Idyllic Chick

Knitted heart! Squeee!
http://www.craftster.org/forum/index.php?topic=173090.0

Labels: Knitta please

Tee! There's a great Simpsons movie display at the theatre.

When we last met our hero she was bravely fighting off the blackberry bushes from hell in hopes of reviving the strip of floral death that runs along the driveway entry to her home. She successfully transformed the area from being overrun with sticks and twigs and the hated blackberries and weed to this:


No, it's not pretty yet, but these things take time, patience, and hard work, My Sweeties. The time and the patience are particularly tough for me. I want to run out and buy all of the flowers that I see and plant them in the ground! But then they die. So sad.

Along the preparatory lines, today I began to kill off the grass and weeds that reside in my future Strip of Bounty. I used the newspaper method because 1) I'm cheap and 2) I'm lazy. The newspapers were free from a friend who was saving them to recycle, and I didn't have to dig up any of the weeds and grass other than the larger pests that I took care of a couple of weeks ago.

First I marked the area that I want as my flower bed. I laid down several layers of newspaper in the bed area and wet it down well. I would lay a few feet of paper, wet it down, lay a few more feet of paper, wet all of it down again, and continued until I ran out of newspaper. Lay, rinse, repeat. Then I put dead leaves and some year old grass clippings on top of the newspaper. This serves a couple of purposes: It holds down the newspaper so that it doesn't fly away when it dries out, and it will compost with the newspaper to provide a good base for the bed. I wet all of that down really well too. All this water helps compact everything to keep it from flying away, and gives the paper and old plant bits a head start on breaking down into a nice compost.

If you plan to plant directly into the ground, you can go ahead and put down your mulch in this step instead of leaves and such. When you plant, just brush the mulch out of the area where your plant goes, dig into the dirt, and replace the mulch around the plant after you've planted. I prefer the look of beds that are mounded up, so in a couple of weeks I'll cover all of this with fill dirt mixed with Black Cow and plant into that.

I really liked how well the grass clippings worked over the newspaper! So much that I plan on push mowing portions of the lawn this summer in order to acquire more grass clippings to use for this purpose next year. Our push mower has a grass catcher, you see, but our riding mower does not.


And here are pictures of the fruits of today's labor. No, not quite gorgeous yet, but I'm getting there slowly and surely. I ran out of paper before I got all of the inside portion of the fence layered. That's ok because I'll be working around in the same direction as I put in plants, so I won't get back there for a couple of months. Anyhoo, I'm off to research what kinds of pretty flowers I'll soon be installing!

Labels: Gardening

Q: How much does my husband love me?

A: Very, very much!

Labels: Yummy in my Tummy

I just got a cool new Blackjack phone and I'm blogging from it right now. It has a much nicer camera, yes?

Labels: Geeky grrrl

It's nice to have an evening with nothing planned. Nothing on the to-do list, even, except clean the cat boxes. I'll do some reading, and some phone shopping, and some knitting, and will be perfectly happy.

Shout out to the Mistress of Snark on her vacation. I hope you have a wonderfully relaxing time, Sweetie! I had to erase your last drunken message because it expired, so feel free to leave another!

Since my dogs keep my cats out of my office, I no longer have a need for this Kitty Keyboard cover, but I think several of my friends could put it to good use!

Labels: Linkie Dinkie

I spent a few hours in the yard today, clearing out the Entry Space of Death in preparation of the installation of a new flower bed. Most of the tough work was clearing out the insipid blackberry bushes without totally trashing the yellow lantana (Wow. Great little Florida plant encyclopedia I found when looking for that link!) that re-emerged this spring. Don't get me wrong, I love fresh blackberries. They are sweet and juicy and just the right amount of sour to make my mouth water when I think about them. But have they ever shown up in your yard? And you were excited about that, yes? Maybe when you bought your property a year ago you even considered the existence of the blackberry bushes a selling point. Fresh blackberry cobbler every spring! Delicious! Then once you settled in a bit, started digging around in the yard to make room for some more pretty, native, flowering plants, an old dried up blackberry vine hiding away beneath your lantana bit you. Bit you hard. And you bit back, oh yes you did. After donning your heavy duty gardening gloves you ripped that prickling, invasive hunk of fauna right up from it's roots. Away with it! Away! And so went about your business. Until you ran into another blackberry vine. Then another. And then you started seeing the little bastard's baby runners popping up all over. So you went after them with the axe! Kill! Kill!

Ahem. So, yes. Ripped out some blackberry bushes today. Ahem.
And the strip of death is more like the strip-of-pretty-much-nothing-but-a-couple-of-Lantana now. Nice. Very nice. I'll add some plumbago someday soon and who knows what else.

I also planted ten one-gallon containers of perennial peanut in the very front yard along the dirt road. I didn't take the existing grass up because I want to see if the p. peanut will choke it out. If this test batch goes well, C&I will consider filling that entire front area with the stuff. If not, well, who knows. Without irrigation our grass just sucks. In the places that we even have grass. Cross your fingers for us that we can find a decent alternative ground covering for most of our lawn!

Labels: Gardening

I'm feeling very... anxious, I guess, tonight. Dunno why. It might be because I have a pretty lengthy list of things to do which I totally began to ignore as soon as C said, 'Want to go out for Sonny's tonight?' On that note, perhaps the weird feeling in my stomach is indigestion, not apprehension.

Labels: Yummy in my Tummy

My cousin* brought 'Pineapple Casserole' to our family's annual Mother's Day gathering this year. "Pineapple casserole?' I queried. "What's in it?" I crossed my fingers in hope as she uttered the sweet spell of those magic words, "This sounds really weird, but I swear it's delicious..."

My sistahs, if you are true believers you know what she said next. "It's pineapple, and Ritz crackers..." Then I joined her as we said in unison, "A stick of butter, a handful of sugar, and cheddar cheese!" I nearly cried, People, and I am not exaggerating when I say that. I wept for my fortune in having a woman this cool as a voluntary member of my twisted little family, and I wept for the leftovers that are reheating in my toaster oven as I write this.

I raise a drink to the SPQs in my life!

*Not my actual cousin. My cousin's wife. But we all love her enough to count her as bonefide family!

Labels: Travel, Yummy in my Tummy

We're close to home! We've been lucky and hit no road closures on I-95 nor I-10. I can't wait to see my puppies!

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Labels: Travel

Chrissi can you see this?!

Labels: Travel

Heading the other direction now. Just drove through a mountain and I don't think we're in WV anymore.

Labels: Travel

One week, one pair. Woo hoo!

Labels: Knitta please

Jealous? :->

Labels: Knitta please, Travel

In Grantsville, MD, just west of Cumberland, is the Hilltop Fruit Market. Half of the store is stocked with fresh fruits and vegetables. The entire other half of the store is full of penny candy. Well, $3.19 per pound candy. It's the most amazing sight to see it all lined up in a row. We got things we'd never heard of before such as Hershey's dark chocolate stuffed with truffle filling. I guess in won't be dieting again for a few weeks!

Labels: Travel

Almost home! *Wonderful* yarn store and now we're on our way to the penny candy store.

Labels: Travel

And a few rows into the second sock.

Labels: Knitta please, Travel

Yes, those are Lantern Moons, not Brittneys. Thanks Lorena. You can read labels much better than I can! But I'll still give Brittneys the title of the Porsche of needles, because these LMs are like a fucking Bentley. Smooth and fast and beautiful and luxurious. I bought them because using only four needles on the Widdershins heel was pretty tight. I wanted to work the next sock with five needles so I splurged in order to try wood. I'm so glad I did! I love these needles and I'll set them on fire before I allow anyone to steal them! Minemineallmine! They've got me rocking on these socks. I just finished the heel on the second one. Looks like nothing but sock knitting for me on this vacation. Maybe I'll try to work on the Hot Tamale skirt while at my parents' this weekend and save the rest of the sock for mobile knitting on the car trip home.

Labels: Travel

Lunch and the second sock. Cool Irish pub, but they think that a snakebite is made with Guiness and Yuengling. Weirdos.

Labels: Knitta please, Travel, Yummy in my Tummy

Collinette Jitterbug and the Porche of needles: my first set of Brittneys

Labels: Knitta please

Outside DC. Driving. No knitting.

Labels: Travel

Just passed the VA state line. Only a few inches left to go on Katie's sock.

Labels: Knitta please, Travel

The sushi is not mine. The heel is. Well, it's mine until I give it to Katie.

Labels: Knitta please, Travel, Yummy in my Tummy

Ready to turn the heel! Yes, there is Bailey's in that coffee. Vacation. Duh. :-D

Labels: Boozing it up, Knitta please, Travel, Yummy in my Tummy

At least the mis-spelling is with the spirit of the word.

Labels: Travel

I forgot to take my phone with me to the wedding last night so you get no pictures. But here are items of note:
-The train of the bride's dress was so long (How long was it?!) when the maid of honor was adjusting it she looked like she was flapping a white sheet while making up a bed.
-Considering the bride is the daughter of the Commissioner of Agriculture and the groom is a cop, that was probably the most 'secure' wedding since the Kennedy's.
-When Mary asked me if Chris and I polka I replied, 'No, but we've been listening to a lot of Weird Al Yankovic lately.'

Labels: Travel

Oh *I'm* not driving. Chris is driving. I'm riding. And knitting! I forgot to bring the instructions for the Widdershins heel (It's really a magical heel. No picking up stitches at all! I recommend that you go knit one right away.) so I used Chris' phone to find it on Knitty.com and emailed it to my phone. I love technology!

Labels: Knitta please, Travel

On the way to Tallahassee. The toe of the first sock for Katie is done. Trekking XXL in color 149. Listening to 1984 (the audiobook, not the Van Halen album) and enjoying the ride.

Labels: Knitta please, Travel