Things I Like

I've been noticing some of the little things I like around my house, and I thought I'd share them with you.

Christmas cactus. Well, more like a Thanksgiving cactus. No, a between Thanksgiving and Christmas cactus.

A metal rabbit I found in Clemson, at (of course) The White Rabbit. I always think of this guy as a toad though.

Two things here: the yo-yo tree and my rolling pins. Oh, and there's the cactus peeking out to the left.

Bench I found in Ohio - love the color.

Painting from my aunt's antique barn. Don't laugh - I like it!

Orange Tree Bowls by Hall China - another gift from my aunt's antique barn.

Stone bird sitting in the breakfast room. I also love the umbrella clothesline in the backyard behind the bird.

Items in my NEW etsy store. Go check them out!

Harvest Time

While many of my blogging friends north have already put their garden beds to sleep for the summer, I'm just now cleaning mine up. I was still getting some tomatoes, but the plants themselves were very overgrown. The resulting tomatoes were on the small side, and by the time I remembered to get out there, they were usually on the ground, where the insects had made short work of them. Ugh, gross.So I just pulled those suckers out of the ground and threw them in the woods.

I started saving seeds last year, and I had an overwhelming crop of marigolds and basil from the previous years seeds. The marigold blooms I saved and froze for fiber dyeing, but I had way too much basil, and I still do! I've been saving the marigold seeds all summer long for next year, and although I have harvested some basil seeds, I'll probably just wait 'til they freeze, then harvest them. Marigold seeds and the last of my marigolds. Sorry for the sucky pictures - they pretty much all turned out like this!

My Thai basil (Queen of Siam) and the seeds look like. The Thai basil is really different from regular basil, but I do grow both.

The above interesting plant was sent to me in the form of seeds as a bonus when I ordered some nicotiana seeds (which I've NEVER been able to grow!) The seller labeled them as Datura Inoxia, Money Plant. What I remember as a Money Plant from growing up had seeds that looked like this, which we used as coins. You know, make believe coins. I'm not cultivating funny money or anything!

Turns out what I was growing was indeed Datura Innoxia, or Datura Inoxia, also know as Jimson weed. But definitely not Lunari annua, or money plant, seeds pictured above. Well, damn!

My parsley is making a comeback from the hungry little caterpillars and the hot weather, but so far the cilantro hasn't shown up again.

This is the one four o'clock plant I have. My sister started it for me, and it finally decided to grow. I think it was afraid, because when I was little I used to pick the seeds and pretend they were pepper. I never ate them, just used them when we played house outside. You know, a delectable stew of leaves, acorns and 4 o'clock seeds!

They kinda look like little hand grenades. What a great accessory for GI Joe dolls. Excuse me, GI Joe action figures.
Last, but not least, are my moonflowers. These are the seed pods, which aren't dried out yet. The flowers look like this:

If you go to this link, you'll see how one woman (I assume it's a woman!) grew her moonflowers from seed.

For those of you who aren't asleep yet, thanks for stopping by to spend some time in my autumn garden. With any luck I'll soon be able to show you the Swiss Chard, lettuce, mesclun and squash I planted!

Multnomah

Okay, okay, so you're tired of reading about Ohio - I get it!!

I wanted to wait 'til I got some "action" shots of Multnomah, but no one wanted to volunteer to pose for me. All you're gonna get is the blocking shots on one of the guest room beds, along with some of my old, ratty beach towels.

The yarn is some Corriedale X roving I bought from Cooper Moose, which I hate to admit was a bit overspun, so it's not super soft. That would be my fault, for those of you who aren't familiar with the process. I then dyed the resulting yarn a beautiful aqua color, which I didn't feel was conducive to the shawl, so I overdyed. The second time I chose an emerald green with some black to try to darken it up. I like the handspun look of it. It's not perfectly spun, and the imperfections just add to its charm, right?

Back to Ohio

Okay, I wasn't done telling you about Ohio, but I wasn't staying a minute over at work to keep writing the entry. Wow, that sounds really bad, doesn't it? Don't tell my boss.
The weather was windy and cloudy and wonderful! The flags were whipping around like crazy, and there were whitecaps on the lake.

I don't have any pictures of us at the cottage, laying under the vanity in the master bedroom, trying to stem the flow of water from a broken pipe. Did I mention it was after midnight when it happened? If I did have pictures, and tried to post them, I would no long be living. If you think your female relatives are crazy about not getting their pictures taken, you should meet mine. I'm lucky they haven't thrown me and my camera into the lake yet.

This is my niece, who only made the trip from Jacksonville, Florida to get a cherry dip cone. You just can't find cherry dip in most places in the south. The child went as far as to call around when she was living in Savannah, and found that the closest cherry dip DQ was in Beaufort, SC. That's a craving with a capital C. She was most happy to have this cone!

These are the flowers in the window box at the cottage. I always knew the Lake Erie water was dangerous - look at the size of those things!! They're freaking mutants!! And this is in October - I can't even get my flowers to grow that big in South Georgia. Something is very wrong here.

These are the scary steps down to the beach in back of the cottage. I can remember steps like these when we were kids, and my aunt would rent a cottage at the lake in the summer. As frightening as they were back then, they're a hell of a lot more scary now. Especially the thought of climbing back up them!Please continue to humor me with this post. I LOVE this picture of the lake! It was a wonderful fall day, and the sun and clouds playing on the water was beautiful!On the way back home we drove through Youngstown, and past the steel mills, where both of our grandfathers worked, back in the day. Yes, it's as depressing as it looks - always has been.Wrapping things up, we drove past our dearly departed Grandma's house, where my Uncle Vinnie lives now. We did it just because we were feeling nostalgic, and wouldn't you know - there was Uncle Vinnie, mowing the lawn. No, we didn't stop, because we didn't call first, but we were crass enough - okay, I was crass enough - to take a picture of him and post it here. Hi Uncle Vinnie, you're on Candid Blogging!!

Catching Up

Meet Monkey, a finished sock. One finished sock. But if you look closely, you'll see that I have started the second sock, and that's as far as I've gotten! The yarn is some KnitPicks bare that I hand-dyed a while ago. The colors reminded me of early autumn, when the leaves are just starting to change, but still have a lot of green in them. This last picture is indicative of the true color. It's got a lot of yellow in it, very warm. I'm not fond of making socks, but this yarn was begging to be made into a pair, and Monkey seemed like a straight-forward pattern, which it is. I've got a few other projects I'm working on right now, but as soon as they're out of the way, I think I'll finish that second sock!

Back to Ohio

My sister, my niece and I took a road trip to northeast Ohio last week. Yep, you heard right - 16 hours in a car - one way. But people, it was fun!! When I left the parking lot here at work to head to my sister's house, it was 91 degrees (Fahrenheit for those of you who perhaps thought we were on the sun). Anyone with any sense knows that's too hot for October, unless you're in Australia or something. I worked on Multnomah on the way up. And the way back. And in between.

I'm using my own handspun, once dyed aqua, now a dark green. It'll be done soon (with any luck), and I'll post a picture once I have it blocked. I didn't stop at 10 repeats of the feather and fan part - I'm just going 'til I run out of yarn. Hope it was a good call, because I'm not ripping it out!

We got in late, so the next morning we hunted around for a place to eat breakfast. There's bound to be at least one diner in a small town, and we found a good one. I can't remember what it was called (State Street Diner??) but this was probably the best omelet I've ever eaten. The only bad part about it was the name - the Moon Doggie omelet. I was embarrassed to say it aloud. Just veggies and cheese - and everything tasted like they just picked it, including the eggs.

It was overcast and rainy, like the picture shows, but it was cool!! Cool as in not hot. Cool as in we're not in south GA anymore. It looks like summer in this picture, but most of the trees were turning. The area along Lake Erie was quite a bit behind the area farther south. The first thing we did after breakfast was to hit a rummage sale at the Catholic Church. My aunt was working there, so we killed two birds with one stone. Not that we wouldn't have stopped in to see her if she wasn't working there, but you know my sister loves a good sale! While I was there I demonstrated how to use an ab machine to the church ladies. Thank God no one had a camera. They'll not soon forget the chubby lady from Georgia who got down on the floor to exercise. Of course, while I was down there my loving Auntie Margo yelled over, "Look at that roll!!", referring to my not so sleek abs. That was just in case no one had already noticed that I was out of shape. Not likely!!After that we were whisked off to Cherry Valley Amish Country & Gift Store, to buy some fresh apples, among other things. I took a picture in the store to show how dark it was!! There's no electricity, of course, so all the light you have comes from the windows and the propane lanterns. I think I had SAD (seasonal affective disorder) when I left. They carry all kinds of stuff, including furniture. I found some bluing, which sounded like an intriguing laundry experiment, and some bulk candy for my husband, who doesn't need it. I also got a half bushel of Jonagold apples, most of which I've already eaten. You just can't find a GREAT apple in the south.

After all that wild frolicking we went over to visit my Grandma. The picture on top was taken at their farm circa 1972. That's me, the tall dark-headed one (how things change!), my Mimi in the middle, and my cousin Lori, who is 16 mos. younger than me. In the bottom pic it's 37 years later, and that's Lori, who grew up to be tall and skinny (damn her), Mimi, my sister Betsy, and me. Mimi's going to be 93 on November 2nd, and still doing well, although she admitted she wasn't sure how old she was. Hell, most days I can't (or don't want to) remember how old I am.

Okay, this has gone on long enough. More later!

Memories of Vacation

JonaGold apples and Halloran candy. Mmmmm, good.