Wool and Spice

Just barely still June, but it counts. Holy moley the year is half gone.

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Now that the veggie garden is planted and it’s mostly maintenance chores, I’ve spent the last week pulling weeds and spreading mulch in the flower garden around the house. I ran out of mulch before I ran out of garden. When I went to buy more I stumbled and a bunch more flowers came home along with the mulch. I added phlox, black-eyed Susans, angelonias, lisianthus and zinnias and another fern to the garden. The zinnias have expired on me which makes me angry, but I still have color to spare this year.

Late this spring, just before my Knockout rose was getting ready to bloom, I pruned it back to within an inch of its life. It was overpowering the garden and I was mentally giving it one last chance to shape up or face the compost bin. If it died that would make my decision easier. And of course it didn’t die. It shook off the scalping and went about its business. It’s about half the size it was last year, so it’s more manageable and the blooms don’t seem to have suffered any. The governor has given it a reprieve for now. 

Sometimes it pays to be fearless. Or stupid.

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Amazingly I missed the local strawberry season this year. I kept waiting and waiting for an e-mail from the pick-your-own place and finally sent one of my own the first of the month. “Too late” they said and “we don’t send out notices because the season’s so short” they said. “What?” I said. I feel gyped. Grump.

But somehow we’ve gotten decent strawberries at the grocery store this year. Not stupendous, but they do actually taste like strawberries. I don’t know what the California growers did differently, but I hope they do it more often.

And then I had to see this: Environmental Working Group’s list of the 15 most highly contaminated fruits and vegetables. Strawberries are #3. sigh

And look what’s at #5: Blueberries, which are ready for picking right now. double sigh

Another reason to grow my own.

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I was rereading yesterday’s blog post and saw that I wrote

“And I’m looking forward to recommendations from the lists of other bloggers more organized than me“ and did a double-take. Should it be “than me” or “than I”? I went to Grammar Girl and checked a couple other sites and decided “than me” is OK since this blog is definitely informal in speech and tone. I could have said “than I am” but that’s a little fussy.  Just as long as I didn’t say “than me am”.

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Carpet cleaning today and I lucked out. The humidity and temperatures moderated this week so the air conditioning was off and the house was wide open. Once the cleaner left, we closed up the house and turned on the a/c to lower the humidity. Right now I’m sitting on an exercise ball to type because the carpet’s still wet around my desk, so no office chair and I had the couch cleaned too so no knitting corner to slouch in.

I’m loving the look of a spot-free carpet again. Taking bets on which cat throws up on it first.

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Woot! I pick up a spinning wheel from the local guild tomorrow to use during Tour de Fleece. Since my spinning addiction isn’t nearly as strong as my knitting, I don’t feel a yearning to own a wheel most of the time but it’s nice to have one for TdF. I expect I’ll buy one later this year because I do wonder if I had the proper equipment if I would spend more time spinning.  For now, I’m happy to make do and looking forward to TdF shenanigans.

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I have a book to add to yesterday’s reading list: Sue Hubbell’s A Book of Bees. I’ve written about her before (see “obscure literary reference”) and happened across her book as I was looking for something else in the bookcase yesterday.  It’s as enjoyable as the first two times I read it.

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I think it’s time to call it a day, a month, a quarter and a half-year. See you on the morrow!

Tags: brain chatter, garden, Spinning