9.6 coneflowers

Exhibit B: Coneflowers make such a lovely display without requiring much special attention. I wish they came in other shades, partly because I'm not entirely fond of this shade, but mostly because everybody has this one. (n.b. they may very well do so, but not popularly available in the local nurseries and I am only now working up enough energy on the subject to start complaining and looking around. Any suggestions gratefully received.) I have these two plants in my big round bed, and intended to move them to the lower new bed. Since everyone in the neighborhood seems to have put them in, I'm reluctant to make mine more visible. I want the bed to look like something besides a stamped out version of the same bed everyone else has.

9.4 morning glory

One might not be able to tell fom my history of picture posting, but there actually are some (a few) flowers in my garden that are not lilies. Exhibit A: Morning glory flower. The morning glories grow on the trellises I have erected to disguise the gas and water meters, since these sightly (?) objects are mounted (relatively) high on the wall on the front corner of the house facing the direction that everyone comes up the street. This is just above the point where the sewer grinder/pump cover sits in the middle of the yard, previously projecting about 10 inches into the air above the level of the yard.
Having put an elevated circular bed (about 20 feet across) around the corner of the house where the sewer grinder/pump cover sits, it gave me a place to put the trellises, etc...
We have a sewer grinder/pump because we live at the upper end of a street with a swale in the middle. The grinder reduces all waste products to fit into a 1 inch pipe and then the pump pushes it past the uphill section. The pump is warrantied for 20 years (don't ask me what happens then), although one of our neighbors had to have theirs replaced in the first year and grumbled that it cost many thousands to have it dug out and replaced. The question of the warranty thus lingers in my mind, as no mention of any coverage accompanied this story, although as no mention of any coverage accompanied the story, my immediate cynicism questions as to whether something unauthorized entered their system at some point.
Behind our house, on the other side of the stretch of woods and stream, there are about 80 acres of farmland. Last year spring there was a public hearing in re. putting in senior citizen housing and assisted living facilities on this 80 acres, which would including a new pumping substation on the corner of the property. We were advised at that time that in a few years, this would imply that our subdivision's sewer system would be revamped and those of us with grinder/pumps would then be connected to a real system and would be responsible (financially) for the cost of doing so. My first thought was, what about my flower bed? Are they going to ruin it by digging everything up? (not to mention the wall?) J thinks it will simply be one of those underground mole machines, burrowing along and going right under everything. All well and good, but how do they get the grinder/pump dug up and carted away?
Oh, J says, they'll probably just change the connections at the house and leave the grinder/pump where it is.
Um, right. An entire, unsightly device, which we now won't need, and we're just going to leave it there. I don't know which I think is worse - leaving it there or taking it out.
The whole building project is now 8 months overdue to start and given the current housing market, I don't think I'm going to have to worry about the choice or my garden any time soon.

Ok, I finally tumbled into a meme...

We'll blame Freyalyn. (Bold indicates I've eaten it, other comments are probably self-explanatory.
Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee - I've had it but am not enough of a connoisseur to understand why I want it over others I've tried.
Rose harissa - ?
Bellini - ?
Calamari - particularly with parmesan-pepper sauce.
Clotted cream tea - clotted cream - yes, tea - yes; never tried mixing them.
Louche absinthe - ?
Fried plantain - Yum.
Flowers - I've had them but they didn't strike me as one way or another. I'll eat them if they're in my food, but wouldn't go out of my way to get them.
Fresh wild berries - Absolutely!
Mole poblano - most excellent.
Baba ghanoush - once was enough.
Bagna cauda - ?
Carp - Rumors of massive numbers of bones put me off.
Kaolin - ?
Roadkill - Never seen any that looked edible.
Venison - I've been fortunate enough to only have good venison.
Nettle tea - Nothing I'd go out of my way for.
Huevos rancheros - most excellent, especially as prepared in the little restaurant down the street.
Steak tartare - No interest, sorry.
Crocodile - I'd try it if it was put in front of me, but I've no idea where I'd find it around here. Black pudding - Not being much into pudding of any kind...
Cheese fondue - It's ok.
Borscht - Tried some once at a French/Russian restaurant. Not the highlight of the meal, but not bad either.
Pho - Nope.
PB&J sandwich - If the PB is fresh and crunchy and the jam is apricot and home made, yum.
Aloo gobi - ?
Hot dog from a street cart - In four different countries.
Black truffle - I wish.
Pistachio ice cream - I liked the one best that wasn't dyed green. Plain white with little green nuts.
Heirloom tomatoes - all fresh tomatoes are wonderful. No need to add any other comment there.
Foie gras - Never tried. I'm not a big liver fan, whatever the species.
Rice and beans - of course. Which ethnicity's version would you like?
Brawn, or head cheese - No.
Raw Scotch Bonnet pepper - No! I'm fond of my taste buds.
Dulce de leche - Chocolate's better but dulce de leche is right up there.
Oysters - there was a period of my life where steamed oysters formed a large portion of my diet, and I always go back to a seafood restaurant in San Jose to get the Oysters Rockefeller they fix.
Baklava - I love this stuff. I found a place recently that keeps it on the menu, but they don't use any nuts. Need to make my own again.
Wasabi peas - Not that fond of horseradish taste.
Clam chowder in a sourdough bowl - not in sourdough bowl. I don't like my bread soggy.
Salted lassi - ?
Sauerkraut - yum. Particularly in rouladin.
Root beer float - A childhood favorite that never lives up to memories.
Cognac with a fat cigar - a cigar is NOT food. Agree. No arguments there.
Vodka jelly/Jell-O - Ick. No desire ever to try.
Gumbo - no interest.
Oxtail - no interest.
Curried goat - yum.
Whole insects - no interest.
Phaal - ?
Goat’s milk - it's ok.
Malt whisky from a bottle worth £60/$120 or more - I don't like whisky enough to spend the money to find out if I'd like expensive whisky.
Fugu - No.
Chicken tikka masala - ?
Eel - in sushi, it's most excellent.
Krispy Kreme original glazed doughnut - Way too sweet.
Sea urchin - No.
Prickly pear - Several times, but most of the ones I can get here look several weeks old.
Umeboshi - ?
Abalone - No.
Paneer - ?
McDonald’s Big Mac Meal -No.
Spaetzle - Sorry, fits in the soggy bread category.
Dirty gin martini - No.
Beer above 8% ABV - Yum.
Poutine - ?
Carob chips - Just give me the real chocolate.
S’mores - Of course.
Sweetbreads - No.
Currywurst - ?
Durian - why? Just to say I had?
Frogs’ legs - Yum!
Beignets, churros, elephant ears or funnel cake - if they are really fresh and made in newish oil.
Haggis - must I?
Chitterlings, or andouillette - No.
Gazpacho - One of the few soups I care for.
Caviar and blini - Not worth the cost.
Gjetost, or brunost - ?
Baijiu - ?
Hostess Fruit Pie - No!
Snail - Yes! Snails are mostly an excuse to eat garlic-buttery toast, but there was a restaurant in Germany with a recipe for a garlic-cheesy white sauce served on a plate with a side of really good bread and you got a dozen or more schnecken and not just a measily 6...
Lapsang souchong - good.
Eggs Benedict - No - I've avoided it, see note above about soggy bread.
Pocky - ?
Tasting menu at a three-Michelin-star restaurant - I WISH. Agree. What else to say?
Kobe beef - ?.
Hare - Tasty, organic, wild caught. What’s not to like? Again, what else to say?
Goulash - Yum.
Horse - No.
Criollo chocolate - ?
Spam. - No.
Soft shell crab - No interest.
Catfish - Yum!
Bagel and lox - yum.
Lobster Thermidor - not since visiting Maine, but I'd go again in a heartbeat.
Polenta - Not a fan.
Snake - No.

8.28 garden report

Despite getting put in late, those things that I did put in have done well. We've had acorn squash, and zucchini (and zucchini and zucchini). We have a zillion green tomatoes (and have had for weeks now), and I've had about a dozen ripe ones. I need to see about better support for the tomatoes next year (this year's consisted of "inadequate" and "none"), but it doesn't seem to have harmed them in terms of inducing mildew or rot.

J has made up his mind that next year I need additional garden boxes to isolate the squash and tomatoes from the other parts of the garden. I have agreed that this is probably a sound idea. They do tend to take over.

I'm about ready to take the squashes out. The weather has not been conducive to further production (cool nights, cloudy skies) and they are being overtaken by powdery mildew. I think some nice fall veg should go in next.

After July in June (hotter dryer weather than usual), and August in July (hot, muggy and thunderstorms on a frequent basis), we now seem to be having September in August (continued thunderstorms every third day, but cool clear nights). Are we going to have snow before Halloween this year?

8.25 spring skein

This is the second and final skein of the spring-colored yarn. Predominately white, with a large swathe of blue, and smaller bits of yellow, green and purple, this has always figured in my mind as "the spring fiber". The purple was a real shocker when I first noticed it as that strip was turned to the inside of the top and not visible in the package. Eventually I'll get to figuring out what the yardage and grist is on these and be able to think about what sort of end use the skeins will get put to.

8.23 speckled asiatic lily

Last year was the first for the grab bag of asiatic lilies to bloom, and this one struck me as being lightly speckled. This year, as you can see, it is heavily speckled, and I really like it.

I'm not sure what causes the changes from year to year. This year, it rather looks like one of those paintings done by flinging paint at the canvas from across the room. I confess to liking the effect better when produced by nature.

8.21 wild raspberry

This was the first try at spinning the Wild Raspberry from Sweet Grass Wool*. Spun short draw and way too overspun for my purposes, this shows the colors nicely, but completely overwhelmed the spring of the Targhee fiber. Anyone need a skein of very firm yarn?

* In linking to SGW, I notice that they have changed their colorways (boo - I like the wild raspberry and it isn't there any more) and expanded their line of available tops (yea, more colors to choose from, not that I need any more fiber any time soon).

8.21 Let me explain...

No, there is too much.
Let me sum up:
K has been to babysit her cousin, B, and is back again.
S and I went to pick her up and spent a day or two around DC.
K, S, my sister and Cousin B went up in the Washington Monument.
I declined the treat, having done this before and feeling that once was sufficient.
I spent the time knitting outside the Monument and trying to identify languages.
Over the course of 45 minutes, I was sure of 11 different languages and only heard two words of English.
I pulled some muscles and am still trying to get them to loosen up.
S is in sailing camp this week.
I got a call yesterday that he'd been hit in the head by the boom.
The pulley on the boom split his left eyebrow.
9 stitches later, he still has a headache but no concussion or any further side effects.
I've gotten quite a bit of spinning and knitting done, but nothing is finished.
Pictures to follow.
My internship this summer has gone well enough that I've been asked to extend for another three months with the promise that I'll be allowed to move into still further fun stuff. I've accepted, but I'm taking a week off first.
I start my fall class on 1 Sept and K and S start school on 3 Sept. Much buying of shoes and school supplies needs to happen first.

Now that I have the synopsis out of the way, I may be able to get back to posting on a regular basis. I'm only 1550 posts behind on my blog reading.

8.7 gold daylily

The daylilies have been going to town. Last year I put in some of the dinner plate daylilies and they have started blooming. I need to find where I put my stack of labels to remember which is which.

8.6 tom turkey

Unlike our visitors earlier this year, Tom was strutting and displaying this time. There are advantages to having guests home during the day - they bring evidence of still further visitors I wouldn't have known about.

7.24 Randomness

I have guests arriving today. Sometime. They left about 11 this morning; at 9:30 tonight they aren't here.
I left my phone at work so it's difficult to give them a call and find out where they are.
I have guests arriving tomorrow. Sometime. They plan to leave at 5 am or thereabouts.
Tomorrow, S finishes up at All-Sports camp (Camp Games, Flag Football, Soccer, Swimming, Flag Football and Camp Games - he's been coming home one tired and hungry pup).
Tomorrow, K starts play performances again - Friday and Saturday nights.
Sunday, everyone leaves, except perhaps some of the guests.
I plan on collapsing next week. Just me and the critters.

7.23 miniatures

One of the benefits of visiting my in-laws during the summer is the chance to check out the babies at the end of the street.

7.22 reading weekly

This week's reading:

1. Fairy Godmother by Mercedes Lackey. For a person who spent a great deal of time as a child reading (and re-reading) the Color Fairy books, the revisions dreamed up by Lackey are amusing and pleasant reading. She tackled fairy tales first in the Elemental Mages series (starting with The Fire Rose), but redid them with the 500 Kingdoms books, and I've enjoyed reading all of them.
2. One Good Knight by Mercedes Lackey. The second book, ditto.
3. The Corinthian by Georgette Heyer.

7.21 L is for lilies

7.20 yellow daylily

Somewhere I have the label for this daylily - where I don't know. Probably in a stack on the kitchen desk. Or maybe in the drawer in the kitchen where I keep extra seeds. Or... There are several possibilities, when I start following the idiot boy's advice about looking for a lost horse. It was an acquisition from last fall, along with the James Marsh. While not as intense a yellow as the James Marsh is a red, it is still pretty eyecatching.

7.19 Bad week for posting

It's been a bad week for getting posts up on the blog. Somehow I'm not having trouble getting posts written, but getting them to post? Not so much. Mostly the problem has been that when things don't work perfectly, I've not had time to stop and sort things out.

The dryer hasn't been working (that is, the dryer works fine. It also squeals shrilly with a metal-on-metal shriek when it's run. I haven't been running it.) On investigation, it turns out that the problem is the "felt pad", which has teflon bearings on which the drum is supposed to slide. This have worn away to nothing, leaving us with metal-on-metal, which I suppose explains the shriek. Thanks to J and the appliance parts store, the shriek is gone and I merely have a mountain of laundry to work my way through.

J and S and the grandparents are off to his second game of the day, third since yesterday afternoon. They lost yesterday (tough team to beat) and lost again this morning (up too early after way too late a night, since yesterday's game was on the other side of town and ended at 10 pm). They enjoy playing in tournaments, but the time combination was really unfortunate. We'll see if they pull themselves together for the afternoon game.

K's opening night for the play was last night and the grands are here so that we can all go see it tonight. S has another game tomorrow morning, and possibly a game in the afternoon. K has a matinee to do tomorrow afternoon, at which I'll be ushering or possibly costume assisting or... Working, at any rate. The grands leave tomorrow sometime and I have to stop by the office I used to work for and if I can figure out what she did to the computer, or what was done to the computer for her, that makes it not work. Busy weekend. I'll have to go to the office on Monday to rest up.

7.18 james marsh daylily

I acquired a new-to-me daylily last year and didn't have it bloom. I acquired a second specimen of the same lily in a collection I bought at the end of the summer. I'm just now getting to see what I have and Wow! I just love it. The James Marsh daylily is just really intensely colorful.

7.17 spindle progress

I'm also making progress on the spindle spinning. This is the first time I've spun with the merino tencel. I'm not yet sure how I'm going like the finished yarn - mostly because of the shiny-shiny. I love the sleekness of silk, but the tencel seems just a bit over-the-top glossy.

As a fiber to spin, I like it pretty well. I find that silk tends to stick to my hands and be difficult to spin in the summer humidity. The tencel doesn't have that problem - it's a good summer heat-and-humidity fiber.

7.16 bobbins

I finished the first wool/angora bobbin, here shown with the two of the ones that are waiting to be plied. I'm planning on having the brown be a 3-ply, but I don't want to chain ply it so... 2 more bobbins to go.

7.15 Let me just say this about that...

I would thoroughly enjoy working with teenagers if they didn't bring with them the baggage of stage mothers.



I would thoroughly be willing to let others work with my teenaged daughter if they weren't pushy obnoxious stage mothers.



I don't see any way of turning my daughter over to the non-pushy non-obnoxious mothers without having the pushy obnoxious stage mother barging in.



It's a puzzlement.

7.14 reading weekly

This week's reading has involved a bunch of old favorites, with a new one that I've finished up.



1. The Golden One by Elizabeth Peters. I've been listening to Barbara Rosenblatt read through the Amelia Peabody books for some time. Audible has had many of them, but has the more recent ones only in abridged format which annoys me greatly. My guess is that the more recent ones in their long format are not a cost-effective purchase for the discount that Audible offers for their monthly membership. The library offers most of them on tape or CD and since I have discovered that I have lost my patience with anything over a 5 minute commute, having books on tape has been a godsend.

2. Wingarden by Elsie Lee. One of the books I stumbled across most recently by this author (although written in '71 - most of her books were written in the late 50s and 60s). Her books are pleasant romances, usually either nominally Regencies or set in post-WWII time frames, often with a mystery. This was a "contemporary" romance (i.e. set in the late sixties?) and had the tense race-relations of small town Virginia as the setting. Her books remind me of many of Mary Stewart's books written about the same time.

3. Chinese Nail Murders by Robert van Gulik. An old favorite.

4. The Gold Falcon by Katherine Kerr. One of the more recent books by Kerr, which I just picked up recently. I read her books when she first started writing. I went through a phase of not reading anything new fictional for a while (i.e about 10 years), and a number of writers kept on writing while I was not reading. Having gone back to reading fiction, I'm finding myself needing to catch on certain authors. Kerr is one of them.

7.13 mystery wool and angora

Each year the local spinning guild has a Holiday Gift Swap as the theme for the December meeting. Each person brings 8 oz of spinnable fiber, wrapped in a pretty package. Packages get judged by their wrappings; each person in turn can take a package from the pile or from another person. If your package gets stolen you replace it by choosing again.

A while back, this was what I came home with. Mystery wool with a certain amount of white angora mixed in. It will be a three-ply when I get finished with it. I am trying to get a minimum of a half hour of spinning in each day.

7.12 merino tencel

I don't really remember where I picked up this merino tencel. If I recall correctly, it was a "throw-in" from a swap I did with someone sometime. The rest of what I got was yarn. I haven't done anything with the yarn either.

This is 2 oz of merino tencel in colors I would never have bought to start with but which turning out to be a rather nice singles. I haven't hit any of the white bits of fiber yet, so I don't know how that part is going to look. I think plied together it will look ok. I split the top into two 1 oz sections and plan to make a two ply skein.

7.11 baby 4 bloom

Hey, Cathy - baby 4 bloomed! I missed the first bloom on this one while I was away, but it has obliged with another one.

7.10 bearing fruit

About six months ago, I warned the offspring that when I got a full time job (intended for this summer internship), they were suddenly going to be responsible for cooking dinner once a week. Now, mind you, this is after a couple of years of anecdotes about my teen years when my mother went back to work and then back to college and my mother, sister and I would sit down at the beginning of the semester and decide who had time to cook dinner when since we were all three going to school.

I wasn't sure how this was going to work out. K has been interested in cooking for some years, but S has not. S is the one I was worried about - he needs to know how to feed himself without resorting to fast food or tv dinners. (We will not even go into his stated opinion of two years ago which was that that was what girlfriends were for - ever since he ran into the Zits cartoon that said "nothing says 'knuckledragger' like sexist expectations of your girlfriend" he has ceased to even try to tease his sister with such statements.) While having additional hands to fix meals is of course bonus, the point is to make them learn to be self sufficient. This summer's addition to the self-sufficiency plans is cooking.

It's working out great. When I said, ok, it's time - they both shrugged and said "OK". No fuss, no muss. I thought they might want to choose the menu, but that seems to be more than they want right now. I'm writing out recipes, leaving ingredients and instructions, and when asked, walking them through the instructions over the phone. I'm also coming home to meals not cooked by me.
I could get used to this.

7.9 flotilla

7.8 Foolishness

I did a very foolish thing this evening - I walked into the costume dept at the high school (K wanted me to admire her costumes for the play) and made the mistake of admitting I know my way around a sewing machine. (I couldn't help it - they were admiring the costume I made K two springs ago [n.b. has it really been that long?]).

I walked out with a skirt to hem up and another skirt to make.

Gotta learn to keep my mouth shut.

7.7 reading weekly

This week I've started a bunch of books, and I've read the last two chapters of a bunch of books - not much has been read from start to finish.

1. Venetia by Georgette Heyer - I started at the last three chapters, then read the middle, then read the beginning and the last four chapters. I suppose that's one way of reading a book.
2. The Snow Queen by Mercedes Lackey - yes I know, this was on last week's list. I read it again.

Not much else to add - I should have about 7 books on next week's list if I actually finish all the ones I'm in the middle of. I'm not sure why I'm having so much trouble with book monogamy, but there you go.

7.6 tango lilies

The tango lilies are in full bloom. I come out the front door (to my right from the angle at which I was taking this picture) and walk down the walk each morning, between this picture and yesterday's picture. I generally come flying out the door (mostly to keep cats from accompanying me), patter down the steps, and...
By the time I have rounded the corner, my steps have slowed drastically. I may be late for work, but I have to stop and admire and smell, and see what's new...
It always takes five minutes to get to the end of the walk these days.

7.5 front garden lilies

Last year I bought a couple of grab-bags of lilies and salted them in the front bed. I had almost forgotten I did this and was a little surprised when lilies started popping up everywhere this spring. They have filled in the bed nicely, along with the alyssum. I love the scent of alyssum and, having planted it two years in a row, now have no need to plant it again. All I have to do now is to recognize the seedlings when they start popping up and not treat them as weeds.

7.4 black raspberries

Behold the fruits of the garden, wrested even from the very gaping jaws of the wild turkey.
We always have wild raspberres at the edge of the property - the vines seem to enjoy the climate facing east, just at the perpendicular of the horizontal grassy lawn meeting the vertical of the woodland trees. I had been keeping a general eye on them for about for or five days - it seemed that they should be ripening any day now, but there never were any fully ripe ones.
Yesterday in the morning, Brandon raised a ruckus and I noticed a turkey strutting away, cautiously but without haste.
The mystery of the non-ripening berries is solved.

7.3 baby 3 bloom

The first baby bloomed! This is the first of the blooms on the six daylilies that Cathy sent me last year - five are of her own hybridization. I just love the colors on this one and I'm so pleased to have it.

7.2 bobbin 3

The third bobbin of the spring merino is done. I'll be glad to have it done, and yet, my spinning is so far ahead of my knitting in projects-worth of production, I have no idea when I will get around to knitting with it. I ought to stop spinning and concentrate on knitting, but the spinning helps my feet and ankles, so I keep on spinning. Perhaps I'll simply wind up with lots of yarn for Christmas presents.

7.1 square foot gardening book

square foot gardening book
Originally uploaded by zinlizzie

Well, Sylvia wins the mink-lined whatsit - I picked up a copy of this book last winter and I've got my squares all lined up. I'm not sure I'll have all my squares filled in this year, but maybe next.
The answer to Norma's question is that IF I have baby snapping turtles, they are under the zucchini seedlings in the bed not pictured the other day. I find myself strangely reluctant to plant too much in that bed.
I plan to encourage the squashes to lean over OFF the bed. This will preclude J's being able to properly mow around the beds, but he got over it the last time I had watermelon and pumpkin vines everywhere, so I expect he'll get over it this time, too.

6.30 reading weekly

This week's reading was a wild swerve away from last week's. While I am slowly making my way through Sea of Sorrows by Michelle West, I certainly have not been a one book woman this week.

1. Nine Coaches Waiting by Mary Stewart
2. The Nine Tailors by Dorothy Sayers
3. Madam Will You Talk by Mary Stewart
4. Wingarden by Elsie Lee
5. The Unknown Ajax by Georgette Heyer

Old favorites, one and all. And a new book:

6. The Snow Queen by Mercedes Lackey

This is a new entry in her Five Hundred Kingdoms series; a set of fairy tales retold with a charming twist to the basic concept. In her introduction to this book, Ms. Lackey references Dorothy Sayers comment that mystery books are where the reader can know that the good will prevail and the evil get their comeuppance. This, of course, not always true in the modern mystery, but it is most of the time. The modern fantasy and the modern romance novels also fall into this category.
There are those who point out that this attitude sets up unreasonable expectations in the minds of the impressionable, that life will always be perfect. While this may be true for some people, I think that an grim insistence on complete realism in one's reading is a mistake. A little escapism is good for the soul, once in a while.
This is not to say that I don't enjoy reading books that are a bit grittier at times, and I have moved past the stage (long since) where I was deeply crushed by any book that didn't have a happy ending. I do certainly appreciate stories that allow all genders to be equally competant at solving problems, and Ms. Lackey's books fit that bill as well.

6.29 red carpet lily

Older red carpet lily

The two year old red carpet lilies have started to bloom and they are definitely more of a blue-red than the one year old red carpets are. I like the older ones better, but the newer ones are ok. They don't seem to have much overlap of bloom time, so I'm not terribly prone to compare them (except for my general curiosity about the question this year). The shape of the flower is obviously different as well. So, did I order them from different sources, or did my source change their source?

Newer red carpet lily

6.28 orange-yellow bed

This is how this bed looked yesterday - today it looks just the same except that a big rainstorm swept through and if you can picture how it would look with all the yellow and orange petals of the asian lilies on the ground instead of on the plants, it looks just like that.

6.27 garden report

The vegetable gardens are doing well - the transplantees are happy campers. The seeds are just starting to sprout - when they get just a bit bigger I'll be able to mulch around them without squashing them.

This first picture has two heirloom tomatoes, one acorn squash, two squares of carrot seeds, two squares of salad mix, two squares of dayliliy seeds, and three squares of marigold seedlings.
The second bed has another acorn squash and four cherry tomatoes, with more to come as I get seedlings started.

6.26B baby3 scape

The camera wanted to focus on the leaves and not the scape, which I didn't notice until I was well back in the house and disinclined to try again. However, you can see it definitely has buds and I'm looking forward to seeing what the bloom looks like! Thanks Cathy, for sending me these. It's been fun!

6.26 baby4 scape

Here's the scape of one of the babies. It's just getting a bit of color and is very much darker than some of my other daylilies.

6.25 it's wednesday

A day when the week is more than half over once you reach the end of it. I've spent a great deal of time this week at work searching for answers (google is my friend) and only finding a few of them. I came home this evening and played in my garden, but I have no pictures to show you yet. By the time I came in with grubby grubby hands, it was too dark to take pics. My lily beds are coming into serious bud and even a couple of the babies from Cathy are sending up scapes. I will take pictures tomorrow morning, I promise!

6.24 just shaking my head

The good news is that the woman I complained about a few days ago saw the light (or more likely, complained to the wrong person and was squashed for it) and sent an apology email, which I dutifully accepted.

The bad news is that she immediately followed it up with another email which was just as self-centeredly rude as the first occasion, on a slightly different topic.

6.23 reading weekly

This week's reading has been confined to two books:

1. The Broken Crown by Michelle West
2. The Uncrowned King by Michelle West

I bought these when they first came out, some number of years ago. I enjoyed them very much but got a little frustrated with the slow pace of the story - the first book centers around character A, the second around character B. The overall story is forwarded in each book, but when the third book came out, centered for the most part around character C, I gave up and decided to wait for the entire series. I now have the entire series in my hands and am slowly working my way through the books. I'm into book 3 and remembering just why I gave up reading the series the first time.

6.22 tournament over

Not much happened chez nous this weekend other than studying and S's soccer tournament. K and S both have two more exams to go, one Monday and one Tuesday each. S also had a soccer tournament this evening and he played two games each day. Three regular games, one championship game. He played keeper/field, keeper, field, and keeper for the four games. And he wound up the hero of the game in the last game. It was a zero-tie game through double overtime, so it came down to penalty kicks. The other keeper missed all the kicks. Sean got a hand on one, which went in, but stopped another one cold. Final score: 4-3. It's nice when they get to be champions at their own tournament.

I took my knitting with me, but really only got a row or two done. It was just too hot/humid to knit with wool, and too damp to spin with silk.

6.21 tiger

This is another of the photos that just sort of appeared in my inbox when I uploaded picture. I decided that this one would be preferable to show vs. the others in that batch. This one symbolizes the clean room that magically appeared, K's clean room to be precise. I guess she was getting as annoyed with the clutter as I was. Tiger certainly seems to be enjoying the fact that the chair can be snoozed upon once again.

The other pictures in the batch were all of the fetal pig dissection that took place after school one day. Apparently one of the perks of doing well in high school biology is being permitted to stay after one day and helping with a dissection. Quote - it was interesting but it smelled really bad [ed. - formaldehyde?]. I don't want to do it again.

6.20 Thunderstorm

S and I went to the gym this evening. On the way home, I was entranced by a perfectly gorgeous thunderhead. We were seeing it side-on, and the setting sun was just to the right of it. The leading edge of the cloud was sheer gold, the first bit or so was rosy red, and the bulk of the cloud was shading into dark deep blues. Across the face of the cloud were sun rays shining gold with the blue behind them, as the light streamed past the edge of the cloud and lit up the moisture in the air that was not actually part of the cloud. It was gorgeous, a symphony in shades of color, and by the time we got home where I had a camera, the sun was farther down, the cloud was farther over, and the whole shebang was behind the trees from our house.

About half an hour later, J came in from flying his airplane and said "we have a thunderstorm in our back yard". The cloud, a solitary individual in an otherwise deep blue sky, was directly over our house and pouring down while snarling with thunder. A look on the weather map showed a clear sky with one tiny red dot of thunderstorm just over our town. It seems rather like that little character Joe Bftplsk (or whatever his name was) from Al Capp, the one who wandered around with his own personal thundercloud just over his head.

6.19 skein 1

This is the first skein of the merino: white, blue, yellow, green and lavender (in descending order of bulk in the fiber). I think it turned out pretty well, although it is uneven in spaces. I'll wait to measure the skeins for average grist until I have both of them done.

Yesterday's singles is making progress but I don't think I'll finish this weekend - the local club's soccer tournament is this weekend (three games for S and a parking attendancy for J) and K needs to help with the pancake breakfast at the church and then stay to work on tying up the loose ends with her project for Girl Scouts.

I had an unpleasant, rather one sided, conversation this evening with a woman who felt that having her daughter be rude on her behalf should somehow nullify both of them from any consequences of rudeness. How dare I correct her daughter for being rude when we both knew very well that she had told her daughter to do what she did? Well... as her leader, it's my job to correct her when she's rude (with regards to things that I'm a leader for), regardless of the fact that I know she's being rude at her mother's direct order. I fail to see why people should have to put up with rudeness just because we all know who the real instigator is. I also fail to see why I have to put up with being yelled at. When I said as much, she started yelling again. I hung up. She called my co leader complaining and swearing she'll never speak to me again.

I can live with that.

The really interesting thing about this whole scenario is that the person to whom the rudeness was directed is... my co-leader.

6.18 bobbin #3

I'm sure you can see the inconsistencies in this bobbin, but it's serving it's purpose of letting me practice, and giving me a chance to relax. It will almost certainly be as consistently inconsistent as the first skein was, so they'll match. I'll just have to find something that can stand a little unevenness in the yarn.

6.17 reading weekly

This week, I dipped into and out of the Bujold books again, and I've started reading the Sun Sword series by Michelle West but haven't finished any of them.

I did start and finish the three books out (so far) by Michelle (West) Sagara.
1. Cast in Shadow
2. Cast in Courtlight
3. Cast in Secret

According to her website, there will be at least two more. They're convoluted and interesting, set in a curious world. She has a nice knack to revealing information about her world without being particularly didactic or stop-the-story-let-me-explain-this-to-you.

6.16 Fire next door

Just after five o'clock I heard the rumbling of brakes outside. I looked out the window at the firetruck pulling up outside my house and started to get nervous.

Not my house, but the house next door. Firetrucks from our town and the three closest towns, local and county police/sheriff's departments, random other trucks with blue lights... It was a busy two hours until they all went away again.

The fire apparently started in the dehumidifier in the basement (should I be worried that I think we have the same manufacturer, maybe the same model?), and burnt a bunch of plastics, making a thick acrid smoke and an awful residue all over the inside of the house.

She was home and heard the "bang", got out, got the dog out, called the fire department right away. It could have been much worse, but I suspect that they will find it has been bad enough.

6.15 blue flag

blue flag
Originally uploaded by zinlizzie

I finally got a daytime picture of my blue flags - just before they're going to be all done. I kept trying to get a picture of them, but since they open up in the early morning and are curling at the edges by evening, they didn't look very nice when I was taking their picture at 7:30 at night.
Today we shifted about 2.5 yards of mulch. Theoretically, it would seem that 5 yards of dirt and 5 yards of mulch should be the same volume, since a "yard" is supposed to be a cubic yard. In practice, they may do them by weight, or it may be that the difference is caused by the fact that we got them from different sources. In any case, in actual practice, the 5 yards of mulch is almost twice as much volume as the 5 yards of dirt was. We put about half of it on the two gardens and then quit fo the day; too hot to do the rest.
After lunch we took a walk down by the Genesee river, along the Greenway path. We wound up walking by the airport fire fighters training facility. One imitation airplane, one imitation car, one "spilled fuel" setup, one building to fill with smoke... A very interesting place to see.
We also saw dozens and dozens of orchids. Unfortunately I didn't have the camera with me. If I can find a picture online I'll post a link to it.

6.14 snowball

One of the interesting things about living with teenagers is that they do stuff without necessarily telling you about it ahead of time. This can be good or bad, although my experience has mostly been on the good side of the ledger.
One of the things that has been happening more and more often is the use of the camera by K. She's gotten rather good at putting the camera back where she finds it, so the only way I know that something happened is that random photos suddenly appear when I upload the pictures I've just taken.
Snowball, on the office chair, with her little pink tongue stuck out.
"Can you touch your nose with your tongue?"

6.13 Calibrichoa

I found a new-to-me plant at the nursery and decided upon this one as my hanging plant for this year. Last year's hanging pot was actually the pot (new plants) from the year before and it bit the dust through sun damage right at the end of last year's season. These calibrichoa (Superbells) look similar to petunias, although miniaturized, and they don't have the petunia aroma which starts bothering me after a while.
The pot has proved to be too heavy for my hanger though, so at the moment it rests on the shelf of the raised bed and may wind up there for the rest of the season if I don't figure something else out.
It may not make it through the season in any case as the flowers seem to be water hogs and must be watered EVERY day. I am not usually quite that organized. Poor things.

Q. If I pity them in advance, will my conscience let me off the hook when they die?

6.12 messy box

When I came home yesterday, the last one of my new raised bed boxes looked like this, rather than the neat way it had looked when I left in the morning.

We had a visitor while I was away - my mom got some pictures with the telephoto.

Last year, our neighbor had a visitor (probably the same one?) and later in the summer we had small, silver dollar sized visitors scampering away one afternoon.

We don't think she left me any presents; she gave up in disgust and went off to where people didn't wander around with big-ass telephoto lenses. Papparazzi!

Just for scale - the strings are at one foot intervals.

6.11 first year red carpet

newredcarpet
Originally uploaded by zinlizzie

The first of my red carpet lilies to bloom this year. This one is one of the new batch and I think it may actually be a slightly different lily than my previous red carpet lilies. I'll have to take a picture of one of those when they bloom again and compare. The foliage is definitely darker on the two year lilies than the one year ones.

I don't remember whether I got them from the same source or not. it doesn't really matter; they're all good!

6.10 Lavender Mountain Lily

lavmtnlily
Originally uploaded by zinlizzie

This is very odd picture, as the autofocus chose to put the lower bloom in focus and the one that's closest to the viewer is blurred. Be that as it may, it is the picture I had that is the truest color and after six tries, I gave up.

I have two of these little beauties left out of the dozen I planted. I'm not sure what I did either to kill off the rest or to not kill these off, but I do wish I had more of them. Maybe next year I'll get some more.

Let's see - if I buy 12 a year and have two left of each twelve, how many years will it take to have a dozen living? A question to pose to my going-into-2nd-grade nephew.

6.9 Disappointment

K has spent the last three months practicing twice a week after school, an hour and then two hours at a time, working on a song and dance routine with the Show Choir. For the 9th graders, this is their last year in Show Choir, last chance to shine, their turn to be the Big Dogs. Tonight's the night to strut their stuff, then cry all over each other; it's over it's done, on to other things but this time in their lives is finished.

K's in bed, trying not to throw up again. She's been in bed all day, ever since the school called at 20 minutes after first bell, nauseous and miserable and unhappy. Nauseous and miserable with illness, miserable and unhappy over missing her night. There will be other nights, but this one has been and gone without her.

6.8 veg garden(s)

veggarden
Originally uploaded by zinlizzie

This is my other major project for the summer. I've wanted some vegetable gardens for a while, but our soil just takes too much improvement in order to do veggies. Voila. 3 new raised beds, 4 x 4 feet, complete with compost and new top soil. I won't be putting too much in to them this year - it's late in the season to start (although with August heat in June, who knows what will happen). However, it's a start and I'm looking forward to doing a few things this year.

6.7B New garden (after)

afternew
Originally uploaded by zinlizzie

The new garden with about 2.5 yards of dirt added. We added a layer, watered it down, and then added another layer. I expect to get mulch next and put that over the top.

6.7 New garden (before)

beforenew
Originally uploaded by zinlizzie

Another angle on the new garden. you can see the electrical box I'd rather not look at from my front window. The little blue spruce has looked a bit lonely in the corner of the yard.

This is taken before we had the five yards of top soil delivered. The temp was up to 98 F today. J did most of the dirt shifting, with some help from S and I at various points of time. Have I mentioned lately I think he's wonderful?

6.6 yellow flag

This is the first of my yellow flags to bloom. If the color showing is any guide, there'll be a lot more of them tomorrow.

Cyndy, you're right - this weather makes it really hard to decide what to wear. Two days ago the high was 62, today it was 98. I hate hot weather.

I really feel for the receptionist at the new job. We're on the 3rd floor and her desk is just inside the door. The door faces the atrium. Someone opens the door at the bottom of the atrium and lets in a blast of steamy hot wind. Said wind sweeps up to the top of the atrium and waits for the door to the office to be opened, then sweeps over the poor receptionist. Repeatedly.

I'd have to find a new job or a bucket of ice to put at my feet or something.

6.5 Growing up

I've had occasion on the past two days to notice just how much my kids are growing up. They are looking so poised and put together. Not all the time, of course, but enough to give long insights into the poised and graceful adults they may become.

S has played soccer since he was 5. It became rather obvious early that he has a defensive player's mentality and focus. He's played goalie at least half time for the past five years. I'm not a particularly good soccer mom (I think I've mentioned that before) and as a consequence I am not a viewer of the games on a regular basis. As such, I think I am more struck by the differences in abilities in play from one game I see to the next, than are some of the parents who go and watch week in and week out.

I saw about half of S's game this past Wednesday. Their other primary goalie having been on the injured list for about 6 weeks, S was in goal for the whole game. They tied 1-1. I asked him afterwards how he felt the game had gone. "Pretty well. I made two mistakes." The mistakes had nothing to do with the goal against him. In his opinion, they were errors in judgement in his strategy as leader of the defense, in his deployment of the defensive players on the field. They hadn't lead to goals against his team, but had jeopardized their chances. Pretty good for insight for a 13 year old.

Then, last night we went to K's year end concert performance, the last performance of the high schools seniors. All the different groups were so poised and so professional in their presentations, difficult work and almost all of it a capella. I was very proud of them.

6.4 babies 5 & 6

The last of the babies from Cathy.

We keep getting cooler spells (in the sixties F) alternating with warmer spells (in the high eighties, low nineties F). Everything shoots up some more during the warm spells - it almost seems as though you can see it growing if you just blinked at the right moment or turned your head just the right way. There was a high of 67 today - Friday's supposed to be in the 90s.

6.2 babies1 & 2 and reading weekly

babies12
Originally uploaded by zinlizzie

Last fall, Cathy sent me some baby daylilies from her garden. These are two of them - I won't know which ones until they bloom (I doubt they will this year, but you never know). One of them wasn't looking too happy, but a good feed seems to have perked it up.

It's a good thing I got some reading done week before last because this past week hasn't been a good week for reading. Between the new job and the hecticness of it all, I didn't get much read this week.

1. Telzey Amberdon - James Schmitz. One of my favorite authors from the good old days of working my way through my parents Analog collection.

ETA - I'm much too tired today. I deleted this post by accident - tried to recreate it from the ashes, but I'm too tired to do that either.

6.3 babies3 & 4

Today's been a day to be nibbled to death by ducks. We started with K oversleeping, J locked his keys in the house, traffic meant that a 17 minute drive turned into 45, forgot the music lessons...

Staring at my garden helps me relax even if nothing else does. Babies #3 and 4 of the six I got from Cathy.

6.1 new garden

This weekend's project was starting the prep on a new flower bed. The structure of this bed has been in my mind since we moved into the house. The tree was put in before the lawn, but the rest of the bed has taken a while. For scale, the tree is about 3 feet tall now and the bed is about 3 feet across.

J helped me rototill it yesterday (that is, he rototilled, I removed bits of sod and hundreds of rocks). J and S put the lower border in, which matches the border on the bed by the front walk. We have a huge electric box at the side of the yard, just at the border between our yard and the neighbors. I talked with that neighbor about possibly planning a joint garden to hide the box, but his ideas and mine on plantings didn't mesh very well and when we actually read the sign on the box which says we can't plant within 5 feet of three sides and within 12 feet of the street facing side, he seemed to lose interest. That was 2 years ago and I quit waiting for him.

Mostly I care about not having to look at it from the house, although I suppose for "curb appeal" I should care about the street view as well. The box is not in the picture here, but the upswing of the garden is about twice as far as it appears from here, and I plan to put a white lilac at the top of the bed, then several tall ornamental grasses in between me and the box. The inside border will have lavendar and the outside border will have white and yellow Carpet Lilies (a miniature). Further plantings TBD. Some tulips, some aliums, some shrubbery and possibly a Japanese maple of the dwarf and bushy sort.

Before we get to planting, however, I need about 4 yards of top soil and about 8 yards of mulch delivered. I foresee much hefting in our futures.