Catching up.....

I have been neglectful of my blog and when I finally sit down to organize my thoughts , I am having huge techie issues . I'm posting on my iPad and I have no idea if this is going to work or not! Please bear with me....

 

June was a busy month. When our kids were little I often though June was as busy as December. Lots of wind up activities, end of school  stuff, summer activities, visitors...etc. This past June we did a lot of yard work  and we were lucky to go on a few garden tours. Lots of beautiful gardens and lovely properties. I thought I'd share a few of the few hundred pictures I took. I don't think I can caption them on my iPad but you will get the idea!

I can see this is going to take a long time to upload several pictures. I'm running short of patience! It's been super hot  ( 40/103) dry (13% RH) and extremely smoky. Our province is tinder dry and there are serious fires everywhere. I'm on the recovery side of some icky oral/dental surgery  that left me speechless temporarily  ( some of you will prob find that quite hilarious) and a bit down in the mouth. I must be getting better as I'm getting a bit cranky with blogger and my pc. They refuse to talk to each other!!  I can get Blogger on Firefox but not my recent iPhone pictures. My cameras software is apparently too old for the new Microsoft and I can't even get memory cards for it anymore. Grrrrrr. I can feel the points of my teeth getting sharper and soon the hair will start growing out of the back of my hands!! On to more interesting things

Straw Bales!!!

The bales are growing like crazy. I don't have recent pictures of them and it's too hot to go outside right now. The tomatoes are just going bonkers, they have been trimmed back twice now for their suckers and it's like they come back stronger . Eggplants are blooming, peppers are growing, tons of beans, kale, and chard. Amazingly the  lettuce has held on well. It's lasted far longer in the bales than in ground. By now lettuce would have bolted weeks back. We have carrots and beets and more beans from our beds. 

Here's some chard and kale I planted in a repurposed flower bed. There's rhubarb and beans behind. It's been so hot and dry and we are under water restrictions so some/most parts of the yard look pretty dead. But that's just the way it is.  It looks more like August here as many gardens and trees look pretty beat up. I'm happy I took most of these pictures a few weeks ago. 

This is one of the bunkers, it's a planter but it got named as a bunker! I'm growing herbs, some pollinators and a few lilies and a couple of sunflowers. This used to be strictly flowers.

I've done some knitting during my incarceration here. Hopefully I can use my PC soon, it's awkward typing with one finger on an iPad! 

I'm enjoying reading everyone's posts lately, they have kept me great company and I always find out and learn about the most interesting people, places and things. Thank you all!!

Keep smiling friends!!

Chris

A most beautiful sweater that failed to launch and a straw bale update

I had the most wonderful plans for my new sweater, I loved the colour, the lovely stripiness, the pattern-Stripe Parade. I began to knit it with some Madtosh Merino Light on 3.5mm needles. That's pretty fine knitting-lots of stitches.

I measured, I swatched, I measured again. I knit enough to I could slip it over my head and put my arms through (it is a top down sweater) and it was too big. I did measure several times, I did swatch but something got lost in the translation. Shipoopy!!!

And that is the end of that story. I still love my colour combo so my knitting brain will have to cogitate on that one for awhile longer. You know, sometimes I think knitting (gardening) is sometimes a metaphor for life. Sometimes no matter how hard we plan and prepare, things don't always work out. So we have to rip back to square one, take a deep breath, dry our tears, regroup and press on. Hopefully we can learn something along the way. As my Dad would say, "you can plan the event but not the outcome" So very true!!

Chrissys Flower Garden

I did receive a most wonderful surprise though. Sally, the owner of the LYS where I enable like minded souls, received a large shipment of hand dyed yarns in many colours recently. They were all unnamed and so the task fell to her to provide them with suitable nomenclatures. I was totally surprised and touched to see this. Evidently I was told this but I must have been in a trance triggered by all the yarn fumes this yarn was emitting (yarn fumes are a known phenomena, ask a knitter). Thanks Sally!! Now it got me thinking, what with my preoccupation with veggies in the bales I had neglected my flowers for the garden. This would not do!

So off to the garden centre I went. If you zoom in on this picture you will see Mama Robin collecting plant material for her nest or maybe she is looking for worms.

Straw Bale Update

Arugula

Radishes

lettuce

tomatoes

eggplants

sweet peppers

 Oh my, the bales are hopping!! Everything is growing well and with the warm weather coupled with some much needed rain, the veggies are growing like gangbusters!

We picked a big bowl of arugula, butter crunch, red leaf and deer tongue lettuce for our dinner tonight and it was sooo good.

So far so good and it has been such an interesting process. We have had a 100% germination and transplant rate. Now, in the spring chicken to stewing hen continuum, we are both definitely quite right of centre. The bales are so much easier on your back and the weeding is minimal and super easy. We get this long grassy stuff growing a bit on the sides,but it just pulls out with no resistance. The best part is the produce comes out so clean, it is amazing! In the picture above, the greens had not been washed yet.

I planted some nasturtium seeds in front of a couple of bales as they are good companion plants. They popped up so that made me pretty happy!

I have two old wooden ladders under which I planted both a pole bean and a scarlet runner bean respectively.They are doing well. Beans like warm soil and with our unseasonably warm spells they germinated pretty quick. They are a great nitrogen fixer for my crumbum soil. We have been eating these french breakfast radishes from one of our in ground beds. Super tasty!

Lastly here I am!  I read so many interesting blogs and I always like to put a face to a name. I am just curious like that.

Yikes, I keep forgetting, a big welcome and how'd you do to my new followers! And a big thank you to all of you who leave such lovely comments and to those who visit my blog. It is reassuring that I am not speaking into Vacuumland  as Alan McPhee used to say (Remember him Isobel?)!

Have a super week friends!!

Keep smiling!

Chris

Living wreaths and Salish knitting

I was really lucky this past month to attend two different workshops, one on making Living Wreaths and the other on Salish Knitting. I love attending workshops, there is always something new to learn or learn more about, you meet such interesting people and they are a lot of fun.

Living Wreaths

My friend Heather recently did a workshop on making Living Wreaths for The Roots, Boots and Shoots Garden Club in West Kelowna. She is a co-facilitator of the group as well as a Master Gardener and a Communities in Bloom judge. Whew! Let me tell you she knows a lot about gardening! She is super creative and tons of fun!!

At the meeting, Heather showed us how to make a living wreath using a wreath form, moss, a special soil concoction, drawer liner and different plants.

When I first read about living wreaths, they were usually made with succulents. Heather did a wreath with succulents, one with strawberries and one with impatiens. They were all beautiful. I could definitely see so many fun possibilities.

She also talked about how to re-purpose and rejuvenate old containers. The black pots above are decades old but received a great face lift using some special spray paint. They looked like new! I was kicking myself for throwing some of my old junk treasures away.

This pot is a re-purposed angel food cake pan. She spray painted it black. Seriously. And get this, the hole in the centre of the pan can accommodate her umbrella on one of her patio tables. This woman is genius!!

I love her hanging lettuce basket. I can see making these with lots of great edibles and herbs. In our climate, moss is practically nonexistent and quite expensive. As a cheaper alternative, Heather lined this basket with black drawer liner she found at a dollar store. Looks good and works like a charm!

Heather started knitting in January and she has knit some pretty amazing things already!


Salish Knitting

 I was also fortunate enough to attend a workshop given by Sylvia Olsen on Salish knitting. I think most of us, especially on the West Coast, are familiar with the iconic Cowichan sweater. I remember knitting them for my family in the late seventies.Their popularity has endured the decades since.

Sylvia has authored some books on the history of these sweaters and the women who knit them. It is a very powerful story and an important part of our province's history. She guided the group through a knitted hat project using a different technique of carrying colours than I am familiar with. It was super interesting.

Her knitted samples were fantastic!


There is lots going on with the bales and the garden. I am spending quite a bit of time mucking around with my shovel and bucket still. I love being outside and it is light past 9 now.

Thanks Val!!

Aren't these roses beautiful?!?  They smell divine. I sure wish I had roses like these in my garden. I had three rose bushes in my front yard but the deer had been ravaging them so I decided to move them into the back.

wipe out

Ouchies!! Well one survived....hopefully.Yuck!

Well some beans are up. I will be talking bales next post. I know, the suspense is building......

Have a great week friends!

Keep Smiling!!

Chris

Hansa Rugosa Roses-I won't be moving this one ever!

Another Noro Wrap and Straw Baling

After posting the Ojo de Dios wrap a several weeks ago, I remembered how much I enjoyed knitting it. It is knit with Noro Silk Garden, which is an incredibly nice yarn and their colourways are fantastic.

I saw this colour and I think it was the bright limey green and rich blues that drew me in. I am an easy sell in the colour department! 

When I finished and blocked it, I really liked it but the colours looked quite autumnal to me. I mostly wear bright clear jewel tones. I am thinking well someone might like it as I was sitting on the fence about it.

 

I then thought I'd switch it up with one of my brighter blue jackets. Yah baby, we are in colourtown!!

It always is amazing to me how certain colours can just pop out when teamed with a complimentary colour. I think playing with colour and textures are the best parts of knitting for me.

My shawl pin, which is more limey green in real life, looks OK! I did see another Noro colour combo in more wintery shades I really really liked too ....hmmm.

The more exciting topic-straw baling

We planted lots of different veggies in our bales and the good news seeds are sprouting!! Can I have a woot woot!!

 

We have planted lettuce, beans, peas, cilantro, radishes, arugula, spinach and carrots. 

And of course the obligatory strawberries!

And tomatoes too!

 

We still have bales to plant, that are located on the hotter side of the garden. Most probably peppers, eggplants, tomatillos, maybe cukes and a few other things will go into the bales as soon as it is warm enough. I have been reading up on edible landscaping a lot and am trying to incorporate more edibles in my garden. After reading Nicole's post on permaculture, I was in! I was talking to my friend Tangi about it and her daughter designs edible landscapes and is quite an expert on permaculture. Synchronicity!!Gives you pause to wonder sometimes!  I have a lot of different ideas I want to incorporate into our garden this year. We have been digging and weeding and weeding a lot.

Thai cooking

Mung bean noodle salad with shrimp

Recently, my friend Heather had a Thai cooking class. Oh my, it was lots of fun and the dishes were amazing!! We all cooked up a storm, ate a great lunch and waddled home!!

Chicken soup with coconut milk

                                              Pad Thai

 

I love Thai food!! I have bought some Thai basil and lemon grass to go into my herb garden. And cilantro, lots of cilantro!! I am in the process of replanting one of my big planters with herbs, beneficials and pollinators, whew! Lots to think about and plan. That is a whole other big topic!!

Have a great week friends

Keep smiling!!

Chris