A Hodgepodge

School is over. I got all As in my classes this past term, putting me on the school's President's List for the term and making my overall GPA 3.7. My diploma is supposed to be mailed next week.

Since I didn't complete college immediately after high school, getting a diploma was something that I always hankered to do but never had time for until these past few years. Getting my "education" was quite an eye opener into the whole business of higher learning. It was fairly disappointing to find the focus less on education than on making money, from the latest edition textbooks being required despite being nearly identical to the previous version to the kinds of classes required. Yes, I'm glad I did it, but the comment of a director years ago to me when I mentioned wanting to get a degree has been resonating as she was right: "Why do you want to do that? It will make no difference to how well you do your job." Well, it won't, but hopefully it will make a positive difference to how my resume is received - meaning I hope it helps me get a job even though it won't help me do the job.

We have a treadmill, bought last year in a fit of optimism and mostly ignored since then. I started walking last week and have now walked for one hour every day since then. Two days ago, my total miles walked exceeded 26, and Danny pointed out that I had walked - with 23 hour breaks - a marathon. A marathon. I don't know that I would ever do an actual marathon...but I am being consistent with the exercise. We'll just have to see where it leads.

I made a pair of socks for my mom for her birthday. She chose the yarn, which is Red Heart Fiesta, and I made them up on my Brother KX-350. They seemed to come out fairly well, and today she said that she loves them. Hurrah!

Mom's Socks

 Yesterday was an amazing experience. A knitter who lives about an hour from me wanted to get rid of her Singer 560 and various other bits - free if you could come get them. So I went. And she is the most amazing lady, a woman who used to be a knitting machine dealer. She showed me some of her work, which I seek to emulate, and kept giving me things! I got home and set up the tilt stand, cleaned the main bed, put a new needle pressed bar in it, and knitted a swatch. Then I got out the lace carriage and cleaned it, hooked up the electric, put in a card, and knitted my first piece of machine lace. Today, I am going to clean and set up the ribber and try it out. Then I need to go through the stack of books and magazines. She bought this equipment new in 1983, making it the newest metal bed machine that I have. I am still stunned by her kindness and generosity.

Machine Lace!

The garden is nearly done for the year. The peppers have been doing fantastic - and here are some pictures of some of that bounty.

That's all from me for today! Cheers!

Dinner Tonight? Lots of Homegrown Goodies

We harvested the first of the spaghetti squash today - eleven beautiful yellow squash! These are easy to cook - slice in half, remove the seeds, place face down on a baking sheet and bake for an hour. Let cool for few minutes after removing from the oven, and then use a fork (or a spoon - your choice) - to pull out all the strands. Tonight's dinner featured one of our fresh squash topped with Danny's homemade meat-and-veggie loaf and a side dish of homebaked wheat bread topped with homemade pesto (from our basil, of course) and diced homegrown tomatoes. Yes, I should have taken a picture. But I was hungry.

I do have a picture of some of the squash bounty:

as well as other pictures from today:

Closeup of the cayennes turning red - pretty!

The peppers...yes, that is a basil in the "odd" pot.

The basils are still looking great despite the near-constant harvesting!

We've eaten lots of these tomatoes so far.

I'm not posting a picture of the squash garden as it's clearly nearing the end of its lifecycle and looks rather pathetic. We'll be getting a few more squash, but then that will be that. Interestingly, when this squash experiment first started, I read all over the Internet about how to grow them, and one constant was that it takes "90 days" for the squash to ripen. Nowhere does anyone say 90 days from WHAT. Based on this experiment, it seems that the 90 days is from the time of germination, since our seeds were started in April and here we are, chowing down on ripe fruit about 90 days later.

June's (Unintentionally Only) Post: Doodle, Oregon, and Garden Stuff

June is almost over. It quite got away from us, what with traveling and school and such. Two of my summer classes were five-week courses that ended on June 20 (I got an A in both, thanks). We left early for our Oregon trip for a unplanned quickie visit with our daughter and granddaughter who were staying in Myrtle Beach. And, of course, we spent a delightful week in Seaside, Oregon with my parents.

The garden is doing amazing things. We've been able to enjoy fresh tomatoes with fresh basil pesto broiled on top. Danny is loving the pepper plants. And the spaghetti squash...well, all I can say is that hopefully there is a way of preserving it, because at this rate we are never going to be able to keep up with it once it starts to ripen.

There are a lot of pictures following. Some of the garden ones were taken the day we left for our travels (June 6) and some today (June 25). Kind of a before-and-after thing. There are some pictures of our visit with the Doodle, and some pictures of our visit to Oregon. In Oregon, we climbed the Astoria Column (read about the Column here) - it was the first time that I'd ever been to the Column when it was open.

6/6 view of peppers

6/6 view of basil, rosemary, sage, basil

6/6 view of tomatoes

6/6 view of shade bed

6/6 view of squash

6/6 - one lone jalapeno!

Danny & the Doodle - she was fascinated by his face

Danny & the Doodle again

Note that his glasses have been removed to keep them safe

My turn with the Doodle!

Guess my finger wasn't what she was looking for

The two of us at the top of the Astoria Column.

View from atop the Column

I tried to take a picture of my parents, who are standing in front of the building.

The Columbia River, from the top of the Astoria Column

More from atop the Column

6/25 pepper plants - oops, there's a basil in there now!

A closeup of the peppers, in an attempt to show off their productive ways

6/25 another pepper closeup

6/25 and another

6/25 - The basils, rosemary, and sage - note that we've been harvesting basil quite regularly!

6/25 The tomato plants...from the front

...and from the back. Go, tomatoes, go!

6/25 The shade bed. Not doing as well as hoped, although the coleus (and the weeds) seem happy

6/25 - Squash overload!

On 6/25, the squash are growing out of the box!

Irrigation: Check.

The irrigation system is in. For the container plants on the patio, we have a Rainbird drip irrigation system. The smaller plants are on 1 GPH emitters while the larger ones are on 2 GPH emitters. (We ran the system this morning for 20 minutes - and twenty minutes is too long. Every plant had water in its tray. We dumped out the pepper plants' trays so that they won't drown.)

The squash are on a 25 foot length of weeper hose and the ornamental garden is on a 50 foot length of soaker hose. These two hoses are joined by a length of plain hose, and the weeper hose is connected to a plain hose which is connected to the faucet.

At each of the two faucets, we installed the manual timers (think kitchen "tick-tick" timer) that we got at Tractor Supply. Once we sort out the proper time for each group to have the water running, taking care of the watering chore is going to be very easy!

Speaking of the ornamental garden, yesterday Danny planted the coleus, Johnny-jump-up, and English daisy seedlings that had been languishing in my office. They're all still pretty tiny, but hopefully they will perk up now that they are out of the house and in the ground where they belong.

Here are this week's photos. Everything is doing really quite well!

Spaghetti Squash 

Stevia, Banana Pepper, and Three Other Kinds of Pepper

Look! Our little banana pepper plant has produced again!

 A closeup to give an idea of the size.

Basil, Rosemary, Pineapple Sage, Basil

Patio Tomato, Patio Tomato, Stevia, Patio Tomato

The tomato plants are already putting on tomatoes!

Another closeup of the plant in action.

Hard to see...but all the little sticks indicate the newest plantings.

And...the first thing we have is...Peppers!

Everything is growing like crazy. The tomato plants are putting on tomatoes. But the first thing we're going to be able to harvest is a pepper! Hot banana pepper, as it turns out. Here are this week's photos, including a closeup of the amazing pepper plant.

Stevia, Hot Banana Pepper, and Three other pepper plants

Hot Banana Pepper

Basil, Rosemary, Pineapple Sage, Basil

Tomato, Tomato, Stevia, Tomato

The morningglories...still getting going

Spaghetti Squash