cool

after nearly a month of above average temps, now have a greenhouse FULL of lettuce, potatoes, seedlings and flowers.  But yesterday was cool and rainy and while we welcome the rain with open arms, and water butts, it meant the greenhouse did got very warm during the day. so last night set up my candle warmer.  A candle in a container, in a cast iron cauldron, with some stones to hold up the flower pot arrangement over it all.  Nice and cozy in there.  Today is a little sketchy and while there was some sun out there earlier, will probably keep the candle going again tonight. Do want to have my spring planting set back!

busy in the garden

 

 

Had this poor nectarine in a too small pot for a lot of years and it has done nothing but flower occasionally, a little less each year.  So decided to give it a break and put it in the ground.  Will still have to find a place for the pomegranate which I got as a bare root plant but has finally started to bud.  Think I’ll leave that in its pot for the year and transplant it next year.  The bare root fig I bought hasn’t done much of anything yet.

Surprisingly, this rhubarb which spent last year in a fat, short pot last year has started to come back, and have moved it into a tall thin pot.  I’m surprised it came back as I did harvest from it quite a bit.  The short fat pot gave me big leaves but short stalks, so I decided to try the deeper pot in the hope of getting longer stalks.

more garden stuff

 

An apricot tree for Valentines day. 

These grow bags have already seen 6-7 years in the Arizona desert, and are starting to fail.  If I didn’t try to move them fully loaded, they might not be ripping so badly.  The problem is the small one is equivalent to 4 x  3 gallon pots, while the large one is more like 4 x 5 gallon pots.  When I bought these, had them sent from England cause these were pretty much all there were!  No one was using them here yet.  Now they are everywhere!  These two units still have some life, while the other large on I have pretty much is done.  This year, I’ll be switching to single bags, although I might move my comfrey into the large one shown upside down above and keep the smaller one currently in use for the comfrey for more veggies.  Once its planted it will stay where it is for the duration.

working in the garden

 

Garlic and shallots coming along beautifully!

Should have taken a before picture. snow had crushed these hoops, but the few things underneath were protected. some broccali, one single turnip (Rapini!), a few peas.  Planted some more peas today.  Keeping the hoops and cover in place just in case cause it is just mid-February!

Like spring

Some of the greenhouse bounty!

six packs for starting seeds including 2 kinds of lettuce, bush zucchini, spaghetti squash, broccali raab, chard, orange sweet peppers, striped roma tomatoes, yellow plum tomatoes, regular romas, and eggplant.  There are also two six packs of Bok Choy seedlings that were transplanted out of the garden where they had self seeded

the blueberries.  Some came with flower buds which are starting to open in the warmth of the greenhouse.  No growth showing yet on the fig or pomegranate plants

chard, lavender wintering over in the greenhouse, calendula (with flower!) also wintering over in the greenhouse, two kinds of lettuce and an elephant garic, chard and turnip way in the back.

Why I knit

Learning how to use my new cell phone’s camera, so these aren’t the best pictures!

Okay, first pic is an awesome pair of slippers, with felt soles and knit uppers.  Knit material is VERY stretchy up and down, not so stretchy around the leg.  These are the type of slippers I wanted to make, then found these at the thrift for $4 a couple of days ago.

This is how they fit around the leg.  Just didn’t have enough hands to do this right, but trust me, no matter how I might have stretched or pulled the fabric, it was NOT coming together around my fat leg! 

Since I usually wear skirts, may, at least temporarily, use rubber bands to hold it together until I decide on a more permanent technique which could vary from making loops as buttonholes, cutting off the existing top and knitting a new one, or making long shanks for the buttons to bring them to the buttonholes.

But this is the problem I have with all such items: knee socks, etc.  Hence, I learned to knit socks . . .

more socks

have no idea why I’m stuck on socks, maybe because I just have so much trouble with them. Anyway, this pair I started and then realized something wasn’t right and only then checked my needle size; I was working with 7’s instead of 6’s.  Reduced the number of stitches, but the loose stitch has a little too much ease and they are still sloppy loose.  Another lesson learned.  Again, working with Cherub Aran.