Green Things Growing

For people who are planning to be away for a large part of the summer, we sure did plant a lot of stuff.

We planted a lot less this year, but still more than we will be around to use. We planted one tomato plant, one zucchini plant (it’s turning out to be a gorgeous green and yellow striped variety, we love it and are jealous that we will not be eating it) and one pepper plant. We also tried an experiment and planted some potatoes to see if they would grow. Well, they are growing! My friend Evie is taking care of our plot for us and so will reap the culinary benefits. It will be interesting to see what things look like when we get back a month from now.  Since we have our garden plot at the Wheeler community garden, we also planted these purple and gold flowers in honor of Wheeler. I took this picture with my phone so it’s not great, but you get the idea.

It would have been a perfect day if Luna had not decided to run off into the trees and find some other animal’s dung to roll all around in! She came out of the woods completely covered in orange poop. Disgusting creature! I had to go up the hill to the caretaker’s house and ask for some soap to give her a bath before she could get in the car to come home. Then of course when we got home JC had to give her another bath, ‘cause that’s just how he is.

Hopefully in the next month I will have much more fun (and less scatological) things to post about!

The Seven-Year Stitch

In 2003 I began a needlework project that was meant to be a gift for my mother-in-law. It was the most difficult project I had undertaken to date because instead of using cross-stitch fabric I went ahead and used linen, so that I had to count the threads that are woven into the fabric to figure out where each stitch square was supposed to be. It is a lot harder to do this way, but it looks so much prettier than when you do it on cross-stitch fabric that has the holes woven into it. Next time you have a linen shirt on look closely at it and try to count the threads and you will see what I mean. Anyway, it took me awhile to get the hang of it, but I liked how it was turning out. Enter Master’s degree, full-time job, moving to the Northeast, finding and settling into two different teaching positions, and buying our first home. This poor project fell by the wayside many times. Every now and then I would pull it out and go crazy for a few days only to have to put it away for another year (or two L)
Anyway, this year I have been working a little more diligently on it and finally a couple of weeks ago I realized that it was really almost done except for some backstitching. So I finally finished that up during the slumber party I had at my house with the Young Women of my church the other night. And here we are, voilà!

Now I just have to get it washed, ironed, and framed. I was looking through some books to see what I should start on next…I’m definitely crazy. Maybe I’ll see you in another seven years!