Promises

   I still have not kept my promise and mowed the lawn....  It's been raining off and on and the grass is so long it takes more than a couple hours of dry weather before I could start mowing.  Besides it's been too cold for me to work outside.  (Remember, I take rat poison (Warfarin) and I'm cold when it's 75 out!  Sunday it's suppose to get dry and warm up and stay that way until Wednesday.  That should be time...and warm...enough for me to mow.

   

(photo added 9:18am 8/17/2014)

In the meantime, I've stayed busy knitting (what else?!?).  In the last day and a half I made 3 ladies hats--2 with rolled brims and 1 with a flat brim--they just need their roses and bows.  Today I'll knit the roses but I'm all out of ribbon. That will have to wait for a trip to Walmart. I've got to get milk and Rx's so maybe later today. For some reason the hats are appealing to customers and they are selling quite well...twice the  the customer bought 2!  I don't like wearing hats so I don't really understand the attraction but ....  A lace-y baby sweater set sold yesterday so after the roses I'll do one of those.  That should keep me busy until Monday.  Then I can do more baby hats... baseball, apple and pumpkins...in between mowing the lawn.

  Jeff had to tie up  one of the tomato plants after an especially hard rain the other day.  The fruit was so heavy the branches had bent over and started to break.  He gave it a dose of compost tea (yes, even after all that rain!) when he did and yesterday it looked pretty sprite.  There are so many tomatoes on it they were too heavy for the stem!  Hope the plant can make it.
   I decided to split my bundle with TimeWarner and get DISH.  You get HBO, Cinemax, Showtime, Starz and Blockbuster free for 3 months!  The only channel I'll miss is the Smithsonian.  I'm going to keep the phone and internet with TimeWarner.  Jeff's sister has DISH and loves it.  I don't like the movies I can get for free on TimeWarner  so maybe I'll watch more movies...at least for 3 months!

How the Garden Grows

    Jeff's garden is doing well.  He thinks it should be doing better but from what I hear I think it's doing ok.

Here are some of the peppers in one of the boxes...with red inpatients to attract the bees .  That's sweet potato in the corner of the box in front of them...with beans  ready to go over the side.

  These are the first tomatoes to vine ripen.  We've been watching these 2 change colors for the last couple of days.  You can see how full the plants are!  Jeff had to tie the plants to the poles again yesterday.  He's pruned the plants several times...something he saw on a You Tube video...and we don't have any blight...yet!  He's also been watering everything with 'compost tea' about every week, too.  A chipmunk or squirrel got the 1st tomato to ripen in the greenhouse but Jeff doesn't think that will happen with these 2.
   I've been promising all last week that I'd mow the lawn today...Wednesday...but it started to rain yesterday and poured all night so I guess I can't mow lawn.  Aw, gee wiz.  I'll have to keep knitting.  Which is a very good idea since I worked in the shop yesterday and every time I put a finished item on the shelf something sold! That left me with a lot of empty space.  (I know it's a case of 'crying all the way to the bank' but I'm about out of yarn and very tired of the colors I've been using!)  Generally business has been brisk and I forgot to take photos of my new sweater! It's Spring Green with pink and lavender flowers
embroidered on the fronts and has lady bug buttons. I'm afraid if might sell before the next time I work and I can take a photo of it so maybe I'll call the girl who's working today and ask her to do me a favor and do it today.  In the meantime, it's back to a red baseball sweater....

(Thanks, Dawn!)

Here are some more photos of the garden taken from a bedroom window.  You can see the 'bean tower' with cucumbers in the upper corner behind the greenhouse.  There's 

squash, zucchini, tomatoes, peppers and beans in these boxes. The dwarf apple tree in the upper corner of this photo is in a cluster of wildflowers and has 
a red hummingbird feeder hanging in it.

What A Beautiful Summer Day!

  I finally got to drive home my 'new' Subaru...this one's an '04 Impreza Outback Sport.  Very Sporty! And fast...for me...ol'lead foot...zoom zoom!  So far, I like it...very much.  Jeff's got to get the Outback wagon inspected and then have new rear struts... and the trailer hitch that he had taken off the Forester... installed.  But it means we can go to different stores...or the same store...at different times. Freedom!!  Matt, the guy who bought the Forester for parts, was very patient while I got together the money for the Impreza.  This makes my 7th Subaru. Wouldn't drive any thing else.
  July ended up very well in Cooperstown.  This was the 1st year I was knitting alone and it was difficult to keep up at first but I learned how to do it.  (Just before Induction Weekend I found a couple of pumpkin hats that Mom had made for the last Pumpkin Fest that hadn't sold so I put them in the shop and they sold, too. A little gift from her!)  August is going strong and I keep knitting!
  Jeff's garden looks great! The boxes are lush with tomatoes, beans, zucchini, and peppers. The carrot tops are tall and bushy, too.  Last week Jeff dug potatoes! 
This week he's been busy  setting up the gutter gardens in the green house.  This year he's using reusable shopping bags in plastic buckets. He learned about them thru Larry Hall on YouTube.  Can't wait to see if they work for Jeff.