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??

spindly crop devastated by fanged predator

News Flash: the sprouts were attacked by a beastly beast! The cat ate ALL of the spinach sprouts and about half the carrot sprouts. All of the sturdy little spinach babies were devoured by the fanged feline! She started to eat the peas, but I think they taste bad...good thing they're poisonous too. Damn cat.




The peas planted in paper pots are positively plantastic. Plentiful and pretty too. I've put a few out in the raised bed to see if it's time...not everyone is out there in case it's too early. The rest of the gang is on a field trip to get a dose of reality. Other people call it hardening off, but I prefer to think of it as teaching the sprouts about life. Although...life here in the not that far north has been so NICE. Sunny and warm. Layers shed, winter skin exposed.



Now that the snow bank between my yard and the neighbors is mostly gone, their dear doggies were back to their fun habit of using my yard as a toilet. Since the ground is still frozen about 6 inches down, I had to figure out alternative fence posts. Being 'blessed' with rocks, I built these things, sort of cairn posts. I know I've seen them other places, I'm sure they have real names...but I bet most gardeners don't call it a spindly crop either.

The morning I found a puddle of dog pee on my raised bed, I knew I had to get that fence up! Now some of the spindlies are getting a serious dose of reality out there, but the plastic will protect them at night. The buckets have potatoes in them, hoping for a spud crop...plants want to grow right? Some of this will produce edibles and make it all worth while.

dabbling in politics

There are some great political blogs in Alaska like Mudflats, and The Immoral Minority but I can't resist a little dabbling.

As you may know our Governor is a bit flamboyant with her aspirations to national office. When (if) she's at work in Juneau, she's usually not cooperating with the legislature. Recently Juneau's Senator Elton left for a job with the Obama administration, leaving the city with out a 2nd voice in the Senate. After much todo, at the very end of the session, Mrs. Palin accepted former Juneau Mayor Dennis as the replacement. After she had tried to force the legislators to accept her two (barely democrat) choices and after they'd tried to force her to accept Beth Kertula... now children stop fighting. This is Mrs. Palin's second defeat at the hands of the legislature in as many weeks, they voted down her choice of W.A. Ross as Attorney General too. Thank goodness. I honestly believe that one step at a time Alaska is moving in to the 20th century. Maybe in another 100 years the 21st.

little plants in paper pots

The peas are growing so fast! I transferred them to paper pots so they have a little more room until I can get them outside. The broccoli that was shooting up so fast is long and leggy but the peas have serious roots that need more space.

Yesterday was warm and sunny in the afternoon, seriously raining in the morning. Rain coat for the dog walk, luxurious sun for repotting the peas. Perfect spring day.

I was out by the woodshed working on the little paper pots, filling them with dirt and pea plants when I remembered....new yarn shop in town! Opening night was yesterday and I was 1/2 an hour late already. Forget dinner, wash your hands and get going! See...that's the sort of thing that happens as the days get longer. Time slides away.

This is the current knitting project, a make it up as I go vest...or sweater if I feel like making sleeves. Now that I know that the owner of the new yarn store has a problem with sleeves, sort of like second sock syndrome, I may have to make this into a sweater. With an order in to Webs for Cascade 220 and a couple of balls of green worsted from the new store, I think I can afford to make sleeves.

I don't like the way the yellow on dark green row has that little hitch in it at the beginning of the rows, but I think I can straighten that out a bit when I tug at the ends to sew them in. Lots of ends to sew in, but different colors keep my gnat brain interested. ...and wondering why so many of the patterns in A. Starmore's "Charts for Color Knitting" are multiples of 8 and 12.

Happy Easter

T-shirts instead of eggs! I bought a 6 pack of white t-shirts at Costco when I was in town...lots of seriously white shirts that needed color. Not so sure about the bright yellow one at the bottom, but maybe I can handle some egg yolky color.

I also did some felt for later beading, but that's not as exciting as a bunch of hippie t-shirts dyed to hide stuff that always gets on the belly of a white shirt.

Bread maker is beeping, a loaf of pre-mixed Bob's 10 grain bread awaits. Hoping it's a decent sandwich bread although I forgot to get sandwich makings today. Tomorrow.

not ready yet!

I planted some seeds two days ago to sprout them indoors the prescribed 4 weeks before the final frost. I thought I was a little late. I mean, it's not getting below freezing that often any more and other folks started seeds a few weeks ago.

It's the broccoli and the spinach that are surprising me. The other side of the tray has some peas that are coming up too but I expect peas to grow quickly, they're like that.



Right next to that shed is where I want to put my little green house. I am not ready yet plants, and neither is the snow! Slow down.