Growth

Cathy lives down in the valley. Her garden runs about two weeks ahead of mine, so when she posts pictures on Facebook—say, of her rhubarb or currants—I know to start watching for mine. It’s about time for my rhubarb to pop up. I went looking yesterday:

I have three rhubarb plants. This is a tiny one that Elysian gave me last year:

And this is one of the larger, established ones:

Signs of life! While I was checking the rhubarb, I also found a clump of garden sorrel:

At one time, there was a whole row of this, but over the years, most of it succumbed to the husband’s overly enthusiastic weeding, lawnmowing, and/or roto-tilling. (I have learned that if there is a plant I don’t want destroyed, I need to mark it with some kind of eye-catching flagging.) Honestly, though, I don’t need much more than one plant. The leaves have a lemony taste and are good in salads in small amounts.

The chives are up, too, but I didn’t get a picture.

I started seeds yesterday for broccoli, zucchini, watermelons, and cantaloupe. All of the other seeds have germinated. I am optimistic about the cowpea crop and curious to see which variety does the best. The husband says we have plenty of PVC pipe, rebar, and row cover, so I should be set for hoops if I need them.

He got the brooder box set up in the chicken coop last night. I’ll start checking with the farm store today to see if I can get some chicks.

I really can’t do much more in the big garden. If the weather is as nice as it’s predicted to be, I’ll probably work on the herb garden this week.

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One of my Facebook friends noted that she’s been cutting up so much fabric for masks that she’ll be able to make a COVID-19 commemorative scrap quilt when this is all over. Here, too, the scrap bags overfloweth (again).

I finished the binding on the latest Candy Coated quilt last night:

That pale turquoise houndstooth is the backing. I had a heck of a time finding a binding color that worked with that print. I the end, I went with some navy Kona. This will get added to the pile to donate to the relief sale in Ritzville next fall.

I also put together another MDS comforter for tying whenever our sewing group is able to meet at church again. We had cut out parts for seven comforters back in January—for the big comforter-tying party, which seems like a lifetime ago—and only finished five of them. The other two have been in my sewing room waiting for me to assemble them. I’ll do the second one today.

And I think I have figured out what is going on with those positive/negative quilt blocks, but that will have to wait for another blog post.