keep on keeping on

 Rats!!

Well, not in the literal sense.  This time, it's deer.  They jumped our fences and decapitated close to 130 sunflowers.  One hundred and thirty!  A pretty devastating morning with more than a few tears.

Then...a flash flood.  "Tornadic clouds" passed over and dumped over 5" of rain in just a few hours.  Thankfully, no real damage, but my poor garden went from this:

...to this.

Gardening is not for the faint at heart!  Thankfully, I was able to harvest from the wreckage.

Beautiful, mysterious poppies.

Sprawling nicotiana, with its angular, architectural structure:

Sweet peas...

...and so...many...snapdragons.

The color range is just amazing.

I am only missing blue and purple to make a full rainbow.  Thankfully, forget-me-nots and canterbury bells round it out for me.

Between the deer, the moles, the beetles, and the crazy weather - cool to blistering hot, drought to torrential downpours - the garden is in pretty poor shape.  But, it's not all bad.  After a week, many of my shorn sunflowers are showing new growth.  They'll be bushy and short, bit I think I will have flowers.

Tadpoles were discovered in a large outdoor bucket!

And many of my perennials are still standing tall.

No matter what condition the garden is in, we always have butterflies.

Our bee balm in particular is covered in these Great Spangled Frittilary butterflies.

So I'm going to ignore the weeds, try to shore up my flattened plants, and just keep picking.

Have a great week!

the humble crumble

It's been a whirl of weather weirdness here over the past week.  We've gone from warmer temps and heavy morning fog...

...to torrential rain and flooding.

These photos were taken by residents all around town earlier this week.  The water level came up, the water level went down, and then...snow.

It's pretty typical for a late Indiana weather, but it's kept us inside for the past week or so.  When 'regular' work is done, I've been working on puzzles...aided by the cats.

They are wonderful 'helpers,' at least in their own minds!  When not trampling on puzzles and dragging pieces all over the living room, they've been fighting to get into my lap.  Having clingy cats is pretty amazing. 

They're pretty spoiled, but I wouldn't have it any other way!

Another indoor activity I've been getting into a little bit more lately is knitting.  I'm working on replicating a sweater I knitted for my sister-in-law a few years ago.  Here is hers...

I'm making mine a little differently, mainly by shortening the cardigan a little bit (I prefer a 22" length) and leaving out the pockets.  Knitted fabric is already so stretchy, and it seems like thrusting hands in knitted pockets, in a knitted garment, is just asking for the garment to be stretched out of shape.  I've also moved the arm cables.  In the original, they are off-center, more on the back of the arm.  I've relocated them to come over the top of the shoulder.

I only knit for a few minutes a day, but I'm trying to be more disciplined about it.

I've also started an (online) watercolor class!  I fell in love with watercolor-illustrated nature journals years ago and always wanted to make my own, but I have a complete and total lack of natural talent.  Turns out that watercolor is incredibly forgiving and that using a light board allows you to trace a photograph, relieving the awkward sketcher of the need to do a reasonable replication. 

My light board is in storage, but I'm going to work on the basics when I have a few free minutes.  I'm really enjoying it.

I've also been doing a little bit of baking, a rarity for me in this really cramped space.  Todd brought home a massive bag of frozen blueberries from Costco and I wasn't quite sure what to do with them.  Then I thought:  blueberry crumble!  I found an amazing "crumble for two" recipe and I've made it several times.  Any small dish will do.  I just used the 6" x 4" dish that I've been using for a spoon rest on the stove.  It's not too sweet, and I've substituted whole wheat flour for all-purpose and raw honey for part of the sugar without sacrificing taste.

Hopefully the weather will moderate soon and we can get back on the trails again, but these indoor activities are a pretty pleasant way to fill a little free time.

Have a great week!