Sowing and Sewing

Good morning, my friends. It was a busy and tiring day yesterday, but I'm happy to say the vegetable garden is planted now. We've lived in our house 24 years, as of June 1st. I can't remember the exact year we created our garden plot, but it was early on. I believe I can safely say it was within the first three years...so at least 20 years ago. In years past, we've planted the whole thing. Here's one of the pictures from early on.

A few years ago, we decided to plant a smaller garden, and we planted perhaps three-fourths of it. This year's garden has been scaled down to half the plot, and much of that is in sunflowers and zinnias. After scooching around on the ground planting those sunflowers yesterday, my knees are thanking me for not being more energetic. So here's our scaled down garden for 2026:

In the foreground, you can see three rows of corn. We cover it with gutter guards because the crows will pull the newly-sprouted seedlings right out of the ground. When they start growing through the gutter guards, we can remove them, and they'll be safe from pecking beaks. 

Beyond the white fencing is the "bee garden." Weeds and wildflowers grow there. Each year, I broadcast a new quarter-pound of wildflower seed and then wait to see what I'll get. On this side of the white fence and along the northern fence line, I've planted a dozen different varieties of sunflowers. Along the south fence line are some zinnias. Toward the end of the corn rows, I've planted three hills of zucchini and three hills of pickling cucumbers. 

As I mentioned in yesterday's post, a gopher killed the entire green bean crop in our last garden (2023) by chewing off every single vine at ground level. It broke (and hardened) my heart. Here's a picture from when I first discovered the damage. You can see it there on the right. Eventually, the same thing happened at every trellis pole. 

In the image below, you can see our solution for the green beans. This year, we've planted the seeds in pots. They're sitting on boards in order to maintain good drainage, and we're hopeful that will thwart the gnawing vermin.

Interestingly, we've grown green beans every year we've planted a garden, but we never had this problem until our 2023 garden. In fact, the 2023 garden disappointed in many ways because of gnawing critters. It's probably good that our travel schedule forced us to take two years off from growing vegetables. The sting of that last garden has subsided some, but we haven't forgotten it.

When we finished the planting, we sat, our limbs throbbing, on the garden bench and enjoyed our Mike's lemonades. Eventually, I felt I could move again, and I made my way into the house for some lunch, a shower, and a nap.

It was touch and go working up enough energy to do anything else, but I made my way to the quilting eventually. Smitty was there to make sure I didn't go too fast...speed demon, and all. (Good thing they don't hand out speeding citations for quilting.)

My goal was to quilt the vertical sashings, and mission accomplished. Here's how they look where horizontal and vertical intersect.

Here's a peek at the back.

Also, I found enough energy to sew the yellow Stair Steps block together. I'll keep going with these today. The next common color diagonal stripe will be purple.

It was late in the day by then. I tried a new recipe for Creamy Tuscan Ravioli. This was really good. We liked it a lot.

It's made with Italian sausage, canned fire-roasted tomatoes, oil-packed sundried tomatoes, onion, garlic, and spinach. Oh yes, and of course, 4-cheese ravioli. The recipe suggested frozen ravioli. I bought the unfrozen refrigerated kind, and so mine was ready to go into the mix without needing to allow it to thaw. Nevertheless, I left it sitting out while I did the rest of the cooking and allowed it to warm up a little before adding it at the end. I've always boiled fresh ravioli. For this recipe, it was added at the end, then the pan was lidded, and it steamed until it was done. I had my doubts about whether it would actually cook enough, but it did. 

I've linked to the recipe above the image. Aside from using fresh ravioli, I also substituted white wine for the chicken broth. (I was too lazy to make any "Better than Broth" chicken broth.) We liked the slight tang added by the wine. Also, I did a rough chop on the sundried tomatoes, although the recipe doesn't say to chop them. They seemed too large as they came from the jar, but a rough chop was just right.

Okay, so my bum knee was absolutely killing me after planting the garden yesterday. I iced it three times, took some Tylenol, took some naproxen, and rubbed some anti-inflammatory gel on it at bedtime. It feels a little better today, but it's still painful. I'll give it a day off today and focus mostly on my sewing. I've moved to the border of my quilt now, and I expect to have it ready for binding by the end of the day. Also, I'll aim for at least one more block for the Stair Steps project. There are a couple of easy housekeeping chores on the calendar for today, but mainly, it's going to be all sewing all the time. 

We have several days of warm weather ahead of us. Fingers crossed those newly planted seeds get to work making little sprouts. Also, I'm on peony watch. We might see a new peony today.