How does your garden grow.........

 My garden is doing great - we've been eating lettuce out of it for a few weeks now, I think I can pick kale and swiss chard this week - everything else is growing gangbusters but not ready to pick other than a few strawberries here and there.

 I think this is a lilac, does anyone know for sure?  it doesn't look like the lilacs I'm used to but does look like a variety of them. There were two scrawny bushes that I didn't want to get rid of last fall since the birds liked to sit in them while resting from feeding at the birdfeeders.  I'm so glad we didn't pull them up - two lilacs...or something similar to a lilac.

And does anyone know, is this a honeysuckle?  The flower looks like one but the honeysuckles I grew up with back east didn't have a cluster of flowers like this, they were just individual flowers on the vines. This was also a scrawny looking bush on the side yard, I cut it back this spring and it's doing incredible now, nice and full and loaded with flowers.

Happy Mother's Day to all mothers out there whether it's to two legged or four legged critters.

Update - friends Teresa & Jon from the coast said that is a lilac and a lonicera honeysuckle - I'll be marking them with metal tags....many thanks

This and that.......

This is the ice-dyed warp on the loom. It's not quite this pale teal in person, it's got a bit more seaglass green in it......not sure why I couldn't capture the color. Here's the link to the ice-dyed warp before it went on the loom, in that picture it's more grass green than it really is. This experimental scarf is finished, ready to be washed in the morning.

A false damask towel warp on another loom. The brown is just where I used up what was left on a bobbin to weave a couple inches to spread the warp out and make sure there were no threading errors. This warp is ready to weave when I feel like weaving towels.

Yesterday morning while walking Bailey on our property I decided to take pix of the wildflowers on our property. This is what we have this week, there were different flowers blooming a few weeks ago, different ones will be blooming a few weeks from now. Unfortunately it was windy so the flower heads were wanting to blow around so not the clearest pix of some.  In addition to the yellow flower can you see the tiny little baby yellow flower to the right of it?

Love these little purple ones. Wish I had taken pix of the other purple flowers earlier in the spring.

This is one of my favorites - I think it's a wild iris.....although I could be wrong.

Cute little white flowers - see those leaves of three near them - that's poison oak. It's all over our 5 acres except Bailey's fenced yard. I have real problems with poison oak, some years I end up at the doctor's over it. I've gotten rid of it in Bailey's yard but there's no way I can control it on 5 acres......and there's a bumper crop this year.

This is another fun  little white flower - lots of poison oak around it too.

Some different little yellow flowers

More of these......because I love them. I had pix of two other wildflowers but accidently deleted them when I was editing......oh well........

Re-entry sucks..........

Re-entry, as I call it, is tough. Each time we go over to the coast I deal with re-entry when we return. Playing catch-up with orders (boxing and mailing), inventory updates, transaction posting, etc. etc. etc. It get harder all the time and what suffers is time to be creative.

I'm going to do some real soul searching and crunching of numbers on the roving side of my business. It provides a nice income but at what cost? The roving sales have a life of their own, just when I think things are slowing down like they always do for a month after school lets out they pick up again. We haven't experienced Sam's full retirement and loss of income yet since he's doing consulting work for the company, sometimes 1/4 of normal hours, sometimes up to 1/2.........so will I be sorry I give up selling roving once he retires completely? Something to think about. My biggest problem is how much time the roving side of the business takes - I feel like I spend too much time in front of the computer dealing with it.........too little time to weave.....not to mention sew, spin, felt, knit, felt, bead, craft, etc. etc. etc. So, the next step is to evaluate it and make a plan. Even if I do get out of selling roving it will take a long time to sell off stock - there is a lot of stock, a whole bunch, a huge amount........takes up one complete bay of the garage a lot of stock. So much to think about over the next few months with the main goal of getting more time to weave and be creative.

This was what it was like the past 5 days on the coast - picture perfect

Here's a house around the corner from us - look at that yard, it's incredible. Sam says no matter where we walk, around town or on the beach I always manage to pass this house getting home.

Our yard does not look like the one around the corner but we do have 2 hydrangea bushes in full bloom right now. Someday I'd love a beautiful yard but we aren't over there to take care of it and we don't have a sprinkler system so it's very sparse at the moment.

I spotted this snail, probably up to no good on my hydrangeas but cute

The new knitting project is the Noni knitted felted bag. Right now I'm knitting intarsia for the stripes - I need 9 balls and 2 threads for each which means I'm working from the inside and outside of each ball. The tangling was horrible so I devised this solution using plastic Ziploc containers. Yarn bowls would work but I only have 2.

It's looking pretty tangled here after just knitting 2 rows but it's actually very fast to untangle.

My small gardening effort..........

This morning I fit in my small gardening project for the year - some pots on the deck - half as many as in the past but I'm good with it. We took off some of the drip tubing since I cut back the pots but there's still one left that I may put a pot under for a fairy garden.

I bought 3 hanging baskets - they come in to BiMart each year in time for Mother's Day at bargain prices. This year's color scheme is purple, yellow and white.

I've got 4 of these deck planters - I planted them this year with Compact Safran, Calibrachoa Volcano Gold, Plum Pudding Petunia easy waves, Bacopa Big Dark Blue Falls and Crystal Palace Lobelia. Hopefully in the near future these will start growing and overflowing the planters to cover the brackets. Each year I tryout some new combination.

Here's looking down the deck - the 4 planters, basil in the corner and hanging baskets. Usually there are numerous pots along this deck railing but have scaled it back this year.

Here are the basil plants - the best starts I think I've ever bought. I thought I bought 3 varieties but found just 2 when I planted this morning - Italian Large Leaf and Nufar. Must have zoned out when putting them in my cart.

Unfortunately I don't have a veggie garden like I did at the last house - very little flat ground on this property. I've experimented with tomatoes and peppers on the deck in pots but they've never done well, this area doesn't get enough sun for most veggies. So, I go to my local stand or the grower's market to shop for fresh veggies all summer. Very sad - my 2 big fig trees out front look to have been done in by the extreme cold we had back in December - no buds, no leaves, just bare trees. We're not taking them out yet though, I have hopes that something is living underground that will send up new shoots - if we don't see anything by winter we'll pull them up. They were good producers - what a shame.

Now off to the loom........

Photography Challenge - D is for.........

Dragonflies

Dandelion

Daisy

Day Lily

Day Lily

Dog - I warned you Bailey was going to try and get in as many pictures as he possibly could. This is actually two Dogs as I brought home a new friend for Bailey from my stop at Ikea on the way home from the weaving conference yesterday - we've named him Buster and he's almost as big as Bailey although he's a lightweight compared to Bailey's 84 pounds.

Dog smelling other dog's breath......hmm, what kind of biscuits have you been eating???

 

Check out Benita's blog - she's the originator of this alphabet photography challenge.

Passion Flower

Yesterday while walking in Bandon by the Sea I saw these flowers on a bush next to the paper machine where we pick up the weekend paper in front of a Mom & Pop restaurant. I've never seen flowers like these, they must be around 2"-3" big. I emailed friend Yvonne to ask her if she knew what they are.........of course she did, they're Passion Flowers. Someday I'll have to plant some of these in the yard at the beach cottage.

Here you can see lots of blooms ready to open, there must be hundreds of buds on this medium size bush.....can't wait to see them all opened up, I hope we're here when that happens.

Orchids - 3 blooming, 2 more will be soon.....they love, love, love this kitchen window......

Flowers.........

Ok, so haven't had any weaving to share for a bit although I did finish up the scarf warp that I posted about last week. Scarves are in soaking now, will post pictures once dry. Took some time away from our valley - we left Friday for Bandon by the Sea over on the coast. Great weekend, beautiful weather. Played catch up and wove a bit on Monday, weaving guild meeting yesterday.....end of the year potluck luncheon and recycling challenge, and then today got more weaving time in and planted my deck flowers. I've got a total of 3 hanging baskets, 4 deck rail planters, 4 potted plants.....one empty, ran out of flowers, and then the 3 pots of lettuces that were planted a while ago. Still need to get some basil to plant in with the lettuce so when that starts bolting and basil will take over. In a month or so they should be starting to look really full and loaded with blooms. It's looking like maybe (hope, hope) spring has returned and my flowers are safe from frost - not so sure I can say the same about the peach and italian plum trees........am hoping we have fruit this year. Think I'll go lay out on the deck swing and enjoy the blooms of my labor..............