Tuesday, July 22, 2008

Garden Success; Some Knitting

Look what I found this morning.


How cool is that? My morning glories are actually blooming. I haven't seen hide nor hair of the moonflowers I planted alongside them since the first leaves, and when I look at all the leaves of the vines trailing up the trellis, they all look alike - i.e., one type of plant. So either moonflowers have identical leaves to morning glories, or they just never grew at all past those first leaves that sprouted from the seed.

But I'm way impressed I've got morning glories blooming, so I'll take that.

Here's the picture I promised awhile back about how well half the pond garden's doing.


The impatiens did astoundingly well here, so well that they got so large they're practically hiding the pond. In the hanging basket in the back I had planted two plants which would trail over the side of the basket, not anticipating the petunias getting this big. I think they've pretty well choked out the trailing plants (I can't really see them anymore, and haven't seen their dark purple blooms for awhile). If I had cut the petunias back from time to time, that might not have happened, but I didn't - I just let them run wild to see what they'd do. All well and good - next year I know that I really only need to plant petunias in there if I want something that will cover the whole basket and hang over the sides.

The fern's growing well too. But that's only one-half the garden. The other side pretty well looks like crap. The violets aren't doing well at all, and my perennials - those that lived at all - are tiny little things buried in weeds. Well ... baby steps, and a large learning curve. I'll keep working at it.

In between my other things I needed to get done, I actually did some knitting last night. I decided to go back to work on the sweater for awhile. I got a little concerned at first because I couldn't remember where I was, and the counter I had handy I thought was for the Snowdrop shawl, not the sweater. Eventually I sorted it out (that counter was for the sweater), and almost finished the front right. I have one more wrong-side row to do, then binding off, and it's done.

I don't know what I'm going to start next - the back, or a sleeve. Maybe the back ... the sleeves are going to require much thought, as I wanted to make them 3/4 length, which means I have to use my 'recipe' from the Handy Book of Sweater Patterns, but then do a bunch of math and figuring to determine how to adjust things to make a shorter sleeve. Not insurmountable, just some thought. And dreaded math. I'm sure I'll get to work on this quite a bit at Pennsic. I've kind of lost heart for the socks at the moment, though I'm sure I'll get back to them.

The Snowdrop shawl is on a break, as well, and I'm nervous now about getting back to that - it was going so well, but it's been so long since I worked on it - I just kind of assume I blew my window of opportunity, and when I go back to it, it'll be a disaster. I still remember what trouble I had with Triangles.

Anyway - time to make the donuts. Or at least, the lentil and sausage stew - I want to get that in the crock pot this morning, both for dinner tonight, and for packaging up and freezing for part of my Pennsic food.

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