and repeat at a lower deck height in a couple of days.

    The fiber I spun last night was plied this afternoon and again is a very fine lace weight yarn.

    That full bobbin gave me 475.5 yards before it is washed. Once it is washed and dry, I will remeasure both skeins to see how much yardage I actually got. It should be in the neighborhood of 900 plus yards.

    This afternoon I attempted to attend the virtual Shenandoah Fiber Festival. It just isn’t the same. I sought out the three vendors I would have sought in person and ordered a “Shenandoah” colorway Falklands from Wild Hare, a vendor I have purchased before. The colorway was dyed for the event and I ordered some Coopworth/Alpaca blend and two color Coopworth from Hearts of the Meadow Farm, a friend who vends there. Trying to browse was frustrating.

    As the weather chills, again I am noticing my right hand, the side from the broken wrist years ago gets colder than the left and the cold is causing more arthritis pain in that arm especially when I knit. This is going to be an issue as I have a Christmas stocking to knit for the newest grandson and a sweater for a grand daughter. It is good that I have all of October, November, and half of December to get them done.

  • Tour de Fleece

    Many fiber groups participate in Tour de Fleece. It is a fun activity that coincides with the Tour de France, in normal years. Generally you do something to challenge yourself on challenge day, “rest” on rest days, etc. I have never participated in this before, but I belong to a group on a social media site that is for Jenkins Turkish Spindles which have been my sanity during the stay at home order and following self isolation as things are opening back up and virus cases increasing. Spindle spinning is relaxing to me and I have plenty of fiber to play with, but spindle spinning slows down the process and makes the fiber last longer.

    The group for the past 23 days has had a “Scavenger Hunt” and the found item is photographed with your spindle(s) with 1 or more gram of newly spun fiber on it. The items have to be from your “home” and that includes your property. Some of the items have been quite easy such as a fresh fruit or vegetable, more difficult such as your favorite piece or pottery or basket, your favorite piece of wall art, etc. Those items aren’t as difficult to fiber artists as you might think because of mugs, yarn bowls, baskets to store knitting or spinning. A few days required two items, such as something to climb and a helmet.

    Surrounded by hills and mountains, I chose my grandfather’s old wooden ladder and helmets from activities neither of us can do any longer, but still have the helmets.

    Yesterday was the final day and if you have ever followed Tour de France, you know that the daily leader and final winner wear a yellow shirt. I had no trouble with the first 22 days other than deciding on some days which basket or piece of pottery, which live plant, book, item that began with a certain letter to use. The final one was tough. We both look ill or like we are about to be if we wear yellow. The object has to be in your home, so borrowing or buying one is not an option. There were no yellow shirts to be found, anywhere in the house, including the clothing stash that Son 1 and DIL keep in the basement bedroom dresser. It wouldn’t have been the end of the world to not have it, but prize entries were based on the number of items found and when. You had to find one each day but two with two grace days to get three entries and if you got all 23, you got an extra entry. I was not to be out done by this. I have an extensive spice collection as I love to cook, so there was a bottle of ground turmeric. A pot of boiling turmeric and water and one of hubby’s undershirts simmered for 15 minutes then treated with a good dose of salted vinegar and I had a yellow shirt.

    Photographed with the 126 g of fiber spun in the 23 days. That shirt will have to be washed separately or everything we own will be yellow and it will become a painting shirt, but I ended up with my yellow shirt.

    What a fun way to take your mind off of being at home. It was fun reading through as many of the more than 8000 posts as I could and seeing objects from other folks homes in the US and other countries, reading about events in others lives, meeting new friends. The group moderator must have been super woman to keep up with what started as 106 participants and ended up with 99 chatty folks, tracking our finds and ending and starting each day. The last find has to be posted by 11 a.m. EDT today, then she has to finish the tally and do the prize drawings. I donated 3 of the prizes so items will be mailed off to the winners when announced.

    To “extend” our fun, she as introduced a spin 15 minutes a day for a week. Many of the same folks have signed up for this too, so we can continue being in each other’s lives for a while longer.

  • Continuation

    Yesterday we had a dozen bags of Black Cow manure compost loaded into the back of the car. And a roll of weed mat. When we got home, I unloaded the compost in the yard just outside of the walled garden. It isn’t nearly enough, but it is a start to hold down the cardboard and the hay that was placed over it. The garden is filled to the top of the wall in the deep part below the retaining wall.

    After it gets rained on and the hay begins to compost, more soil or leaf mulch will have to be added. The first dozen bags went farther than I anticipated they would and the steep part at the edge of the retaining wall will be a challenge. I may run a secondary retaining wall of stones like in the outer wall from the top end of the retaining wall to the outer stone wall to hold the soil on the uphill side. More stone was moved, and one plant was relocated, but it really isn’t a good location for it as it is tall and is right on the edge of the bed at the wall. There is a large clump of the same plant at the corner of the garage, so I may sacrifice what is here and move some once the bed is finished. It would be perfect against the large stone you see above in the retaining wall. A clump of Dutch Iris was moved to the bed behind the garage wall, a garden I am really liking this summer with all of the bright colored flowers.

    Note the posts holding plastic mesh fence to deter the deer.

    It is a mix of iris, day lilies, Calendula, Zinneas, with annual yellow coneflower, marigolds, coreopsis, and a few other annuals tossed in for more color. All of the bright colors make me happy. It got too hot to continue to work back there in the sun so I quit working on it for the day. It is a work in progress, not something that must be done immediately.

    There was no more work on our hay last night. They may have been baling the last field on the farm down the mountain. Two of the their tractors are still parked under the trees in our field. I expect they will return after their day jobs today as they have today and tomorrow before we have more rain in the forecast. They need to at least get what is down baled, even if they can’t get the last field done yet.

    Late last night, hubby let the pups out for their last nightly outing and one of them returned smelling skunky. Not a full on spraying, but more like they walked through somewhere that had been recently sprayed. If it wasn’t going to be 90 today, I would open all the windows and turn on all the fans. When I went out to do morning outdoor chores and returned into the house, the odor hit me again. What an effective and unpleasant defense mechanism. I have feared having one of them directly sprayed ever since we got dogs. The big guy seems to be in a lot of pain lately in spite of being given a human adult sized dose of Meloxicam every morning. He is coming up the stairs to be with us again and then reluctantly goes back down, not limping as badly as he was, but he is a very old man for a huge Mastiff.

    I try to avoid politics in my blog and not to dwell on COVID, but it is terrifying that cases are rising nationwide and there is no national unity in addressing it, that so many people are dismissing it as a hoax and refusing to adopt basic safely practices to help slow the spread. During the early months when it was rampant down the east and central part of the state, the rural areas where we are were not experiencing many cases, but it is on the rise now. We are starting to see businesses in our area shutter their doors permanently and many more will likely follow. We obey other safely laws and rules for the good of ourselves and others, why have masks and social distancing become such a devisive issue. Travel is not advised now, and we would love a vacation, but won’t, yet I see friends and acquaintances posting pictures in areas where the virus is a hot spot, then they return to our area. I want to return to a more normal lifestyle, but can’t afford the risk of catching or spreading the virus to someone more vulnerable.

    I will continue to play in my gardens, spin on my spindles, read my books mostly e-books from the library, and avoid the public except for essentials. We will continue to wear masks, I have made dozens for us and family, continue to wash our hands until the skin feels like it will dry and crack off, continue to eat in to the detriment of some of our favorite restaurants, and hope that someday, life will return to something that resembles the old normal, or at least a variation of it.

    If you use my link at the top of my blog to go to my shop, you will see that it now goes to my Etsy Shop. As of today, Square Up was going to migrate my shop to a new format and to have my domain linked to it was going to cost me more than I have ever earned from that shop, so it is being deactivated. All of my wares are in the Etsy Shop and shipping can be free with them.

  • The garden thrives and so does the hay.

    The mowers did most of the farm down the mountain, but the rest of the back field was partially mowed and has sat idle for several days. Our hay still stands. Maybe this week, maybe not, the weather will control that. This is as late as it has ever stood, I don’t know about hay nutrition, but I would think that when the seed heads mature and drop their seed that the hay loses nutrition, but it means it is self seeding the fields.

    I found the concentrated citric acid weed killer a couple of days ago and mixed up a gallon at the lowest concentration to spray the inside of the walled garden. It did a fairly good job on miner’s lettuce and a few other tender weeds, barely touched the grass and the pigweed thumbed it’s leaves at it. I guess I will up the concentration and try again. I don’t want any of that coming up once the cardboard and mulch are put down. Yesterday and today are fairly comfortable temperatures and I was hoping to get that job done but it will have to wait another day or two if the second spraying does work.

    The daylilies continue to bloom and brighten the east side of the garage. I love spring and early summer as first the iris bloom, then the Dutch iris, and finally the daylilies. The Calendula bed really self seeded last year and it is full of blooms, far more than I will use in a year of making herbal salve. I will gather some seed and add a patch of it to the walled garden for bright yellow and orange color. The marigolds in the vegetable garden that I planted from seed are about to bloom, but the plants that I bought and put in half barrels look puny.

    I am continuing to spin on the Jenkins Turkish spindles for the Tour de Fleece/Jenkins Team. It is fun seeing what item you have to seek to photograph with your spindle(s). However, Ravelry recently changed their website and though it is cleaner in appearance, it is an ocular migraine inducer for me. They have a link to a variation of their old look, but it really isn’t and it too causes the migraine, so I have been going on as the item is listed, posting my photo and staying off the rest of the day. Yesterday was spent mostly making masks for family. Some of yesterday’s that were made.

    Well off to find a “Christmas or Holiday ornament that can hang” for today’s hunt. I have plenty, but the boxes are all stored away, nothing got left out by accident. The spindles are ready.

    Stay safe everyone.

  • The Weather Backstep

    The past three days have felt more like early spring. Gray and rainy, highs in the low 60’s (mid teens celcius). No walks, no garden time, just hunkered down inside in long sleeves, long pants, and socks, all of which had been put away clean a few weeks ago until fall.

    I go out to do chores, to drop packages of stuff I am selling to minimize, stuff that has life in it, but not being used. On our way to the post office drop box, we saw our first fawn. Doe and fawn were standing in the middle of our gravel road. Mom seemed unsure how to proceed, fawn was confused about the big brown animal on 4 wheels that made loud noise. Mom finally veered to the left, over a wire fence. Junior couldn’t manage the fence and seemed even more confused, finally turning the other way into the tall wet uncut hay field. I’m sure Mom went looking for Junior as soon as we passed on to the main road. And of course, I didn’t get a picture.

    This time of year, the Iris have all faded, the summer flowers are all blooming. I especially love the Day Lilies. They are in a bed that runs down the east side of the garage and a few in the back of the garage. The tall “Ditch” lily is from my Dad’s gardens. He loved Zinneas and the tall orange wild type day lily. When we bought this farm, the prior owner had a herd of miniature horses on it and prior to her, it had been used for grazing cows. As a result, the top of the property was pretty void of much vegetation except some grasses and multiflora roses with some cedar trees scattered around and the run off creek that flows in a slight diagonal across part of the north edge of the property. That area is much too rocky to hay and without the horses or cows grazing on the vegetation, many volunteer trees and a few we planted have grown up. Along the creek, I planted a few clusters of the lilies and we planted 4 River Birches. The creek has divided and spread the lilies over quite a good length of it’s run and the Birches have gotten tall. After my Dad passed away, the following spring, I went up and dug a small amount of the lilies and brought them down to the house to add to the others. They are the tallest currently in that bed, but there is a yellow one that will be taller later in the summer. Currently 6 different cultivars are blooming and the bed is getting full, crowding out the Autumn Joy and the Coral Bells tucked between them. In another year or so, I will have to divide them. The Iris already need to be divided behind the garage.

    The grass desperately needs mowing and edging, but it has to stop raining and dry up some before that can be done.

    Time is being spent spinning on my spindles and knitting on my shawl. I am trying not to be competitive in the Spin Along which only requires 20 grams of spinning a month. By the time I finish the Peacock braid and take the Jacob off the spindle, I will have probably 140 grams. It adds up when I am not in the garden.

    In desperation for something new to read last month when the library was only doing curbside delivery and everything I wanted to read had a hold on it, I downloaded an E-book from the monthly Amazon list. I have chosen from the monthly options before and been happy with the selection, discovering new to me authors. This one was about a serial killer who found his female victims on the World of Warcraft game. Well, I’m not a gamer, so the settings and terminology were foreign to me, the story line predictable and the ending making me want to write a review on Goodreads suggesting the author go back to writing school. No, I’m not going to do that, nor am I going to out the author or title here, but I felt like I had wasted several hours of my time on it. The library has reopened to check out books, I placed a hold on one a friend recommended and it became available yesterday, so masked and hand sanitized, I went in and picked it up and left. We will see how this one goes.

    Stay safe everyone.