I spent several hours down at the garden this afternoon. I raked everything out, pulled aside the straw-like bunching onion stalks to discourage the slugs from eating my strawberries (I assume it will have no effect on the rabbits), marked off the boundaries of the beds, and turned over the soil in the main section.
The sorrel is back (that’s what’s in the front center of that section) and there are still several clumps of onion. The soil is healthy — lots of worms — but I should add some more one of these years, since my plot is sunken compared to the pathway (and therefore prone to ending up with the wood mulch in it).
Several years back, I planted bulbs along the back fence. The mini daffodils (they’re normal-sized heads, but have stems that are like three inches tall) have been the most successful of those, although I also saw shoots for at least one crocus and some tulips.
The mint and rosemary are doing fine. I suspect the lemon balm is also fine; I dumped a bunch of tomato cages on it, but it’s ridiculously hardy. I noticed the purple sage I planted last fall had some leaves on it in the potato patch, so I’ll need to be careful when I put in the potatoes that have gone to seed in my kitchen.
I’m down to only one or two strawberry plants in the right section of the garden, so that will be a top priority in the near future. My peony survived, though, and is looking very cheerful.
And a single, adorable leek overwintered. I’ll be saving it for a special dish.
In addition to tracking down strawberry plants (they were virtually impossible to find last year) and planting the past-prime potatoes, getting peas and early greens into the ground are next on my priority list.
Being outside and working in the sun was helpful toward channeling my grief at Jerry’s death into something productive. He and Dan also appreciated gardening and had a very nice collection of plants on their top floor terrace.
I do not feel like writing paragraphs or stringing thoughts together like Mardi Gras beads, so you’re getting bullets, which, come to think of it, also look like Mardi Gras beads strung together.
As Rudi was loading the car at 6 a.m. this morning for his winter weekend drive to Pennsylvania for ski coaching he heard a ping. He told me this as he kissed me goodbye “just so you know.” I thought I might not sleep again this morning because now I knew.
Five minutes later he was back again. One of the tie rods had snapped, which is a far better thing to happen when a car is parked than when you are driving it on the highway at dawn (or any other hour).
We rented him a car so he could get to his final weekend of coaching for the season.
When my car broke a couple years back (also on a coaching weekend), it had the decency to still be drivable.
A baseball games-and-Christmas party friend has cancer. We didn’t find out about it until partway through the pandemic. It was not a good diagnosis. His husband started posting pictures of better days yesterday. This morning he shared that he’s brought our friend home, along with round-the-clock care.
I spent a lot of today crying.
It sucks to say goodbye through a comment on a website.
I also spent a lot of today napping instead of planting peas or sitting out in the sun.
I watched a Miss Marple episode tonight. Terrible things happen in Agatha Christie novels, but the villain very nearly always gets his or hers in the end.
I do not know who the villain is in this current story arc of my life — a virus? mutating cells? aging auto parts? — but I hope they get theirs soon.
My sock-in-progress also sat next to me and watched tv. It didn’t have to put any effort into growing, because I didn’t pick it up.
I will not advance past this round of Sock Madness and I am okay with that.
I did start my spring training book, while sitting in the park. The first chapter is about an elderly couple whose home was squatted in while they were away over the winter.
I bought daffodils at Trader Joe’s earlier. I should probably put them in water. The store doesn’t keep them in water, so I’m not feeling overly urgent about it. But I can’t admire them if they’re sitting in the dish drain, rather than in a vase.
The drawback of napping all day is that I’m awake. Also, I lost an hour a little while ago, so while the clock currently says 4 a.m., I am taking solace that it would only have been three at this time yesterday.
The sun will set at 7:14 tonight, which means it won’t really get dark until 8. And that’s a thing to celebrate.
I hope everyone’s weekend plans involve being gentle with themselves as we all mark the anniversary of a life-altering year.
I’m planning to put the peas into the ground in my community garden plot, soaking up some fresh, albeit cooler than the last few days, air. It’s Rudi’s last weekend of coaching for the season, so I have no one to please this weekend but me. I’m also going to go to the farmers market, read and knit, and bake some pie for Pi Day on Sunday. I’ll be springing my clocks forward on Sunday, but I’m taking Monday off to blunt the pain of that.
I saw my first magnolia blooms this evening, so spring is definitely moving our way.
Sock Madness, the sock knitting competition I enter each March and rarely advance through the play-in round, commenced on Saturday with the pattern Senbonzakura by Natalia Vasilieva. It has smocked stitches and beads and twisted stitches meant to create an overall effect of cherry trees in spring.
I’m using a skein of Hobbledehoy sock yarn in the colorway “Crosswords,” which I’m finding to be a pleasantly round, bouncy yarn. It tolerates the tiny crochet hook I use to add beads well. The beads are blue-tinted with a silver core and they were the best of the batch I had on hand against the variegation and red undertones (overtones?) of the yarn.
(You can see the four Rudi and I gave serious consideration to. The clear ended up not being right, the blue was just too blue, the red was matte and I didn’t love it as much as I wanted, and then there’s the silvery blue I picked.)
And, yes, I am already significantly behind where I should be if I want to advance. It’s great if I move on and also fine if I don’t. Either way, I should have a great pair of socks at some point.
I started From the Desk of Zoe Washington by Janae Marks this evening. It’s a middle-grade novel about a girl who, on her 12th birthday, gets a letter from her birth father in prison. It’s the first one she’s ever received from him, but his letter suggests there have been others through the years. I look forward to finding out what happens next.
Head over to As Kat Knits to see what others are reading and crafting.
I really like Bruno Mars’ earlier music, so I was really excited to hear he had a new album out. Here he is performing with Anderson .Paak (yes, the period is part of his stage name) in a joint project called Silk Sonic.
