Yarn Along: 31 August

Joining Ginny again this week...

Do you take Yarn Along pictures of the same project for weeks on end just like me?  I really hope others are knitting as slow as I am.  This truly is the Summer 2011 Cowl because it is nearly the one and only thing I have knit through the summer.  Here's hoping that it will be done by summer's end.

My reading has varied a bit though.  I finished Rhythm of Family by Amanda and Stephen Soule this week and thoroughly enjoyed it.  Like others have said, there was not a lot that was new to me in the book, but the photography was beautiful and I appreciated the reminders I took from each of the authors.  


Now I am working my way through the bundles of peaches that we picked last week, trying to find just the right way to preserve them for the year.  Any ideas?

Blight!

Oh our tomatoes!  I think the gardener's heart in me might just be breaking. 

This year we built a large, very large by our standards, bed for these babies of ours and in the late spring, I faithfully transplanted all (or most) of our volunteers to their permanent {summer} home.  Because I have never grown tomatoes from seed before, I knew that this year would be experimental for me {and that there might be some casualties) but I never dreamed of this!

Nearly all of our tomato plants are dead!  Ack!  AND to add insult to injury, the hens are pecking away at the few that are indeed ripening!  It feels like such a sad climax to what has been an only mediocre season in our garden.

The late coming of spring, the extraordinary amount of rain, the hens, and my relative inexperience have ensured a pretty poor showing from the garden this year.  I suppose I have learned a few things (note the grumbling and arms crossed) and have made some mistakes that I won't make again (keep the hens out of the beds, for one).  Most importantly, though, it is another lesson in relinquishing control (for me).  Some years will be good; others won't.

Nature Study Monday: Coneflower

Do you have any of these growing around your home?

I planted Coneflowers early this spring and anxiously awaited their arrival throughout the summer.  Butterflies supposedly love the flower as much as we do, but I have not noticed many surrounding ours.  They, instead, flock to the nearby butterfly bush (which I only learned later is not a native plant and therefor not a host to many of our native butterflies).

Coneflowers (Echinacea) are native to eastern and central North America and do not mind some drought.  They like full sun but can handle some shade, and once they are established they live a long while and attract all kinds of good native species to your garden.

{this moment}

{this moment} - A Friday ritual. A single photo - no words - capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember.

Amanda Soule

Yarn Along: 24 August

Joining Ginny again this week...

Is the weather cooling where you are?  It is here.  I have actually opened the knitting bag containing my hub's sweater to peek in.  No knitting yet, but it is coming...  The cowl though is filling out quite well and I just might meet that end of August deadline.  Still just a couple of rows a night, but they are adding up.

In reading news, The Egg and I has been retired for the moment in favor of some homeschooling reading.  The new school year is upon us and I don't really know what we are going to do with it.  Karen Andreola's words are giving me some comfort though.  And my copy of Amanda Soule's new book arrived last week.  The photographs are lovely as is the writing.

Making for a Birthday

Our littlest one recently turned two.  We had a small family celebration for him with a peach crumble pie and two little handmade gifts.

This third child of ours is so naturally balanced, so sure, and yet so open.  It was a wonder to watch him on this special day of his.  I imagine he feels himself a part of and inextricable from our larger whole and is comfortable with his place in the family.  I pray that the balance remains with him as he gets older.

Our eldest daughter made her littlest sibling a books about his very favorite thing in the whole wide world--TRUCKS.  And his Mama sewed up a little birthday crown that he absolutely refuses to wear so it had to be modeled by his older brother!

Nature Study Monday: Carpenter Bees

I am very interested in all the sorts of bees that we have humming about our yard over the past three months.  Documentaries like this one have me especially interested in the fate of our dear honeybees.  To fight the anxiety drummed up knowing just how dependent we are on our yellow and black friends I study those that are flying about my yard and dream of the hives that we will get next year.  And I am finding out so much more each day (thanks Julie for pointing out that this is actually a yellow jacket).

Carpenter bees, or at least the species that we have in our own backyard, are a great deal larger than honeybees.  As you may have guessed (or already know), they make their homes in wooden structures or decaying trees by boring holes and creating tunnels.  The bees, however, do not eat the wood, although they might use it to create divisions within their nest.  They are primarily solitary nesters although in some species some females and their daughters nest together.

They are good pollinators of open-faced flowers, like our bee balm, pictured above.