So many hobbies!

Peppers

My red peppers are finally turning red.  Finally!  They've been green for so long I wasn't sure they'd ripen before it got cold. 

The Sweet Chocolate peppers have almost caught up with the red peppers.  I just hope they ripen before the end of summer.  Today's 96F day should help, although it's supposed to be 63F on Friday.  Just another week in Michigan.  My garden needs more summer!  I've still got tomatoes that the heat, too

That's all I've got.  I haven't been sleeping too well on my new bed so I haven't had any energy in the evenings to do anything, like block a shawl.  I'm determined to get to bed early tonight so, with that, I bid you "Good evening."

Sorry for the silence

Things have been rather busy here in SE Michigan.  Blueberries have been picked, and frozen, and turned into jam.  My birthday was this week which was a great day spent with my sister.  We ate yummy Indian food, I got a birthday cupcake and we watched The Wolverine at the theater.  I've become obsessed with tie-dyeing again which, so far, has lead to this:

and this:

I've got another shirt in the dye bath right now.  I find the process very exciting since you never know how each shirt is going to turn out until you take off the rubber bands/ties.  Such potential!

My garden is plugging along slowly.  I have tomatoes, green ones, but nothing ready to eat.  I've harvested one zuchini and a handful of beans.  The peppers are loaded but none are ready for eating yet... and we're running out of summer:

 These are the red peppers.  And these are the purple peppers:

I have no idea when the darn things are ripe because they start off purple.  At least with the red ones it's obvious when they're ripe because they turn red.  The big purple pepper has been there for weeks and is hard as a rock.  I have to assume that means it's still "green."  Can anyone give me some clarification on pepper ripeness?  'Cause I'm at a loss here.  The Sweet Chocolate Peppers are finally blooming but I doubt there will be any ripe peppers this summer.  I have no idea why they've been so slow to prosper.  It's not just my gardening skills.  I gave one to my BIL in Pennsylvania, who lives in one gardening zone warmer than here, and his didn't thrive either.  Maybe a bad batch of seeds?

Next week is the Michigan Fiber Festival.  I can't believe it's here already.  As usual, I'm not ready.  I still need to figure out lunches, prepare the fabric I'm bringing for the batik classes I'm taking and move all my camping stuff up from the basement.  The vacation will be appreciated.

Oh, and for anyone in my age bracket, I had my annual mammogram today.  If you haven't had your's yet this year, please talk to your doctor about scheduling one.  We girls need to stick together.  (Yeah, okay, that was sappy but the sentiment is sincere.)

Peonies and spinning

I just love this time of year!

Per my mom's request, here's a shot of my front garden, happily mulched and planted:

The potato boxes are now planted with black beans.  There won't be enough for more than a meal but I wanted to play a little.  The three pots next to the potato boxes have green beans.  The far raised bed holds the zucchini and the closer bed now has the 4 grape tomatoes, an Ugly tomato, the basil my sister gave me and 2 of the Sweet Chocolate peppers.  I need/want to pick up a bale of straw both to mulch the veggies beds and to feed the compost bin.  I really don't want to do any weeding this summer.

I did a little spinning last weekend but never got around to showing the pics:

I also started spinning some silk hankies over the weekend.  It's slow going because opening up the hankies is a bit tough on the hands.  Silk is an extremely strong fiber and the constant pulling on my fingers has left them pretty sore.  So, the spinning will be slow until I build up some calluses.  Pictures will be coming as soon as I have something to show

Fantastic!

As weekends go, this one was pretty great.  I finished mulching my front garden and planted my new peppers and zuchini:

The left one is the red pepper I bought on Thursday and the right is the purple pepper.  The Sweet Chocolate peppers and grape tomatoes are on the front porch in their little greenhouse hardening off until I can plant them.

During this past week, I made batts from a batt kit I bought on Etsy.  I've started spinning them but I'm not done spinning yet.

My neighbor has a purple poppy growing happily in the garden outside my livingroom window.  This morning, it bloomed:

Gorgeous!

And growing against the side of the house, a purple Clematis in full bloom:

While I took pictures and talked to my neighbor, Galen watched from his bench at the window:

When I wasn't working in the garden, I was spinning and watching movies.  I saw "Now You See Me" today and quite enjoyed it.  I also started watching Doctor Who from the beginning of Eccleston's Doctor.  Oh, and I ordered some Doctor Who cookie cutters off of Etsy:

I can't wait to make cookies with them.  For those of you who aren't Doctor Who fans, clockwise from the right are, a weeping angel, the TARDIS and a Dalek.  I'd explain all of them but it would take too much time.  Watch the show instead.  It'll be much more fun.

Spring planting

At this time of year, I kind of go a little crazy with plants and seeds.  I already have 5 chocolate peppers and 4 grape tomatoes that I started from seed.  After deciding I needed more peppers, my friend and I stopped at a little nursery and I bought more.  I now have a red bell pepper and a purple bell pepper to add to the list.  Also, a zuchini (actually 3 but 1 will be plenty) and, in the perennial category, an Iceland poppy.  The flower has a beautiful yellow-orange color.



My sister gave me a slicing tomato and two basils over the weekend to add to my growing - pun intended - list of veggie plants.  (Yes, I know the potting mix is dry.  I watered them right after I took this picture.)  So I have 7 peppers, 5 tomatoes, 2 basil and 1 zuchini.  So, do I plant green beans, too?  I think I'll have room for them.  I have one 3x3 raised beds that will house the zuchini, one 3x4 bed that will hold the tomatoes and some of the peppers.  There are 4 large pots for the rest of the peppers, 5 or so smaller pots for the beans and the two potato boxes that I'm thinking of using to grow black turtle beans.  If all grows well, that's lots of produce from one little garden. 

This weekend I'll be finishing up mulching the heck out of the rest of my flower garden.  I also need to clean up my raised beds and the pots for the veggies.  I'll be picking up some compost at Lowe's along with the mulch.  (Please let there be more of the mulch I need left at the store!)  I'm thinking I'll get my plants into the ground this weekend.  Get everything growing and producing.  The two peppers I bought have flower buds just waiting to pop.  Man, I love this time of year!

Do you put in a garden or plant up some pots on the porch?  What will you be growing this season? 

Sorry I've been gone

I spent the Memorial weekend at my sister's in Pennsylvania.  These pics are a pretty good summation of the weekend. 

My sister loves to garden.

This is Snookums.

She's been completely spoiled

and is a very happy kitty.

 

Sadly, Snooky's brother, Tuxedo, had to be put to sleep Thursday morning.  Tuxey had been sick for about a week and was very uncomfortable.  Going to PA, I was looking forward to seeing Tuxey as much as my sister.  He was a special boy.  I miss him.

With the exception of a little spinning, I spent most of the weekend working in my front garden.  I weeded Friday afternoon and Saturday, pulling out 4 garden refuse bags worth of weeds.  Friday I also bought 15 bags of mulch.  Saturday was the flower giveaway that my condo association does every year.  I got a flat of 1/2 Marigolds and 1/2 Snapdragons:

And a flower box kit for my front window:

Sunday, for about 4 hours, I mulched.  I'm terrible at taking care of my garden when it gets hot outside, which happens during Michigan summers.  The garden usually looks terrible; choked with weeds.  This year I thought I'd do a preemptive strike on the weeds.  So, I in the open areas of my garden, I laid down 4 layers of newpaper and covered that with 3 or so inches of mulch.

You can see some newspaper peeking out from the far side of the mulched area.  Oh, before I mulched, I planted the flowers I got Saturday:

I also planted the red Dianthus I bought during a quick run to Lowe's for potting mix for the flowerbox.  I have a gorgeous red lilly that I planted 2 years ago and some Correopsis that come back every year so that let me to planting a red/yellow color scheme.  You can't see them very well, but there are Snapdragons behind the Marigolds.  Hopefully, they'll be either red or yellow.

I didn't get the whole thing mulched because I ran out of newspaper, plus I need another 3 or 4 bags of mulch to finish it off.  The tricky part of future weeding will be around the plants since I couldn't easily get newspaper in there before the mulch went down.  We shall see later this summer how the weeding goes.

Still, it looks pretty good with its fresh coat of mulch.  I'll need more plants to fill in the holes once all the daffodils die back.  My neighbor gave me a volunteer Foxglove that you can see in the lower left corner of the picture above.  Now I just need more newspapers...

New greenhouse

I needed some place the seedlings could hang out and grow without the cats eating them.  IKEA had this cute greenhouse that was perfect.  I repotted the pepper seedlings last night and now we're just waiting for the end of May (the last frost in Michigan is around May 31st) to plant.  This weekend I'll start the tomato seeds.

The Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival is only a few weeks away.  I'm really behind in my preparations for the skein contest.  At the moment, I've only got two skeins that are good enough to enter.  This is the first time in 3 or 4 years that I'm not going to have any spindle-spun yarn to enter.  I haven't touched a spindle in almost a year.  I need to get spinning...

It's spring!

I know this because the croci are blooming.  (Yes, I know the plural of "crocus" is "crocuses" but I figured since the plural of "octopus" is "octopi" then the plural of "crocus" should be "croci."  Sadly, it's not.)  These are the ones in the front yard:

Sorry they're so bright.  It was finally sunny.

And in the kitchen, I've got these little guys:

Again, sorry about the lousy picture.  All of the seeds have sprouted except the ones in the back on the right.  I can't wait to eat the peppers this summer. Next weekend I start the tomatoes.

New camping toy

The new camping season is coming up fast.  Since Sheri and I are going to be doing Freezer Bag Cooking at Maryland this year, I thought I'd make up a couple cozies for our meals to sit in while they cook.  Each cozy (I made one for each of us) has Insul-Bright sandwiched between the outer fabric and the inner polar fleece lining.  Insul-Bright has a mylar layer that reflects heat back to the source.  It's can be used for hot pads and such.  As soon as the freeze-dried and dehydrated foods I ordered arrive, we'll start playing with new recipes and give the new cozies a work out.

Sweet Chocolate Peppers.  They should germinate in the next couple of days.  I hope.  I've discovered that just about the only way I can eat sweet peppers, and raw carrots, is with hummus.  For some reason, eating them raw by themselves gives me heartburn. 

So far, the garden plan includes grape tomatoes (I'll start those seeds in another couple weeks), green beans, the peppers and possible a zucchini.  I need to find someone who'll sell me a bale of straw so I can both mulch the veggies and feed my compost bin.  I hate weeding so mulching is a necessity.  The problem I run into, as I'm sure many people do, is I'm oh-so enthusiastic about gardening in the spring but when the hot summer rolls around, the last thing I want to do is be outside pulling weeds or tending plants.  So, definitely, mulch.  The rest I'll have to figure out as I go.