Bad News, Good News

Good morning, my friends. Calm your beating hearts...it's mostly good news. Nothing to worry yourselves over. Let's just dive right in, shall we? I'm typing fast this morning. It's a pedicure day, and so I need to be out of here in a couple of hours. If I'm going to have time for slow-stitching, there's no time to waste. And speaking of slow-stitching, that's where my day started yesterday. I filled in what remained of my hoop, and then stitched a little more. 

From there, I was anxious to see if the dahlia was looking any better. As I strolled down the sidewalk, I noticed the cherries are now visible in the tops of the trees. These are probably still a month away from harvest.

Also...lookie there! Another lily has poked its head above ground. There are four lilies planted in this area where the sidewalk makes a U-turn. From year to year, only one or two of them appear above ground, and it can be different ones in different years. I won't know what kind of lily this is unless it blooms.

Often, I find these chewed off at the ground level, and so I gave it its own pinwheel. The pinwheels will deter the squirrels, but they don't help for the deer. I'm not sure who the culprit is here.

On the other hand, this stargazer lily appears every year. It looks as if it's putting out a side shoot now. If I'm remembering right, this one had about nine flowers on it last year when the culprit above decided to eat it. Bummer. Note to self: give it its own pinwheel. Do it now.

Okay, but let's just take a look at the dahlia, shall we? It looked even worse than the day before.

When I checked my email a little later in the morning, I found a response to my inquiry from the grower. They suggested digging it up and having a look at the tuber. I'll admit I'd been sitting on my hands trying to keep them from doing just that. I didn't want to void any guarantee by moving ahead without permission. So I did that. The tuber looked okay on initial inspection, but then I applied the gentlest of pressure. It broke open, and it was all slimy inside. Clearly, the tuber was rotten.

So, I sent that same image above to the grower, and this was their response (this is the good news):

Thank you for getting back to us. I am happy that you decided to dig the tuber as it is rotted and will not continue to thrive.  I have set up a replacement tuber to ship to you right away.  You will receive an email confirmation later today. Have a wonderful day.

And after my sad experience with the peony folks, this was pretty great customer service. I was so happy. As promised, a little later in the day, I received this notification:

Yahoo! Oh Happy Dahlias! Your beautiful order has left our family farm in Canby, Oregon and is on the way to you. Your order was shipped today through the Postal Service - USPS. If a tracking number appears below you may track your package at www.usps.com Please allow 24-48 hours for this tracking information to be available.

COOL!!!!

Just now, I tracked it on the USPS website, and this is what I found:

TODAY!!! Well. To say I'm thrilled would be an understatement. I'll be able to plant it this afternoon, and it'll be like this whole sad affair never happened. I'll be careful not to overwater it this time.

In other bad news...is this the saddest thing you've ever seen?

On closer inspection, though...here's some more good news. It appears that only the foliage has wilted and died. The stems of the bloomed out seed pods appear to be standing upright. I think they will continue to mature and produce seeds for next year's blooms...or maybe it'll be blooms for two years from now. In any case, I think I'll be able to save the plant for more blooms to come.

Also, Mae is going to bring me some more seeds. We'll get it going again one way or another.

Checking the greenhouse, I'm seeing more tomatoes all the time. These are about olive-sized now. They are Romas, and so they are maybe 1/3-to 1/2 the size they will be when mature.

And check out this crazy lettuce. The loose leaf is ready for harvesting. We just pick the leaves off as we use them.

To its right, the butter lettuce and red-leaf lettuce are still barely beyond green sprout stage. All the seeds were planted at the same time, so what gives? Mike thinks these two have been over-watered. He's turned down the drip system as low as possible, and so we'll see if they start gaining some size.

Back outside, we're getting more roses. They're so pretty and fragrant.

Most of the flowers are appearing at the bottom of the plant, near the ground. That's because the deer eat the ones that are at mouth level for them.

A few days ago, I spent some time pruning and grooming the plant. The poor thing is ignored and neglected since we rarely see any of the flowers it produces. I noticed there are more buds at the top of the plant. On the other hand, I may find them eaten when I check today.

Another flower has appeared on the Red Cardinal clematis. So pretty. I'm so happy about this.

The Gracie Memorial Catnip Garden is doing a good job of establishing itself. These are some plants I dug up from another area where they like to volunteer. Some years I have better luck with them than others. These are growing taller and forming flowers.

So let's have a look at the vegetable garden. The plants are getting enough size to show up in pictures now. The cucumbers that weren't eaten by critters are gaining some leaves.

The ones that were replanted have sprouted now too. In our garden, we always plant way more than we'll need to make up for the plants that don't make it...or get eaten by critters. I have five of six cucumbers so far, which is more than enough to fill my pickle jars this year.

Of the 24 green bean seeds I planted, nine have survived...so far. That should be enough to give us plenty of beans this year. They are fairly prolific.

Please ignore the weeds in this next series of pictures. I'm hoeing as fast as I can. These are the presumed carrots. They're looking more and more like carrots every day.

These next ones are beets. I ran out of seeds halfway down the row on the right. The remainder of the row is where I planted some of the carrot seed tape. I think I'm seeing some sprouts, but it's hard to tell.

I have three rows of corn. The corn stalks are about six inches tall now.

The zucchini is doing the best of anything. I'm hopeful we'll have zucchini soon because I'm all out of zucchini relish. It's a crying shame, I'll tell you.

The plum tree is located just outside the fence and next to the gate. As I passed by yesterday, I noticed more plums. They are about halfway to their full size now too. In this next image, I could see three plums.

Now, as I'm showing it to you, I can only find two of them. I swear there's another one. If I'm lyin' I'm dyin'.

Okay, back inside, I spent an hour on the tiny house. I was able to get through Sections "C" through "F." This one goes through Section "N," and so there's quite a ways to go with it.

Smitty helped me select fabrics for the next barn sampler block.

We're doing them in the color of the month from the Rainbow Scrap Challenge. These should probably be lighter shades, but I need enough contrast for the barn to stand out from the background. Smitty believes these will do nicely. If one is wise, one will always take advice from one's cat.

That was the end of my sewing day. My left wrist is bothering me. I blame all the paper-piecing for that. In fact, I blame paper-piecing for everything, including the dead dahlia. There. I've said it. So, I probably won't do any sewing today. My wrist has been bothering me as I'm typing. It will be good to give it a rest. I might decide to don a splint if it continues to hurt. And if it's still hurting tomorrow, I might take a day off from blogging. If you don't hear from me tomorrow, that will be the reason.

So I need to get a move on. It's time for breakfast and a shower, and then I'll be on my way. I'm making two extra stops today...a short stop at the grocery store, and I'm also going to stop in to Staples and have three more patterns enlarged for the next When Quilters Gather blocks. It won't leave much time for sewing, sore wrist or not. Have a good day, Everybody. Don't forget to check out yesterday's post and leave a comment to be entered in the giveaway. Thanks to all who have stopped by to wish Sadie a Happy Gotcha Day.

Sadie appurreciates your many kind comments.