Cabin Crafted

Category: gardens

  • The one that didn’t get away

    Last year about this time, grandson 1 came to spend part of the summer with us. He enjoys doing so because he gets to use the riding mower and drive the tractor, but he also has to help me with farm chores. He helped move some fencing, work in the garden, and just about anything I ask him to do. He cooks some as well and gets lessons and new recipes to add to his book of Grandmom’s Spells and Magic that he got for Christmas a couple of years ago, a loose leafed recipe book with cards that can be filled out and filed, all in my handwriting that my kids and he call a font that should be on the computer. He and I were about to start work on some project last summer when I looked in the egg door of the coop and a 6 foot long Black Rat Snake that I had seen outside of the coop about a week earlier was in one of the nesting boxes. It had gotten eggs the first time and had come back for more. I wasn’t going to have that happen, so without telling him why, I sent him to our tool area to get my leather garden gloves and an empty 5 gallon bucket with lid. When he returned with them, I had him open the egg door from the other end from the snake while I reached in and grabbed it behind it’s head and snatched it from the coop. His eyes got huge and his response was, “Grandmom, what kind of magic was that.” We put the snake in the bucket, put the lid on and he held it from falling over while I drove a bit more than a half a mile away to the woods and turned it loose.

    Well, because of COVID, he can’t visit this summer and I miss his help. This afternoon, I got the part of dinner that was going in the oven prepared and put in the oven and grabbed a basket to go gather peas and whatever eggs were under Miss Broody and when I opened the egg door, I spotted movement in an empty nesting box. I hurried back over to the house, grabbed the same gloves, a 5 gallon bucket with lid, and called up to hubby to grab his keys and his phone. He questioned why and I gave him a quick explanation as I dashed back to the coop, opened and hooked the egg door up and snatched this one out of the coop just as he arrived to snap a couple of pictures.

    Not as long as last year’s, this one was only about 5 feet and where the one last year was lethargic, this one was a writhing mess, trying to wrap around my arm. Once calmed down and picture taken, it was plopped in the bucket, lidded and back to the same spot the last one was taken. Last year, I had to dump the snake out of the bucket and it didn’t even move away very fast. As soon as I got the lid off today, it went over the rim and off into the woods. While there, I spotted these cool black mushrooms.

    I love mushrooms, but I would never gather them for food. Back home, the peas were picked and shelled in time to plunge them into boiling water for 3 minutes to enjoy with our dinner. The plants aren’t blooming anymore, but there are still many peas to pick, enjoy, and freeze.

    I would never kill a snake that wasn’t directly threatening me, the dogs, or a family member, but they don’t get to be in my coop and eat the eggs.

    Be safe. I wear a mask for your safely, please wear one for mine.

  • Permanent Hay

    My memory pictures all show the hay either down and baled by now or at least in the processes. It is tall, wet, probably full of ticks, so I won’t venture into it. I can’t get to my berry patches to check on them. It should be about time for the Wineberries. The forecast doesn’t look good for them to come any time soon to mow and bale. We have 40 to 90% chance of thunderstorms every day as far as the weather app will take me. Yesterday the rain held off until late afternoon.

    We had two packages to mail and a pick up from Tractor Supply of critter feeds and stopped by Southern States to check their seed stock. They rarely have more than a couple of people at a time in there during weekdays. I found two packages of hybrid sweet corn with a 78 day maturation window, which should give us a harvest well before the first frost. It seems odd to think of first frost when we haven’t even hit the summer highs and the garden isn’t producing anything but peas yet, but as a gardener, I have to think ahead. I am doing a germination test on the other corn before I send the seed company a letter. Two packets of seed won’t break the bank, but it is still about $8. Because it wasn’t raining when we got home, I pushed the wheel barrow with my spade , hoe, and rake over to the garden area. The spade and wheel barrow were wheeled around to the area where I changed the configuration of the chicken run and I dug two earthworm filled barrows of the richest black composted soil and dumped them on the freshly weeded and lightly disturbed patch where the corn should have sprouted weeks ago but didn’t. I was careful to avoid the sunflowers that did come up along the edge and left the two stalks of Silver Queen that did sprout and raked in the compost and replanted corn for the third time. The new seed. While I was at it, I replanted the two hills of Seminole pumpkins that also either didn’t come up or got eaten. Now to wait 7 to 14 days to see if the block of corn takes this time. The block is 11-12 feet by 4+ feet, 6 rows 27 inches apart, so if it will come up, it is the ideal arrangement to actually get some corn from the patch. It may be too late to plant the climbing beans because the corn has to be a foot or so tall before you plant the beans. I think as far as three sisters, it won’t be this year, but if we get corn and a few pumpkins, I will be happy. I had hardly gotten back in the house when the daily deluge began, so at least it got a good watering in.

    The only area still unplanted is the old mint bed. It still lacks a box or border and as it is in an area of the garden where there is a significant slope, it needs something to hold the soil. The mint is continuing to pop up in and around that area and I continue to fight with it. I want to terrace that spot, but don’t want to purchase blocks. Huck’s coop, the failed A framed chicken tractor that we finally set on a cedar raft set on rocks for chick raising, has deteriorated beyond repair unless we removed each bottom board one at a time and replaced it, a job beyond my skills alone. And a wind storm a year or so ago ripped the hinged half of the top off. I am thinking about going out with the cordless drill/driver and taking the metal roof and plastic side panels off, carefully removing the hardware cloth to save for another project. I will salvage any of the good wood, burn the rotted wood, and use the larger rocks as my retaining wall for the terraced area. The smaller rocks that we put around the inside edge to hold in the layer of soil over the cedar post raft will have to be loaded in the tractor and hauled to a rock pile if the hay ever gets mowed so I can get to one.

    After dinner prep as it continued to thunderstorm, I returned to my spindles to finish the Peacock braid of Falklands wool that I have spent the first half of June spinning. I had done the purples and blues with the teals and greens what I was currently working on. I did finish spinning it, took my final check in and scale picture for the Spin Along side.

    Between the 4 ounce braid, the gray sample yarn, some Jacob for my rare breed credit, and the last of the wine colored wool for my shawl, I ended up with 166.17 grams (5.861 ounces). It was wound into a ply ball and plied on my wheel last night, but I haven’t measured it out to see how much yardage it is. The Peacock yarn is going to be the yoke of a sweater with the gray Shetland below and on the sleeves. A sweater entirely spun by me, almost entirely on Turkish spindles. The purples and blues are almost 300 yards. The July Spin Along side can be done the way the first half of the year, with 4 check ins and a final scale picture showing at least 25 grams spun, or we can participate in a Tour de Fleece that usually occurs when Tour de France happens. Since it isn’t happening this year, we are going to do the Tour de Fleece as a scavenger hunt beginning a week from tomorrow, the day the race should begin if it could. Each day an item will be posted, you try to find the item in and around your home and take a picture of it with your spindle on which you have spun at least 1 gram of fiber. One gram of fiber is not much, the neater green cop/turtle in the above picture is about 25 grams, so the amount that is normally needed for a whole month. It should be fun and at the end, the finishers, who found at least 20 of the items and spun daily will be entered for prizes that various spinners have contributed, including the generous donation of several spindles by the Jenkins. All of the wool spun during the competition has to be done on Jenkins spindles, this is the Jenkins group after all. My two spindles are empty and I purchased a 3 ounces of Bam Huey (a bamboo, merino blend) to use for the challenge.

    These are my two favorite spindles.

    Be safe out there. Please wear your mask for my protection, I wear mine for yours.

  • Wonder

    I have enjoyed watching the Finch care for her nest of 4 tiny mouths to feed. Once they hatched, I quit looking for a while so she could care for them. Over the weekend, I peeked again and instead of large gapeing mouths popping up, there were little feathered birds with proportional heads and big black beady eyes looking back at me.

    It is amazing how quickly they go from awkward disproportioned nearly naked bodies to little feathered well proportioned birds. In the midst of the nasty weather this week, chilly, gray, and periodic heavy, heavy rain, she fledged these 4 little creatures out into the world. The nest is empty, the hanging pot can again be watered.

    I know that the birdhouses by the garden have supported two nests of Tree Swallows and one nest of Eastern Bluebirds, the Barberry bush had the nest of Caroline Wrens, and these little finches. I think a Hummingbird has a nest in the breezeway garden, one flies from there to the feeder and back often, but I haven’t attempted to find it in the rain.

    One of the wonders of spring is watching the nests of baby birds, the tiny rabbits kits, and the fawns. I discovered this year that something, probably the deer like Sunflower shoots. There were dozens in the walled garden under the feeders and everyone of them has been clipped off just above the primary leaves. I haven’t been weed wacking in there to let them grow. I guess it will get mowed down as soon as it dries up. I will then put down cardboard, move some rocks to the back side of the wall and start filling it with leaf mulch or compost. And still no corn. Two packages of seed from the feed store and both seem to be bad even though they were packaged for 2020. It is probably too late to try to find corn seed elsewhere and plant it now, though we have about 4 months til first frost.

  • 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.

  • Rainy Sunday Activity

    The rain did come off and on today, so I chose to do stay at home activities. First thing this morning, I finished spinning the wine colored wool that I took on my walk yesterday and began plying it on my largest spindle. It was taking forever and after about 90 minutes, I wished that I had plied it on my wheel, but persisted throughout the morning and early afternoon.

    I am trying to finish knitting a shawl with it before the end of June. This is the last 27 grams of the wool. The shawl had a major error in it and I had to rip it back about 2/3 of what I had already knit, pick up the stitches and start again.

    After lunch, I started two loaves of sandwich bread for the week. Of course it had to be tasted while still warm.

    I know that the fad during the pandemic is sourdough and I have made my share of it, but we both prefer yeast bread, half whole wheat with good stone ground flour.

    Between rain storms, I took a basket to garden and picked a basket full of fat shelling peas.

    While out there, I spotted 3 chubby asparagus spears among the thin ferny shoots, added them to the basket as well. Since hubby was having a chop for dinner with our corn, peas, and cantaloupe, I pulled a fresh small garlic bulb and a small potato onion. While out there I ran the broody hen off the nest for the third time today, grabbing the eggs under her. This has been a six week brood. Nothing I do breaks her.

    The onion, garlic, and their tops were chopped along with half a green pepper that was in the refrigerator and sauteed to top his chop. There were enough peas for dinner and the first batch in the freezer. I planted about 2 or 3 times as many peas as usual and wish I had planted twice what I did. My dinner was many of my favorites, fresh sweet corn, just picked and lightly steamed peas, cantaloupe, and fresh bread. The hens get the pea pods, corn cobs, and cantaloupe rinds and seeds to make compost to feed the garden in the fall or next spring.

    While wandering the garden, I picked a few raspberries and a blueberry, but they didn’t make it back to the house.

    I love when the garden starts to provide and pay back for all the toil of the spring prep. Every couple of days the suckers are pinched from the tomatoes and the tomatoes and tomatillos are tied higher on their posts. I am seeing blooms forming on both. The cucumbers have been given a trellis, the bush beans are filling out, but no blooms yet. The potatoes have purple/blue flowers and desperately need a good layer of hay applied to them. I’ll tackle that the next dry day. The peppers aren’t doing much yet, but they will. I added more basil seed and a few Chinese cabbage seed to a bed that still had space. The only failure I am seeing in the garden is the corn. I have planted it twice and still only have 3 stalks and the pumpkins didn’t come up. I need a plan for that area that will provide us with something for the table, maybe more potatoes?

  • I’ve Lost Track

    After retirement, days started melting into each other, but there were certain events each week that helped keep things in order. The spinning group met on Thursday right after lunch and I had a Thursday late morning regular appointment. Saturday morning was breakfast out and a Farmers Market run year round. Sunday we would have lunch at McAllister’s.

    With the stay at home order, each day is, “What day is it?” followed by a check of the phone or computer to see where we are. There is no regular schedule, we get up whenever, usually early for me as the sun lightens the sky. Lunch is prepared after hubby is up, news checked, etc. Sometime during the morning or afternoon, some garden time and a walk are included. Some spinning on the front covered porch, except Asplundh has been chain sawing everything near the power lines for days. They even drown out the Cicada song.

    Our state is in Phase II of reopening. Shops and restaurants can operate with restrictions, but we aren’t comfortable at our ages going in to them, especially since so few people heed the mask wearing and social distancing guidelines. I did venture in to the grocery this week and a man about my age without a mask crowded me every time I distanced to let other shoppers make their selection and move on. I am afraid to say anything for fear of enraging a fool. The employees are all supposed to be masked, though many wear them only over their mouths. The frozen food manager who always is loud, didn’t have one on at all. Thank goodness for our Natural foods store and their curbside delivery, they have mostly eliminated the need to go anywhere else. And our local plant nursery and garden center who have gone overboard to be safe and ensure safety, so flowers and vegetables have been purchased and planted to maintain.

    Last night, the school board in the next county where daughter lives had a virtual meeting with hundreds in attendance to discuss school reopening for the fall. Daughter watched 3 hours of chaos and disorganization. The plans sound like someone came up with them an hour before the meeting and will have a detrimental effect on any parent who is working, working from home, lacking childcare, lacking the ability to connect to the internet, without transportation to get their child to and from the abbreviated days they are in the building. Tonight we had a video chat with our eldest grandson who turned 15 today and they don’t know how the new school year will operate where he lives.

    Who would have thought in this modern age, that a virus would shut down the world and turn our lives around.

    I spin, I knit, I garden and cook and try to make our lives as normal as possible, but someone please tell me what day it is.

  • Productive Crafting

    Once masks were recommended, prior to them being required in businesses and other buildings other than your home, I made each of us 2 masks. Then I made daughter one, later another and two for each of her two kiddos. It seems like they are always in the laundry even though we aren’t going out much. This morning, I decided that we should each have two more and I had seen a short video on the construction of the pleated kind that seemed a better design and simpler to make, no pattern required, no elastic, no bias tape. Simple job, but the folding chair at my sewing machine is so uncomfortable.

    They are designed to be tied behind the head, however when I was making the first ones, I bought a dozen cable locks and slide the two ends through which makes a tight fit and does not come untied.

    I have been spinning on the Peacock gradient braid of fiber with my spindles. Last night I finished spinning the first two colors and plied the yarn. I wasn’t happy with the twist, it was too loose, so this morning, I ran it through the wheel a second time and careful not to over twist, put more in. It is 190 yards of very light fingering weight, it is only 47.78 grams.

    When the gradient is finished, it will become the yoke of a sweater for me with the body and sleeves, the gray Shetland that I have been spinning. There is more of it waiting for a turn on the wheel, I got tired of spinning it on spindles.

    The reddish wool that I have been spinning on the tiny spindles is being knit into a lacy edged shawl.

    The garden got a couple of Bull Nosed pepper starts and some basil. There is more basil started from seed and it will be added to the garden as well and some dill started also from seed.

    I had to replant the corn bed. Then it got two heavy rains, so I am hopeful that it will come up this time. The seed is not from the company I generally use, but it is packaged for this year and I didn’t do a germination test first. If it doesn’t come up this time, I will do a germination test.

    The tomatoes are being trained up 7 foot poles as a single leader per plant so suckers are being removed every couple of days, the tomatillos are also being trained up poles, I don’t need them sprawling all over the beds. The peas are heavy with pods, the tomatoes have blooms, the onions have bloom buds on top. The potatoes are getting large. I need to top them again with more soil and then start piling on spoiled hay. Spoiled hay needs to be put on the asparagus bed and soon a containment rope will be needed to contain their ferny tops away from the other beds and the paths.

  • Morning Song

    Last evening as the night chores were being done, the sky had this gorgeous pink swathe in the sky.

    As I was planning last evening’s meal, the frozen green vegetables in the freezer did not appeal. I knew I had among the last of this spring’s harvest of asparagus, which I love, but are not favorites of hubby, I remembered that 4 of the plants in the row of spinach I had planted survived the chicken onslaught a few weeks ago. A quick pop over to the garden and the two smaller heads, a handful of pea shoots, and a couple of asparagus that had emerged were harvested and a salad plan was made. Fresh raw spinach with pea shoots and shavings of the most delicious vintage aged cheddar cheese and a mild vinegarette. A nice fresh from the garden addition to dinner.

    The morning chores were greeted by the song of the cicadas that have emerged up the hill in the woods. I stopped during my walk yesterday and recorded their sound. In our south woods or in the tall hay, a gobbler was sounding his call. No traffic sounds, no jets like I grew up with, just natures calls and bird songs.

    Soon there will be fresh peas, the two beds are full of white blossoms.

    The potatoes look like they need topping again. I am excited to have potatoes in the garden again this year, though they aren’t a long keeping variety, they will be enjoyed fresh, maybe a few small ones will be able to be dug from the edges when the bush beans are ready, that is a delightful combination.

    On summer mornings, when I go out to turn the hens out, I carry a hoe with me and in the cool of the morning, the weeding is done. More mint was dug and pulled this morning and I realized that I had not put down cardboard around the potato bed and covered it, so that task needs to be undertaken. Though I don’t like plastic in the garden, that feed sack is tucked under the edge of that bed and will have to remain there until the potatoes are dug unless I can tug it out before putting down cardboard and spoiled hay.

    More spring flowers were cut last night for the dining table. The Dutch Iris are blooming now that the Bearded Iris are fading, the Coreopsis is blooming and lots of Comfrey flowers.

    I am a failure at flower arranging, but love a bouquet of fresh cut flowers on the table during the season.

    After chores last night, I finished spinning the second bobbin of the gray Shetland and plied a very full 4 ounce bobbin. There is still about 6 more ounces of the wool, some on the two bobbins that didn’t fit on the plying bobbin, so I will weigh them, subtract the bobbin weight, divide the remaining Shetland so that each of those bobbins end up with 2 ounces and spin and ply another 4 ounces. I think there is plenty now to knit the sweater for me for next winter.

    It was spun with a pattern in mind, then I bought this Peacock gradient braid and I think a yoke style sweater with the Peacock at the yoke and the gray below would be stunning, so now I am in a quandry.

    This morning is cool enough for a light hoodie, too cool to enjoy my coffee on the deck, so maybe I should take advantage and though I have already spent some time in the garden this morning, I should put down the two paths of cardboard and hay and put a layer of mulch on the asparagus bed that will now be allowed to send up it’s pencil thin ferny shoots to feed the crowns for next year’s harvest. The cycle of life.

    “When the power of love, overcomes the love of power, the world will know peace.” Jimi Hendricks

  • Rainy Day Activity

    Bertha has been providing us with rain all day long. Another front has stalled over our area and we are looking at 3 or 4 more days of rain on our saturated soil and full creeks. Another flash flood warning is in place. We are high above the creeks and sloped, but flat enough hopefully to not have mud slide activity, though there has been a lot of that including destroying a property and making a home uninhabitable in our tiny village.

    With my spindle spinning, I am participating in a spin along using only the Jenkins spindles. Since I had filled them all a couple of days ago, I elected to report my results for the month and wait until June 1 to work with them again. I have a new to me spindle due in the mail tomorrow or Friday and received a gorgeous braid of wool a few days ago that I am anxious to begin spinning. To occupy my time, I have been using my wheel to try to make a bigger dent in the pound of gray Shetland that I have been spinning on spindles for two months. And knitting on the shawl that has been on the needles about that long. The first Shetland bobbin is nearly full and I will fill another before plying. The shawl was finished tonight, soaked and is pinned out to dry. I played a bit of yarn chicken with it and finished with only about a yard left, not enough for another row.

    I have enough yarn spun to begin my sweater, but knitting a sweater when the weather is hot is not something I want to begin. With the current pandemic cancelling events daily, knitting more items for my shop seems futile, there won’t be craft shows and holiday markets this year. Most people don’t want to buy knitted or woven garments online without being able to handle them, try them on. I have a knitting request from a family member, but it will need to be superwash wool, which I haven’t purchased yet, and it is another sweater. Maybe I will just work on the Shetland, perhaps even one spindle that I can clear before the first of the month. We are going to be indoors for a couple more days, but I did get a bit of weeding done in the walled garden between rain showers today.

    When the rain ends, I plan to make a compost bin to put in one corner of the garden. If I can make it sufficiently large, I will gather the composting material from where I moved the chicken run and use it as a base to finish composting along with kitchen scraps to have it ready to supplement beds as they get harvested and replanted. I really hope to fill the freezer and the canning shelves with homegrown produce for the winter season.

  • It’s done . . .

    . . . now it is just maintenance, harvest, and putting by for another year. After taking down the inner fence and mulching that area, I realize how much space there is that could have more beds. I already planned on putting a 4 by 8 foot box where the three sisters bed it this year, a 4 by 4 foot box where the mint was and where the asparagus is now. Looking at this photo, I could easily put a 2 or 3 by 8 foot box along the near left beside where the peas are this year.

    Once upon a time, the raspberries were there but threatened to take over the garden. They are contained in 3 half barrels that are rotting away and no longer have bottoms so the raspberries are starting to escape. Maybe a couple of shallow feed troughs with drain holes buried half way would allow the raspberries to be moved back to that area safely and another 4 by 4 foot box added where the barrels are now. I would love to have 4 galvanized panel long raised beds that run the width of the garden with the southern edge the fruits. The blueberry bed is the southern most bed with the raspberry barrels off the end of it.

    The chicken coop was cleaned, some of their fouled bedding put around the comfrey plant. Soon the comfrey will be cut and the leaves put in water to produce excellent fertilizer for the garden. Once cut, they send up a second growth of leaves. The leaves can also be used as mulch around plantings. The large green patch that looks like it has a birdhouse in it is a large patch of comfrey and there is another patch in the breezeway garden. I used pelletized horse bedding in the coop this time, they probably won’t like it for a few days, but it takes a whole bale of pine chips which quickly begin to smell of ammonia. For some reason straw has been hard to come by, but a straw bale will usually last for a couple of cleanings and usually doesn’t smell until it is very dirty.

    Mulch did get put around the flowers planted a couple of days ago, but I only needed one bag. The second one will be spread around the Iris once they are thinned.

    There is still more cardboard from daughter’s donation and she says there are a few more boxes soon. That will all go in the walled garden that will become the herb and dye garden eventually.

    For now we await the next round of rain. It is thick and gloomy outside now, but warm and close. Rain is expected off and on for the next three days. At least I’m not having to water.