setting the stage for average

I have a confession to make:  I'm a quitter.  My past is littered with ambitious projects that ultimately never got off the ground.  Mutilated first chapters of short stories, edited relentlessly and then shoved away in disgust.  Huge piles of rubber stamps, which somehow never assembled themselves into Hallmark-quality greeting cards.  Nature journals, ripped to shreds after my first feeble attempts to sketch a cardinal. I approach ideas with great zeal:  I make lists, spend days or weeks assembling information, and then organizing it in a pleasing way.  I clear a spot in my day and in my office to work, pick up a tool, and then freeze.  You see, I'm a perfectionist, and it's really, really difficult for a perfectionist to see a flawed output. I feel overwhelmed, or disgusted with my initial scribblings.  In my mind, I know that it's rare to try something new and be instantly great at it.  I know that "practice makes perfect."  But it's hard to break old habits, even though that my photography, my quilting, my sewing, my writing, and all other hobbies are seriously affected by my inability to get better through real practice and learning.

Enter watercolors.  I've always loved their look, but my little efforts have looked like something created in an elementary school art class.  However, the desire to learn and practice perseverance has been growing for several years, and I decided to put it into practice by taking an online watercolor class.

I hated it.

I was terrible at mixing colors.  I added too much, or not enough water.  My teardrops looked like circles, and my straight lines were fat and uneven.  "You should just donate these supplies," I told myself, but every few days, I picked up my brushes with resignation and submitted to another class.  After a couple of weeks, I was shocked to see that my leaf shapes were starting to look like leaves!

before and after

"Let's make a peony, step by step," the instructor said, and suddenly my feeble splotches started to assemble themselves into something recognizable.

It wasn't perfect, or even close.  But it's something that I COULD NOT DO three weeks ago.

I still dread watercolor lessons, because it's a constant struggle against my discouraged - and discouraging - inner voice.  But I'm doing it anyway.  My goal this year is to EMBRACE BEING AVERAGE.

(The classes are free on youtube:  Jenna Rainey)

Even my knitting has been affected by perfectionism.  I'd start a project and work for a while, get hung up on a technique or a less-than-desired output, and ball it up.  I frogged so many old projects last year, but this year, I really wanted to keep it going.  Kate Davies' Funchal Moebius was a great project for this.  FIFTY-FIVE INCHES of tube-shaped stranded knitting.  "Your tension is off!  It's going to be puckered!!" my inner voice shouted, but I doggedly kept knitting round after round.  When the monotony got to me,  I picked up another - very quick - project: a bulky-weight hat for a friend.

It was really nice to go from two skeins of skinny, fiddly yarn to one big, thick strand.  I finished it in two days...

...and went right back to Funchal Moebius.  Perseverance!!

And...it's finished.

All fifty-five inches!  All I need to do is join the two open ends together.  I shrank back yesterday from such a complicated graft, but I knew it was my old perfectionist demon poking:  "That is never going to be a tidy, even join.  It's going to be bulky and obvious."  I set daily mini-goals for this:  today, I will prep it for joining and do a few stitches.  Tomorrow, I'll do another few inches of join.  Repeat, repeat.  No hurry and no bother if it's clunky.  Baby steps!  Every time I complete something, regardless of the quality, it's a huge victory for me.  I've already started another project:

It's a warm worsted-weight shawl (Almina on Ravelry).  The pattern is challenging, but not too challenging.  I splurged on some delicious, pillowy-soft Malabrigo Rios yarn in a silvery colorway that has subtle lavender highlights.  It's such a joy to work with!  Note to self:  when I decide to go grey, subtle lavender highlights are a must.

It's cold here, but no real snow yet.  We'll get an occasional dusting...

...but it will be gone in a few hours.  The pumpkins have started to crack in the constant freeze-thaw cycle, but it looks beautiful.

Claudia is as fat and wriggling as a grub worm from her extra winter feedings.  Sometimes she slips into the barn with us while I pack orders, usually settling into an inconvenient place.  She's so sweet, though, that I can't be too irritated!

She's got a cushy set-up in our garage for nighttime, too.

It's been so quiet outside.  The front pond is frozen and I haven't seen any minks or muskrats.  I spotted a rabbit feeding last week in the very early hours...

...but our outdoor activity right now is pretty much birds and only birds! 

We're hunkering down, working on the business, keeping our two indoor cats separated with an unwieldy system of baby gates, and enjoying cozy nights by the fire.  It's been a pretty nice year so far. It turns out that low expectations + embracing your average-ness = a less stressful life!  

Have a great week!  

...and bad mistakes, I've made a few...

Sweltering, humid, and no rain...hello, August!  At least the daily dew is really heavy.  

It's a good thing, because unless we actually get rain, this is the only moisture that my garden will be getting. My fatal mistake of expecting pathway weeds to die has pretty much sunk the garden this year.  The weeds thrived and spread into the beds.  It was hot and dry, and belatedly trying to pull them proved impossible.  Then, while we were on our trip, everything sprouted.  Now the flowers are like a museum exhibit - see, but don't touch.

Ticks, spiders, snakes...the paths are gone, and it's a jungle out there.  As much as I'd like to just mow it down, we still enjoy looking at the flowers (from a distance).  Of course, the pollinators and the birds are loving the smorgasbord.  When it finally cools down, I can take a weed whacker to the worst sections.

The newer garden isn't nearly as overgrown, at least!

I'm collecting a few seed types this year, but not many.  Multi-variety flowers like zinnias, cosmos, celosia, sunflowers, etc. will not grow true from saved seed in an open-pollinated garden, so I'll just order the varieties that I'm interested in.  The birds can have these!

I am saving a few types of flowers for drying.  Celosia, gomphrena, yarrow, and strawflowers are supposed to be great for this.

I've got a nice variety of celosia this year! Pink, yellow, cream, sherbet, orange, red...plume, wavy, and wrinkled...I hope they'll dry well.

Strawflower petals are already dry, so they retain their appearance well after hanging.

There are still beautiful things to be discovered in that tangled jungle, like an edge patch of zinnia with beautifully saturated petals.

I planted red, yellow, and white milkweed...none of which grew.  However, a stray wild milkweed is looking gorgeous and ready to provide for the monarch butterflies!

A painted turtle peeked out of the grass at the edge of the garden.

Just beyond the back garden, a fawn was surprised by the dawn.  In the fog, she'd gotten turned around...and Mom was on the other side of the fence.

She didn't appreciate my attempt to open the back gates for her.

I had to leave the front gate open for an escape route!

August is tough, absolutely my least-favorite month.  That's one of the reasons why I wanted to get married in August...so at least there was one good thing in it! I'm just focusing on getting through the next couple of sticky, hot weeks...working on winter projects...

...and dreaming of the day when I can finally open a window to let in fresh air.  September is coming!

Have a great week!

no seedling left behind

 What a contrast!  A week ago, everything was blanketed with thick snow and ice.  This week...sprouts.

Daffodils are coming up!  And more great surprises...a local lady had posted on Facebook last year, asking if anyone could come and thin out her bulbs.  I came away with hundreds of daffodil and naked lady lilies.  I planted them in clumps around the yard, but the greens were prematurely mowed down, and then we had a horrible drought.  I didn't bother to water, thinking that they were most certainly dead by now.  But yesterday...

I can't wait until they bloom!  These are wonderful harbingers of spring, along with the raucous red-wing blackbirds and the gentle rhythmic chirping of spring peepers that I've been hearing for the past few days.  Hooray!  

I've been very busy with my plants.  First, my ranuculus and anemone corms - they were soaked and pre-sprouted, and developed very nice roots.

I planted them in temporary pots until I can get them out in the ground, not expecting much growth, but they are really taking off!

I set up a caterpillar tunnel in the garden and they should be fine to grow within it, just with a frost cover (like a thick sheet) at night for protection.

I'm extremely pleased with my sweet peas!  They've grown steadily and now are in our cold, unheated potting barn addition with bright grow lights but no heat protection.  They love the cold and can survive freezes.

Other things are slowly and steadily germinating in the house.  I have multiple different plant varieties on the same tray and just scoop them up with a brownie spatula and move them upstairs under grow lights once they germinate.  I love seeing them sprout!

Sometimes a seed has fallen between soil blocks and germinates in the soil debris at the bottom of the tray.  No problem.  I mound up some soil and pop the seedling in.  Do I know what it is?  Nope, and don't care.  I'll give it a chance to grow.

I planted 12 - 15 varieties of snapdragons, and all the tags have gotten displaced from sliding trays in and out from under grow lights to water.  Does it matter?  Not really.  For a Type A person, I am remarkably unfussy about this.  As long as they grow and prosper, I'll pop them in the garden and see what comes up!

Even though March is a fairly grey month, I love being outside in the spring.  There's a lot of work to do in the garden, and I like listening to the horses...

...and keeping a certain nosy cat from impeding my work.

Sunrises have been GORGEOUS.

When it's too cold and rainy to work outside, and when I need a break from plant care, I try to focus on other hobbies.  I finished my Ley Lines wrap, and I quite like it.  It sometimes gets chilly upstairs and just draping it around my shoulders takes care of that.

I also knitted a hat.

AHEM.

I'm not really happy with the color choices, though.  I'm trying to use up scrap yarn, since I have so much of it, but skeins that look appealing next to each other don't necessarily carry over into the finished project.  I'm moving right on to a cardigan, and this time, I decided to test my theory before starting.  I picked yarn and colored in my choices (pencil colors not quite the same, of course)...

...then knitted up a swatch (wonky because I cut the yarn strands at the end of each row...just wanted to get a general idea).  I'm glad that I did, because together, the colors all seemed too washed out and pale, especially with a pale main color.

I chose new colors - brighter, with more contrast, and I think it's going to look a lot better.

Between my regular work and my plant propagation, this is plenty to keep me busy for a while.  The soil blocks need to be watered multiple times per day, especially ungerminated seedlings that are under grow lights because they need that light in order to germinate.  They dry out quickly and have to be closely monitoring.  I also am keeping a close eye on my winter sown containers.  If there's early germination, I have to remember to throw a blanket on top of the containers when we have heavy frosts.  Signs of life!  There's condensation on top, but peek in the sides and you can see a bit of green:

So far, out of the thousands of seeds planted, I've got very sturdy Bachelor Buttons and Corn Cockle coming up.  It's a great pleasure to daily check these containers to see what will be showing up in this year's garden.

Enjoy your greens and have a great week!