I need to:

• photograph- I want before and after pics!
• rake and weed everything
• pick up trash and fallen branches
• start lamiastrum flats for keet
• start indoor seeds
• plant bulbs

From the Home Depot sale on Saturday:

veggies:

• Peas: Dark seeded early perfection
• Peas: Sugar Snap
• Mesclun Salad Greens

flowers:

• Marigolds: scarlet starlet
• Cosmos: bright lights
• Oriental poppies: Pizzicato mix (amapola oriental)
• Sweet peas: Royal Family
• Zinnia: envy (It’s chartreuse!!!)
• Nasturtium: Empress of India
• Zinnia: candy cane
• Sweet William: tall double
• Viola: Helen Mount

Also pulling out of the fridge from last year

veggies/herbs:

• Basil: summerlong
• Basil: dark opal purple
• Beets: Detroit Dark Red
• Lettuce: little Ceasar
• Greens: Mesclun spicy (raddichio, endive, mustard, etc)
• Smart Pickle Cucumber
• Broccoli Raab
• Spinach: Early Prolific

flowers:

• oriental poppy “Brilliant red”
• sunflower: Mammoth Grey Stripe
• cosmos: bright lights (oops!  Forgot I had this!  it’s a 2006 packet, though, and I got limited germination last year)
• Zinnia: candy cane (same as the Cosmos.  At least I know what I like!)
• Sweet peas (recovered seeds from last year’s plants)
• Catnip
• Nasturtium: Empress of India (ok, this is embarrassing.)

On their way from Thompson & Morgan:

• Cauliflower: Gitano F1 Hybrid (Romanesco)
• Datura meteloides: Evening Fragrance
• Swiss Chard: Bright Lights
• Alcea rosea: Chater’s Double Icicle
• Nigella damascena Moody Blues
• Nicotiana: x sanderae: Fragrant Cloud
• Zaluzianskya capensis seeds: Night Phlox
• Radish: Rainbow Mixed
• Lobelia cardinalis: Queen Victoria
• Buphthalmum speciosum
• Myrrhis odorata

Yet to find:

• variegated horseradish
• Borage (Borago officinalis)

I planted a lot of shrubs last spring, but the dogs have eaten or trampled pretty much all of them.  :-(  I’m hoping they come back form the roots.

My first outside garden chore after the general clean-up and starting some flats of Lamiastrum for Keet is going to be putting up a fence to keep them out of the area I’m trying to establish in back- which is most of it.  They’ll have a concrete patio and a service corridor on the far side of the house as well as two large beds on the driveway side of the house that have huge old azaleas.  And by huge I mean 15′ or so.

Mcho Ficchu detail

I also did something that wasn’t on the agenda- I photographed my stash.  The pictures aren’t great because they were taken in the basement with a flash camera, so the color is off.  But they should at least help me remember what I have, once I link them to the stash database on Ravelry.

For today I want to do the final finishing on the Ficchu, which should be quick, get the knitting bags done, and then when Z gets home we’ll tackle the house cleaning.  If he is effective at it, I’d like to take him out to Target to spend his gift certificate from my family and also his allowance.  Oh, and the garden work, if it gets warm enough.  It peaked at 34° yesterday, so gardening?  Not so much.  Today is forecast to make it to 42°, which is vaguely plausible for digging holes in the ground.

For the moment I’m still lazy in bed.  Which I think is entirely justifiable, since it’s Sunday morning and I have only slept 4 hrs.  :-D

Right now I have two knitting projects on the needles, and three knitting bags in my backlog, one of which (apologies, Summer!) I’m still trying to find an interfacting to allow me to complete.  And it’s making me feel a bit queasy.  I want to get the shoulder wrap (Macho Ficchu!  hee!) off the needles this weekend and get back to the yak socks.  And I want to get Squid’s bag completed and off to her, as well as Andey’s.  Summer’s too, if I can make it to the fabric district to scour the shops for a heavy black interfacing that won’t shrink when ironed.

Seriously.  What good is an interfacing that shrinks during the iron-on process, leaving awful bubbling puckers in the dress fabric?  I had a terrible moment with that when the adhesive was setting and I couldn’t find a free corner to get it off already.  I did manage to peel it away from the silk beore they were permanently bonded, but I was terribly worried that I had just destroyed the precious sari silk.  phew.

Also on deck this weekend are tasks in the “maintenance” category, which is stil one I struggle with.

I have bulbs that were purchased too late last fall, which have sadly wintered over in their bags on the front porch.  I’m hoping I can pop them in the ground now and coax them into surviving the insult.  My spring pansies suffered the same fate, as well as a few perennials that had the poor planning to go dormant before getting bought from the garden center at Home Depot, and so were rescued from the trash pile.  I look forward to them being lovely black eyed susans and daylilies and I forget what in the fall, but first I have to convince them that they are only dormant, not actualy dead.  :-)

The fish tank… eh.  The light bar has been broken for ages.  All of the lovely plants that were the purpose for the tank have died, except for one lotus that refuses to give up the ghost.  I at least need to change the water in the tank, and return carbon to the filter now that the snail plague has been erradicated.  I would like to dismantle the light bar and determine what parts are needed; I finally found someone at the company who will help me restore it.  Alternately, I could declare the project dead, and dismantle the whole tank.  I’m down to a couple bottom feeders I should be able to dump on some nearby pet store, or send away via Craigs List.

And last but not least, the truly uninteresting but essential maintenance task- house cleaning.  I’ve been out or busy for three weekends now, and the house shows it.  I’ve spot cleaned a room here or there, but the place needs a good sweep and vacuum, and the bathrooms are in sad states.  Somewhere this weekend that must be addressed.

Saturday morning 9am.  We’ll see how far I’ve gotten with this by Sunday night.