Patience

Gardening

I spend an awful lot of time outside looking at my little garden and cheering on the plants. Despite a spell of good weather a week ago, it took longer than I expected for the peas, spinach, and lettuce to sprout. But lo, a pea shoot:

The plants from Sky Nursery are generally doing pretty well. I'm a little concerned by the yellowing of the Chinese Cabbage (background), but the broccoli (foreground) looks good.


There's still no signs of potato sprouts. I think I may have planted them too soon, or too deep, or too something. We've had a good bit of rain, and it's supposed to warm up this weekend. If they don't start sprouting, I'll do a little excavation to see if they rotted.

Excercise

I've started another long-term project...again. I've once again embarked on the couch potato to 5K plan. I tried it last year, then I tried jogging again last fall, in a less structured way. Starting didn't hurt nearly so much this time around. Either I have a tiny bit of lingering fitness from the last bout of running, or I've finally learned to jog slow enough to not kill myself.

Finished things

My friend Kristin is having a baby girl, which gave me an excuse to do some really girly knitting and sewing. I made a sweater

and a matching outfit.

And a quilt covered in ribbons.


Unfinished things
Remember how I said I was going to finish all those unfinished sweaters this year? I worked very diligently on Trent's fisherman sweater for awhile, almost finishing one sleeve. Then he tried it on, and the sleeve is too big. Not too long - too big around. So I'm going to have to rip the whole thing out and reknit it, starting with fewer stitches (I have a plan for that) and decreasing more rapidly. I could cry. Consequently, I've been knitting other things. Hopefully I'll make it back to the unfinished sweaters at some point.

Progress

There’s been great progress on the garden, and I’ve got the blisters to prove it.

The potatoes went in last Thursday. I need to lay chicken wire or something over the bed because the frakking neighborhood cats are using it as a litterbox.

I eventually had topsoil delivered from Viking Topsoil. He was very efficient and more reasonable than Pacific Topsoil’s delivery. So, Mt. Dirt arrived Monday.

On Monday, I also broke up the subsoil in the base of the bed. Tuesday, I moved Mt. Dirt to the raised bed with the aid of Nancy’s wheelbarrow. Here's the before (actually, after about 4 wheelbarrow loads).

That’s when the blisters really came up. But here's the after:

As the cold, cold rain started to fall Tuesday afternoon, I planted the starts I bought at Sky nursery last week (kale, collards, broccoli, and Chinese cabbage). Then I used my frozen fingers to poke some Cascadia pea seeds in, and sowed a row of spinach seed (Tyee hybrid) and some mesclun mix. I covered the whole thing with a floating row cover, held down with some convenient rocks that I dug out of the subsoil.

It’s a good thing I used the row cover, since it’s snowing today. Oh, and here's a cheerful article about our likely spring weather.

Tuesday evening, after I took a dose of Ibuprofen and a shower, Trent and I joined up with our friends Melissa and Paul to celebrate their 2^nd wedding anniversary (we didn’t invite ourselves to their anniversary – they invited us). We had a lovely dinner with them, then headed to the Triple Door to see Habib Koite. We not only found street parking within a block, we also had a front row table. It was an amazing show. We’ve seen Habib Koite 2 times before, and this was by far the best show. We didn’t get home until midnight, and I had to be up at 6 this morning, but it was worth it.