She came back!

I found Biscuit, she's safe and sound! ...and accidentally posted this in the BJP blog, duh.

Biscuit come home!

Biscuit the cat is missing. The plumber was here yesterday working on the water heater and now the cat is gone. I can only assume he left a door open and the cat dodged out. I'm worried about her, the weather has finally gone to rain and she's outside! Dog walks involve looking for the biscuit kitty now. Come home!

are you sick of the garden yet?

Again with the good weather! So I took the little (really old) table outside and did some beading out in the back yard. I decided to work on a design that I made up a few years ago based on the logo from the Cook Inlet Keeper website, a mermaid holding a seal. I don't usually do mermaids because they're overdone and too often cute. I imagine them as more selkie/siren like...not so cute and a little more dangerous. Less little mermaid and more sea lion.

No pictures of the 'maid yet, but of course there are garden photos! Lucky you, the weather might be going to normal so the garden shots will be less frequent. Ooh, then action photos of the rain barrel getting filled, lol!
A pea clinging to a twig...I love their curly tendrils! They're so delicate and just a little freaky too, the way they cling and entwine I imagine them moving ever so slowly to grab a small child or slow moving bird.

Nancy Pearl, radio librarian, watching over the cabbage bed. She has magic shushing action that right now she's using to point at the cabbage plants. Pope Innocent is watching over the sprouting beets in the bed that birthed the mountain of rocks. He's less aggressive than Nancy, but he's a pope so he doesn't need to point at the plants just stand around looking beatific.

steady on

Here's one for you: gardening is like watching t.v. I read somewhere that t.v. characters are good friends because they come back regularly, never get angry with the viewer and rarely change...sort of like when I walk out to the garden and all those little plants are pushing up further and listen attentively when I talk to them. Steady on, I like the plants better than t.v.

Today when I went out, one of the cabbage plants was standing up tall and straight like it had just woken up, yawned and stretched to greet the day. Cabbage pictures will come soon... peas are just so cooperative, ya know.



Peas May 8, Peas May 15...thanks guys!




Rain barrel that is really just a holding tank for water I've collected at the spring where I get my drinking water. It hasn't rained here for a month and a half! The downspout that is going straight down on the left will be redirected to the top of the barrel when it actually rains...and after the roof of the woodshed has been washed a little to get the dirt and pollen and stuff off before water goes in the barrel.

My favorite radio dude is back in town, yay! Someone who plays a variety of music and speaks in a normal voice with no goofy affectations, ahhh. Thanks for coming home, Tim!

I'm starting to believe in good weather

It's been an amazingly beautiful spring here, crazy warm, madly sunny and just plain "unseasonable" I love it. The wee garden is growing in size as well as in greenness, the sproutlings are moving right along and geez, I feel all green thumby! Which of course means I haven't been beading much at all...I think I've decided good weather trumps the bjp. Sorry bjp friends, but this sort of weather happens about never. Ok, maybe that's exaggerating...about once a decade. AND, I'm lucky enough to be in one of the most beautiful towns in Alaska this spring.
This is the indoor outdoor thermometer by my kitchen sink...99 is the temperature it registered right outside my back door. Ok, the spot is totally sheltered and sun reflects off of two walls, but still!
This is parsley. I have been informed by someone who knows everything that I shouldn't have been able to sprout it in such a short time, and that it's really really hard to grow. Mmm, don't tell the sprout that it shouldn't be there, k? It's surrounded by seaweed...our little coastal secret to gardening miracles. ...the magic parsely came up before I got the seaweed, btw.
This is the original raised bed with all store bought soil and compost, there are peas along the left side and broccoli down the middle, carrots on the far end and leafy stuff (spinach, kale and lettuce) along the right side. The plastic on the left drapes over the hoops at night. The buckets on the top right have potatoes in them...wonder if they're gonna sprout.
Here is the original bed on the left and the latest bed on the right. The rocks between? (oh my aching back) came from the new bed. There were more of them, but I put the biggest ones in the chicken wire baskets that make up the fence posts for the compost pile. Holy crap, I think the rock to soil ratio was 3:1...yeah 3 rock to 1 soil. I mixed the native soil with the closest thing to decent store bought soil that is available here today...miracle grow brand "organic natural". I read the ingredients and it sounds ok...but I don't really trust Miracle Grow not to alter dirt in some nasty way. The True Value (dirt store) didn't have the Whitney Farms dirt... we'll see if I grow frighteningly huge plants in the new bed.
Here's the over view...old bed has the hoops, new bed is in front, potatoes in the buckets next to old bed, blue rubber maid tub is full of seaweed, the crossed hoops are over the pea patch and the shabby green box with nothing showing has cabbage and spinach sprouts in it. Oh geez, what if all this stuff actually grows??