And all existed peacefully until the small one got a little too comfy, and too close to the big one! Then the small one was suddenly and unexpectedly kitty-mittened, enveloped in a whirl-wind of paws and orange floof!
And suddenly I was stitching alone. But it was nice while it lasted.
But, I got a nice bit of progress done. And you will note, I had to move the hoop down to accommodate the lower part of the skirt. Still enjoying EVERY stitch!
While my garden wasn’t doing well in the strawberry department, the same can’t be said for the farms around here. On Friday, Dave and I stopped at our favourite farm store on the way into Sarnia. And I completely lost my mind, forgot how many quarts I need to make two batches of jam…. so for some reason decided two flats should do it. (I would like to note that I’ve been making jam on my own for at least 10 years now… I should know this).
Saturday morning, while all the jars were going through a cycle in the diswasher, I started prepping berries. And I quickly realized….I bought WAY too many berries. I had enough for FOUR batches. I was planning on making at least one batch for gifting at Christmas, but…I definitely did not need four full batches of strawberry jam.
While making the first batch, I was also messaging mom. She suggested getting some rhubarb and making a batch of strawberry-rhubarb – that would give me another variety to add to my Christmas gift baskets. She’s a smart lady, so once the first batch was in its jars, Dave and I hopped in the jeep and headed back to the farm store.
There, I bought entirely too much rhubarb (because I had no idea how much I’d need of that either!). I still had some raspberries in the freezer from last fall – it wasn’t quite enough for jam, but when I saw they had some pints of raspberries, I grabbed a couple of those too. And some aspargus for good measure (not for jam – but it went lovely with some steaks we had to bbq)
When I got home, I set to work making the strawberry-rhubarb batch.
Fun fact: I hate rhubarb. And don’t think you can sneak it in on me – I know it’s there!!! That said, it was neat to see how quickly it cooked down and became jam.
Afte that, I tackled the raspberry batch.
While strawberry jam is my favourite to eat, raspberry is my favourite to make. The smell of those raspberries just explodes and fills the kitchen as soon as they start to get warm. Nothing makes the kitchen smell better.
Once the raspberry was done, there was still more strawberries to use up. So two more batches followed.
There were jars EVERYwhere!
But the end result was three batches of strawberry (24x125ml jars and 12×250 ml jars) a batch of raspberry (13×125 ml jars) and a batch of strawberry-rhubarb (11×125 ml jars) and five 250ml jars to take to Mom (one strawberry, two strawberry-rhubarb, and two raspberry).
The smaller jars will be put into gift baskets for Dave to give away at Christmas to friends and service providers.
And as soon as my blackberries ripen… I’ll be making up another batch or two!
We had a wonderful storm pass through on Thursday. It did produce a small (EF0) tornado about 10 minutes south of us, which caused some property damage, but it also brought us a a full two inches of rain. As a result the gardens feel refreshed and thriving.
Despite the title, the only thing we are eating from the garden right now is still just the lettuce (sooooo much lettuce)
But the beans are thick and lush. It’s such a difference from last year when my beans struggled so much. They are just starting to get flowers, so we will be crunching beans very soon.
I’m not seeing flowers on the peas yet, but they are growing strong and tall.
I’ve already cut off the garlic scapes, and the lower leaves are starting to turn yellow. I’ll be harvesting garlic in a week or two. And the shallots won’t be far behind. I don’t think my shallot harvest will be as good as last year (probably because of the wonky weather) but I’ll take what I can get.
I was a little worried about my laundry basket potatoes when I first started this experiment, but they’ve really surprised me. Of course, the proof will be in the harvesting, and that’s still weeks off.
My cabbages are looking more and more like cabbages every day. In truth, I’m quite excited for these. I grow most of the veggies for Dave, but I secretly love cabbage – I love a good coleslaw. Dave likes his cabbage cooked – which I don’t mind, but it will always be slaw first for me!
I think I mentioned last week that I picked up some more melon plants.
My poor melon bed is going to be VERY full if they do well – we’ve now got three Mini Mikes (mini watermelons) a yellow fleshed watermelon, a cantaloupe and a honeydew melon! They are all looking happy and healthy so far. The weatherman is calling for a week or more of the sticky ickies so they will probably take off very quickly.
One area that’s not looking great, are my strawberries.
My new plants are doing ok (but not spectacular) and most of the old ones have died off completely. I think it might be time to pull all the soil from this bed and start fresh.
It’s a good thing I wasn’t planning on relying on this bed for jam supplies….
I got those from a farm not too far away. But more on that later tomorrow.
June is almost over… let’s see what’s in bloom this week….
The Amazing Grey Poppy has finally bloomed… and wow… this one was totally worth the wait. All the annual poppies I started from seed have been amzing but this is definitely my favourite!
I will definitely be out there in February, spreading more poppy seeds!
More day lilies are starting to open. I have, at least a dozen (and probably more) varieties, so there’s lots more to follow thees ones.
I’ve got two types of Bee Balm blooming – a short, bright pink hybrid, and a tall native red. They are just so crazy looking – I love them. I have three other Bee Balms still to bloom.
Next up are False Sunflower, Shasta Daisies, and Black Eyed Susans. It feels a bit early for the Susans… but well nature is going to do what it wants. As long as I dead head them I can probably keep them blooming until fall.
All the sedums on the driveway garden are blooming. They are pretty enough without the flowers, but when they do bloom, it’s quite the show.
The coneflowers are starting to do their thing too – with many more colours and styles to come.
There’s no doubt about it – summer is off to a fabulous, floriferous start!
This fat floof monster gave me a bit of a scare this week.
Long-time readers will know that Burton has a history with dramatics. Over the years, we’ve had several bouts where he just randomly stops eating for no apparent reason. This is usually accompanied by him holing up somewhere (usually under the bed). Then I book a vet appointment, drop $1000 on tests, and they go “we can’t see any reason for him to stop eating, here’s an appetite stimulant, see if it will get him eating again, if not syringe feed him until we can do more testing”
And usually the stimulant has him eating and back to himself within a day.
So this time, when he refused to come out from under the bed for treats after I made the bed in the morning, I tried not to panic. Instead, I let him be for the day. I still have some appetite stimulant from the last time, so I figured if he didn’t eat dinner, I could try that first.
After work, I came to check on him. He wasn’t under the bed anymore, but was laying on a pile of dirty clothes I’d left on the floor. I shook the treat can – no interest. So I picked him up, and put him on the bed. And then I got his brush…. and boy did he come to life! He was purring and rolling and just loving his brushing like he always does! After a good long brush session, I tried the treats again. And the little turd gobbled them right up! And followed me downstairs for dinner right after.
The Great White Whale got to enjoy some later afternoon sunshine this week. A young friend of ours graduated Grade 8, and he requested to be delivered to the ceremony in style. And of course, do a little photo shoot with ol’ Bonne beforehand.
We arranged to meet up at a park in Petrolia (a town about 25 minutes west of us). It’s a lovely little park that I’ve been dying to explore. So Dave and I headed out a little early, and while he did a little last minute detailing (mostly cleaning bugs off her grill), I wandered around the park with my camera.
Bear Creek (a northern branch of the Sydenham – the river that runs through our town) runs through the park… and part of it widens into a large, lake-like area. I wandered along the edge, trying to get shots of the little blue dragonflies that were flitting about. No luck there. The flock of geese were a much easier target.
And I got a nice shot of a red-winged black bird.
These guys visit our yard, but they are quite hard to get pictures of. This guy was more compliant.
Naturally I took some pictures of the vegetation too.
Native (but aggressive) Hedge Bindweed, and Non-Native (ironically named) Canada Thistle. It’s a shame about that thistle… it’s actually considered invasive. If it wasn’t I’d be going back for some seed because it was so pretty.
I did surprise a beautiful garter snake, but it was very shy and very fast, so no pictures.
But it took Dave’s eagle eyes to spot the best discovery….
A Great Blue Heron!
He was on the other side of the lake and stood so still, I don’t know how Dave spotted him. Even when he pointed him out, I needed the help of the long lens to see him. Happily, I was able to get closer for a lovely close-up with the long lens.
I tried to move even closer… but he took offense and decided the other shore had better fishing anyway.
What a wonderful sight!
Sadly, I ran out of time to explore, as our young friend had arrived, and we were on a schedule! But you can bet I’ll be bugging Dave to return and spend more time there!
If I’m in my garden, and I’m not working on it, I generally have my camera in hand. I’ve been at this a long time, but the miniature world that calls my garden home.
There are, of course, the butterflies – above is a Peck’s Skipper and a Norther Crescent.
But there are also moths…
This little Bilobed Looper Moth is a new visitor to the garden. It’s “looper” name comes from the shape is caterpillar makes.
And this caterpillar should need no introduction…
Yup. We are officially on Monarch watch! And it’s not just the caterpillars enjoying a milkweed lunch…
These pretty red guys are Milkweed beetles. Like the caterpillars they live exclusively off the milkweed. It’s a good thing we’ve got lots of plants in this garden!
This next little visitor is a Long-legged fly. You probably wouldn’t notice them – they are VERY tiny – except for the fact that they are VERY shiny – like little robot flies!!
This shiny guy is bigger and a lot more noticable…
A Blue Mud Dauber wasp – like a large flying sapphire!
The Marguerites are one of those flowers that attract a variety of pollinators.
It’s a very busy spot in the garden (and look closely – that last photo isn’t a bumble bee…. but a fly… a Bee Fly!)
Here’s a fuzzy friend that really is a bee
A Leaf-cutter bee! According to google, this one is a male. The females do all the leaf-cutting. He just flies around, eats pollen, looks pretty and tries to attract a mate!
And if all those wee bugs aren’t your jam…
Here’s something cute and fuzzy to cleanse the palate!
It will come as no surprise, that… as I spent almost ALLLL weekend in the garden, that there was very little time for stitching…
But I managed a little bit on the bottom of the dress. You can get more of a sense where Mr Fox will be. And I did a little start on the cream underdress. It wasn’t much, but it really gives more of a sense of the shape. Funny how a few small stitches do that.
That said.. I *think* that I’m done all the big jobs for the garden, so I’m just on regular maintenance now (dead-heading, weeding, etc). That should mean a little more time in the evenings to put some more love into this.
I hope you’re not sick of the gardens…. because that’s all I have to show you!
The weather has been warm – but other than a few days at the start of the month, we haven’t had the gross, soul-sucking heat and humidity we usually have this time of year. It’s not going to last, so I’ve been spending every moment I can outside.
Because it’s not like there’s not work to do in the garden. In addition to staying on top of the weeds, I had all those seedlings to finally plant out. I won’t bore you with pictures…. I’ll wait until the get big and flower. But among the seedlings planted were cosmos, zinnias, marigolds, foxgloves, daucus, scabiosa and nasturium. And sunflowers…. lots and lots of sunflowers.
I posted this pic on facebook/instagram the other day…
And a friend asked how I keep them from digging in my garden and eating my plants. And I laughed and laughed! Because I don’t. As you know, they plant peanuts all through my gardens. And the digging was so bad this spring I had to cut off service at Squirrelington’s for a few weeks to give the small seeds a chance to sprout undisturbed.
And as for eating the plants… I find the squirrels really only eat one plant. And that’s sunflowers. They seem to LOVE sunflower seedlings. Once they get to a certain size, the squirrels leave them alone – but there’s a few weeks where the appear to be a tender delicacy for our little furry friends. My antidote to this is just to plant LOTS of sunflowers. They will probably eat 80%… but if I plant 100, that still leaves me 20. In truth, I didn’t plant 100…. I think I planted about 36. And there’s a pile scattered about the gardens from ones that re-seeded from last year. The ones that re-seeded are already pretty far along, so even if the squirrels eat all my seedlings (unlikely) we should still get a good show.
In addition to planting my seedlings, I also put down some more carrot seed. I got some more rainbow mix, as well as Imperator, which is the very first carrot I ever grew. And… I decided to give something else a try….
Carrot starters. I’ve never actually seen these before… probably because it’s not generally recommended to start carrots this way. They always say the best way is to direct sow. However, my favourite nursery had some, so I thought… what do I have to lose? I bought three little containers and they had enough carrots to fill 1/3 of one of the beds.
While there, I also got some pickling onions (to make some pickled onions for Dad), a jack-o-lantern pumpkin, some birdhouse gourds, a cantelope, and a honeydew melon. They were all $1 each, so why not?
And another cool find there…
A Ginkgo tree! And I got it for just $7. I’m keeping it in a pot, as we don’t plant to stay in this house forever (hoping to sell after renos are done in a few years). They are such pretty trees, and turn a lovely shade of yellow in the fall. I may have to up-size the pot every other year, but it should do fairly well that way for several years.
After all that work in the garden, it was time to make dinner. I had pork roast on, made some mashed potatoes and…
I sauteed up the last of the garden spinach with a little butter and garlic. We can’t eat every meal straight from the garden, but it’s nice to have a little something to add here and there!
The hotter weather has made the spinach bolt. So I picked the lot. It can still be used for cooking. So I gave a big try to a friend. I have a large bag in the fridge for Dave and I. And we all know, once cooked down, that large bag is probably just enough for the two of us for one meal.
Even the stems and flowers didn’t go to waste – a neighbour raises guinea pigs, so the went home with her as a treat for the piggies.
The pulled spinach also gives way for more light to get to my cucumber sprouts
They should really start taking off now.
And while the spinach bolted, the lettuce is still growing strong
I finally cracked the code on growing lettuce I think! I’m going to have to start giving some of this away too!
Sadly, my radishes have started to bolt as well
So they will get pulled. I don’t think the piggies will want them though.
Still, I’m not sad – they were just something to grow in that space until it was time for the zuchini
Which has sprouted nicely and is quickly putting on leaves!
Over in the carrot beds, things are not looking quite as good.
Both beds have very sparse germination. I got some more seeds to plant. I NEED carrots!!!!
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