Crazy Lanea

G is for Gardening

G is for gardening. 

I come from a long line of people who like to play in the dirt.  I feel like I never get enough time in the garden, between my crazy commute and my copious hobbies.  But when I do get down into the mud, I love it. 

I love blooms, and berries, and herbs, and vegetables as much as any gardener does.  But I plant and tend for the love the growth itself, and of transition.    Watching  a favorite perennial emerge from the soil is a gift every single time.   Or finding a sport that traveled from a neighbor's garden or across the yard. 

I love taking part in this annual bargain with my plants--I offer them shelter and care, and they return year in and year out, breaking through the soil to fill whatever niche in our landscape.  I've had this Cranesbill since I was 18, and have moved transplant after transplant from one home to another since I first planted it. 

I love the decline and the deliquesce as well--gathering the fallen leaves and composting them, and harvesting compost wriggling with earthworms.  I'm a dyed in the wool tree-hugging, dirt-worshiper. 

Telegram

Gas Company  STOP

Understand your work is vital  STOP

Be a bit more ginger while digging STOP

Some friends violently removed and likely killed STOP

Warning to home's owners about location of digging would be appreciated STOP

Wish to remain in our current homes STOP

Signed Buddleia, Holly, and Daffodils  STOP

 

D is for Daffodils

D is for daffodil

I'm cheating a bit--these photos are from last year's garden.  I've been waiting for this year's to bloom, but they're just not going to be ready in time.

I love daffodils because I love Wales, and mythology, and spring.  It is that simple. 

These plain old big yellow daffodils are iconic, and lovely, and necessary.  I've been naturalizing them for years, often in other people's land.  Some people paint graffiti on things--I plant flowers and saplings about the neighborhood as a very Civil form of disobedience. 

I've become increasingly enamored with cultivars like these over the last few years.  It started as a need to just extend daffodil season a bit, and now I'm unabashedly flirting with accepting those pale petals for their own beauty. 

Valentine

I can't drive on Valentine's Day.  I've done it six times, and three of those times I've been in very bad car accidents.  I'm not a particularly superstitious person, but I can do basic math and those are horrible odds.  So I arranged to take today off.  I also arranged to have PT and my doctor-mandated allergy test Wednesday afternoon, thinking I could use today to recover from both--limping plus angry needle-marks all over one's arms do not a good impression make, after all.  I woke up yesterday to learn that the ice storm we had the night before had frozen my car doors shut, so I ended up calling in sick rather than adding terrible ice-removal tasks to my extra-crappy commute and half day at work.  A morning of leisure to prep for my four hours of allergy tests and PT that afternoon seemed a good option.  Cue accidental mid-week break, complete with power outages, errands, bad roads, scratch and intradermal tests, and stability tests (though only for my leg--no one looked into my mental state). 

Lo and behold, my immune system decided to switch it up on me.  When I was tested for allergies a few years ago, I tested positive for allergies to dust mites and dogs.  Yesterday, I learned I was no longer allergic to dogs, but was suddenly allergic to cats.  Now, I know dogs can be very very smart, and I'm sure Kayo and Scott have both used some amount of their mental prowess to entirely win me over to the dog side.  But such a drastic shift of allergies?  What the hell would cause that?  Are Yarrow and Speedwell really so different from Scath that their dander is poison to me when his wasn't?  I'm so confused.

Apart from the running around, I've spent the last couple of days on a number of worthwhile projects.  Priority one: trying to help out our young pin oak, which was having a bad time with the ice.  Pin oaks hold their leaves through the winter, so suffer more than most deciduous trees in such  storms.

 

The whole tree was bent pretty dramatically towards the ground Wednesday morning, so I did some judicious ice-removal, while simultaneously convincing neighbors of my continuing insanity.  Thankfully the ice has melted and this young tree is standing up mostly straight again. 

Priority two: prove I still knit.

This is the lace cardigan I'm making for the sake of a  beer label.   I asked Aes and Phalen to brew some heather ale, and they agreed, while encouraging me to perhaps grow hops and heather and also do a label shoot for them.  So I have to come up with a lovely outfit that seems to evoke heather, and maybe Scotland, and the like.  So, of course, greens and purples and knitted lace.  I need to speed up, I guess, since it's not that long until heather season.  Though, being lace, the sweater is further along than it looks.  I'm using a free pattern from Elann, though I'm not using the second lace pattern for the sleeves, and I am going to make it longer than the original.  It's worked from the top down with raglan shaping, so the alterations should be dead easy.

And Hedgerow Mitts:

 

( Ignore the bump over my wrist there--my friend Tara gave me a beautiful bracelet, and I can't bring myself to take it off right now.)   I started off a second pair of Hedgerow socks in some lovely Fearless Fibers sockyarn I had on hand. But then thought it was silly to make another pair so similar to my first, noticed that I was going to have too few stitches, and accidentally designed some mitts.  It may be a special kind of laziness that makes a knitter design a new garment rather than start over upon realizing things aren't working out.  The first mitt is finished, and the second one is humming along.  I really like how this stitch patterns feels as mitts--it is very stretchy, and reminds me of those arthritis-therapy gloves turned pretty.

Priority three: shop for books and eat great food with my Mom. Nuff said.

Priority four: cut big pieces of fabric into smaller pieces of fabric.  I'm trying to do more with red, because the red-loving people need bags too. 

Priority five: Order flooring!  Tonight, we buy bamboo.  Lots and lots of bamboo.  I know some of you gals go for jewelry, flowers, and candy--and I certainly like all of those things--but this is the best V-Day plan ever.   We get to replace carpets that literally make me sick with environmentally-sound bamboo floors, thus increasing the value of the house and making dancing at home easier, while employing a dear friend to do the work, all the while financing the project with the settlement money from that terrible car accident Scott was in a few winters ago.  It's like a home-improvement hat trick. 

Please remind me I said that when we have to pack up everything we own so that the flooring can be installed, ok?

Dear Knitting,

I've been meaning to write.  I know you don't want to hear any excuses, and I'm sure you've heard the rumors about me and sewing, and me and spinning, and me and the kitchen.  Well, none of them are true.  I may have picked up a few needles with eyes lately, but they're not really much of a temptation these days.

But things have changed between us, and we both know it.  I'm not leaving you--I just need a bit of freedom.  Freedom to leave the couch, and see people who, well, who don't knit.  Or don't just knit.  I'm not turning my back on you.  I promise!  I'm just trying to reconnect with some old friends who were feeling a bit neglected.  Namely, soil, and flowers, and vegetables, and some people. 

All that talk about the Maryland Sheep and Wool festival was true, you know.  I did go.  I just focused on people and music and the great outdoors rather than, well, you.  I'm sorry.  I did hang out with both Rowans, boy and girl (knitter), and with Brooke (she knits) and Mary (she makes us knit), and the Two Sock Knitters, and Juno, and Jayme, Janet, Jinann, Carol (all knittets and most spinners)--heck, all sorts of knitters were there.  And look what Mary made:

It's not the best of pictures, but that's the top of an ironwood walking stick.  It was hard for me to photograph, because it's about seven feet tall.  And it's essentially the predecessor to the fallow-deer antler distaff she's making us.  It looks like she'll use beech.  Isn't that great?

And remember that green bag we were working on?  It's finished, and at Tuatha.  I needle-felted some fiddle-head inspired designs on it.  I know they're hard to see there, but the fuzz isn't as powerful at obscuring the detail in real life.

 

But before Maryland Sheep and Wool, I really started focusing on plants.  It happens, you know.  Don't worry.  I'll grow some flax.  For now, though, I want you to meet some of my other friends.

This is sandwort, and blue-eyed grass

And their neighbors, bachelor buttons

And cransebill

And clematis

Round back, there's Golden Star (she's a native).

And more clematis

And iris

Verbascum

and lilac.

I know they all look strong and well, but some parts of the garden need serious help.  While you and the festival got all of my attention last summer, the Egyptian walking onions and rosemary and strawberries were attacked, see:

They need me.  But I promise to come back once it gets hot.  Knowing Virginia, that could be next week.  I'll tell you all about it while we work on the blanket, ok?  Ok.