Not-so-winter Garden - Week 3

So much for "winter" around here. We had some torrential downpours here, and the garden seemed to shoot up overnight.

As you can see, the red bucket is filled with water pouring off the roof- it filled up in just a couple hours.

More sprouts popped up all over. These are the habaneros and cayenne peppers.

Whoops, one zucchini too many. Have to either get rid of it or transplant it!

These are sweet peppers from a carnival mix. I guess I won't know what they really look like until they bear fruit!

Eggplant! This interesting plant will always remind me of that episode of Inspector Gadget where he feeds a bunch of Mammoths some red eggplant things.

Tiny fernleaf dill sprouts.

The row of moneymaker tomatos grows as I feel pity for the runts and transplant them instead of getting rid of them completely. I don't know what I'm going to do with everything I have!

The first tomato set fruit. This is why I do this.

Another angle of my tomato runts.

Winter Garden - Week 2

I just wanted to post a quick photo update of the garden two weeks after planting. Not much has changed since the last post, except that a few more seedlings have sprouted up.

These are the transplanted herbs. From the left: Basil sprouts, parsley, another variety of parsley (and much healthier looking), and a small Oregano bush that used to be hanging in a pink pot.

Tomato plants, which are much bigger now.

Not very visible, but there seems to be some chamomile, marjoram, and thyme sprouts there.

Habanero and cayenne peppers.

Winter garden - week one

I should have planted three months ago, but my dear husband was still putting this thing together for me. He is so good to me, I just thought I should say. He's got a lot on his plate (teaching 7 periods!) but he still made the time to help me make my garden. We hauled in over a ton of manure from Home Depot for this project! There were no truck rentals available, so we just made several trips. I was a bit dubious about using only the manure because the HD sales dude told us we should not just buy the $1.75 bags of manure, but buy the $4.97 bags of "garden soil" instead. Let me tell you, I got the idea for using well-rotted cow manure from "experienced" gardeners who teach at Fairchild, and featured an article on the intarwebs somewhere. We actually saw them speak at our local library. They said that it's safer because it's disease-free. Well, the manure we bought looked like it had some mulch and sand mixed in, but at that point we already bought a TON of it- literally. Let me tell you, seven days after planting- I saw sprouts popping up all over! Oh joy! No more doubts now. Chamomile and Thyme which aren't supposed to germinate until about 14 - 28 days were the first! Among the others were Zucchini, Tomato, Marjoram, Onion, Peas, Dill, and Forget-me-nots. Yay! At this point, just about all of them have sprouted, but since I haven't been updating, I'm going to focus on one week each post. Here are some pics from the first week after planting (Jan 29 - Feb 4)

This is what the garden looked like approx. one week after planting the first seeds directly into the soil. I transplanted all my existing plants (the ones in the background will be added later). That includes parsley, oregano, sweet basil, Moneymaker tomatoes, and Yolo wonder bell peppers.

Here are some of the Thyme sprouts. I put stones next to where the seeds were planted so I could remember where to water.

The zucchini was one of the first ones to sprout. 

This is literally one day later.

This is two days after that.

Another two days later.

 You can see the second zucchini sprouted days after the first. I started to get worried after seeing just some of the seeds sprouting, so I planted extras to be safe.  Well, now I have three zucchinis, about 16 eggplants and 20 peppers. Oh well. The peas are an exception, I wanted to plant a bunch there. They were very early sprouters, and 100% of the peas planted sprouted eventually. I'm hoping these will make it worthwhile!

Sadly, one of the first casualties came this first week. A bastard cat used my garden as a colossal litterbox! I found cat scat in there and everything! >=(

I put these Moneymaker tomato plants in the ground, which I had been waiting to do for a while. They didn't look like they were doing well. It turns out it was really good for them to be planted in the ground because they took off from here.

It's pretty amazing. Three days after I transplanted the tomato plants into the ground, flowers opened up! Now I've got tomatoes growing! They weren't doing so well in the tiny pots I had them in. They have made so much progress since then.

Knitting a rainbow

First of all, I've been a busy, busy lady. I may not have documented my hobbies here for posterity, but I have done many things. I've completed a dozen more knitting projects, invented and tried out new recipes, and our queue of home projects are slowly getting completed. Right now I'm drooling over the yarn I have sitting in my stash, I can't wait to make more lovely things.

My current WIP is a shawl I'm making for myself (and another three or so things I'll write about later). I used to think that shawls were something only old ladies wore, just like knitting is supposed to be a pastime for the female members of the retirement community. Since I joined Ravelry over a year ago, well, all that changed. Now I think they are artistic and refined, a means of self expression and a manner of warming oneself in a stylish way.

The first shawl I tried to make was a lovely lacy purple one, but my gauge was too large for the amount of yarn I had in that color. Since I love my Plum Pudding  colored yarn, I bought a little more in the same dye lot, and now I can make more purple things. Anyway, I have this soft fingering weight rainbow yarn, called Serenity Garden by Deborah Norville. The colorway is Gems.

I fell in love with the color but had no idea what I was going to make of it. I've seen other Ravelers make lovely lacy shawls with this, but the sad part is that in the pictures at least, the intricate lace is not as aesthetically appreciated because the Gems outshines the actual pattern. My eye is drawn toward the color changes, not the pattern itself. So, I found a simple shawl that would be the vessel for this beautiful, bright yarn.

I chose a pattern that is worked from side to side so that the stripes are vertical (rather than the typical top-down shawl that has horizontal stripes). I chose this for two reasons. The first reason is that toward the beginning of a top-down pattern, the stripes are visible, but as the stitch count grows, the stripes start melting together in a weird variegated pattern. I guess that the colors are pretty regardless, but I prefer the neat transitions.

Second, I just like the stripes better vertical. I added two pattern repeats because the pattern calls for worsted and a larger needle, but it seems to be plenty large with the way it's coming out. I can't wait to wear it, and be shameless about fashion faux pas in public. I will update again when I'm done!

Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes!

We have had a busy and productive past few weeks. My husband is on fire! He resolved for this new year to be more productive, and so far he's installed a mirrored jewelry cabinet (he bought as a gift), taken down the track spotlights in the kitchen and installed a new light- I can see now!

Here is the hubby in the kitchen with the original spotlights. Note that they do not light up the area well.

And here is the new and improved, bright and evenly lit kitchen! Note how much more lived in the house looks now as opposed to the previous pic, where we hadn't moved in yet. Jorge also hung the frames on the left recently, which deserve a post of their own. I cross-stitched a massive Save the Date and Wedding invitation. On the right is a double sided clock, imitating a vintage Parisian train station clock. We also finally got our wedding photo framed, and Jorge put that baby up!

Finally, Jorge is helping me plot that garden. I know, it's something we have been talking about since June! Since then, I've lost all my tomatoes and peppers to whitefly, but replanted a few weeks ago. So far, these are doing much better in the cooler weather. I think that the high humidity was a lucrative environment for pests.

This is what the "garden" plot looked like last time I posted about it. Now, here's what it looks like:

We got cedar instead of pine even though it's a bajillion times more expensive (and is very fragrant) because cedar is rot resistant. Those frames are going to house lots and lots of garden soil, and it will look great. Note in the upper left hand corner of the yard, the banana plants have flourished!

When I decided to start planting, I wanted to immediately dig up all the rocks in my little plot and fill it up with soil. I went and borrowed a dozen books from the library on the subject. A few months ago, all we just had were a tremendous pile of rocks that no one wants, and it was either too hot or too wet to plant anyway. The thing about a sudden urge to do something is that it doesn't work well with having to wait. I haven't been taking pictures of our compost bin, but it's actually broken down quite a bit as it is teeming with grubs! Timon and Pumba would love it in there. It's not really enough to amend let's say 200 lbs of topsoil, but I plan on adding some cheap cow manure compost (don't worry it doesn't smell) and using my compost as an organic side-dressing. Hold on, I can't help myself.

Manure. I hate manure.

I still have some plants that are somehow alive. This is the second batch, the first (as you saw in past posts) did not survive the whiteflies and blight. Well, the oregano and succulents did.

Here's my Oregano and sprouts of Sweet Basil. As you can see, the Oregano is doing well.

Here we have the new tomatoes and bell peppers, and a tray of butterfly flowers.

So, the weather is nice and our one week cold snap is over. This weekend we are going to fill that baby with soil and transplant my garden- or bust. The good thing is that with all the work that we (Jorge) put into it, it will last years to come, and there's always next October...

Hark! Do I hear another blog post?

Things tend to get really busy during the last quarter of the year. This is some of what I've been up to:
1- Visiting with my brother when he came to town in early October.
2- Late October- Painted our bedroom finally, and set up our new furniture.
3- Participated in NaNoWriMo and Won! Well, finished the 50k. I still have much more writing to do.

4- I also cooked my first turkey/ hosted my first Thanksgiving. 

Somewhere in there we also drove up to my friend's wedding and had just about every weekend spent busy with something!

I'll expand on this all soon, I promise. I need to take a good photo of the bedroom.

Blog ain't dead (and stuff about furniture)

On the contrary, there are ideas that have yet to be realized, and topics that have barely been touched. I've lost considerable steam here, yes. This can possibly be attributed to several things: One, I've been reading a ton-load of books. Two, I am trying to acquire pictures of things that I both promised to blog about and I very much want to post on. Three, my obsessive nature leads me to do one thing very intensively, and then forget about it for a time while I obsess about something else. Four, I realized that I actually have other things I've been neglecting to do, mostly stuff around the house. I mean,  not just some things, more like a list of about 30 things I've been neglecting. Lucky for you, I've got some useless banter to fill the void today, including a trip we made to Ikea yesterday. We brought home some beautiful white furniture for our bedroom that looks something like this:

I really love this style of bed frame. It's simple and classic; I doubt that this is going to look tacky and outdated ten years from now. It almost looks vintage, and I liked vintage before it was cool to like vintage (Uh oh, I sound like a hipster!) I found this image on a google image search and would attribute the source if it was known to me:

Isn't it gorgeous? I love it. Unfortunately, I married a man who loves sleek and modern decor (which utterly clashes with my love of classic) so we had quite a time trying to compromise on decorating the house. We both liked the Ikea Hemnes series. It looked simple and vaguely "country" style to me, but sleek enough to satisfy Jorge's tastes. Either that or I'm just rubbing off on him. Anyway, our dressers look like this:

So, white bedroom furniture. I like the look of wood furniture, but the floors of our bedroom are some kind of wood laminate that looks somewhat like this:

I thought that the wood finishes we liked best would clash with this color floor, so we went with white. It's not only a pretty color, but it's safe and it matches with things. Now we are asking ourselves what we are going to do about the paint job. The previous owners didn't do a very good job, but they left the can of paint at the house. I like the color, but am not sure that it would work with everything else we've got going on. I mean, it looks good (and would look better as a contrast against the white) but I spent years of my life making this quilt and want it to look really nice with the quilt as the focal point of the room, without compromising the beautiful contrast of the headboard against the wall. Our walls are currently this color:

It feels a little darker than it looks in the picture. I know that it would contrast against the headboard on the bed, and made that stand out... but I feel like maybe going a little lighter or maybe in the neutral range. Here's what the quilt I'm talking about looks like: 

So, what do you think? Leave it like that? Maybe go a little lighter and match the green on the quilt? Go neutral? Darker? Blue? Purple? All I know is from reading blogs like Design*Sponge. I don't claim to be good at this, but I'm pretty sure I know what I like (more or less). Now that I'm shifting gears back into house decorating, I think I'm going to follow up with the things we have already did back in April and May.