Harvests

The skeins of yarn I produced during the Tour de Fleece feel like a harvest of sorts, all 14 3/8 oz. of them.

This was my spindle production (the rest was done on my Hansen miniSpinner):

I still need to get it all washed; it will dry quickly in this heat. When that's done, I'll cast on a pair of fingerless mitts with the pastel blue/yellow/green skein. I have no plans yet for the other skeins.

This morning I picked the first summer squash from our garden. The two yellow squash went home with my MIL; the round one is a mystery variety I bought as a seedling in a fundraiser. I've also picked our first two tomatoes, along with the two little jalepeno peppers I picked earlier for my dad.

Yesterday, Rick brought in a nice bowl of "blue"berries from our young bushes. No, he didn't pick green ones. He was given a plant called "Pink Lemonade;" it produced those light-colored berries. They are delicious, with a more fragrant flavor than the blues.

I'm trying to focus on our garden successes, because it would be easy to let my blood pressure rise over the failures. It doesn't look like the bush beans will recover from being eaten down to the stem, and this morning I noticed that our young carrot tops are being nipped off, too. Most of the cucumber starts I planted after the varmints ate all my seedlings are surviving inside the barrel, but I'm not holding my breath that they will live to fruiting age. The ground squirrels are making themselves scarce after Rick's shotgun assaults, although I've seen my weed-eating friend once more. But Rick mowed down all the false dandelion yesterday, forcing it into a life of crime and, I suppose, the death penalty.

That's it for today from . . .