Like a jigsaw puzzle

I made a small patio!

We bought the concrete stepping stones a while ago with the intention of making a small patio under a bench we have in the backyard. Like many projects, we had good intentions but other stuff stood in the way, like  weeding under the bench just so that we could get to the point of being able to put down the stones. Here's what the area looked like before we hired three guys to save us from the weeds:

I'd like to get a few more of the concrete stepping stones and fill in some more area in the front of the patio but I'm too pooped to go out to the home improvement store to get more. It's a beautiful day today and just the right temperature but it was still hard work to make the area level and lay down the stones. I took frequent breaks and enjoyed the pretty blossoms in the yard.

The bees like the cherry blossoms too

The Wisteria is blooming and smells wonderful

I even let two of the cats out to have a romp. Felix loves to roll in the dirt.

I can tell I will be sore tomorrow from the digging and raking and lifting. I'm already feeling it, so I think I will finally try out that new air-jet tub we put in and have a soak.

Blackberry Jam

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Birds and bees

This morning I fed the cats, as usual. Then I saw the hummingbird feeder was empty so I mixed up some nectar and refilled it - after hosing it down to get rid of the ants. I had neglected to keep water in the ant moat and a "thousand" ants were having a party. Then I saw the pond fish were all staring at me waiting for their meal...well it seemed like it at least, so I tossed in a handful of fish food and they gulped it up. I tend to forget about the fish because they get a lot of natural food from the pond. I had bought about 10 inexpensive feeder fish a year or so ago and thought they'd all died because we never saw them. Then last spring we suddenly saw fish in the pond. Either someone snuck in and restocked it or seven of the feeder fish hid out under the waterfall for a year. While I was standing on the patio watching the fish eat their breakfast, a hummer hovered about 2 feet from my face. I was happy to see him but a bit startled - the blur of his wings and the long, pointy beak were a little too close! I guess he wanted to drink from the feeder and I was in his way. We've had a large number of hummingbirds in our yard this year. We have lots of flowers for them to feed off of so I don't normally keep the feeder full. However last month I filled it with the leftover sugar syrup from canning peaches and since then it seems we've been the rest stop on the hummingbird migration highway.

The plants and pond in our yard attract lots of birds and bees. We've seen some HUGE carpenter bees that could pass for small hummingbirds! If there were more room in the yard, we'd probably have bee hives and maybe chickens. I'd like a goat too. And maybe rabbits. That would be fun. A lot of work though.

Good/Bad

Good: I'm almost done with my French skirt. It's from a pattern out of the sewing magazine Diana Couture, which is in French, and the fabric is from Paris (the one on the far left in the below photo). I'm really liking the way the skirt is turning out too. I started it two years ago, right after I bought the fabric, but when summer turned to fall I put the skirt aside because it was a summer skirt. But by the next summer, the tiered-skirt style was sort of "out" and I didn't feel like finishing it. But this year I decided to complete it because I didn't want to waste the fabric and also because I've seen a few tiered skirts in the RTW ads, so it hasn't completely gone out of style.

Bad: The "house" phone is on the fritz. The display on the phone says "line in use" and there's no dial tone, only a loud, static-y electronic noise. It's affecting the DSL (slow or no internet access) and when I turned on the DISH TV there was a notice warning that we'd be charged for not being connected to a phone line or broadband. Great. We had some issues with the inside wiring, which we thought we'd cleared up but either we didn't fix it, something else is wrong, or the problem is external to the house. So no internet, which means more time for sewing, right?

Bad: I'm still not over my killer cold. It's been 2 weeks and I'm still having sinus problems.

Good: I'm feeling better than I did a week ago!

Good: The garden is producing lots of fruits and veggies. There are hummingbirds flitting around, lots of little tiny yellow birds (Lesser Goldfinch, I think) attracted to the plants that have gone to seed, and there's a Black Phoebe who seems to have chosen this as her (or his?) territory. I would too - lots of plants and a pond with moving water in it. It's a nice environment that is very much alive.

Bad: I haven't been able to keep up with the summer harvest and haven't been feeling up to cooking anything. At least our compost...and the squirrels are being fed. I do hope it's squirrels and not rats. Someone devoured all of the little yellow squashes and also sampled some cucumber and they're also nibbling on the nectarines and white peaches. I moved the squash vines up onto a trellis in hopes that will keep the developing squash out of reach. Nothing I can do about the fruit I guess.

Good: The nectarines are delicious and haven't all been sampled by the wildlife so I've been able to enjoy a few.

Good: Knitting meetup tonight! I'm going to work on my Jaywalker socks. I have some sweater finishing to do but that's too tedious for a meetup.

Bad: I ran out of yarn making a baby sweater that was supposed to only take one skein. Dilemma - do I buy more yarn to finish the collar and cuffs (the yarn is discontinued so I'll have to find something to compliment it) or do I rip it and do something else with the yarn. I don't really want to add more yarn to my stash!

Good: Overall, life it pretty great and I can't complain...even about the so-called "bad" things. But I really would like to get over this stinkin' cold!

Been working on...

I finished one of two flannel baby blankets I'm making for my husband's co-worker. I completed the decorative stitching on the first one, so it's done. The second one still needs the decorative stitching. I used a variegated thread to stitch the stars, which is why it looks dark and light.

I blocked my Rowan "Bonita" sweater - finally!! Next step is to seam the shoulders and then pick up stitches and knit the neck edge.

I worked more on my Rowan "Capri" sweater. The yarn is Rowan Calmer (the one called for) and it's really coming along nicely I think. Very summery. And yes, I do seem to like Rowan patterns (and yarn), don't I?

I made chocolate covered cherries using the delicious Bing cherries from our tree and Valrhona 71% dark bittersweet chocolate. I used a cherry pitter to pit the cherries but found it impossible to leave the stems on and pit them, so I used a toothpick to hold the cherry while I coated it. I melted the chocolate in the microwave in a Pyrex measuring cup. One 100 gram (3.5 oz) bar of Valrhona coated about 2 dozen cherries. I've refrigerated half and then froze the other half to try to preserve them as long as possible. Yes, of course I could just eat them all!

I love having a garden. For the last few weeks I've been able to go out in the morning and pick fresh blackberries, raspberries, strawberries, and blueberries for my breakfast yogurt. The blackberries are just about finished now but the blueberries are still ripening. Last night for dinner I went out into the garden and picked some lettuce and made up a nice vinaigrette dressing and added a sweet pepper (not from our garden...yet) to make a yummy and fresh salad.

20 lbs

We picked over 20 pounds of cherries from our tree (some never made it into this trug). This is by far the most we've ever harvested. This is an old tree, perhaps an original orchard tree from before the houses were built in 1967. But wow, this was a bumper year for cherries.

We need a taller ladder. These are the ones we couldn't reach.

And if cherries aren't enough, here's a mouthwatering bowl of cherries with black raspberries and strawberries...also from our garden.