Sewing, rug hooking, and other things...

Lately I've become extremely interested in rug making. Since I like to sew and there are always scraps of fabric that I don't know what to do with, I happened upon the idea to use them for making hand hooked rugs.

I've been searching the internet for any information on this fascinating part of our American history and have found all sorts of wonderful things. Things got really "bad" for me for rug making because I happened upon a wonderful book that had really awesome pictures and tutorials for making rugs. A while back I had begun the process of collecting the parts and pieces for creating my own rugs, but due to life and such, those things were pushed to the wayside. Until I found that book.

Additionally, I was able to repair my 17 year old serger which I'm thinking will leave me with lots of great fabric strips for rug hooking.

So, will post more later as I think about it. I'm not too good at maintaining this blog, but do add to it whenever it crosses my mind.

Catching up...

This past week has been spent mainly at work. But, today is Friday and I ran down to the feed store. I went on ahead and bought more purple cone flower seeds and a few other perennial seeds that I've never seen available in the stores here before. Also, my bamboo, comfrey, lemon grass, caraway, and kiss me over the garden gate seeds came in the mail today.

I can hardly wait to get them into the soil. All of the other seedlings that I have started are doing really well. The mystery seeds that I started two weeks ago are viable and they've sprouted. I'm really hoping they turn out to be the rose mallows I've always wanted.

Oh, I also bought some green goddess eggplants, one pot of butternut squash, and a few cucumbers.

Will post more tomorrow.

Sunny, blustery day...

Yesterday we spent over in Mobile with my mom, brothers, and little sister. It was a really beautiful day...yesterday and today. We went to this really nice county park and had a cook-out. The kids were so cute and I think we all had a really good time.

Today, I put over 132 Roma tomatoes into Dixie cups. Also, I put all the Serrano chilies and Jalapeno chilies into Dixie cups, too. I also discovered that all the Purple Cone Flowers that I stepped up got eaten by the snails, slugs, earwigs, and roly poly's. So, I will have to go buy some more of those seeds to start. These are some of my favorite flowers and I've not had any growing since Ivan hit and killed just about everything I had growing out in the flower beds.

So, to sum it all up as to what I have growing, I've got Rutger, Roma, and Celebrity tomatoes, squash (yellow crook-neck and spaghetti), cucumbers (National Pickling and Armenian yard longs), Jalapenos, Serranos, bell peppers, and Ichibahn egg plants. I have herbs such as basil, oregano, bay leaves, rosemary, garlic chives, parsley, thyme, and stevia.

I'll also start several types of beans and peas. This year I found leeks in the nursery at Wally World and put those out by the chicken coop. I've never grown them, but I totally love them in potatoe soup. The sugar snap peas are beginning to make peas, but with the temperatures going up into the 80's already, I don't know how much longer they will produce.

I took several photos of my garden and am really proud of my dh. He built me a table that is especially for my trays of seeds/seedlings. I'm also utilizing the old rabbit cages to hold my trays, too.

Pictures will be posted at a later day because I'm really tired from working outside in the heat.

Will post more later.

Not much happening today...

Went to work, came home and ran out to the garden. Had my two little shadows along and didn't get much done at all, except to snap a few really cute pictures of my budding gardeners.

First post on this blog..

Today, I decided to post my gardening notes and observations on an internet blog.

All of the seeds that I planted two weeks ago are up and this evening, I stepped up the crook neck squash into larger pots. I also did the same with the spaghetti squash. The cukes, Armenian yard long and National Pickling are just about ready to step up, too. I don't want to put them into the ground until they're a bit bigger. The honey dew melons are up, too. I almost got those confused with the cucumbers...that's what I get for not marking them properly.

The plan is to trellis all of the vining plants, whether it's on the fence or some sort of structure that I'll have to build.

The neighborhood cats have decided to use my flower beds as their "box", so I've been cutting the small trees (weeds) and using these as a sort of wattle to deter them from hanging out there. There is also at least one cat that lies on the ground under the bird feeders. I'm guessing that if he/she lies still enough, an easy meal will fly straight to him. If I remember, I'll take a picture of the homemade wattles and post it here on this blog.

Until tomorrow....