Yesterday I was replanting my cucumbers and the rest of the tomatoes. Some of them are quite overgrown.

I know, it is supposed to be knitting blog, but it is spring and all bets are off.

Clean table.
I replanted  Red Cherry tomatoes, Heirloom Red and Yellow tomatoes, tomatillos, all my crazy cucumbers( I think Armenian is really overgrown or it do not  have enough sun) and Chinese Lantern. I also started seedlings of Nasturtium- my mom's favorite flower.

 
This is how I grow my greens.

 

 I have two shelves with Swiss Chard, two with Sorrel, one with Kale and one with Spinach. I read about growing plants in soil bags in a gardening book. We have very strong winds in the Spring and harsh burning sun during the Summer, I hoped that the mesh screen will help.

My husband came up with the idea of the shelving system.

This is how it looked last summer. I learned many pros and cons about this system last summer, so this year choice of greens reflects last year experience.  And of course my husband wants to improve the design and build new shelves.  I think he just wants an excuse to buy more tools.

 

Have a happy gardening!

 

Yarn Along

Last week I was mostly knitting socks for my husband and for my son. I used my hand dyed yarn.

As soon as my son's socks came from my needles , he started screaming: "Where are my yellow socks? Can I wear them? "
That was my magic moment!!!!

 I was reading "A Nun in the Closet" by Dorothy Gilman.

I really want to learn Herbology.

Have a happy knitting and reading!

Spring is here!

We are very busy in our tiny backyard. I was planting these:

My husband was doing project on his own (even though if you ask him, he will insist that I made him do it). We decided to demolish our absolutely useless fountain and create vegetable bed/ greenhouse.

Talking about fountain, we never used it since we moved to this house four years ago, so it has to go!

The first stage was to remove the fountain itself. That was problem of its own, since inside this blue structure was concrete! We all helped to remove the stones from inside. After that  my husband was trying to make a hole for drainage of excess water. He tried to drill it - it did not work.

After that he rented in Home Depot this piece of equipment:

I have no idea what is it, but it worked!

 He and my youngest worked on the walls and viola! the first stage was completed!

Dog helped too.  Here he is checking out the progress. 

Hoorays for my boys!!!

Finished.  At least for today.

Have a wonderful day!

The Spring is coming!!!  What do you do when suddenly  it is 74F outside? Replant your tomatoes of course! My tomatoes grew tall and strong . I thought it was time to move them to bigger containers. Wonderfully warm, sunny day and no wind (which is a real treat in our neck of the woods) let me do this work outside.

 

Here are my tomatoes in front of a sunny window.

 

 

 

 Tomatoes did not look good after replanting, but I checked on them couple hours later and they look great!

 

I also planted Red hot poker. It required spring planting, so here I go - planting away.

 

 

Have a wonderful day!

After yarn dyeing last weekend my fingers were just itchy to knit something with that beautiful yarn.

I started socks for my youngest son and then I spotted yellow cowl on Ginny's blog.

She always has so many great knitting ideas!

I thought, this is what I really needed.

Both my winter and fall coats are dark blue, so I need something cheerful and bright to wear with them. I thought that cowl in dusty pink and pretty purple will be great for that!

 

 

 

This week I am reading:

John Sandford "Chosen Prey"

I also brought from the library J. le Carre's Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy. By mistake I ordered the same movie on Netflix and of course I watched the movie first. I love it! It has several of my favorite actors. I also like how story unfolds itself - slow, emotionless.

 

Have great reading and knitting!

This weekend my son and my husband were sick. A lot of hot tea with lemon and honey, orange juice and as much sleep as possible were in order.

 

I ended up with a lot of time on my hands. So I got busy with food color dyeing. I ordered yarn awhile ago from Knitpicks. I have done this before with egg coloring kit. On my header you can see picture of my first experiment with dyes.

 

 

 

 

 

                               Yellow,white and specks of moss green

 

Red, green,orange,yellow and some mossy green.

 

 

The first one is dusty rose and pretty purple.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Dusty rose.

 

This time I used liquid food dyes. I got crazy and mixed them in many different combinations. I think my favorites are dusty rose, pretty purple and moss green.

 

I dyed three skeins of Bare Stroll Sport and one skein of Bare Wool of Andes Worsted.

 

AND I still have full box of yarn to play with!!!

(I am out of dyes though.)

I hope you have a wonderful day!

My youngest son asked me another day : " Is it spring already?"

No, it is not spring. It is, sure, feels like it with all that sprouting by every sunny window in my house.

 

This year I started seedlings for organic yellow and red cherry tomatoes, tomatillos, Armenian and picklbush cucumbers, organic container little leafs cucumbers and Chinese lanterns.
 

 

I started tomatoes in beginning of February and  the rest of them on  February 20th . I do not know if it is too early. I probably will need to transfer the tomatoes to bigger containers, but that's OK- I have plenty of sunny space.

 

This year I also ordered Sorrel. I have childhood memories about eating Sorrel soup all summer. I am planning to plant Sorrel this weekend. Just hopping our climate is not too hot for it..

 

I love bulbs and always buy too many of them, considering my small sized backyard. This year was not exception— bought too many. After planting as much as I could ,I planted the rest of bulbs in containers and put them in the garage. They all started growing.

 

Have a wonderful weekend!