Happy Memorial Day!

My husband is an ANGRY man! There's finally proof, look at how menacing & scary he looks, threatening me with grill tongs. *shiver* Ok, so -maybe- I'd just taken a terrible picture of him that may have portrayed him in a less than flattering way... or maybe he really is a mean ogre who would threaten his precious wife with grill equipment. You can decide.


Here are my Chinese Red Noodle beans, looking fetching and growing like weeds. I'm actually a little worried that they may not be getting enough light where they are now. I might move them before they get really attached to where they are now & put something else at the bottom of the pole. No flowers yet on them, I'm keeping my eyes out for them though!


Tomatoes below. Look how big they've gotten just in the couple of weeks since I blogged last! They're ready to transplant in the next few days.


These are my Soleil bush beans, THEY'VE ALREADY GOT FLOWERS! I'm about to be a bean gramma! My little bean babies are about to have beans of their own. My husband says that's a ridiculous thought, but these beans ARE my babies. I wonder why one of the blooms is cream colored and the other is white.


Here's Kara and Pixie fighting over a rawhide chew. Aren't they precious? My little dog-babies. Kara is my shelter hound that we just got in January. We've had Pixie since before Kieffer was in school. They each got a rawhide chew for the holiday today, but you know the best one is the one someone else has so they've been bickering over them.


And this is the CAKE that my fabulous hubby bought us as a surprise. It came from Publix. We saw it when we made a trip in for charcoal and I thought it was adorable; a cake that looks like a hamburger! He snuck back out there & bought it for me because I'd loved it so much. I guess he's really not such an ogre after all. Possibly the most fantastic husband in the whole entire universe and he's all mine!


I hope everyone had a great holiday. I'll have knitting pictures next post. I'm in the home stretch with my Icarus, it's HUGE!

Sit & Spin, if that's how you feel about it.

There's been a great deal of flooding this year. Not sweeping people's houses away flooding, but we're at least out of the drought we were having last year. The picture below is a bench that normally isn't in the water - overlooking Percy Priest Dam. As of two days ago, this bench is now completely submerged and more rain is in our forecast!



Pretty flower after the rain, taken at the Nashville Zoo.



Saturday, 5/9/09, I managed to get my lazy butt up and at the zoo by 9am to see some sheep get sheared. I took both boys, who were fascinated for a fraction of a sheep and then disappeared at the speed of light toward "fun" stuff. I found them later soaked to the bone and thoroughly exhausted.

Devon is the shearer's name, if I remember correctly. Not a zoo employee, but hired by them the past 7 years to shear their babies. This is the fattest sheep in the bunch, he called her "Rotunda" but she didn't seem to appreciate the fat jokes. See how ROUND she is though?



Look at all that beautiful fleece! I want it I want it I want it!!!



Apparently my sheeping made a big impression on my family because my Mother's Day present from them was two batts of hand painted roving, a drop spindle, and a hour-long private spinning lesson that I redeemed after work this evening. Look what I made! My teacher said I was doing a remarkable job for a noob & she didn't believe I had never done this before. I think she was jerking my chain, but flattery sure does whet the addiction stone!



I can't wait to make something with this yarn. I'm not going to ply it, I'm going to make something lacy with it just like it is. Something I can keep forever. My other roving is yellows & greens and there's a flat ton of both of them. Plenty to make something special, I'm sure.

I'm off to spin some more!

We Dig It

This is our beautiful new raised garden bed! At Home Depot today the boys and I bought two landscape timbers for $3.94 apiece and four HUGE nails that looked like baby railroad spikes for $1.95 apiece and came home & built this. Built is a word used loosely in this scenario.

We also purchased a mild jalapeno pepper plant, a stevia which has the sweetest leaves in the whole world and taste nothing like that horrible sweetener that carries their name, and a cilantro.

We'll have to go back tomorrow for another landscape timber and some more nails but this is very exciting stuff. We had a rough time getting rid of the grass. It's a very small planter and in my mind the grass shoveled up very easily with our flat edge shovel but in reality it was hours of hard work with shovel and hoe and two very tired boys helping me.

I didn't get a picture, but we found a record breaking earth worm that was easily two feet long and was VERY snake-like. Since our hands were coated with loads of clay dirt, he didn't squirm to get away from us when we picked him up like they normally do. I'll show pics tomorrow if we get another rain-free spell and can finish our creation. It's about 2 feet wide and 8 feet long.

Today the Spring Monsoon Began

I got a call at work from my hubby, in a panic, because as he walked out the door to leave today he realized that our courtyard was flooded nearly into our house. He would have had to swim to his car to leave. We have a sump pump set in a hole in the corner of our courtyard because flooding happens frequently; we have a big creek just a few feet from the back of our house, it's inevitable. Unfortunately the sump pump wasn't getting the water out as fast as it was coming in. In the picture below, you can see my hubby standing over the sump pump corner, on top of our wall, with a rental pump to supplement our own in the hopes that we wouldn't have to file our first flood claim within a year of living in our new home. Joy!



Below you can see him, standing fetlock-deep in our "pool" (as the kids are calling it) and plugging in the new pump. The most hilarious part of this picture, besides the electric shock potential, is the yellow kitchen glove he was wearing a la Michael Jackson.



Thankfully the rented pump worked just fine, if a little slowly, and we were able to get our own pump unclogged when the water drained down far enough for us to reach it without diving equipment. Among other things, there were pieces of plastic bag wrapped around it! As of right now the rain has resumed its deluge and there's no standing water in our courtyard. Much to our children's dismay.

I looked for my pictures of my crape myrtle from this past summer. I've been telling you how much I cut off it. Well I couldn't find anything except this one picture (below) of it from this winter. You really can't tell how bushy & overgrown it is from this picture so that's disappointing. It looks to me like whomever lived here in the past like crape myrtle shrubs and they must have trimmed them as such every year. They were so bushy & thick they were a hazard. You couldn't see around this one when you were pulling out of the driveway.




Well I love them, they are the prettiest TREES! I hate to see them trimmed like shrubs, it breaks my heart. They have this magnificent mottled bark and they grow in elegant shapes with arching plumes of leaves & flowers. So I pruned the Hell outta' them in early March before they had any leaf buds. We only trimmed two of my three, in case I accidentally killed them with the drastic cutting. But apparently they're just fine! Next year they will be thinned out even more, now that I know they won't croak from it. This one here by the mailbox is a bright vibrant pink when it blooms. It's like a fluorescent pink torch at the end of my driveway. I adore it. The other one (that's not shown) is a muted dusky pink that's not nearly as flamboyant.



I love my yard! I am hoping there's a few times this weekend when the rain dries up so I can try to get some more gardening done. Other than that, and making cookies @ Gramma's house sometime tomorrow, we've got no plans - and that feels GOOD!

Glorious Icarus!

I finally got it on the needles! I've been drooling over this pattern now ever since I learned how to knit, a little over two years ago. Well I finally CO for it this past Friday and it's going famously. I love how boring the spines are, and how I can take the pattern anywhere and know where I am when I pick it up.



My funny co-worker Bill DiLuigi likes to leave notes on my knitting when I walk away from my desk. They're hilarious! Things like, "We're your friends, we can help you through this" and "This is the Devil's handiwork". Well, attached to my knitting ziploc in the picture is the most recent one from yesterday. If you can't see it, it says "This should have been quarantined in Mexico".

Bill is the extra-special musician in my department, who modified the song "Psycho Killer" into "Psycho Knitter" just for me. I requested he make it more generic so all my knitting friends could enjoy it and he's in the process of recording it for us now. I'll be sure to share it when he finally gives me a copy.

In gardening news, I transplanted my egg-carton seedlings into pots of wonderful potting soil last night after work. Yes, in lieu of knitting I gardened. Sometimes it's a tough call, and the knitting doesn't always win. I've got pictures of my pots to share, but right now my knitting is calling my name and it's winning over blogging. Tomorrow will be rainy, I'm interested to see how the transplants do in their new (temporary) homes.

Next, I start my Charentais melons! Three for my Mum and three for me. In exchange she's giving me seedless grape suckers she started off her established vines and some yellow (crookneck & straightneck) squash. Only problem is - I have no place whatsoever for any of these plants... and thanks to the beautiful motorcycle-riding weather I am way behind in my garden construction. Here's a pic of my youngest son & my best friend Scott getting ready to ride. We stopped in Dickson at the Perfect Pig BBQ joint for lunch Sunday. Great BBQ! My bike is the one with the flames.



And here are three pictures of what's preexisting in my garden. My rhododendron which I would have SWORN was going to be pink but instead is the most gorgeous purple I have ever seen.



And my two azaleas that I was considering killing because I didn't like where they were growing until they bloomed and now it's not even an option. The white one has a carpenter bee feeding in it (I love those guys!) and the coral one is tiny but really packs a punch with those beautiful flowers!



I'm glad I waited to see what was already here before doing anything drastic. I love my yard, now I can plant all the flower seeds I ordered with a happy heart. I don't have to remove any azaleas!

Coming soon, pics of my pruned crape myrtles. I really chopped these guys and was worried they wouldn't survive it, but they've got leaves! Next year I'll have to prune the one on the side of the house. I was scared to do it lest the pruning be too much for the others to survive. I didn't want them all to die.

What a Beautiful Saturday!

Look! This is the pretty sock I've been working on since last Sunday. The colors look much more vibrant in the picture than they do in person. I'm about to turn the heel sometime this afternoon.



Below is my 1st tomato sprout, this is a Purple Russian. It's an heirloom tomato with a supposedly superb taste and small roma-style fruits.



Below are my beans. See how much they've grown since I first posted their picture? These are two bean types, Soleil a yellow wax, french style bush bean and Red Noodle which is a climbing pole bean that produces 18" long red beans. I thought the kids would love growing them.



Today we mow our lawn. Or, Kieffer mows our lawn - since he's trying to earn enough $ to take himself & his "girlfriend" Hope to a matinee tomorrow. I had plans to do yard things too but am feeling crappy today so that might not happen in quite the quantity I had originally planned. Keegan has been EXTEMELY sick lately, has Dr.'s orders to be out of school from last Tuesday until this coming Monday. Jeremy started getting sick yesterday & went to the Dr. too and so two of my guys are down. It's just me & Kieffer holding down the fort.

At least I've got knitting and gardening to keep me happy, and this magnificent morning too. I hope everyone gets to enjoy it doing happy things with the ones they love most.

How Does Your Garden Grow?

Above, are my Canary Climbers, that seemed to sprout overnight. They are a climbing yellow-flowering vine and they will be growing up the side of my porch as soon as the weather is just a little bit warmer. YAY!



Above is one of the two kinds of beans I have started. This one is a french style yellow wax bush bean. They just started peeking out of the dirt yesterday afternoon but they just came out so fast that you could practically watch them grow! I'm so impressed.



Last but not least, these are my beets. You either love 'em or hate 'em, but they sure are beautiful and even if you don't like the actual beets - their greens are some of the most scrumptious and nutritious salad fixins you can have. These grow like WEEDS, they sprouted nearly overnight and I'm just DYING to have them in the actual ground instead of my egg carton starters.

Anyone else growing anything? If Summer doesn't hurry up and get here soon I'm going to EXPLODE!