Interesting Things in the Garden

We worked outside yesterday. I mulched the potatoes with hemp from the bale we got last season. I also weeded the peas and lettuce and dug up the collards, which had promptly gone to seed after surviving the winter. Sometimes biennial plants do that. Makes you wonder why they just don’t go to seed the first year. 🤔 The leaves were too bitter to use. I’ll replant that row.

After the garden work was done, I mowed the yard again. I did the first pass with the riding mower, then finished up with the push mower. The husband spent most of the day wielding the string trimmer. He doesn’t need to trim every time I mow, but it’s got to be done at least a couple of times a season. I have a little Dewalt battery trimmer that I use in the garden. He has a much larger gas-powered trimmer.

[I have my own set of “Mama Bear” tools because everything he buys is built for him.]

The hemp bale had mushrooms growing out of it:

The layers of these round bales peel off in one piece, so I peeled off this layer and put it down between the rows of potatoes. I didn’t have to touch anything.

I also spotted this ladybeetle on the gooseberry bush, although it’s hard for me to get close-up photos with my phone:

Ladybeetles are different from ladybugs and have a bad reputation as an invasive species. They are aggressive and will crowd out native ladybugs. They also bite, but I don’t make a practice of picking them up. All I know is that if I see these, I won’t see aphids.

It felt good to be out in the sun, moving around. No garter snakes yet.

After lunch, I got out the pieces for the BU jacket and started putting that together. This is the hardest part of the process. I have stacks of variously-sized Sawtooth Star blocks. The blocks have to be assembled into large pieces of fabric which can be quilted and from which I can cut the jacket pieces. I started with the back. Of course, I didn’t just make two sizes of blocks that sew nicely together, like 6" and 12"—no, I made blocks of several different sizes. I solved that problem by sewing strips of background fabric to some of the blocks to make them larger. I also don’t want to cut off any parts of the blocks when I cut the pattern pieces, so in addition to the “sashing,” there will be a border around the outside edges.

This is as improv as I get. I don’t enjoy flying by the seat of my pants and I’ve already gone way off script with this project. It will be what it will be, but I am motivated to get it done because it’s holding up the rest of the sewing queue. And June is going to be an insanely busy month. I get back from BU late on June 30th. My friends from Tennessee arrive that day to spend three weeks in the Flathead and I plan to do nothing but goof around with them while they are here. That will be my reward for having gotten through April, May, and June.

I have church this morning. By the time I get home, eat lunch, and call my mother, it will be too late (and hot) to start any garden work, so I’ll probably work on the jacket or edit this week’s podcast episode. Tomorrow, I plan to start putting some plants in the garden.