Weekend Wishes...

So, I almost got what I wanted to do this weekend done this weekend. Almost. I did garden, some. I watered everything and weeded in the vegetable area. Which area, so far, doesn't have much in the way of vegetables. I'm pretty sure that I have four asparagus pea seedlings that have come up, so that's good, but no tomatoes have volunteered which I find highly disappointing.

I did not take any pictures of anything. Including the lovely ripple baby blanket that I finally finished weaving in the ends. I did accomplish that, so go me! The coordinating hat is almost done, as well. I had so much trouble trying to figure out how to make a ripple brim, that I gave that up and am just giving it a "single crochet in back loops only" ripple brim. It's super cute, even if I do say so myself. Pictures will be taken and posted this week. Hopefully, before I send it off to its intended recipient.

I also meant to play with my Ravelry account this weekend. That went the way of the pictures of stuff. Nowhere!

I have two excuses (well, three, if you count lazy, which I do when I have enough energy): I had a hair appointment yesterday (which I had forgotten about) and I had rehearsal today. My hair appointment did lead, indirectly, to the purchase of yarn for the wedding afghan that is due by the end of July, so that's a good thing. I like Lion Brand Homespun. Which may make me a yarn philistine, but so be it. I prefer to think of it as being democratic. I like the super high end stuff, but in the right colors and with the right pattern, Homespun is a marvelous product. :-)

Here's an old picture to keep all none of you quiet...


Glory believes in getting her close-up

Not dead yet!

Well, the nursery is closed and the law office is open. People get this glazed look when I tell them that I've gone from working for my parents in the family nursery to working for my parents in the family law firm. It seems to cause a certain amount of brain freeze. I enjoy causing brain freeze. It also amuses me when people don't recognize me when I'm not dressed in a dirty t-shirt and jeans. I seem to be easily amused. :-) And just as easily irritated, so watch out!. :-|

Luckily for San Luis Obispo County (which apparently has the highest per capita number of lawyers in the state), my parents are specializing in estate planning law. This means wills and trusts and advance health care directives and power of attorney for health care. All of which are necessary things for everybody to have, especially if you own a house in California. Well, anywhere, really, but housing prices are so insane in the Golden State that it doesn't bear thinking about most of the time. And, if you have all of those things, you should have them looked over at about every 5 years or so because the laws change, lawmakers being what they are. Especially when it comes to things dealing with money.

My three, no, four favorite things about working in an office:

1. Wearing grown up clothes (including high heels, make-up and jewelry)
2. Preparing papers (for signing, for filing, for mailing, I just like organizing things)
3. The telephone (answering and making calls)
4. My computer (it's a fancy new Mac...shiny and pretty)

So, I'm odd. I've been working in a retail nursery for the past ten years, I like not being on my feet for eight hours and ending the day filthy and exhausted. Also, while people might be anxious and nervous when thinking about death, at least they aren't taking it out on me. Mostly they are glad that we are here to help. Several of our clients are customers from the nursery and they are glad that they can go to someone they already know and trust for such important work.

Moving on to the garden... I accidentally became a dahlia collector as we closed the nursery. We kept finding struggling pots of dahlias hidden among the weeds, and I couldn't bear to throw them out or put them in the free pile, so I took them home. I have at least a dozen pots of dahlias (most of which won't bloom this year, but should be happy and blooming come next summer) in addition to all of the little dahlias that my former housemate planted in the garden around the house. I'm planning to leave the dahlias in pots in the pots because I don't have that much plantable ground and tons of plants that need to be in the ground to survive. The plan is to plant mainly those plants that I will be able to take pieces of with me when I leave (since I don't plan to live in this place for the rest of my life. Actually buying a home may be a dream, but I insist on my dreams). I haven't gotten much more planted recently, but now that I have recovered from the last couple months, I can get back to gardening on the weekends (at least, and sometimes in the evenings).

My vegetable garden is going great guns. My Sweet Million cherry tomato and my Dark Green zucchini are fighing to take over the world, neither one is winning, so the other plants in the garden have a chance. The Ronde de Italia squash are having a little trouble with their timing. The male and female flowers are blooming just enough out of step that most of the squashes aren't setting. It's sad because the few that I have gotten have been delicious. We've actually had a warm enough summer that the peppers are peppering, in fact my Marconi Red has a ripe pepper on it that I plan to pick and eat this evening. Or maybe I'll wait until tomorrow evening when the boy is back in town so I can share it with him. The Black Prince tomato has set a bunch of fruit, now we are just waiting for them to ripen.

Luckily for the deer population, the avocado survived their depredations, and the deer repellant seems to have kept them off. Knock wood.

I haven't been knitting or crocheting much lately, but I'm starting back up. I have another friend who is going to be having a baby soon, so I'll be starting on that project, once I figure out what I want to do. Then I'll have two projects again, which is always good because I lose momentum if I only have one project going at a time. And the projects need to be significantly different for the distraction technique to work. If it's two scarves, I won't work on either, but if it s a scarf and a hat, why, I'm all over both things. Having one project be knitting and the other crochet is good too.

I should work now.

Talk on ya later,

Harley

Some things just aren't meant to be...

I've given up on the Diamond Knit Shawl. It is beyond my knitting skills at the moment and was causing me great frustration. I went wrong somewhere, but couldn't figure out how to fix it or compensate for it. I kept coming up one stitch short or one stitch over in the pattern. It's ripped out now and I'm trying on a couple crocheted afghans (throws rather, the pieces will be too small to be considered afghans) for size. I may have to go buy more yarn (oh! horrors!) if I don't like the way the two colors of Homespun that I have crochet together. I'll figure that one out in the morning light. I may scream if I don't get this figured out in the next several days. The person I'm making the project for won't need it by the time I finish at this rate. Grrr! Argh!

The only reason I'm still up at this hour (aside from having just come home from my parents' house, where I had yummy beef stew for dinner and watched The Daily Show with Jon Stewart [well, sort of watched, I was crocheting part of the time and missed bits] and House. I don't get to watch either show much because I don't have cable. Well, I suppose I could watch House, but then I would have to putz with the antenna cable, and I'm not a good cable putzer with-er [yay! a made up word! or two!]), is (to get back to the original point of this sentence) that I want oatmeal for breakfast, and I won't have the 45 minutes it takes to cook the oats in the morning. So I'm doing it now so I can just reheat it for breakfast. Sometimes I'm clever. Other times it doesn't work out so well.

I'm planting a vegetable garden this year. I'm very excited by the prospect. This is the first year I've had a garden to plant. I love fresh vegetables. I have already planted two tomato plants (not for me, I don't like tomatoes, but for my mother and my boyfriend love them, so they get two kinds), and several zucchini plants (three Rond de Italia which are little round green squashes and a regular green zucchini). I brought home a cucumber plant, a yellow crookneck squash plant and three kinds of peppers (two poblano types and a sweet pepper). I also brought home some thyme, basil, two oreganos and a mint. There's a rhubarb plant waiting for a spot and some potatoes that I'm going to put in fifteen gallon pots. I want to find a place to plant some horseradish too. I'll be swimming in produce if all goes well.

I planted a yellow kniphofia this evening (after work, before feeding horses). It is a variety called Malibu Yellow. It's tucked in under a palm tree next to a bottlebrush with bright red flowers. The clear yellow and bright red should spark off each other really nicely (actually, they do already, but it will be even better as time goes on). Plus, hummingbirds really love both plants. I can only hope that it will not become the hummingbird death trap, since I have two cats that love to hunt, and are very good at it. The cats will look on it as their own personal drive up window in reverse. They just wait there and the hummingbirds come to to them. Having said it, it won't happen. Right? Right.

Things I want to do with my life: write a book, get married, have children, write another book, get in shape, promote world peace, write another book, play Wonder Woman in the movie, take ballroom dance classes, write another book. Not much really.

Off to stick the oatmeal in the fridge and then head for bed before I fall asleep with my face in the keyboard (which wouldn't be comfortable, but might create some interesting letter combinations, although, likely not Hamlet).

Talk on ya later.

Harley

No eggs today...

I was going to bake tonight. I hadn't quite gotten down to the nitty gritty of exactly what (brownies were high on the list, but then again, so were chocolate chip cookies). Then I realized that I don't have any eggs. This makes baking very difficult, most recipes for desserts have egg in them. I could, no doubt, find something that doesn't, but that would take to long and I just wanted something quick and easy. I have to remember to get eggs tomorrow (it's possible that I should put a note on my forehead so that I'll actually remember this need at a convenient time, I probably won't go with the note). I'll have to ask Mom to bring some up to the stables when she comes to feed her horses. Mmm, homegrown eggs. A backyard flock is a good thing to have (actually, what's best is to know someone with a backyard flock). If I didn't have to worry about coyotes and raccoons wreaking havoc with chickens, I would probably have a couple of my own. Goodness knows I have enough snails and earwigs and sowbugs for them to eat that they would be some happy chickens. Until of course the coyotes or raccoons got them. That would be an ugly scene. Oh, and foxes probably too. And if there aren't foxes now they would hear about the chickens and show up just to prove a point.

I've decided that I don't like doing laundry. I don't mind the sorting really (right now I have a red load working). It's the whole having to find something to do that keeps me in the vicinity so I don't forget to move the wash to the dryer and then take the wash out of the dryer and fold it. I resent that part. I think I liked it better when the laundry got done by magic. Especially when I am in rehearsal for a show and spend a total of about 10 hours a day at home, and most of those are spent sleeping. Which is about to be the situation once again.

I had a mystery extra stitch on my last row of my diamond knit shawl. Which is very frustrating because I've been very careful with this one. I think I've fudged it though and it should be fine from now on. If it isn't I might have to commit a grievous act and unravel the whole thing (again!) and do something else entirely. Grrrrrrrrrrrr. I want this pattern to work, it's so pretty and soft and perfect for the intended recipient. Once again, grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.

My man isn't coming home tonight. :'-( He's working late and has to get up early, so he's crashing at a friend's place. I guess it's time to pull out the flannel pajamas and socks. I might not get to cuddle, but at least I'll be warm. And I can sleep in the middle of the bed. Which almost makes up for sleeping alone. Almost.

Time to put the laundry in the dryer! One step closer to clean clothes (well, they are clean now, just wet). Done. Complete with unscented dryer sheet (I like the softness and lack of static, not crazy about perfumes in my clothing care products, my detergent is unscented too).

I made me a good dinner tonight. Yummers. All it needed to achieve perfection was a piece of crusty bread on the side. Oh well, very little in this world achieves perfection. My new secret for delicious poached chicken is to put a piece or two of lemon (half a small lemon, a quarter of a larger lemon) in the poaching water. And salt it well (then, I like salt, if you dont, don't put as much salt, but a little bit helps the flavors combine and perkes them up at the same time). So, I did this, then when the chicken was cooked (in this case a boneless, skinless breast tenderloin), take it out and let it cool so you can shred it then use it however you like. Tonight, I added a little water to the poaching liquid, removed the lemon wedges, brought it up to a boil and dropped some fusili noodles into it. When those were partially cooked, I put the chicken back in, then added mixed vegetables (corn, artichoke hearts, green beans, yellow wax beans and baby carrots, all frozen) and cooked until the noodles were tender and the vegetables heated through. Then I added some spinach and kalamata olives and stirred until the spinach was wilted. I put it all in a bowl topped it with sauteed onions and garlic (from the other night, I made extra when I made it for my salad) and some parmesan cheese. It was delightful, and could easily have been made a vegetarian meal by adding mushrooms and not using the chicken, but I needed the protein, and didn't have any mushrooms on hand (which is a travesty, but I need to go grocery shopping and haven't in the past several days). Then I finished off the Breyers Dulce de Leche ice cream. Which would have been problematic except that there wasn't much ice cream left. And I enjoyed every bite of it. :-D

I think I'm going to go do a row or two of shawl and then call it a night. I should probably just finish my purl row and call it a night because I'm just as likely as not to make another mistake, and I really don't want to do that. I keep telling myself it's good for me to push my knitting boundaries, but another part of me wishes I had stayed safely within my known abilities. Oh well, I am determined to get it done (mostly right) now. I won't let it defeat me. I can be more stubborn than three skeins of yarn. I can. Really.

Talk on ya later,

Harley

Thoughts on deer and other pests...

I got up early this morning to water my garden and was faced with a tragedy of minor proportions. I have this little bitty avocado tree that was finally starting to grow past its difficult past (too long in a pot, not enough water, snails, pretty much anything that could kill an avocado was tried before my former roommate got it into the ground). Anyway, it had a lot of lovely new growth and several sprays of flowers (I wasn't expecting any fruit this year, but it was good to see it flowering), and was just generally looking healthy and vigorous. Until the deer came by and ate all but about two of the new leaves (they left the old leaves, which is good, because it means the baby might be able to create enough energy to grow some new leaves). They also stripped my rose (which had two open flowers and several half open flowers). Luckily for the rose it is wide enough and thorny enough that they only got the front of it, but it will definitely recover. It is big and well established. They tasted one tomato (the Black Prince, not the Sweet Million) and the squash (Ronde de Italia). I'm going to put some deer repellent around and hope that it works. If I rotate the two liquid types that I have and put the pellets under the rose, things should work out.

I wouldn't mind the deer so much, except that they don't nibble, they chomp. It's like with gophers, if they wouldn't kill everything they encounter, I would willingly share. Especially if they ate the weeds and not my roses and vegetables. :-)

Really, that's about all I can think of to say. It might have something to do with the fact that I've been working non-stop for the past three weeks. At least I got this afternoon off, and some of tomorrow. I have some bookkeeping to do (people are constantly wanting to be paid, it's a crazy world), but I have an early chiropractor's appointment and then a hair appointment in the early afternoon. I love getting my hair done. I love everything about it. I may have to tighten my budget, but I that is one indulgence that is almost a necessity (only almost, but it's close, since sometimes I need an excuse to sit and do nothing for a couple hours, of course, other times, I don't, I just sit and do nothing even shen there are things I should be doing).

Yarn projects in progress: Homespun Shawl (finally, after starting it about 15 times); 1 Incredible scarf (that's the yarn, not a comment on its quality); 1 Lion Suede scarf; Drunkard's Path afghan
Yarn projects in the planning stage: 1 Lion Suede scarf; 1 multi yarn scarf (there is one more texture I want to find, but haven't so far); 3 Lion Suede hats; 1 afghan

Right. Time to go release the dogs from durance vile and feed some horses so I can eat a salad and go off to game night.

Harley