It’s still too early to do much serious planting in the veg beds yet, but this weekend I got in a couple things.

My favourite nursery had some Leeks ready to plant so I thought that would be fun to try.

I’ve only eaten leeks once before. A few years back I made Dave and I a pot of Cock-a-Leekie soup for Burns Night. I will have to find some other ways to cook them if these do well.

Another thing I planted were some green onion bulbs.

I’m not a huge green onion fan but, I use them occasionally. Dave said he will find lots of uses for them.

My garlic is growing beautifully. I have shallots planted on the other half of the bed, but there’s not much to see there yet.

I’ve had chives growing in this pot for a couple years now, and it looks like I need to toss another packet of seeds in – the pot’s a little lop-sided.

My strawberries have greened up nicely – though I need to top up their soil a bit (and give the boxes a coat of paint).

In the raised greenhouse bed, the spinach is starting to get true leaves – and the lettuce has just started to sprout!

And last, I picked up some fresh oregano, though I haven’t decided where to plant it yet. I have some parsley seeds I need to start, and I was thinking of getting some other herbs as well. Any suggestions?

I used a good chunk of my weekend to work on the Bride’s socks (details coming soon), so I didn’t spend a lot of time with the tiny needle. Just enough to finish up block 13

For some reason, this one dried with a bit of a faint water mark around it. So I’ll have to see if I can get that out. But otherwise, I’m pretty happy with it.

We are headed to the big city for the weekend (Bride’s celebration is on Friday) so I’m not sure if I’ll get another block started before next TNT. I guess it depends on how hard we party!

I hope you all had a wonderful Easter. My Easter Sunday started with a lovely card, and a surprise Easter Egg hunt around my livingroom

That guy of mine is quite adorable! (I made him a turkey dinner in return).

My day finished with this big beast finally done!

I actually started working on it on Saturday. I had seven rows left to do – each getting longer than the last. I got four rows done, and on the last of the four, I realized I’d sewn it on wrong and my setting triangles didn’t line up right. The whole day had been a slog, so I decided it was time to pack it in for the day.

Sunday, after my egg hunt, and a quick trip out to vote in the advanced polls, (our country is in a Federal election right now) I got back to it. Some time away made me realize I could fix my setting triangles without having to rip and resew the whole row – which is what I thought I was going to have to do. With that done, I set to work finishing the last three rows.

That still took aaaaaaaaaaalll afternoon. The final row alone had 29 4.5 inch squares. But just before dinner it was finally done!

It finished up at about 84″ square. It contains 225 four-patches, and 196 solid blocks… then all the setting triangles, which I didn’t bother to count.

We still have to quilt it, of course, but the boys and I are soooo happy to have the sewing done! It’s time to start something new!

Long-time readers know that I have a little tradition of buying myself a pretty new dress for Easter. It stems from my childhood when I almost always got a new outfit along with my chocolate and candy. Well this year, I might have lost my mind a little.

Back in March, I decided this dress would be my Easter dress this year.

Those who know me know I love pink. And a puffy-sleeved, pink twirly dress so much the better! I arrived in late March and I fell in love with it! It’s super long, (like right to my toes) and makes me feel like and absolute princess! I WANTED MORE. But I was supposed to be curbing my spending… and other than thrifting had actually been doing ok in that department.

But….

The dress wasn’t actually pink. When it arrived it was more of a peach. Which is fine. I like peach too… but I really wanted a pink dress. Sounds like a good reason to get another one… right?

Perfect.

And of course… the site recommends other things you might like. And if I got a few more things, I could get free shipping so…

THREE more dresses of a similar style went in the basket. And I was very pleased with myself.

But then… I was waiting for them to arrive, playing around on facebook one day… and another different site flashed these in my face.

I’d need some good summer dresses too… right… summer is just around the corner… and did you notice in that second pic… THEY HAVE POCKETS!!!!!!! Yeah.. they went right into the cart… but it’s okay, because that site actually carries one of my favourite bras which I was due to replace – so it was a good reminder. Two more dresses and two new bras on the way for me!

So… I guess I better skip the chocolate this year… I overloaded on dresses!

Happy Easter!

Easter weekend is here, and the garden is performing perfectly for the holiday.

We have several clumps of giant hyacinths. A few, like the light pink ones, have multiplied beautifully and will probably be split up once they are done blooming.

The dark blue ones in the front boxes are doing nicely – though as you can see, the tulips haven’t bounced back. I’ll have to replace them with something else.

The daffodils are coming out in full force. Like the hyacinths, they’ve multiplied beautifully and we are set to have a wonderful show this spring.

As you may recall, I have a wide collection of different daffodils – including this one:

It’s called Rip Van Winkle. Like Arctic Bells (in the back of the first pic), it’s not a bi one, but it is a wonderful one!

I have Glory of the Snow in three colours, and all three have come up. They haven’t spread as much as I had hoped (Mom has a brilliant display of the blue ones each year), but I’m sure they will eventually.

The Muscari (Grape Hyacinths) are just starting to put up their buds. This pink one is in a nice sunny spot, so it’s the only one that’s fully bloomed yet. There’s lots more coming though!

And last – the Pasque flowers are just starting to bloom! How appropriate!

Wishing you all a very happy, bountiful Easter tomorrow!

This doofus gave us a bit of a scare last week. I’d noticed he was losing some weight… not necessarily a bad thing, as he is on the chonky side… but then he started vomiting and stopped eating. It was so bad, I thought we might be saying goodbye to the old man.

We got him into the vet on Friday morning. The vet thought it might be diabetes, but his blood sugar was fine. So they kept him for the afternoon to rehydrate him and take some blood and urine for further testing.

We picked him up at the end of the day and were send home with an appetite stimulant and instructions to feed him by syringe until he started eating on his own.

By Sunday, he was doing much better and was almost 100%. The vet called back with test results which were… frustrating. Everything was pretty much normal. The vet can only surmise that he had a stomach ate and stopped eating because of that. And that caused the dehydration which made his situation even worse.

While I’m thrilled it was just an upset tummy and not something more serious… it was a $750 upset tummy. I think he’s been taking lessons from Burton.

We have a completed Bride sock…

And a very wee start on the second sock.

Exhaustion from the weekend seems to have bled through most of the week, and after the workday, I just haven’t had much energy to knit. But I do need to get a move on because I only have a week left to finish it.

Happily, this coming weekend is an extra-long one (I’m off Friday-Monday), and it’s looking like it might be pretty rainy. I may be able to take an afternoon or two to sit down and bang the last one out!

If I have one piece of relationship advice for my fellow ladies… it’s this. Forget about flowers and grand romantic gestures… find yourself a man who’s willing to clean concrete for you.

First… it was my Porch Goose.

The weekend before last, he spent about five hours stripping off the old paint, then using a wire brush to clean up all the detail so I can repaint her.

Then… on our travels Friday night, we came across a large concrete swan planter. I fully expected him to say “Hell no… I aint going through that again!!!”

But…

He didn’t. Instead he lifted it into the jeep for me (it weighs about 70 lbs), and spent Saturday afternoon giving it the same treatment.

He also gave the concrete bird bath we got last year a quick clean up and now all three are ready for painting.

And if that wasn’t enough… he spent Sunday cleaning up a pile of metal garden doodads I’ve picked up over winter…

Including this awesome pump head.

Now that’s true love.

With all the outdoor activities going on this weekend, you won’t be surprised to learn that I didn’t manage to finish Block 13.

I did work on it. But I was so whomped after all that fresh air, I didn’t have energy for more than an hour or so with it each night. And those little purple pea-pods we quite finicky. We’ve got a nice long weekend coming up this weekend, so I’ll finish this one up and maybe even bang out one or two more.

Yep. It was that kind of weekend here. I had several big jobs to tackle in the garden this weekend, and thankfully the weather cooperated. It means I don’t have any sewing to show you this week, but I do have….

A big hole. Or at least it was until I filled it in. This little patch is between the side porch and the driveway. And long before we moved in, some brilliant person planted a pink honeysuckle shrub. It’s not the cool, climbing honeysuckle like I have on the catio, but a shrub type that’s frequent used in hedging. And that means if it’s not kept clipped, it just becomes a wild mess that easily scratches cars. Basically – it’s a stupid place for a shrub. I’ve been keeping it cut right back, but it was long past time to finally just take it out. It actually came out much easier than I expected – though it still took some good swings with that hatchet.

At some point this summer, the whole spot will be dug out and concreted as it makes zero sense to have any greenery there.

The second big dig was the Euonymus in the driveway garden. Whoever planted it (likely the same person who planted the Honeysuckle) chose exactly the wrong Euonymus to put there. They chose a creeping Euonymus.

It’s a layering plant. Meaning that everywhere a branch touched the ground, it put down roots. The whole thing was a crazy giant tangled mess. But with my pruners, and my hatchet, and a little extra help from Dave and his sawsall….

It’s now history. At least I hope it is. We couldn’t get the main root out. It was just too darn big. But I’m hoping we did enough damage to it that it’s not going to grow back.

My plan was to get a more suitable shrub for the spot… but since the root is still in there, I have to shift gears. I have a plan, but you’ll have to wait for more on that.

In addition to hacking up poor defensless shrubs, I also decimiated the Snow on the Mountain bed.

This area is around the right side of the front porch. When we moved in, it was covered in Snow on the Mountain. I left it because it was growing well and I had more than enough to deal with elsewhere. But after a few years here, I’ve realized a couple things… 1) it spreads… and it was working it’s way down to where I had the coral bells along the side walkway. 2) It’s prone to some sort of rust…. and by mid-summer was often looking pretty sad.

So… now it’s all dug out (at least I hope… I’m sure there’s a root or two left in there.) and I have a whole new bed to plant up. It’s in shade for about half the day, so I’m thinking it will probably get some daylilies. I have several that need to be split up and they look nice almost all summer long whether they are blooming or not. They should fill the space quite nicely.

And because none of those pictures are very exciting… Check out this new bloom.

Dave and I were doing our usual shopping Friday night and Rona+ had these GORGROUS hellebores.

They were HUGE and just $15!!! If you know anything about Hellebores, it’s that they are usually quite spendy. I rarely see them under $30. I’m very tempted to go back and get a few more.

It looks soooo nice by the Hollly.