Last spring I built them a lovely mound.  I amended the soil.  I planted 4 varieties developed in the region, mixing ever-bearing and June bearing so we would have a big initial crop and then a constant small supply.  I trimmed their runners, so the mother plants would focus on their own roots rather than offsets.  We let each plant set a few fruits, but plucked most of the flowers.

And then suddenly it was winter before it had ever really been Fall.  I never put them properly to bed; I just left them to their own devices.  Today I perhaps reaped the rewards of my inattention, except I prefer to believe it’s their perversity, not my lack of care, that made such a mess.

They had, somehow, migrated.  Instead of neat little offset rows of plants, they were scattered about with big empty spots and over-tight spacings.  This could have been the work of raccoons going after grubs.  It could have been the work of the cats and dog.  But I think it’s the plants.  They had also set a bumper crop offsets on the driveway and brick paths.  Lots of perfectly good dirt, but nooooo, let’s set down roots between these two bricks!  grrr.

All is now orderly in strawberryland again.  Runners are trimmed back to the mothers so I can weed around them, and all the weeds are removed.  The volunteer poppies and parsley have been heeled in elsewhere in the garden.  The offsets are re-planted in the inexplicable bare spots.  All that remains is a good feeding and some mulch, and they should be good for the season.

It felt good to be out digging in the little plot of Earth that’s mine to tend.  I had a very grumpy day, but there is something relaxing and, well, grounding about tending the land.  Even though it was cold, even though there’s now hail coming down and I’m still shivering, it was good.  I’m still a bit down and disheartened, but no longer ready to chew nails and snap at people.  I feel much more at peace and ready to face the things that must be dealt with.

In other news, Henrietta is all spun up, plyed, and awaiting finishing.  250 yds (unfinished) of worsted-ish yarn from 4 oz.  I’m pleased.  :-)  As ever it’s shockingly darker than I expected, but I like it.  I want to try to make a wrap of some kind, but I believe it will need to be mixed with another fiber; 250 yds isn’t a lot to work with, and I expect to lose at least 10% in the finishing.

The tags are for me to remember what end to start from when knitting, since I set up what should end up being gradual color shifts.  I racked my brain trying to come up with a way to mark the yarn that would survive a fulling, and then realized I have plenty of scrap fabric and a laundry marking pen.  I made up tags, lettered them sequentially (writing on satin is hard!)  and tied them to the starting ends of the skeins, so I’ll know where to begin when I start knitting, no matter how long the yarn marinates.

It ended up that my first ply– the one that was split as a single length of the braid– is much shorter than the second ply.  I *think* this is because I slipped into semi-worsted point of contact spinning, rather than the honest long draw I was doing on the first ply.  Semi-worsted is much more well suited to cuddling on the couch watching tv.  :-)

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.