the winter post: crafting time!

Told you. Once a season. *cough*

Last week my parents tipped me off to the existence of the Madrona Fiber Arts Winter Retreat, which sounded really neat and was almost in striking distance. I looked at the website and discovered there was a mini-class on stranded colorwork, which I have little to no experience with, and after contacting the organizers managed to get registered last minute. So yesterday morning I packed up some needles and the necessary yarn for the classwork—

which of course my faithful assistant had to inspect—

and off I went. (Please note the colors in those images are terrible; one is an olive brown and the other is a peacock teal.)

spider season

Posting once a season whether I need to or not!


The rains have returned, and with them a lot of the hope that seemed lost in July and August. I went outside yesterday to sow a few seeds for winter-friendly crops, cabbages and greens, and discovered in peeking at neglected garden beds that they're not as disastrous as I feared. One of the raised beds has some sturdy parsnips growing in it; the other has potatoes and rejuvenated kale. The carrots that I left to go to seed over the summer did so, and scattered seed around their half of the bed, which is now already starting to produce tiny feathery seedlings. The everbearing strawberries take their name seriously and I brought in a heaping handful of them last night, and the raspberry canes that had all withered over the summer now have bright green, healthy leaves.


There's a lesson in this that I need to take to heart, and carry with me; Depression Brain is quick to declare that things are RUINED FOREVER but that's not what nature does. "Forever" is an awfully long time. Things change, and keep changing, and 'tis a rare wind that blows no-one any good. The rigid patterns that we declare "the right outcome" are never the only ones with value.


Spider season is a good time to meditate on that. They're some of the most maligned and ill-treated of our near neighbors, despite all they have to offer. Around here they become most visible in late August through sometime in October, plump orb weavers spinning broad webs between any plausible pair of attachment points (I've seen them suspended between power lines more than once). Things are changing, they say. We have things to accomplish before the long dark. I try to say hello and wish them good hunting when I see them. I try not to disturb their webs. They're readying to lay their eggs, wrapping up hundreds of them in a tiny silk pouch to safely wait out the winter and be ready to patrol next year's woods and fields. Many of them make a habit of tearing down and eating their damaged webs, reclaiming those proteins to be used again. They know that someone bumbling into their web doesn't mean things are ruined forever.


I should too.

we'll just call it a fallow year

Behold the most intensive and successful agriculture going on in my backyard this year:

I ruined it shortly after taking the photo, though I'm sure I haven't deterred them for good. The host plant there is a red elderberry, and despite being the site of an extensive aphid farm it's thriving -- I planted it as a bare-root stick this spring and it's now tall enough to look me in the eyes, with rich green foliage and plenty of it. It's honestly the most successful of its group. The ants know how to pick a good farm site, I guess.

Mostly things are not happening this year. I spent some crucial months being not well enough to support the garden the way it needed, and now that we're having an alarmingly hot and extra-dry summer it's too late to recover any of the spring annual crops. I did get a few small onions out of the back garden, and the cherry tree I planted last year bore enough cherries this year for a batch of really delicious syrup to pour over ice cream (pit 2 cups tart cherries, place in small pot with 1/4 cup local honey, heat gently until boiling, simmer a few minutes, cool a little bit and serve). So it's not a complete loss? But a very good thing I'm not depending on my direct efforts for any substantial amount of food.

I'm going to have to attack the southeast corner of the garden with power tools, I think, where the neighbors haven't rooted out a blackberry problem and now it has spilled over the fence with a vengeance. And probably I should just sheet mulch 95% of the garden at this point and start over when the rains come back. Well. One learns even when one doesn't produce.

tree update

Utterly failing to keep up and make timely notes ever, the lifestyle~

Just moved 4 of the 5 Indian plums i planted this spring from the native plant sale; the only one that was thriving was the one completely under the shade of the maple. The others were all sad little sticks with withered leaves. But they're not dead, so I moved them into shadier spots and watered them and hopefully they'll perk up a bit. Will have to remember to water them more often so they can get established.

I'm honestly not doing very well at getting a vegetable garden going this year, but I'm at least making some progress on the front. And I do have a few things to set out in the garden soon, including crookneck squash, paste tomatoes, and my tiny soviet melons.

The apple tree has loads of tiny fruit on it this year, after not setting any last year, so that's a good sign for pollination. The quince had lovely blossoms but is setting no fruit at all. The cherry is going to need bird netting any day now as its loads of green fruit start turning red. The peach has a terrible case of leaf curl and may not make it. The mulberry is young but beautiful.

Also I recently planted a madrona, because I love them dearly, and here's hoping it survives; they apparently are very hard to transplant and cope badly with any disturbance of the root system. But maybe!!!

tomato notes

Started a bunch of paste tomatoes in tiny pots on a heat mat last month. Moved them up to 4" pots tonight. The Amish Paste from Baker Creek seems to be slightly better performing (13/14 vigorous enough to be worth transplanting) than the Sheboygan from Uprising (10/14). The Amish ones are in the colored pots; the Sheboygans are in the black pots.

Next repotting: april?

buried treasure!!!

Look what I found when I was digging a hole for the last of the blue elderberries:

Trowel included for scale. On the bright side, by the time I finally got it out of there, I had PLENTY of room for the bare roots of the plant.

The more sincere buried treasure that I've been turning up in all this digging is, of course, the worms. The dirt below the sod layer is pretty barren and compacted, but in among the grass roots I've been finding some nice fat earthworms. And they've already started to colonize the dirt I had trucked in, too, which I take it to mean that it meets with their approval. One of the ones I turned up the other day was so big I didn't recognize it at first glance. Onward, little detritovores!

This weekend I need to repot my tomatoes for the first time. They've gotten their first true leaves and are a bit leggy, so time to move them into 4-inch pots and bury some of that excess stem so it can get to rooting.

Springing

I'm just not good at posts with pictures; waiting to get pictures of things means the things don't get posted. So here's a post with a lot of text instead.

 I have two big outdoor goals this year: to no longer need to mow the front slope, and to encourage more pollinators to hang out here. I've been working on both of them in the last few weeks! Saturday of last week was the annual King Conservation District native plant sale. I preordered a few things, and then went down there with H so we could both buy some stuff in the walk-up sale too. Now, looking at the prices on the website, I thought "well, that's a little high but reasonable," and ordered two blue elderberries and one mock orange. Then we got to the sale, and we discovered that I had ordered two bundles etc, and that each bundle was 10 bare-root plants. We promptly strategically divided our lists so we didn't repeat species, and bought bundles of a bunch of other stuff too.

 But then we have the best problem ever: so many plants that need to get in the ground! And it's a beautiful weekend! So for the rest of Saturday we worked in H's tiny back yard, where we moved around clumps of rosemary and oregano to make room for various exciting berries. She also gave me two of her rose bushes, since she's really short of space and I'm not so much, and when I got home I plopped those into the front garden bed beside the driveway, which has had a big blank spot in it ever since the old heating oil tank came out of its underground lair.

Sunday it was my turn.