I’m making a Sunnyside Baby cardigan.
It took me a long time to figure it out, as the directions are terse. Gotta love that feeling when thousands of people are all like “such an easy knit!” and you can’t understand the first thing about it! But I persevered due to lack of alternatives. And sheer cussedness. (I also changed up the edgings because I’m not a huge fan of garter stitch because overthinking.)
I’m also, as usual, challenged by the necessity of knitting for show-watching vs. the futility of doing even the simplest lace-work while distracted by pretty dresses and handsome chauffeurs (starting Season 2 of Upstairs, Downstairs! *EDITED TO ADD: warning, Deirdre reminds me that she told me that Season 2 is utter trash so ugh, I’ll have to find something else.).
What do you suppose the odds are that I have enough yarn…
If you have my book, The Little Oratory, you know that I have a wry little comment in there, borne of long experience, about May-as-the-Month-of-Mary coming just in time to ease the heartbreak of seeing one’s few spring posies mercilessly yanked off their stems and grubbily presented to one with a loving smile. If we can, in turn, offer them to her, it makes it all better.
Note to self: One can never have too many tiny vases!
While little Nora blithely gathers flowers while she may, Molly helps me plant. So it’s all good and the grandmother’s life is a happy one!
Side by side with the pretty (as-yet-untouched) tulips in the garden is the massive amount of cleanup and work that needs to get done. Do you see that grass??
I feel like the toppled chair by the compost hack tell the tale for all who have ears to hear. We are about to be swallowed up by our landscape.
Things need to dry out and then the mowing and weeding and planting and fixing will commence! But at a painfully slow and advancing-middle-age pace…
What’s going on at your house?
I have just recently and slowly started reading The Little Oratory, but I read that passage just the other day and told my husband about it as our two-year-old picked several wildflowers on a walk this weekend!
I do love The Little Oratory. I am excited that David Clayton will be at my husband’s work this summer, but am sorry that Auntie Leila will not be there. Maybe I can get his signature and pretend that yours is there as well. We are forgoing a bit of outdoor work for new interior drain tile in our “finished ” basement. I would much rather work outside. Maybe I will do flowers this year instead of veggies. At least then I can smell like the outdoors. I love your blog.
On the flowers note. We were having a day at a public garden and noted two boys, around 3 and 4. They had picked some daffodils when the mom and dad turned around, the mom exploded about how “we DON’T PICK THE FLOWERS!!!” My dear husband noted “They probably picked them for her.” I wondered how many times I have parented out of embarrassment instead of grace and truth. It is such a temptation to feel we must ( and our children must) do everything correctly or others will judge.
For the first time in probably ten years, my husband and I aren’t planting a vegetable garden. We just had our fourth daughter March 5 and the switch from three to four kids is more exhausting than we’d anticipated. Plus, as the kids get older, so do we! Who knew? So, we bought some bags of flower bulbs at Costco than will hopefully attract hummingbirds and grace our table, if the bags tell the truth. Plus, we just read the children’s book, “Sunflower House,” which our girls loved, so we may plant some sunflowers as well. Hmm. This may not turn out to be such a relaxed gardening year. Oh well! I love gardens. Thank you for the pictures of your outdoors. I love them.
Aunt Leila, where did you get your knitting “bowl” in the first picture? Is it handmade? What a beautiful and useful item! I think my mom would like one…
BridgetAnn, the bowl was a gift from my students! Their dad made it and they glazed it.
You can find such things on Etsy… but they won’t be as special :)
Seed is my favorite edging: it’s flat and neat-looking. I don’t like the look of garter at all.
I just found two tiny vases at the local thrift store: perfect for wild violets brought in from the weedy lawn. I’m working on being more gracious about dandelion bouquets!
We planted two peonies and assorted bulbs from Aldi–we’ll see if anything materializes. That’s our current garden status: wait and see what turns out. Crossing fingers that this is the year for fruiting blueberries!
Speaking of lace, have you seen this video? I find it weirdly hypnotic. So complex and whoever is doing it can keep all the movements straight!
Speaking of lace, have you seen this video? So complex and yet somehow whoever is doing it can keep all the movements straight.
Sadness at our house this morning: a lawn care service for the next-door neighbors completely mowed down our day lily bed. ðŸ˜ðŸ˜ðŸ˜ Granted it was in a shared side yard (inaccessible by foot from their house and unconnected in any other way!) and granted they weren’t blooming yet, but it was a FLOWER BED! With bricks at one edge and squared-off with posts and string and pine-strawed and not *entirely* weedy. And they just chopped it all down to a mess of slaughtered greens! We are mourning all the blooms we would have soon enjoyed from our bedroom window and the changing table window.
It’s only a little funny, in that I’ve been teaching the toddler and 4yo about “gently visiting” garden flowers vs. collecting violets and clover and such at will. And here two grown men whose job it is (should be) to know, hack up a whole bed!
Katie, noooooo!!!!!
That’s terrible. What is WRONG with people!
At our local bank I have witnessed many years when the landscaping company comes and shears off all the hydrangeas (and it’s all hydrangeas!) — just before they bloom!! Like, “let’s be sure this landscape remains boring shrubbery”!!! I’ve gone in and told the manager to make it stop!!! When they leave it, of course it’s a glorious display.
But maybe the daylilies will recover? They are very hardy? I hope so!
At the least, your toddlers can judge them!
Katie, this happened to us last year! Our landlady pays for landscapers to mow and weed-whack. They just zoom in and mow/whack everything in about five minutes. I really have no control unless I happen to be outside when they arrive. One day they whacked a whole bunch of our plants! Sigh.
Sukie, that’s the story next door as well. Lovely neighbors who are buying a house soon, so clearly the landlady hired a one-off crew to come “spruce things up” before showings for new renters. I saw them working but never imagined the day-lily consequences. Ugh. We have other lilies around the yard, but those were the most special and the prettiest. My husband’s actually more heartbroken than I am, as they are flowers either transplanted from his grandmother’s farm, or mulled over and specially selected with his sister.
Hoping they’ll bounce back. There’s still a smidge of mown green above ground, and we’re in the South so they’ve already had weeks of warmth and growth to recharge the bulbs. Maybe it’s like nursing a sleeping baby… five minutes on a side isn’t great every time but is juuust enough to send the signal. Then time and sunshine might see us through to summer blooms. =)
Oh, your beautiful yard. Thank you for sharing your photos! Here in MN the tulips are out also, but the crab apple trees (of which the neighborhood is full) are JUST starting to blossom. Every morning is like a little bit of paradise, even yesterday, when it did snow. (Nothing died).
At our house we have brick-and-mortar school kids and homeschoolers, and boy howdy are we having trouble keeping the homeschoolers from just escaping outdoors! And their tired, distracted mother. All we want is to go outdoors and wander around humming. The children are already filthy with mud.
As to me, I’ve just read L.M. Montgomery’s “The Blue Castle,” which is a great quick read for moms — not a young adult book, despite the category they put it in. Escapist fiction that is beautiful and not immoral…
That chair is a perfect reflection of my thoughts as I look upon our flower beds, bushes, kitchen garden and all things needing attention. Wasn’t all of this a good idea 20 years ago when no patch of earth went un-flowered, un-bulbed or un-bushed? How did we not know that we wouldn’t be up to it by the time Medicare beckoned? Didn’t we pay attention to Paul McCartney’s immortal words in “When I’m Sixty Four”? What did we think that was, a fun pop song?? It was a warning that we should have taken very, very seriously.
And to add insult to injury, we just had central AC put in our 1939 house and figured as long as everything was at sixes and sevens, we may as well paint the entire interior, replace bathroom fixtures and and the kitchen sink. Yes, everything including the kitchen sink. But when it’s done I will be one happy woman -if I live through it.
I know how you feel about middle age and property maintenance. We recently sold our 5 acre plot where we’d been for 15 years and moved into something smaller and boring. It’s only a temporary rental, but for the time being we really are enjoying not worry about home maintenance and yard care. When we were younger, we had so much energy and enthusiasm and dragged our kids along for the homesteading experience. It was great! But drat those kids; they grew up and didn’t stick around. Just maintaining everything was becoming a burden (to our bodies and our bank account). I miss gardening, but I realized I have more time to spend on reading and neglected hobbies, not to mention devoting more time to the education of the remaining two children. My husband has relaxed significantly without the stress and we are all enjoying his company more.
Things at our house — since you asked — are growing mostly without us, since we’re stuck in a hotel due to a recent house fire. I have never enjoyed weeding so much as when we go back home to care for the garden! (All prayers for our family of four are greatly appreciated!)
And yes to the tiny vases! Why aren’t they more common, when they are so greatly needed?