A weekend off...

Well, mostly.

I feel a lot better than I did after Friday afternoon. Part of it was time away from campus, getting out of the one-inch picture frame I sometimes get stuck in. (Anne Lamott talks about the "one inch picture frame" in the context of writing. Sometimes it's a good thing - getting that tight focus on something you need to do and forgetting your other responsibilities until the work is done - but it can also work against you. I tend to fall too much into the "your work is who you are" trap, not having a spouse or children or even nearby family, and sometimes I just need to leave work behind for a while and do something else).

So, as I said, I spent a while Friday night clearing out the rest of the herb garden and what I call the "north garden" (it's a narrow strip - maybe four feet wide - on the north side of my house. It's hard to know what to plant there because it's mostly shaded).

Then I went to Lowe's. Bought a few more herbs to replace the herbs that had died off because of either the cold winter or my neglect of weeding. Also, I went to one of the small, local garden centers and found some different things there - including Arkansas Traveler tomatoes, my favorite variety, so I bought three of those and brought them back home to plant.

I didn't find scarlet runner bean seeds anywhere and was kind of vexed as to what to do - I had kind of had my heart set on those but figured as it had gotten pretty hot already, ordering them from Burpee's or somewhere and waiting a week or two, it might be too late. And I knew I didn't want to do morning glories, because you NEVER get rid of morning glories once you plant them.

I decided to go back out and just look for some kind of pole bean (after verifying with my mother - who has far more gardening experience than I do - that pole beans would climb like runner beans). I found Kentucky Wonder, which, in its bush variety, was one my mom used to grow many years. (Funny, I never appreciated the garden fresh beans much when I was a kid.) I also bought a few packs of nasturtium seeds, so most of the area along the chain-link fence is now planted with Kentucky Wonders, and the rest of the area is planted with nasturtiums. (Some varieties of nasturtiums will climb, but I don't think either variety I found is a climbing type. I was also careful to plant them in the areas I had NOT top-dressed; nasturtiums often don't flower as well if the soil is too rich).

And I realized, perhaps the gardening is a way of reliving a bit of my childhood. When I was a kid, my mom didn't work outside the home. But she did a heck of a lot AT home - she baked the bread we ate, and cooked nearly everything from scratch, and in the summers she had huge gardens. I think part of that was just her personality - I am like her in the respect that it's hard for me to just sit still and "do nothing," - and part of it may be because it was a way she could contribute to the family budget in a way (remember, this was the inflationary 70s) and still be home for my brother and me. And also, I think she just likes gardening - her grandparents had a 'truck farm' and her mother grew some vegetables in their small yard.

I remember following her around in the garden a lot as a kid, she would tell me stuff about the plants and the bugs. (And I would get paid a penny bounty for every Japanese beetle I caught, or for every potato bug, or for every cabbage moth caterpillar). And some years I got my own little garden plot, and either got to plant what I wanted, or got one of those one-penny seed packs one of the companies (Burpee's, I think?) used to do for kids. (I think they were probably the seeds that fell off the tables and got all mixed up, the packet was always a mix of different vegetables and flowers).

I wasn't a terribly eager gardener as a kid - I didn't like vegetables all that much (And despite the claims of some, having your kid help raise or cook vegetables does not necessarily make them more likely to want to eat them). And I didn't like weeding (it was often, in fact, doled out as a punishment - or as a remedy for me moping around and complaining I was "bored.")

But things change. Now I like weeding, provided I can make time to do it. It's peaceful and it's productive and you can look back over your shoulder and see what you've accomplished. And I like green beans, at least, out of the garden. (Some of the other prime garden vegetables - like carrots - I cannot eat (I have a sensitivity to carrots, also to celery), and others, like cabbage, I've not quite sussed out the correct season for here yet. (I think I might try a fall planting of cabbage and beets, though, this year). And I don't have enough space for corn, and also I think it's a little much in the water requirement for my climate. (And it's mostly too hot here for lettuce. I'd love to be able to grow my own lettuce for at least part of the year but I'm never thinking about it at the time it would be time to plant it. Again, maybe do an early fall crop). And melons and squash, borers always seem to get them, and that's a huge disappointment.

So anyway: beans, and tomatoes, and lots of herbs and flowers. (I might try eating the nasturtium flowers in salad if I get some. I understand they're kind of peppery tasting. Maybe use them with cream cheese in finger sandwiches...)

I think I am going to try to break away early on Friday afternoon, if I can, and go to Sherman to Twin Oaks, which is a huge nice garden center. I have room (if I can get it cleared out) for a couple more tomato plants, and I want a few more flowers, and they often have some nice shade perennials - which I could use in that little north garden.
***

I did finish some knitting this weekend. I got the second of the Serendipity socks knit up:



It's hard to photograph them. The lace doesn't show up that well - it's kind of chevrons of eyelets - and the color is dark. You can kind of see some of the purple highlights in the photograph.

I do think I will need to wash these socks before actually wearing them a full day; the dye "crocked" off a lot on my hands (and on the bamboo needles) while I was knitting the socks.

I also added a couple more rows on the Knickerbocker Glory quilt top. And I planned another quilt - this one will be entirely from the stash. I had about a dozen bright-pink and lime-green fat quarters, and I found a pattern called "Citrus" in the February issue of American Patchwork and Quilting, and thought it would be ideal for those fabrics. (The original quilt has black accents and sashing, but instead I'm going to use green accents with the pink fabrics and pink with the green, and use a very large-scale pink-and-green print as the sashing on it. That way, I can use entirely stash fabrics without buying anything new - I may even have a piece that will work for the backing (or be able to piece one).

I think I want to start challenging myself to doing entirely-from-the-stash tops for a while, both to use up accumulated fabric and also to save money.

And I hand-quilted some. I can see that I am getting really close to done with the current quilt; I should pull out the backing for the next quilt I want to do in that frame and seam it up, and also get out the batting and let it "breathe." (Most of the hand quilters I know say you need to let the batting "relax" out flat after being rolled up in the package, for a day or so before you layer and baste the quilt).