Hi, folks!
The sky in the skylight was blue with a little gold-tinged cloud. Long golden shafts of light are falling through the trees, lighting up the morning mist. Stellar jays are on the railings and the feeder.
A flutter of sparrows. looking like grey brown leaves in a breeze. are all around the feeder and flying back and forth from the alder.
I spent a while yesterday morning working on newsletter files, then my eye kept getting caught by Sam as he worked on harvesting roses. He has more to do today because when he got around to the back he was having so much trouble with the blackberries that are growing through the roses that he worked on getting rid of those instead. He had a freely bleeding slash across one wrist and I caught a glimpse of him fighting a blackberry vine trying to wrap around his head.
I got a nap, late in the morning, and then went out to the garden. I spent several hours, first weeding up into the Spanish lavender (which needs to be tied up to itself), then the lavender and then up to the edge of the sweetgrass bed, on into the flax (the creeping jenny survived!) and then around to the other side of the sweetgrass bed, clearing first the edge of the path and then the first 6 inches or so of the bed, pulling out weeds and trimming the sweetgrass for making braids….which has to happen today! It’s finicky, fiddly work to separate grass from grass, but it needs to be done. It’s either that or dig up the whole thing and say, “Forget it!” and I’m not willing to do that since I have no other plants to re-start it.
There’s a pair of evening grosbeaks on the feeder, now. Dew is thick out there, splashing from the edges of the porch roof as the sun is hitting it.
Nexes and I had quite a bit of help from Kyle. He’s fun to listen to and he ran back and forth, dumping weeding buckets and fetching tools.
Nexes worked by the chamomile at first, de-grassing it and then weeding around the sage. Something happened with that plant. It was perfectly healthy up until this spring and then it started looking puny and now large sections of it are dead. It could be that it and the chamomile are arguing, since they’re really close, but we’ve been explaining to both that there’s plenty of room to grow into without expanding into each other. Part of the sage may have gotten the message since a long branch has headed away toward the porch, but it may just be looking for company, since there are two more sage plants in that direction.
Now the *underside* of the porch roof is dripping! The feeder is deserted for the moment and the sun hitting the window is highlighting the dust on the window and making it hard to see out.
The “accidental harvest”, (like “by-catch” in fishing?) is inevitable when you’re still doing weeding at this level at this time of year. We have a fair amount of chamomile, a little sage, and quite a bit of sweetgrass, not even counting the stuff that I deliberately trimmed, that will have to get processed today along with the roses that Sam got.
Now there’s a sparrow on the feeder. The finches showed up later yesterday, after the newsletter had gone out. I think the one with the red crest is not a house finch, after all, but a Cassin’s Finch, but I’m going to have to eyeball a few more pictures to be sure.
Nexes and Kyle then got some things into the ground as I kept on with the sweetgrass. They planted the lemon verbena and the lungwort, also transplanting the lungwort that the St. John’s Wort in the other yard was eating. We tried to get the curly willow in, but it was way overgrown in that area, so that got put off until today.
Sam ended up working across the back fence, uncovering the huckleberry and salmonberry bushes, the witch hazel and what I think is either the rowan or elderberry (dunno which survived. I gotta go look….) He’s going to go through there today and see what he can do with a sickle since the grass between the berry bushes and the blackberries on the slope is nearly head-high. Once that’s done we can get to the corner and then the curly willow can be planted. We’ll have to surround it with some kind of mulch to keep the grass down. The dinosaur plant is supposed to go in above the pond, too, and *that’s* going to have to be mulched….
After I came in, I got a bath, then got some dinner started while Sam got a shower and then they had Winemaking Workshop while I got some work done on the inventory file. After that we ate and then I crawled into bed. Nexes made blueberry muffins late in the evening and I just ate one, and it’s delicious!
Today’s tasks are first, to get the results of the harvesting processed, then to get some pictures of the new stock (the baskets and the amulet kits and maybe more of the pottery). I’ll be at the shop for at least the early afternoon and then I’ll be at the house for Herbs Outdoors at 5pm. We may get some lavender wands done today.
It’s clouded up at 8:15….go figure. Completely clear, even 20 minutes ago, but now? It’ll burn off after a while, but gee!
Sam’s up and making coffee and the sun is coming back. Gotta get on with the day!
The shop is closed on Wednesdays, but I’m going to be there for a while mid-day. Summer hours – Thursday through Monday, 10am-6pm! If we’re supposed to be closed, but it looks like we’re there, try the door. If it’s open, the shop’s open!
Love & Light,
Anja
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Spoonflower Fabrics - http://www.spoonflower.com/profiles/coastalanja The newest designs are in the and Bugs ‘n Slugs Collection. We have designs for sale in the Garden Collection and Mushroom Collection and the Pagan Collection is coming soon.
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