So many good things have been going on that I have MEANT to blog about….

You can check out the flickr stream for the visuals.  In the meantime, here’s a quick update.

Chloe is doing BETTER!  A bit.  But We’ll take it!  Big meeting on Tuesday night with all of the Doctors to make a plan for the summer.  We’re just trying to go with whatever each day serves up and making the best of it.  She is still really dizzy all of the time, and there are some days that feel bad, but there have been other days with SWIMMING, and SKATING at roller derby!  ( see Jimmy’s blog for details  )  That’s HUGE!!  We’re really happy and hopeful that we’ve seen the lowest point now with the POTS adventures.  She has started outpatient physical therapy, which will help her work on her strength and endurance.

And it’s almost SUMMER… which helps with the moods around here for sure!

Lil is great, and looking forward to school’s end in a couple of weeks.

She’s still loosing teeth too.

Today we wrapped up a project that has been in the works for a couple of years.   It’s been a  lot of fun and makes me really happy.

Now I get to smile  about them every time I go out in the garden.:)

Here’s a slideshow if you’d like to gander at the individual flags.

We will NOT negotiate* with garden terrorists…

* But we will feed them organic produce and send them on a FREE all-expenses-paid exotic vacation.

Ode to the menace I’ve named  “BROWNDOG, LOL.”

He will also answer to “crap-weasel,” or “here is some lovely lettuce and brussel sprouts.”

My sister Sharon and I share a common enemy.  Marmota monax. Latin for Terrorist Varmit.

Cute, right?  Name a holiday after it!!  A movie!! Call it sweet things like “woodchuck” and wonder about how much wood it would chuck….If it only could.

Bake it a bless-ed cupcake.

Here’s that little sweetie now–

or more commonly

That gaping maw is where it will put your garden.  Your WHOLE garden.  This blog has some beautiful illustrations of the havoc they can wreak on a garden.  This is just what the NJ sister and I have experienced without the nice pics to show you.

The almighty WIKI reports that most live 2-3 years… except for that little trucker Wee Wiarton Willie– who lived for 22 years.  Ours lives under the front porch in a nice cave dwelling with garden terrace.  He often rolls out of bed to a loverly breakfast al fresca.  For the past years he’s eaten a mile-wide path of destruction through anything we’ve grown in the garden.  Except peppers and basil.   He likes to shake it up too… last year he waited a long while and employed the element of “SURPRISE, I didn’t die over the winter.”

I DO love me some Guinea Pigs and Hedgehog, but Hates. Him.

Maybe he is dead this year??  It’s been 2 of the could-be-3 year life span…

Not tough enough for bad-nature-karma-death-tactics, we are trying the havahart dining-car.

If LOL happens to be DEAD– rest his angelic soul– the havahart will reside like the sublime-Buddah-shrine in a nail salon.  I will place offerings of fruit and burn sweet incense all season long in honor of our varmit-free renaissance.  Maybe we’ll catch a raccoon or 2.. Or some of Erin’s stealthy cats.  Please note, previously promised vacations are only for LOL.

I somehow doubt that dreamy possibility however…  As Jim says,  “Make your own luck.”

That there is what Sharney and I like to call the FOUR DOLLAR CANTALOUPE.

Praying for this–

Here is a bit of information on what to do next…  Don’t worry, I’ll be sticking a stamp on him and sending him some place legal to release him… Or at least it won’t be near your yard.

This is the most awesome exterminator since Sir Burroughs.  Maybe we’ll call him in if old LOL wins again.

I’ve also decided that it’s maybe about time to start researching “We’ll come and fix your house up shows.” I  think it might be our end-of-the-world strategy.

God save the Queen.

Back to my spinning wheel.

The cleaning-up part of the garden year has not historically been one of my strongest talents.  While I’ve been know to pull off some 11th hour jungle-takeover heroics during the season, I am not so much a fan of the fall clean up.  Stupid, as it just means more work, and more weeds, in the spring.

I have the awesome blessing of being much healthier this new year than in many past… and I am marveling at the renewed joy and total stress catharsis of slogging around in the garden.  Last week was so nice on cello lesson day, that I settled Lil and Ryan on the front porch and made like a groundhog in the garden beside them.  For one thing… I think cello accompaniment should always be available when there is gardening to do.  That was a nice idea, for sure.

Then I kicked weedy-butt.

I did.This was the sad blueberry hedge– which is now TWO bushes that aren’t doing all that well.  The strawberry plot has fed no one but SLUGS for a few years now, so I ripped that apart as well.

Don’t think it’s all freedom and ease, there are a fair few mulberry roots that are giving me fits and conniptions….  I reached a standstill on this one… I cannot get it loose, and am not sure how to KILL IT FOR SURE at this point, so if anyone can advise, please leave a comment!!  I do not want to see it’s nasty devils-snare tendrils ever again.  As you can see it is right near the retaining wall, so no tying it to the gnomemobile and heaving-ho.  The roots appear to go down under the wall and driveway.

So it’s one of the most exciting times of the year for me… garden is cleaned up and ready to go, and I just need to make a new plan.

Please send any ideas you want to share… I need a new full-sun ornamental vine idea to grow on the fence– I have grown hyacinth bean there in the past but am looking for a new inspiration.

I am also WIDE OPEN for garden orphans and contributions… If you have an overabundance as your seeds go in and your gardens grow give me a yell!!  We have lots of sunny and shady spaces in need of plant material, I’ll come and thin out your crowd and give them nice homes!

Tomorrow, part two– the BAD and the UGLY.

(This is just a bad phonecam photo…not taken by satellites)

LOOK AT THE GIRTH OF THAT MUNCHER!!!

Sure

Sure it might look sort of cute with it’s squinchy little face, but that is NOT a guinea pig.  And it looks like I am not going to  get one single brussel sprout or tomato out of my garden.  Crime, really.

How do I make my garden HOG PROOF next year?

I dyed a bunch of wool and am in the process of spinning it up.

More will eventually follow.

I’ve got so much to share– gardening, graduating,spinning and the makings of.  I’ll be back tomorrow for some of that.

Sweet dreams of poppies.

One of the Fairy rooms outside

Brawwwwk!

This beautiful day. I know it was warm.

This is where the gnomes meet up at night to talk crap and play pinochle. Isn’t that a great word? Does anyone really play pinochle?? Teach me please.

The Godseye tree. It’s the giant Dogwood. We eat dinner out here many nights.

Up in the neighbor tree. This is where it is best to talk to Erin and her tribe.

Urban Gnomes?? Or deconstructionist witches at the Home Despot??

Ok. I am off to bed. I have a BUNCH of really lovely handspun to update the Etsy Shop with tomorrow. More then!

I sent rosemary to school today with her VAMPIRE cape, and Jimmy and I showed up with cookies at 2 for the Halloween party.

You know, the one that is next Friday.

swirly, spinny, dizzy life.

At least the kids were happy to see us. No we didn’t give them the cookies anyway. Yes, the teacher now has a pretty good idea what kind of apples are on our tree.

I had the VAMPIRE TEETH in my pocket.

WoooooooSSSSHhhhhh!

Back to our previously scheduled blog post.  I wanted to show you some views of my world this morning.  Its chilly and wooly and so pretty out there.

Beets for Erin

morning glories reaching for the moon

mmmn the colors.  Blueberries in the Autumn are so pretty, and these Asters– they’re ok too.

Some and more of Peg’s dahlias

The end of the season for beautiful Hyacinth beans and still very much the season for prayer flags

Chilly big girl ( in her new neck warmer– pics of my new obsession coming soon)

Toasty little girl.  She is like a yarn shop on feet.

More later! It is rumored to be a cold and rainy weekend– I am sure we’ll come up with some sort of mischief.

Happy “send your vampires to school day!”

First– I am the kind of person who has crap really great and important stuff everywhere.  It drives Jim crazy.  It may be the reason why I am crazy.  Shall I post a poll?

I hang stuff on doorknobs, I pile stuff on the steps… heck, I pile stuff everywhere!!!  My windowsills and frames and picture frames and any other spot that I can claim as mine, are covered with little shrines of said stuff.  Little parades of the ephemera of my life.  Kids sculpey creations, rocks, marbles,nature, tiny stuff, candles, bits of this and that.  It’ sort of the same way outside.

Is it not written–the way you do anything is the way you do everything.  This pop philosphy both comforts and terrifies me. I find it both a measure of truth and a measure of where I need to examine/change the way I do things.  I am such a creature of habit– though I love the excitement of change. It’s such an easy slide down the slope to that wise-guy Einstein who (maybe) said that Insanity was doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.   It all makes a difference. Every. Thing. We. Do.  I am voting for change everywhere, my own little world included!

Anyhow– skipping analysis of the ALL of my life, the GARDEN is full of stuff.  And I like it like that.  Stuff in trees , stuff on sticks, stuff.  I like to think it not so like Sanford and son, but more in the realm of art and memory and visions that have inspired me like Derek Jarmon’s lovely garden.

Yeah– I am a lot more wabi-slobby.  But it still is part of the garden magic for me.  My gnomes, and kids art and shells that I dutifully put away in the Fall each year and bring out again in the Spring.  The things I would have out there if I had real magic and money were dirt.  ( see Gypsy Vardo on ebay)  Anyhow, I love my garden and the outside world of this house.  The barn and docks of Jim, all of the little nooks and crannies, the front yard as food garden/weed farm.

My friend Peg has been working on a wonderful sculpture for us  inspired by the Helligan Giant.   This the Heligan version–

Here he is blooming.

I’d like to visit that garden some day.

Our is more of a non-botanical garden scale.  Just right for us.   It makes me smile everytime I go out to the back-world.

The birth of our mud/moss-person is  a long evolution, which I love, because it means gets worked on now and then while we visit and have tea.  I sort of hope that it never is really ” done” but keeps evolving through time and our friendship. It’s lovely.  It grew hair recently.

Lovely variagated green hair with purple highlights.

I’ll continue to post the changes, and thank you Pegella.  We love it.

I have an ongoing collection of Garden-as-sculpture images.  Here are a few that I’d love to share with you, they fit right in with our lovely garden head.

This beauty won the 2006 Chelsea Flower Show in London.  I think it was called “Garden of Dreams”.  So nice. The sculptors were Sue and Peter Hill, who have done other, similarly gorgeous works.

Belinda Villani

2 hysterical mentions:

( this biggest chia pet evah!)

I could go on and on..

A piece that really touched my heart was this prayer hut at the 2007 Bioneers conference in CA.

Environmental artist, sculptor and Santa Cruz firefighter ( !) Wendy Domster made this amazing piece.  It was created from a field of leek blossoms from an ‘excess crop’ that would have otherwise been just plowed under.

“It was a “gratitude hut”, with a dark interior where you could go to sit and ponder the miracles of your life, and remember what you were most grateful for. Inside it was full of ‘milagros’ or little charms and notes hanging from the walls in representation of all those miracles.”  I love the idea of this…all of it.

I bet it was a pretty pungent pondering in that hut.

Off to bed now.  Thankful.

I am working on those lovely sproingy-patterned socks for Knitty Spring Forward . It is a really fun pattern, looks great, is easy enough to remember, but has enough going on pattern-wise to be a fun knit

Marigold, per usual is a experiencing crafty-schizophrenia.  The weaving is to the side now and we’re back to knitting.  She is knitting her first circular-knitting project,  A hat.  She is planning to make a LOT of hats.  She wants to jazz’em up too– viking hats, egg hats, wig hats.  It ought to be good!  We have found this site so helpful for calculations.  Many helpful tools there, including the ever daunting ” how to knit a bust dart”.  I don’t think we’ll need that for her hats– but still good to know it’s there.

Still with the mantises.  Went to grab the doorknob the other morning and almost got a handful of THIS.

I mean, WOW.  Look at the size of that thing!

And there have been more– on the kitchen window… ” Look Mama here’s one and it still has it’s head.”

And THAT folks, is good for the garden.

Mama’s yarn ladies came over.  They brought  reeeeeeally good food.  My favorite was the  asparagus quiche and both of us LOVED the BERGER COOKIES!!  Here they are.  Kellie and Bonita couldn’t come.  I hope your poison ivy is better.

berger cookie for the little girl

I baked a cake, and guess what??? It DIDN’T EXPLODE!  ( see a few posts back for that photo)  I wrote knit on it with m&m’s.  It fell apart a little when my mama “helped” me with it.  It was delicious though.

I liked looking at the African safari pictures but my favorite part of the night was eating my cake.

Once you eat fairy food, you can never leave the fairy realm

AAAAAHHHHHH! ( she’s staying!)

So is mama.

nice dogwood picture

tiki torches

experimental photo of the candelier.

The evening was fun and extravagant.  I wouldn’t say it was elegant because I kept tripping in very un-elegant ways.  I am sure that was entertaining at least.

Rosie says she had fun.  she swam in the moonlight and the booger cookies were awesome.

the end.