May 25, 2018 - my so-called [knitting] life

This morning I went out to check the nest and discovered the front door wreath nest has two eggs! They are so tiny in the nest. I wonder if we will have more, one new one each day? I checked on Tuesday and there were no eggs. I thought maybe the nest had been abandoned. I haven’t seen the bird, but we do have the AC on so the front door is always shut. I left it open today to see if I can catch a random glance of the bird. The bird building the nest was a House Finch and I assume these eggs are the same.

I love the nest has long lengths of grass with the seed heads on them

In the House Finch nest in the hanging flower basket, we still have eggs, no baby bird yet. Tuesday when I checked the nest there were only four eggs and today there are five! Very exciting!

The Sparrows have all hatched and are keeping their parents very busy providing food. There’s lots of chirping and activity in that hanging flower basket. I’ll also mention here there is lots of movement on the new birdhouses in the backyard. The momma bird is constantly going in and out. I assume feeding babies. I can’t see inside the houses as the doors are very small and its dark inside.

I’m taking today off from yard work and spending the day knitting. I started the Chevron Shenanigans by Stephen West last Sunday. I’m just about to start Wedge #6 which introduces the second color. I’m planning to do at least this entire wedge section today.

This week I also put in some quality time with my Hermione’s Every Day socks. I realized my change in the way the second sock was striping was because my gauge was off. With the second sock being knit at a looser gauge, so I frogged that and started over.

It will be much better if both socks end up the same size. I don’t mind starting over. I really like to knit and this way I get a finished project I’m happy with. I also want to mention the Biggest difference between a good knitter and an excellent knitter is not that the excellent knitter doesn’t make mistakes. But rather they know how to, and do, fix their mistakes.

I spend most of my knit teaching time helping knitters discover what the mistake was and how to fix it. To me it is so important to fix those mistakes. In my knit projects I find if I don’t fix the mistake, all I ever see is the mistake, and that makes me crazy.

I’m off to meet with a second cup of coffee and my knitting!

Happy knitting. Finally!

I wouldn’t say I love to garden. But I do love to have beautiful gardens. My mom is a gardener for the love of gardening. I’ve learned a lot from her. She has always had beautiful gardens. Flower gardens, vegetable gardens even just beautiful grass. I want those things, too. I’m not afraid to do the work, the removal of overgrown gardens is part of that. When we bought this house the areas around the front and back were mostly shrubs that maybe had been here since the house was built. The first thing we did was remove all these shrubs. Max and Tim spent a week just doing that!

Here’s how it looked when we came to see the house the first time

This is after we moved in and had the house painted, removed the shrubs but hadn’t yet landscaped.

This is how it looks now, just waiting for flowers to get big!

We prepared the earth with compost. We installed gutters to protect the gardens from washing away in the rains. As part of the control water during the rains we also created “dry streams” which is something that was required for all property in the city limits in Las Cruces, NM. And it really works great to direct rain where you want it to go.

We then planted lots of plants. Many are annuals since we have so much ground to cover. We have Geraniums, Snapdragons, Marigolds, Coleus, and Petunias. We also planted some perennials, Lavender, Day-lilies, Roses, Dragons Blood, Pachysandras, Hostas and several other varieties. It’ll be awhile before they fill in but its looking good. I’m pretty happy with our progress.

In addition to compost and plants we’ve spread 23 yards of wood chips! 23 yards!!! we have several large areas we’ve made into flower beds and added wood chips to areas under our large trees, since no grass seems to be able to grow with the shade, intending these areas to be shade gardens instead.

This is in the backyard and what you see most through our living room windows

Now we have full flowers gardens the length of the front and back of our house. We’ve planted so many things. Hopefully they all do well. We have to contend with deer and rabbits. And obviously birds. So all plant choices need to consider these things.

I think it s starting to look pretty dang good. If I do say so myself. My mom planted all the pots when she was here last. They are filling in really nicely. And I think they make the front door seem to pull forward from the house, I hope that makes sense. It’s very welcoming and I look forward to having many guests.

We’re still working on the backyard. Since we’ve now purchased a riding lawnmower and a weed whacker the grass is looking really good. Along with the purchase of the mower we also purchased a shed in which we can store it. We couldn’t find a riding lawnmower rated for an acre or more that would fit in our existing shed doors. as a result we’ve renamed the shed to the Cottage. This way when you say “It’s in the shed.” it’s clear where the “thing” is.

Part of our yard work this week was getting wood and putting it in our yard, stored for the winter. A man, Roy, that Chuck works with was generous and gave us about a cord of wood, Pecan and White Oak. Another man he works with, Gary, offered his trailer to move it here. Tim and I emptied the trailer onto a simply made Wood Rack. He loaded the wheel barrow and moved it to the pile, I unloaded it onto the rack. This worked really well and we had it done in just a few hours. I researched some ideas on pInterest and found this one. It was easy and seems to be perfect. We had some overflow and put that on a pallet that the lawnmower was on when it was delivered. Now we need a could Ax and a hatchet.