Weekend of Weeds

My body may never forgive me, but I pulled every stinking weed this past weekend. There are still a few microweeds left behind, but I'll let Mike hit those with the carcinogenic holy water. Desperate times, you know. As I was telling Mike, I was determined to finish up yesterday because I have so many other things to do...writing blog posts, for example. And so I soldiered on despite my screaming knees and wrists. Every once in a while I'd just have to take a break, straighten my back, give me knees a rest, drink some water. After that, I felt ready to go on some more, but I noticed that the weeding times got shorter, while the resting periods got longer. Finally, it was done and my aching knees couldn't stop me from jumping for joy.

During the resting periods I managed to get in a few photos...not very good ones, but it's all I have. The lilacs appear ready to burst open. Hurry up, little lilacs! We only have three more days at home!

Since we're going to be gone, I haven't yet planted my annual pots, but the pansies are filling in nicely. The white orb kind of in the middle of the image below is actually a glow-in-the-dark piece of yard art. If you look carefully, you can see there is a metallic sun surrounding it. Kind of fun.

I took this next picture for the peanut shells in the foreground shadows. There is a big fir tree growing there and casting that shadow. Just in the middle of the image, you can see where our peanut feeder is hanging. The blue jays will empty the feeder in about an hour. Thus, it only gets filled every couple of days. Anyway...the blue jays grab a peanut and then fly over to the fir tree, crack them open, and eat them, littering the ground below with shells. It always cracks me up seeing all those shells there.

Here's a very bad picture of some more tulips. I kind of like these dark purple ones.

And there is this single yellow one. I figure it will multiply eventually.

Some neighbors gave me a tree rose for my 50th birthday, which can't possibly have been 13 years ago, but there it is. I do still knows me my arithmetic. Anyway, it got neglected terribly for years. We even talked about taking it out. The deer were always eating it, and so we didn't waste much time on it. It grew gangly and was quite a mess. Then last year, miraculously, it bloomed! It has the most fragrant blossoms. Here's a picture from last year.

The deer went after it last year too, but not before we got to enjoy its pretty flowers. So anyway...this year I gave it a good pruning, leaving four good canes. I cut a huge pile of gangly runners from it, and then worried I'd cut too much. Yesterday, I noticed the buds I left behind are sprouting. All's well, even if it is a terrible picture. 

I'm hoping the deer will leave it alone long enough for us to enjoy it again this year. We have some deer spray, but it smells like all kinds of vomit (literally). Kind of makes it hard to appreciate the fragrance of the rose, so we just bag the spray and hope for the best. Also, the Stanbro Men sometimes go out and mark the territory by, um...well, never mind. That works pretty well as deer repellant too.

Some of the iris are heading up. They're just barely getting started. The white ones are the first ones to bloom, usually. These have a long way to go. 

And here's a boring image of the six echinacea plants I tended from seeds last year. I'm pleased as punch to see they survived the cold winter. Maybe I'll get some pretty flowers from them this year.

Checking in on the greenhouse, I was grief-stricken to discover that four of the tomatoes had died. We had two 80°F days in a row. In summer, I generally open the greenhouse up because it's plenty warm in there. With our weather being so cold, opening the greenhouse was the last thing on my mind and the little tomatoes paid the price. I thought early on the first day to go out and water them, but it never occurred to me they would fry in the heat. So the ones marked with a pink dot are all dead. I'm thinking the rest will survive, but they're not looking great.

Today I'm going to repot them into larger pots. When we get back from our trip, I'll replace any that don't make it with some starts from the local nursery. There's more than one way to grow a tomato.

On the other hand, the sunflowers loved the hot weather. They're ready to be planted into the ground, and I'll do that today. One of the seeds never germinated. You can see the cup there second from the left at the bottom. It's hard to see, but the replanted seed has germinated now too. This was yesterday, I expect today, it will be standing up straight and it can get planted into the ground with the rest of its brethren.

The lettuce is doing well too, although the plants are still almost too tiny to see. I'd just showered them with water and so they're looking a little limp.

This morning Mike and I agreed it made little sense not to cut into that monster loaf of challah I baked, and so we gave it a try on a round of French Toast. The crumb is lovely.

And we both thought it was the better choice over brioche for the French Toast. Bonus: it only take an afternoon to bake it while the brioche takes two days.

Finally, I was thrilled to receive these images from my friend, Robin, this morning. Robin is The Emperor's mom, and she received his pawtrait.

And check out The Emperor. I think he appurroves!

Thanks, Robin...I love these photos.

There's been no time for sewing with all the cooking and weeding going on here at the Three Cats Ranch. I did get some slow-stitching time in yesterday on Hildegard.

I'll do a little more this morning, and then get back to work outdoors. Time is winding down until our departure date, and there is still much to do. Since it seems clear there won't be any time for sewing, I'm going to make up a couple of little kits for myself to try to keep up with some of the challenges. I'll be making up a kit for the Welcome Home small quilt mysery. There are just four little churn dash blocks to make. Also, I'll make up a quilt for the May small quilt challenge and for the Free Motion Quilt-along. I have some tasks assigned myself each day, but they aren't really blog-worthy or picture-worthy. With that in mind, I'll probably take a short break from blogging for a day or two and get back to you after we get down the road a piece on Thursday or Friday.

On the other hand, if I start muttering to myself, don't be surprised if you see me get back on here to deword myself. "Deword." I just made that up. It's when verbose people like me purge themselves in written language, and you are forced to stand there tapping your foot until we shut up again. It's a heavy burden, but you carry it well. Thank you.