be-twix-t a winter and a spring place

 Moderate weather means more outside time!  At first glance, there's not a lot of life out there yet...

...but I'm seeing more signs.

Bean Blossom Bottoms, a 700 acre nature preserve with nearly 3 miles of suspended trails, is only 15 minutes from our house.

Because it's bottom land, and naturally boggy, it's unbearable in the summer:  heat, humidity, and mosquitoes.  Spring, though, is another story.  It's alive with so many frogs, birds, and animals.  The Sycamore Trust, which protects and maintains this and many other properties, set up trail cams and has caught some remarkable things.  I love this short video of a bobcat family!

On our other walks, we're seeing a bit of color...the beautiful purple of bare blackberry bushes...

...and even the greening of moss is a nice harbinger of spring!

A bit of red, too, in the infrequent berries spotted on bare branches of various bushes.

Speaking of red, we recently celebrated Valentine's Day.  I was still feeling unwell, so we had a low-key day at home.  A red velvet recipe that made just four cupcakes was the perfect amount...

...and, for my "gift," I made a punchboard out of plastic cups.  Insert a treat and a terrible pun, cover the opening with crepe paper, and you're magically transported back to your second-grade classroom.

Feeling better means that, besides finally able to get back to work in a meaningful way, I've also been able to work on hobbies.  I hadn't worked on a puzzle in many weeks, but as I slowly improved at the end of January and beginning of February, I got to work on a 2,000 piece puzzle that I absolutely loved.

I also got back into knitting.  I've been working on my Deco cardigan off and on for the past few months, and had nearly finished the body and both sleeves.  I've been woefully unobservant this year, and realized belatedly that I had stitched a child-size sleeve on to the adult-size body...sigh.

Grimly, I ripped the arm back to the shoulder and began again.  I'm nearly halfway through - relief!  I've already picked out my next sweater, and it's one that I've knitted before.  

Shadow sweater, photo courtesy of Brooklyn Tweed:  Wool People

Here it is as a nearly-completed project in 2015:

The problem?  First, I used a silk-blend yarn, and silk has absolutely no stretch.  Neither do cables.  And because I'm a fairly impatient knitter, I didn't bother to knit a gauge swatch.  Most of the time, these swatches are knit in stockinette, or "plain" knitting.  This pattern, however, wanted me to knit a swatch in the cable pattern and then measure it.  I didn't do it and just guessed, and this sweater was WAY too small.  I frogged it last year.

Last week, I broke down and knitted the swatch:

Bingo!  Perfect gauge on size 7 needles, and I also found the perfect yarn.  This is Brooklyn Tweed's Shelter in the Fossil colorway.  Normally it retails for $16/skein, making this a fairly pricey sweater at $128!  I found someone selling it for much cheaper on Ravelry, although it will still be (gulp) $80.  A bitter pill to swallow for someone who still prefers to get clothing from thrift stores...but it's good-quality yarn and I know I'll love wearing this sweater when it's finished.

Skies are increasingly blue here...

...and temperatures are slowly warming.  I'm still feeling well and am cautiously optimistic about continuing this trend.  Looking forward to many adventures as the season progresses!  Even in the garden, which I'm determined to control this year.  I'm talking to YOU, weeds, ticks, and chiggers!

side garden in spring from a year or so ago, pre-weed invasion

Have a great week!

My Newer Manure Set Up

 The big melt is coming!  Temperatures up to **55 degrees** by Friday, so...

The snow has been amazing, though.   We got 11 - 12 inches, and then got another powdery inch after a few days.  Borga was not too keen on a snow walk...

...but did her best to keep up!

It wasn't long before she was worn out...

...and ready to head in.

Claudia, comfortably ensconced in her heated garage bed, had absolutely no interest in going outside.

The wind smoothed out the snow and made gorgeous drifts, and the sun made perfect diamond sparkles across the expanse.  It was so lovely!

It was almost a shame to break a path through it, but it had to be done so that we could easily get to the barn.

The birds have been steady visitors at the feeder and have pecked their way through all twelve inches to the bare ground below the feeder.  I love watching them through the living room window!

Valentine's Day has come and gone.  I didn't feel very festive because of poor Bosewichte, but I did make a "heart inside" loaf cake...

...topped with my favorite new toy, a handmade paper chain.  I used 1" x 1/4" strips of colored paper and constructed in the same way you'd make a full-size one.  It was somehow soothing and therapeutic, and I have claimed said chain to drape on my computer!

Now that the season is getting on, I've turned my thoughts toward indoor planting.  Ranuculus and anemones have to be "pre-sprouted" by soaking in warm water for a day, planted in soil for 2 weeks to stimulate root growth, and then planted in the ground.  

They don't look like much now...

...but I'm hoping to see THIS within a couple of months!

(photo courtesy of Floret Farms)

(photo courtesy of Eden Brothers)

I also started 17 varieties of sweet peas nearly 2 weeks ago.  I read so much conflicting data about sweet peas...scratch the seed!  Heat mat!  No heat mat!  Surface sow!  Plant 1" deep!...but I decided to go with the one that made the most sense.  The seeds don't get scratched in nature, and they're a cool-weather plant.  The seeds are larger, so I planted them about 3/4" deep.  All in tall yogurt containers...

...well-watered and placed in our dark, chilly attic.  Germination is supposed to take about 10 days, and I really sweated that time, checking the containers daily for signs of life.  Should I have nicked the seeds?  Don't they need temperatures warmer than 50 degrees to germinate?  But sure enough, after 10 days, I started seeing little nubs...PHEW!  

I hope they'll be beautiful in about 5 weeks!

(photo courtesy of Floret Farms)

I'm continuing to winter sow as our weekly plastic containers are freed up.  I also started soil blocking this week.  Soil blocking is an alternative to using the black plastic containers that you normally use for seed starting.  It's supposed to cause stronger growth and allow you to start many more seeds in less space than with the plastic.  

First, you have to sift all of the big chunks out of your peat moss.

Sixteen cups of this sifted peat moss is mixed with 4 cups of composted manure, 1/4 cup of rock phosphate, and 1/4 cup of green sand (those last two are...fertilizers?).  You add water until you get a mud pie-like slurry and then pack it into your handy soil blocker, which compresses the mixture and pops out 2" blocks, ready for seeding.

Blocks are seeded and placed on cafeteria trays, which are then placed on heat mats until the seeds germinate.  You bottom-water by adding the water to the cafeteria tray, and the blocks wick it up.  A sprinkle of vermiculite on top helps retain moisture and stop algae growth.  These little blocks can hold a seedling for 4 - 6 weeks and then be popped directly into the ground, so no transplant shock.

They are VORACIOUS drinkers and I'm watering these twice per day.  Plus some other seeds that I started upstairs on heat mats. Plus keeping the sweet peas, anemones, and ranuculus watered.  Oh, and the Aerogarden.  It's taking a lot of time and energy!  I just hope that it works!  It's all new to me this year.

It's just too cold to work in my potting station, so I've dragged everything into the house, which has been completely overtaken by debris.  We're crunching over big grains of salt from our walkway that we've just been too busy to sweep up.  A big bag of composted manure...manure!...is spilling over on our dining room floor.  Big bags of other ingredients are spread around, plus two big mixing tubs, cafeteria trays, grow lights, heat mats.  Oh, and the house smells like old, wet dirt from the soil blocks.  It's making me crazy, but hopefully, within a week, it will be warm enough to move out to the potting addition.  Todd has worked hard to set up a "grow tent" in that cold space, and once the indoor temperature hits at least 45 degrees, I should be able to move around comfortably.  

One...more...week...and no more manure in the house!  One of my current top life goals right now.

Have a great week!  

a trifling matter

It's been a little colder here this week, and I love how the little birds puff up to stay warm, like this titmouse...

...and this carolina wren...

...and these mourning doves.

Despite an infrequent drizzle, Todd and I cleared out the side garden.  Without the somewhat picturesque covering of leaves, it looks awfully...bare.

I'm waiting to see what will grow, but I envision filling this space with my cottage garden plants.  I can't wait to see what it will look like next year!

Inside the house, we're still pulling things into shape.  Todd had me lay out my rubber stamps to get an idea of how many I had.  Uh oh...it's a lot.

Two years ago he built me a wooden stand for my stamps...

 

...but now I've got double what I had then, so we'll have to figure something else out.  Once we get that set up, and the curtains up, and the slipcover on the chair, the craft room will be done.  It looks a little better than this:

...but there's a ways to go!

I've been trying to do something with all of these bare walls.  I'm not a huge fan of pictures, but I got a great deal at Goodwill recently.  I found this picture...

...for $10.  Normally I don't like gold frames, but it's very subtle.  I found the same picture + frame online for over $500, so I'm pretty excited about my score!

Here's another bare wall.

I was inspired by this magazine picture:

...and decided to try the same thing.  I already had some hats, so it only cost me $9 to flesh out the rest of it.  

Of course, you can't see it too well in this photo...and since then, we've added a rug and changed the fireplace mantle...but you get the idea.

I've also been feverishly knitting.  I wanted to knit a certain something for a friend, and I wanted to knit it in blue yarn.  For me, it's hard to tell by looking at the ball, if it's not a solid color, and see what it might look like.  Here's a ball from Knitpicks:

I was worried that, knitted up, I'd see too many pastels.  I made a little swatch:

...and liked it very much.  I also had a Cherry Tree Hill ball...

Would it be too much like denim?

No...I ended up liking it a lot more than I thought I would.  Anyway, all that knitting, and I ended up going with a solid green.  Here's a peek of the finished project!

Valentine's Day is coming up, and I'm a sucker for holidays.  I made valentines for friends and family...

...complete with valentine's themed envelopes.

Last year I made cookies and took them around, but this year I had to settle for making something for Todd's office.  My original plan was coconut cream-stuffed chocolate cupcakes covered in coconut buttercream and dusted with pink-tinted coconut, but I disregarded the recipe line, "Bake these in cupcake liners, to be removed later."  The cupcakes were VERY 'sticky' and didn't easily come free from the tins.  I had to settle for - you guessed it - trifle.  ARGH!

Later this week, I'm making a three layer chocolate cake with raspberry marshmallow cream filling for Todd and hopefully, if it's not botched, I will post it next week!

To cheer myself up after the trifle fiasco (and the kitchen scrub-down that took almost an hour), I picked more camillas and made bouquets for the entire house.  Yay!  It's the little things.

Have a great week!