So Very Soon!

Lol, is it wrong to be so excited about my tomatoes finally starting to ripen?  Cause that's what's happening!  I snuck out and took a peek to see how the big guys were faring and I saw a hint of red!  YIPPEE!!

Ok, I know it's silly, but really, stuff like this just puts a smile on my face.  Since I've mostly focused on growing herbs for the past 5+ years, the concept of growing produce is just cool.  Since I seem to be able to grow tomatoes AND finally managed not to kill my basil this year, I think I'm going to try cucumbers next summer.  That is if I can find baby cucumber plants... I don't start from seed because it takes too long and I don't have the space to let them grow inside before the frost stops.  Maybe I'll try growing from seed once I have a house, but I make no promises!

How Does My Garden Grow?

Well, I would have to say, pretty darn well! :D

All of my herbs are flourishing (even the BASIL!!!!) in all this sunshine and heat, although I do have to be careful about watering them every day so they don't get droopy and sad looking.  The only one I barely pay attention to is the basil.  It almost never needs to be watered and likes it that way thank you very much!  So, after 4 years of horrible basil death, I have finally been able to get 1, just one, measly plant to survive and do well.  But, I'll take it!  We used our first harvest of the herbs in some burgers and meatloaf this wek, so I think it's safe to say that my victory is complete...

Come to think of it, I've been able to harvest quite a lot from all of my lovely plants so far, with the exception of my tomatoes.  Don't get me wrong, they are doing just fine.  It's just that the cherries haven't quite ripened yet and the larger ones (I have no idea what they are called) are still in the growing stages and haven't even started turning anything resembling reddish in color.  

 

My cute cherry tomatoes just after a watering.  This plant has been producing so many flowers and then fruit, it's just amazing!  I think there are over 20 little guys developing right now and it just keeps growing!

These are my big fellas.  I have two plants of these and while there aren't as many of them in process, they look very healthy and started producing fruit much later than the cherry plant.  I have 3-4 clusters of 2-3 tomatoes each on these plants.

While it is getting late in the season for my lilies, I have been able to take some nice pictures of the two varieties I have.  I love this ivory one especially.  The other one, picture below, oddly enough matches a yarn I made for Tour de Fleece almost exactly.  Strange huh?

Speaking of Tour de Fleece, I was actually not so good about it this year.  I did make some nice yarns, but I kind of got bored and moved on to other things for the last two weeks of the tour.  I'm ok with that and I did get some nice yarn spun up in the first couple weeks, so while I wasn't a real competitor, I did participate and I think the two weeks has really helped my spinning skills.  I even learned to long draw during the tour, which is one of the methods of drafting fiber that I had never done before.  

Long draw basically means allowing the wheel and the twist you are putting into the yarn to draft out the fibers for you rather than strictly controlling the supply of fiber by using both hands and pinching the fiber at the point where the twist comes into it.  Long draw generally makes less dense yarns because there is more air trapped in between then fibers.  It's still not easy for me, but I CAN do it with some concentration now, so I've very happy about that.  The video below is a good demo of what long draw or woolen spinning looks like.  As an added bonus, the music is pretty good too :)

And finally, the hyper rose has slowed down pushing out its usual riot of pink flowers.  So, the whole plant looks pretty boring right now.  But, I did see a few new flowers and buds poking out, so maybe we're in store for yet another set of blooms.

POL-IN-ATE... POL-IN-AAAAATE!

The hyper rose has begun its invasion.  This lone flower is just the beginning.  Soon, so very soon, their takeover shall be complete!  

Ok, I need to stop watching so much Dr. Who; I'm getting all melodramatic and assuming things will take over the world...  like the Daleks or Cybermen.  On that note, I highly recommend checking out all the great episodes of Dr. Who available on Netflix streaming.  They certainly have entertained this household lately :)  

In other news, yes, our insane rose bush is back and its first blooms of the season are stronger than ever. More pics to come when they are in full force and once again threatening to take over the world...  and somehow I have managed to combine gardening and sci-fi into one bizarre blog post.  Go me!

Getting Ready to Play in the Dirt

It is officially the time of year that I need to start thinking about what I want to plant in our little garden.  We can't do too much because we don't have a whole heck of a lot of real estate since we currently reside in a first floor apartment however, we are fortunate enough to have two reasonably large planting areas at our disposal.  We don't get a lot of sun, so most of our garden is filled with very forgiving hosta and a rather large, mutant rose bush that will most likely end up taking over the world.  For the past few years, in between the mutant rose and all our other easy going perennials, I have been planting herbs in pots to spruce up our summer culinary options. 

This year I was happy to discover that our oregano, sage, strawberries and chives have all come back.  To supplement this merry band of survivors, I went to Ferjulian's, our local greenhouse, and picked up some dill, rosemary, thyme, another type of oregano, three tomatoes from my mom and two basil plants.  

Sigh.... basil and I do not seem to get along.  I have killed it every year for at least three summers and it's starting to affect my conscience.  So, I'm going to give it another go this year... I think I know what I've been doing wrong.  I think.  Keep your fingers crossed and we'll see how this turns out.  Sadly, I believe my past failure with this herb stems from the fact that the signs of over watering and under watering are the same: things turn yellow.  My basil has always turned yellow.  Then I would panic and water it... so I'm thinking I just drowned the poor things every year :(  My suspicions have be confirmed at least partially by the stake in the pots saying "Loves sun and heat" and "Don't overwater."  We'll see how this goes.  I am diligently water everything except the basil and so far so good.  Hopefully I will get these babies in this ground this week, and won't have to worry about them relying on me quite so much.

Tour de Fleece Update - Day 15 - Drooling Over Merino

Not too much to report here.  I haven't had much time to spin for the last few days, but I did manage to mostly finish the second bobbin of my beautiful red merino today.  Hopefully I will be able to get the last bobbin done tomorrow and then will be able to ply up my first non-Navajo plied three ply yarn as well.  Very excited.

I also managed to get another repeat done on my Mystery Summer Wrap today, but that is about it since I had a really big to do list for the day.  Oh well, there's always tomorrow!

In other news, my cherry tomato crop is officially insane!  In the past few days, I've harvested 20+ little tomato-lings.  So, in an effort to use up said produce, I actually cooked today (Brian, try not to keel over when you read that).  I just have so many of the little fruits and I felt like pasta, so I made myself a small amount of tomato sauce.  Well, it was actually more like a tomato compote because it was so think in the end, but it was extremely yummy.

I will make sure to share my basic recipe in the next few days.  I don't really do the measuring thing, so everything will be a guestimate.  Well, I'm off to retrieve laundry and attempt to find my bed under all the stuff that needs folding.  Ta!

I've been a very bad blogger

Yes, real life has gotten in the way of blogging again, sigh....  That's alright, a bit of down time usually re-energizes me a bit.  And now I have some cool stuff to share and I should have more on the way shortly.

I haven't had much to show for my knitting lately as much of it is for gifts and I'm also toning the projects down a bit after trying to do way too much in May.  My spinning has been going well though.  I finished up my first ever plied yarn and I adore it.  I even have started making a couple projects with it, so once I finish those up, I'll share those as well.  The roving I used was Louet Northern Lights wool in the Cactus Flower colorway.  You can see some photos of the spindle, singles and plying process by checking out my blog posts here and here. 

This past weekend I tried my hand at spinning soy silk mixed with wool.  That's didn't go quite as well.  The length of the fibers is just so long I couldn't figure out how to pull them apart to spin without cutting the roving.  Once I did that, I did pretty well drafting from the fold and got some thinner singles than ever before.   Unfortunately, the fun ended there.  Once I got to the end of some of the strands they didn't just twist themselves neatly into the single, instead they stuck out in all sorts of weird directions.  I'll try to take a picture of this later.  Needless to say I put that down for a few days and have yet to pick it up again. 

Some other good news I can share is that in a little over a week I will be the proud owner of a my very own spinning wheel!  I am totally excited and can't wait to share pictures of her and name her.  Yes... she needs a name and yes... she's a girl.  Those two things I know. Her name I won't figure out until I start spinning.  My goal is to practice spinning on her and be good enough in a couple weeks to start making yarn for a hooded sweater I want to wear this fall.  It only calls for 3200 yard of yarn.  That'll be done in no time right?  **cough cough**  You can see a picture of the sweater here.  I want to make mine out of a dark natural colored wool, so I ordered a small amount of Jacob and Coopworth to try out before committing to probably 4 lbs of any one fiber.

Other than all of that, since the last time I posted we had a cookout, helped put in the sailboat in for the summer, and harvested our first strawberry from our garden.  Not too shabby for one week.  We got some nice pictures and video of putting the boat in and sailing around the harbor that I'll share later on in the week. For now I'll leave you with a shot of Brian playing cameraman with our Flip.