We were all laid low by sickness. I had a sinus infection which after my first course of antibiotics turned into an ear infection bad enough that I almost ruptured my ear drum. I'm just able to hear out of my left ear now. Josh had an upper respiratory infection and Maegwin had a perpetual runny nose. Good thing we all see the same doctor. Now that we are feeling better I wanted to catch you all up on the happenings of the house.
This week our seedlings have started exploding from their little containers. It is so funny how we went from just a few random brussels sprouts to literally tons of plants. Our tomatoes, green beans, soy beans, peas, beets, and cabbages are up. We are still waiting on the lima beans, summer squash, butternut squash, and black beans to peep up their lazy heads. I think I wasn't watering quite enough at first to really soak the seed coats on the harder beans so they are behind. We are a bit delayed from stuff we would buy at the nursery but honestly we had a late spring this year so we will probably also have a late fall. Or so I hope...
Josh finished building all the raised beds and they look really good.
We've already planted our leeks and onions. It is amazing how quickly they shot up. We got a medley this year so we can decide which ones we like the best to plant in the future. There were so many onions in the set that we could not plant them all. The closer plants in this photo are the leeks and the further ones are the onions.
And for some close ups....leeks:
and onions...
We also FINALLY had a weekend without rain so we used our newly acquired tiller (it's an attachment for our weedwhacker, isn't that cool?!) to till all the beds and plant our butter lettuce and seeds for arugula, romaine lettuce, more butter lettuce, and spinach. Crossing our fingers that all the subsequent rain will make them come up soon.
The strawberries and asparagus are in the perennials bed. As you can see, there has been some nibbling already. Need to get that critter fence up!
Yeah, yeah you say...all well and good but what about that adorable baby? We're sick of all these garden pictures! Patience is a virtue my friends. The heavy snow and lack of below zero temps for much of the winter made our herb garden (and the weeds) go nuts! Our chives, oregano, thyme, and mint all survived and are spreading like wild.
Maegwin and I have done two weeks of Mommy & Baby yoga and she LOVES it! The whole time she is rolling over, laughing, chattering to the other babies. It is so nice and I plan to keep going with it for as long as we can. The first week three of the other women invited me to breakfast and we hung out for a few hours at a restaurant called Northstar in Clintonville. It was really good and I'd never have known it was there if I didn't go with them. So funny because it is just down the road from the farmers' market we go to regularly. It has been open for three weeks now but we haven't made it out there yet. I was going to go this week but the weather is crap and I didn't want to trudge around in the rain.
Maegwin graduated to the exersaucer and she has so much fun in there. Her favorites are what I call the "baby slots" and this sort of gummy circle with a star on it. She bends the stick down and gnaws on that thing like there is no tomorrow.
We also tried solids a bit this week. She was intrigued by the avocado though I'm not sure if she liked it or was just puzzled by it.
The rice cereal on the other hand was a total no go. She hated it and made very unhappy faces.
We concluded that she probably is not quite ready so we're going to wait a few weeks and try again.
In knitting news, I finished a little sun hat for Maegwin to wear. It was quick and used a skein of yarn that was the second one I ever bought.
I'm also making progress on the wedding afghan for Josie. I'm about 3/4 of a way through the first repeat. I plan to do four repeats of the pattern plus a border to match the one on the bottom. It is actually five feet across so I only took a photo of one section.
Why yes, those are little cupcake stitch markers. I made a little visit to the
Wee Ones store at Etsy. If you knit and haven't looked, go now. Her stuff is too cute! I also learned how to spin. Ok, I attempted to learn how to spin. All the history of spinning was very interesting. We learned how to prep fibers, how to spin, and how to ply yarn once you have spun singles. Here is my sad little skein of yarn which took me 30 minutes and a lot of frustration.
It's not very even but I'm told that once I get better I won't be able to spin like this again though I might want to.
I might buy a drop spindle in October when we go to the Wool Gathering in Yellow Springs but I probably won't be buying a wheel anytime soon. I just can't justify the expense when I'm not very good. What's that you say? You won't get good if you never practice on one? Probably true, but I'm told that all the skills you use with a drop spindle are the same as for a wheel and they are more affordable. I'll put that on my wishlist with a sewing machine, eh?
We got an estimate on getting the final bit of knob & tube wiring taken out of the house and it came in under what we thought which is great. The electrician is coming tomorrow morning and while he's at it he's going to replace the rest of our non-grounded outlets for free! We had enough extra from our budget that we got an estimate on getting the ductwork extended upstairs for our geothermal. Right now, the upstairs gets a bit hot in summer and cold in winter (as Mom & Laura can attest to) so we want to get that all fixed up before Maegwin moves up there. That bid was very reasonable also so we just need to get it scheduled. It will also add value to the house to have a central heating/air flow.
I think that is all the interesting happenings here. Tune in next time for the critter fencing and the firepit improvement. Dun dun duh!
