Keeping Busy

I've been trying to do a little bit of everything lately...getting almost nothing done! My order from Webs of red, white and navy sock yarn (a washable wool/nylon blend) arrived Wednesday and I tore open the package before getting out of the car...actually while I was driving...very slowly...up the driveway. It's better than I had hoped!! I left in on the rocking chair in the tv room so I can see it from the kitchen and touch it when I went into room to watch tv. And that's about all I've done with it so far. The only not-so-nice-coz-it's-not-a-bad-thing about the yarn is that it's in hanks(not skeins) and will have to be balled. Oh, well, not such a bad thing, really. Just need the time to do it!

Three of the garden rows have flowering annuals planted in a circle of rocks at each end. It's suppose to encourage pollinators...ie bees...but that fat bumblebee still prefers the clover. I want to finish the ends of all the rows tonight or tomorrow but I've got to get some more plants.

I'm using our abundant crop of rocks to finish off the plantings. Every time Jeff tills he's dug up more rocks! There are a couple that are the size/shape of cannon balls!! While I got to plant pretty flowers, Jeff was busy turning the compost and meeting the 3 snakes that were living there...uninvited! Two of them just slithered away when he disturbed them but the 3rd one had a small problem...he/it had become very well acquainted with the working end of the pitchfork. He had to step on it to hold it down to pull out the pitchfork and it repaid his kindness by striking at his shoe. Telling of his adventure at supper gave Jeff the opportunity to express his dislike for the Crocs I like to wear. But since I'm not planning to turn compost...or step on a stuck snake...any time soon it won't cause me to throw out any of my pairs.

Jeff went to his sister's yesterday to build her a gutter garden and I went up after supper to pick him up...and stopped at the Tractor Supply to get a lawn glider/chair that was on sale. Of course it wouldn't fit in my car...it was the floor model ...so the manager offered to take it apart. When we tried to load it in the car again, I noticed one of the wooden back slats was broken. Got my money back. She checked on line and called several other stores to see if anyone had another one in stock but no luck so I saved $150. Hopefully I'll find something in one of the end of season sales that should be starting soon. Darn!! I was looking forward to sitting and gliding by the fire this weekend watching the garden grow.

How The Garden Grows..., er, Is Planted!

Gutter Garden Uncovered!

I think Jeff has been staying up late nights planning this year's garden. Going with the square foot concept we picked up those discarded booth bases from Applebee's dumpster and adapted them for the corners. Once the grid was installed in them, Jeff got busy filling and planting the two in the lower or driveway corners. He's got catnip in both top squares and a variety of veggies in the other levels. Over the weekend he tilled the main part of the garden and measured off a double square foot row. It took 2 days...and most of the seedlings in my tv room but it's planted...with tomatoes, peppers, beets, onions and carrots. More than I thought would possibly fit but the concept is why plant an entire 'farm' row when you're going to thin it to...whatever? Just plant the seedlings or seed that distance apart to start with. It looks very organized especially with the groups changing every foot down the row. There's room for 2 more double square rows for whatever and a farm row for potatoes. Jeff took the plastic off the peas and romaine and is planning on putting corn on both sides to finish the row. Peppers,

tomatoes and eggplant are in square foot groups between the boxes across the driveway side.other. We have 2 'spaceship landing crafts'...oops, I mean, pvc bean towers for climbing beans, cukes, squash and melons. They will be covered with garden netting and hopefully covered with green vines and fruit. The blackberries and raspberries got planted yesterday in their pvc cages. Got to get some net to cover them so the birds don't feast on the fruit before I get to pick some... like last year. The greenhouse over the gutter garden was on borrowed time and was taken down yesterday. It did it's job starting the season a couple of weeks early.

Potato Tubs #2 & #1 (l-r)

Everything is growing nicely in the gutters. I still like the idea of the self-watering gutter system! The potatoes in tub #1 need to be 'hilled' again. We're not sure the tubs will be deep enough to make it thru the season! Maybe we'll use plastic garbage pails next year. Jeff started a tub

of 'compost tea' Sunday to give the transplants a boost. We've used up just about all of the compost that formed this winter mixing it with bagged soil and peat moss to fill the boxes in the garden and

Strawberry planter

the pails in the gutters. I'm planning on putting flowers at each end of the double rows, along the driveway sides of the boxes and near the gutters to encourage bees. This weekend we shared our shady spot with one big, fat yellow & black bumblebee who was feasting in the clover but we all ignored each other and lived to tell about it. Jeff wanted me to start putting in the flowers yesterday but things have started to sell in the shop and I didn't want to stop knitting to play in the dirt. I want to finish a sweater and some baseball hats to get in there for this weekend. It's been raining gently off and on since I got home from work and Jeff worked outside before and after supper trying to get things planted. Instead of sitting and knitting I was the gofer bring out the seedlings. I've got 2 hats done in white worsted weight cotton ready for the embroidery to make them look like baseballs and after we came in tonight I finished the 2nd sleeve on a size 9months v-neck raglan from the neckdown sweater. With a little luck the rest of the sweater will be done tomorrow. Since it's in acrylic I'll have to do a hat to go with it. It may mean a fast trip to Cooperstown...maybe Saturday morning. We'll see.

POTATOES!

Jeff decided to check the potatoes in the gutter garden in the greenhouse today and this photo(center) shows just sprouted seedling in tub #2. The seedlings in tub #1(left) are about 2 weeks old and seem to be doing very good. In fact, they need to be 'hilled' so he mixed up some soil and added it to the pots, burying most of the seedlings. (rt). He plans on checking the tubs every week and adding soil as the plants grow. If the tub system works when it's time to harvest the potatoes he'll just dump the tubs into the garden and collect the potatoes. Last year we learned that no matter how careful you are digging potatoes, some get nicked or cut by the shovel. Hopefully, this way we'll avoid bruised potatoes!

Tuesday after work I met Jeff and his sister in Utica to pick up her new lawnmower (wouldn't fit in the trunk of her car) and after leaving them at her house went over to JoAnn Fabrics by myself (ahaa!). I had a partial skein of red Bamboo & Ewe sock yarn and hoped I could get some in solid navy and white to make baby socks to go with the baseball hats that sell so well in the shop. No luck with the yarn and I ended up driving home in rush-hour traffic in a terrible rainstorm. I checked the yarn catalogs I had but couldn't find any that I really liked but I ended up ordering some red, white and navy superwool from Webs in Massachusetts. I hope I like what I get coz I ordered 2 skeins each of the red & navy and 1 of the white and when you're making baby socks on size US 0's that should last me a couple of seasons!!

True!!!

MAKING DO

Jeff had planned on taking apart some wooden pallets to make multi-tiered corner units for the garden but as we were driving from Walmart to Agway past Applebee's after work on May 1st

he noticed that Applebee's had pulled out their booths and had them stacked between the sidewalk and the curb next to the dumpster. We turned around and went back to check them out and after consideration he thought he could make them work as the corner units. A quick dash to Jeff's for some hand tools...and then to my house for the power tools...and he took 5 of the booths apart so they would fit on/in my car. It took 2 trips to get the app 4x4', 12" deep 3/4" plywood boxes home. Boy, now that was when we wished we had a

pick-up truck...or that some of the people we know who do drive trucks would go

by Applebee's while he was working on them...but, of course, none did! After more work at home, he ended up with 4 3-tier boxes each app 4x4', 2x2' and 1x1, and 2 4x4' boxes all 6" deep. He spent another afternoon placing them, leveling and squaring them. The bases are covered with green vinyl and the other tiers with black carpet (they came that way!). Yesterday he started filling them with a soil-peat moss-manure mix and hopefully we'll be planting in them next week. It will make the garden look different!

Yesterday Jeff transplanted the ground cheeries into the last 2 buckets for the gutter garden in the greenhouse. The celery looks great...and the potatoes in the big

tubs have sprouted. The best part about the gutter garden...to me at least...is that it's self-watering!

In the meantime, I've been knitting baby hats in sugar & cream cotton. Got 3 finished with a sunbrim in 3 nights! Next will be a baseball hat or 2 and then a rolled brim hat with a knit flower sewed on the side. As usual there's a zip baggie in my pocketbook with a sock in progress!

Back to Work...But Not Back to Normal

I went back to work today and let me tell you, things were not normal at all! I had never felt claustrophobic before but the office, Washburn Room, Children's Room etc are all stacked with boxes of books, magazines, DVD's etc with narrow hallways...almost tunnels...winding through them. I kept making jokes about needing baseball caps with bike flags on top so we could be tracked on our way through them! The floor between my desk and the staff mailboxes is full of boxes and if anyone was using the desk it was 'cozy' trying to get by. The library director was set-up in a corner of the storeroom behind the office with a pc but no phone. The only printer connected to the internet is in the Children's Room and the pc in the office is not connected to it. I was trying to catch up with the new book orders that have come in and I had a couple of ways I could do it. I could carry...in my arms coz all the carts are full of books...the books I wanted to label to the children's room or I could do the prep work right there and then email the labels to myself, go back to the children's room and open the email and print the labels. That sounded easier until I tried to print the labels I had created in Publisher and remembered that Publisher has to be the same version on both ends or it won't open and it's not. Then I went back to the office and tried to create them in Word...but I never like Word...never used it much, and that took twice as long but finally got them printed and all the books labeled and ready for inventory. Tomorrow I'm going to try to prep the dvd's and do my part of cleaning the library...defrosting the refrigerator. Next week we'll be actually putting books on the shelves. There are definitely going to be parts of my job I will not miss when I leave at the end of June.

Jeff & I have been searching on line for another dog (not a replacement for Dawg but new one). We've all decided we'd like another lab... not black this time, maybe a yellow lab, and we're surprised at how rare they are at shelters...and how much it costs to get a puppy. I saw online offers for lab puppies from $250-1500! One shelter offered a young lab-mix female, spayed, for $250 PLUS $50 postage or delivery cost. And everything from breeders to shelters required an application with written agreements on the treatment of the dog. One breeder even stated that only occasionally do they sell a pup as a family pet!! I guess we'll just take our time. Dawg was a prize dropped into our laps and while I don't think we'll be that lucky again, we're not in a hurry to find out.

I've been finally making headway on baby sweaters for the shop. I'm doing a size 9mos cardigan, raglan from the neckdown, in a Bernat's baby jacquard with a solid color for the ribbing (neck, cuffs, button strip down the front, and around the bottom) that I thought matched. Well, I've got the sleeves done and half-way to the bottom and I'm not so sure anymore. It's close but not as close as I'd like. Had some trouble with the self-patterning on the sleeves but finally got it done. I'll take some photos tomorrow and add them here X and let the reader decide.

Tonight should be a test of sorts for the greenhouse. It's suppose to be below freezing and the beans and peppers may not make it. Jeff has just about decided to make the greenhouse larger and put in a rocket stove if he does so this won't be a problem anymore. We're getting very serious about this garden.

LIFE GOES ON

Jeff decided today was the perfect day to keep busy so after we picked up my paycheck (and noticed that the DO NOT ENTER--ASBESTOS signs and the plywood and paper barricades had been removed from the library), a quick trip across the river to Aldi's and cheaper gas (even tho it still cost $50.04 to fill it up!), a longer stop at Lowe's to get supplies (the guy who really knows it all in the plumbing department nods at us and asks how's it going), and a late late lunch, he put together the 2nd gutter garden in the greenhouse and put more seedling/transplants in pails in place. A minor mishap...the overflow hole in the water tank worked...too well...and the leg of the base sank in the mud it created causing the tank to topple over and crack... resulting in the tank being replaced while I try to melt a patch over the cracks. (I think it will take several layers of melted plastic to completely mend the crack..at least that's the story I stuck to so I didn't have to stay outside in the garage trying to fix it...it was just too cold and damp for me today.) I found an outside thermometer that we were able to hang-up in the greenhouse that showed it was warmer by a few degrees inside. We now have a 20 gal tub of potatoes on a gutter as well as some pole beans. Jeff ran out of the soil mix he's been using so the tomatoes will have to wait until the weekend to be transplanted. We got the pvc pipes and joints for the blackberry cages today, too, and hopefully they will be done this weekend...the blackberries have started to blossom...in the living room! I've been watering them...and all the seedlings waiting to be put in one form of the garden or another... with a diluted form of the hydroponic solution after Jeff changes the solutions in the system under the grow lights every week. With the price of the nutrients he feels they should be recycled and not just flushed away! And it seems to work! Besides the blackberries blossoming, a 3-yr germanium has already flowered and looks as big/full as it was last fall, and an old mother-in-law's tongue has new growth from the bottom. The only thing I couldn't get to respond to the nutrient solution was an old amaryllis that produces leaves every year but no bloom.

And today I started, worked to the sleeves and ripped out a size 9mo baby sweater in a self-patterning yarn (not a baby jacquard...called mini tulips. I couldn't see a pattern...it just looked like colorful blobs to me and I didn't like it so I ripped it out. I'll try something again tomorrow. Nothing of mine has sold in the shop so I'm not pressed to produce. I've got 2 pairs of baby socks finished and a light lavender size 4 shrug almost done. There's a cute sun hat pattern I'd like to try, too. And I may be forced to take a side-trip to JoAnn's for yarn (baby jacquard or cottontots or both!) when we go to Utica to the hydroponics store for supplies next week. I've been good not buying yarn lately and I think after this week I deserve a treat.