Monday, May 24, 2010

M(a)y Garden

It was raining most of the last week and The garden liked it :) The terraces are soaked with water and since it is very warm as well, all is ready to "jungle up". Even the new rose on the bottom corner is shooting fresh leaves, poor one. I have not given her too high survival chances after she was completely destroyed by "salami" (our unruly Zoe dog, who was told she will become a sausage if she does not stop doing such a baaaaad things, but somehow she does not take me seriously, she tried to dig it out and crushed the the rose so badly that only the bare sticks were left).


Of course I bought more tomato and pepper plants (even though we will have some from the seeds I started directly to ground) and one squash and one zucchini since they were such success last year. To accommodate all of them, I expanded a bit both of ours "uphill" and "downhill" vegetable patches. The borders will be done more properly next year (as we have seen it at our neighbor's and as I am promised)



While weeding the the rows, I found this


It is remnant of the wild "walnut" tree we cut down last spring - we are not really sure which nut it actually was, just looked little bit like wallnuts but had no edible core. This seedling looked like from some botanists collection :)

Our cherry tree is getting ready for my mom to have some fresh cherries


so far unnoticed by birds:). May be they get enough of mulberries from the old tree growing on our front edge



I had big plans to try jam or even wine, but we are so very busy this year that I will just make some pie for time being, they are about ready for that.
...
I got some moderately bad news about the little feet project, but may be there is still hope, we shall see ... Fortunately we did not have time to worry about it too much, we are getting closer to the end of all the building downstairs, now there is lot of painting ahead of us (saying us even though so far it was mostly W. who did all the work) and we had to go get some closet furniture ...
Somewhere between the shelwes in Ikea I got inspired and made this very Czech piece for dinner. We call it "smazak", it is breaded and pan fired piece of cheese (with optional slice of ham between), served with fries - we had a good chippotle red potato ones from WHF freezer section, baked in oven.


I know, not exactly healthy choice, but it was good (and we have it just once in a blue moon) :)... Oh, and we won the world championships in ice hockey, we beat the RUSSIANS!!!!

Wednesday, May 12, 2010

Bloom Time

This time of year is my almost favorite, not too hot and so many colors everywhere (unfortunately they come with pollen in one package, so that is the catch). I cannot get enough the roses we have in garden, we may end up with no grass and forest of roses one day, I drag home new bush almost every week now :)








I always thought that roses are too fussy to be beautiful in regular gardens, that one has to pamper them to see some blooms, but it is pleasant surprise that the ones we have are doing fine with no extra attention requirements at all (I did prune them little in the early spring to remove dead branches and I am using granulated Miracle Grow plant food for roses sporadically).
And these girls are making me happy too, although the red ones are not going to bloom this year, I have to replant them in the fall and make sure they are not sitting too deep.



. . .
We were on the way to Lowes on Sunday, to get some garden stuff and look for more door slabs e.t.c., but fate had for us something else ...


we found there our new seating! As W. have put it - "we will know when we see it" - and indeed we did. The only problem was we had to take it home the same day, so that was pretty much our afternoon/evening entertainment (we had to make 2 trips there). Cannot wait to see it in the new space !

Monday, May 3, 2010

Sheep and Wool

we have seen in overwhelming quantities of both when we visited The Maryland S&W Festival on Sunday.


We found out about it quite accidentally when I saw a message on the closed doors of the Alexandria yarn store saying everybody went there. We got curious and went too:)


it was fun, even though it was one of those 90-in-shade-jungle-wet days.


I was very reasonable though, I dragged home with me only one skein of juicy red incredibly soft hand dyed alpaca yarn,


I think I just have seen too many nice things to be really sure what I absolutely have to have ;). My catch of the day is destined to be a cardigan I am planning to make for my mom (again).
. . .
On the way home we stopped in the antique stuffed Ellicot city,


to choose nicely restored potential candidate for W's old books library for upstairs living room and to buy heavily discounted leather sitting cube for the downstairs new space


it was so cheap that it must have been an early gift from one of these gentleman (who probably had a secret convention there).
. . .
It was otherwise very work-busy week, but I somehow managed to finish my Stained Glass cardigan,


which was originally intended for mom, but it ended up being too big for her (she apparently does not like wide sleeves). I am happy to keep it for myself, as souvenir from the day we spent in Laramie last June just day before we got married (I got the blue-green merino silk yarn there).
My fingers were itching to start something from the beautiful yarn I got in Kauai, so the Hanalei Dream pullover just mysteriously appeared on my needles on Tuesday and it keeps growing fast since.


It is my own design, but I am planning to use EZ calculations for raglan construction and it will definitely be the v-neck.
. . .
Oh and our climbing rose is blooming now !


And so is the maroon clematis in the front yard,



peonies are just about to open, azaleas are behind the peek I think, but since we have them in relative shade, they will last for couple more days.