Long overdue

Like a library book, I'm long overdue. At blogging, that is.

No excuses here, I've just been busy resembling a vegetable. The garden - she doesn't need me so much as she did when I started her. It's mostly perennials, and we've laid down some serious mulch to keep the weeds under control.

There's still some fussing and fiddling, some weeding, some planting, much learning.... but by and large, it's not so consuming this year. On weekends, I sometimes have trouble getting started, for all the lack of pressing garden needs.

I should make a list of all of the projects I have planned. Maybe that would make me feel needed again.

I have a hard time just enjoying things, apparently. Even the picture taking is getting kind of same-old...

Ah well, here's the latest crop of pics.



Maybe I just need to learn to appreciate subtlety. This lupin, for example, was new last year and produced just one small stalk. This year, it and it's neighbouring white lupin, are flowering in abundance. I liked them so much, I went out and bought two new ones - a red and a yellow. Had to put the new ones on the other side of the yard because I'm running out of space where these are.

Actually, that's quickly becoming a problem. Space. I'm starting to run out of space to put new things in.



These painted daisies were new last year as well and the plant almost didn't make it. In fact, I had so completely convinced myself that it died, that I couldn't remember what this was when it started flowering.

It's a rather stunning colour, isn't it?



The foxglove continues to impress me. I bought 3 new ones in different colours this spring. Last year's is flowering but the new ones aren't yet. It's a biennial.



This calendula is also new this year. It has a slightly different colouring then last year's calendula. Calendula is supposed to be an annual, but it looks like it self seeds quite hardily - at least the spot where I planted it last year is quite full of foliage that looks like it belongs to the calendula but no flowers there. Only on the new ones. Quite strange. I'm letting the space where it was planted last year be undisturbed so I can see what happens.



The tigerlillies are in trouble this year. They're out on the front of the fence that faces the sidewalk. It's a very small town, but apparently there are still troublemakers or the just plain thoughtless. Someone has been pulling them out and throwing them on the ground nearby.

Neil thinks it's a kid riding by on his bike, grabbing at it, and discarding.

I don't care who or what the excuse is - it's just plain rude. I want to put up a big sign in the post office and shame the offender into an apology. *sigh* I wish the world worked that way.

A few years ago, we found the shasta daises out on the fenceline were being cut. We decided it was a kid taking flowers to his mom. Also annoying, and they could readily have obtained permission if they had bothered to ask.... but cute. Not random destruction like the tiger lillies are suffering.



This is called a japanese wonderflower. We bought the bulbs from the big show - Canada Blooms - last year. We had six of them in flower last summer, and now we're apparently down to 2 plants. I just looked them up on the web, and apparently 'Japanese Wonderflower' is a madeup name to sell Mirabilis jalapa (aka 'Wonder of Peru' and 4 O'Clocks) at garden shows. Fascinating.

And it's not particularily frost hardy in zone 5. Which explains why we lost 4 of the 6. It's one of those tubers I'll have to dig up every year if I want it.

I hate that. It's contrary to my philosophy of gardening, in that if it can't survive in my zone, I don't want it. I tend to only buy annuals for window boxes, vegetables, and to fill in empty space where I've overcrowded it with spring bulbs that are gone too early (and I'm working on that problem).



St.John's Wort. I have two of them. One from an ordinary commercial nursery, and one from the famed Richter's Herbs. Strangely, it's the one from the ordinary commercial nursery that is giving these wonderful flowers. The one from Richter's is straggly, and not flowering at all. I'm assuming that the Richter's plant is a slightly different variety, and better for medicinal use, so I'm not ready to axe it just yet.

Even if I'm also not ready to use herbs medicinally yet myself. It's on the list of things to do with my life. In the meantime, I just plant them.

But it is puzzling.

Well, that's it. I guess I had more to say then I thought.

Cheerio,

Karen

It's my birthday!

And I'll blog when I have a free moment. Sorry folks!

Hope y'all had a happy solstice!

Karen

DARC weekend

The Dark Ages Recreation Company is a group of friends who recreate the Viking Era, sometimes for money, and sometimes for research, and sometimes just for fun.

This weekend was fun. :)

Darrell and the boys were doing The Smelt. The big one of the year. Academics and Museum people and professional blacksmiths were invited to watch.

And I hardly saw any of it. :) Finally.

It's been getting on my nerves because it seems to have taken over the life of the group. So this weekend, I did something about it.

I pushed. I suggested that the rest of the group might like to set up an encampment on the other side of the property, and do some of that other stuff about the Viking Era that we like.

I warped a loom (or started to until the yarn knotted crazily).

Bera and Kadja cooked.

Rig worked on his soapstone bowl.

Stevegrimr (it's not his right name in either time period, but it's how I know him) was carving bone, and later cherry.

Neil and I slept in our viking bed, in our viking tent, with a million sheepskins piled on the bed because it was frigging cold at night.

We sat around the campfire at night with the blacksmiths and academics and friends and ate of the the wonderful food that Bera and Kadja cooked and talked and laughed.

I have so missed that community thing. I am full now, and happy, and I want more of it! :)

In the garden today:
I took the day off to unpack and do laundry and get my darned peppers planted.

So far....I've done some mulching (mostly because I had to empty the wheelbarrow to use it), and weeding.

Deadheaded the irises and have kept the dead flowers aside to perhaps use in a dye bath.

Weeded more.

Threw the ball for the puppy.

Planted some of the peppers, and one poor lonely tomato that I had thought was going to die but didn't.

Dug up some overcrowded tulips.

Did some dishes and laundry, and I'm still working on the yarn mess I made!

Threw the ball for the puppy. He's tired now, he must be happy and content as well. But no doubt, he's dreaming of more balls as well. :)

Pictures in a day or two.

Cheers, Karen

huh?

I'll admit that I wasn't listening very closely. We're encouraged to not engage in political discussion with the patrons while at the service desk. It too easily trips over polite lines and annoys the management.

But this one patron was talking about how frustrating her most recent essay on abortion has been for her. I was nodding politely and just signing out her books...

And she said "did you know that Ireland has a law against abortion but they allow women to leave the country to get abortions in England?"

I couldn't help it.

I replied with surprise. She seemed so annoyed. "So? it's not like they can stop all pregnant women at the border _just in case_ they might go and get an abortion."

"Damn straight they can!"

huh?

Wow, was that ever time to shut down the conversation.

"Your books are due in two weeks".

Do you think she seriously meant that all pregnant women should be locked inside their country for the duration of the pregnancy just in case they might have an abortion? What about all those pregnant women who actually want to be pregnant? And, how would they know? Is it time to start issuing pregnancy tests to women who want to take a weekend trip out of country?

I'm appalled.

Karen

Smelting Fleece, or Fleecing the Smelt, or...

Okay, so it's a weird title for a post, but it works for me.

We didn't actually do any smelting, just prep work for it. The actual smelt is still a week and a half away.

For those of you who haven't been following me around for the past year, or haven't wandered anally retentively through each and every last post in the archives... I have this weird hobby where I sometimes get to dress like a woman who might have lived in the Viking Era, and do things that Vikings might have done, and get paid for it too. When I'm not getting paid, I do research.

For me, that research has turned me into a fibre junkie. You know - natural dyeing, spinning, weaving, etc. No, I don't knit. *gasp* It just isn't my thing.

For Darrell and the boys, it's iron smelting. Originally, I think he wanted to smelt iron the way the Vikings would have done it. Lots of serious research on archaeological remains and all. Now I think he's just obsessed.

Not necessarily a bad thing. After all, I'm obsessed about fibre. Or fiber, depending on your country of origin or spelling preferences. Despite being fiercely Canadian in so many other spelling matters, I must confess - I prefer 'fiber'.

So where was I?

Right - last weekend. Last weekend, the hubby and I went up to the Wareham Forge homestead and the fun ensued.

First, let me talk about the weather - both days had temperatures in the 30's with a humidex that pushed it into the 40's. Now, let's set the scene on the ground. The Wareham Forge homestead has something called an esker running through it - picture lots and lots of annoying stones with a sprinkling of topsoil.

So Saturday morning dawns and we sit around drinking coffee, until the urge to move hits us - the boys go outside to sweat and toil, and Vandy and I make good our escape.

We went off to a little bit of fiber heaven - also known as a sheep farm.

We got there just as the last sheep was being shorn, so unfortunately I have no 'before' pictures.... just the naked sheep. Their eyes reflect strangely when a flash is used.



We did get there in time to watch the farm's doggie getting sheared...



And we met Elvis...



Don't ask. I don't know why this rooster was named after the king of rock and roll.

Vandy and I both came home with fleeces. Mine is from a sheep named Ely, and she's a moorit (reddish chocolate brown). Vandy's sheep was named Greta, who is a musket (light greyish-brown). Yup, that's right. Sheep grow themselves in colour. It's not all white.

Sorry, no pics of the fleece. I just wasn't thinking. If you want to see coloured sheep fleece, you can go back to February's archives and watch me playing with a black Icelandic fleece.

Anyway, I'm all keen to send my fleece off to a fiber mill to get turned into commercial roving. That experience with the black Icelandic was enough to teach me that I really just don't like the processing parts of preparing the fleece for spinning and that someone else with big modern machines can do it for me with much gratitude. See? This is where researching the Viking methods and the fiber junkie go their separate ways.

It's okay, it happens to the best of us. The key is to not pretend or deny that we're substituting a modern method. And to not use the modern method when the museum is paying you. It's an important detail.

Which brings me to the smelt preparations.

When we got back from the sheep farm, we were stunned (okay, I was - I'm not sure about Vandy) to see four large wooden posts sticking out of the ground near the pond. And the ground had been flattened, and railway ties added to make for a firm edge to the pond. That's the part that relates back to the obscene temperatures and the rock infested ground. It was the beginning of this....



.... which actually got roofed the next day. Imagine doing all the physical labour involved to dig out holes for the posts, and carving the riverbank with that heat, and rocks a'plenty. I would have played the girl card if I'd been there.

The next day 'though, I did help out...



... by mixing up the clay cobb with Selena, so that Kevin (the bent over guy) could make the smelter itself. Kevin took our cobb in handfuls and deposited them between two metal forms ....



... and then Ken took a big stick and tamped it all down nice and tight.



Now of course, the Vikings wouldn't have had nice flat metal sheets to help make a smelter, or newspaper so the clay releases cleanly. But that's some of those modern methods that make our life easier thing that we don't pretend about.

The guys who've done the research theorize that the Vikings _might_ have used wooden forms to make the smelter and then just burned them down around the smelter since the wood will burn at a lower temperature then the clay. There's no archaeological evidence about the _method_ of building a smelter. There's very little archaeological evidence about how it was _used_ in this era.

That's where we get the concept of experimental archaeology. Take what we do know, and try to make it work.

But I digress.... here's Kevin putting the finishing touches on the smelter building.



Darrell's got some good shots in his temp folder, taken the day after we all left.

There'll be all kinds of pictures and words about this most recent project on the DARC website eventually, in the Iron section. Neil's slower to write those up then the bloggers amongst us are.

*sigh* Now, I'm doing it. I'm actually getting quite tired of the way the group is getting taken over by the iron smelting, but here I am blathering on way more about it then the fiber stuff, and showing y'all lots of pics.

So.... anyway, when we got home from that excitement there were a few more flowers out in the garden. Here's one to tide us all over til the next post. It's the very last tulip picture of the year.



Karen

Two weekends behind

Sorry, sorry... let me catch up.

The 20/21/22 weekend was the first long weekend of the summer in Canada, celebrating Queen Victoria's birthday. We're weird that way about the Royalty in Canada.

On saturday, we went to the first camping SCA event of the year. Neil and I just dropped in for a day to teach some Arts and Sciences classes and I got a tad fried by the sun.

Nina asked me to help her out with a class on hedge-row dyeing. I brought some madder for one dyepot....


...and we picked dandelions for the other dyepot.


After a few hours of simmering on the fire, while the people simmered in the sun, we felt like we weren't really getting very much colour out of either pot. Neither of us had remembered to bring a mordant to add to the pots.

So I suggested to Nina, who was camping that weekend, that she keep the materials in the pots overnight and take it out in the morning. I'd hoped the longer time in would give the dyebath more time to leach metal from pots - one copper and one alum.

I've seen the madder results, but not the dandelion ones yet. I'll have to take pictures of both soon.

This most recent weekend, we went up to the Wareham Forge homestead to visit our friends, Darrell and Vandy.

Darrell's goal: enlist big, smelly menfolk to build a semi-permanent smelter and smelter cover in his backyard.

Karen and Vandy's goal: escape from the boys, and go visit some pretty shetland sheep being sheared. Come home with fleece for dyeing, spinning and weaving.

Both goals were accomplished. Details in the next post, when the pictures are ready. They're off the camera, but not yet disseminated, thumbnailed, or put up on the web. Soon, I hope.

Karen

Okay, so what now?

I've been having a difficult couple of months with the sinuses, and I'm at the maintenance level of the allergy shots. Things are supposed to get better when you get to the maintenance level, not worse.

Cats and dogs, btw. And as you know, I have one of each.

So... I went back to the allergist recently to be retested. I thought perhaps after a few years of a growing gardening hobby, that I might be becoming seasonally allergic.

The results?

Nadda. Not a damn thing. Not even the cat and dog allergy that I'd previously been diagnosed with.

So...I guess that's a good thing. That the previous allergies are dying back. That I haven't developed new ones.

But I gotta ask (and I did, believe me) - what the heck is with my sinuses then?

Tests to follow.

The allergist thinks it's anatomical - effectively a deviated septum. I think I've got a sinus infection. A coworker thinks my voice sometimes sounds like I have asthma.

If it's a sinus infection, I'm never ever going to trust my GP again. I've brought it up in the past, and she asked me a few diagnostic questions. Apparently, I didn't give the right answers so she blew it off as an idea. Without any tests, or even physical examination.

Funny thing is... I had to stop taking antihistamines a week before the retest, and ...I've been feeling better without them. Strange, huh?

Anyway, in the garden today we have - alpine brain coral. Not it's real name, I don't even remember it's real name except that it's an alpine something.


Drawf Irises


Japanese Quince


And because I still completely adore this flower, another view of the pink and white tulip. :)


Karen

conflict of interest

Honestly, I can't decide whether to be completely bummed out that West Wing is now... done. over. finito. Forever. What can possibly come close to it?

Or just plain... tickled pink.



This is absolutely, by far, my favourite picture this year.

Karen

You know...

You know you've been gardening too much lately when....

1. You walk by the perennial gardens on the campus and are tempted to weed them.

2. You start to think about all the space on campus that could be used as community gardens.

3. You close your eyes to go to sleep and all you can see on the inside of your eyelids are dandelions.

4. The dandelions start to talk back to you.

5. The dandelions take over your husband's brain and make him turn the lawn mower on so they'll be chopped back only a little and not actually yanked out completely by the roots.

Feel free to add more....

Karen

For no other reason......

....then I have a liking for these particular photos today.

I call this one "my maple beats your church steeple".


More tulips.


One periwinkle flower.


There are actually hundreds, maybe thousands.


We inherited this patch. Like forget-me-nots, lily-of-the-valley, and most of the mint family, there are some plants that I have a hard time believing people can ethically sell. Rabid growth is an understatement.

The tree in the forefront, btw, is one of the many squirrel-planted chestnuts. Something else that is in rabid abundance in the yard.

Karen

T is for Tulips

I have no inspiration for words today, so I'll let the pictures do the talking instead. Today's theme is tulips.

















Karen

F is for....

Fritillaria Imperialis, "Aurora"


And close up...


Forsythia


This is the little garden between the fence and the sidewalk. I call it the Fenceline Garden. We have 7 different garden 'areas' - the Front Garden, the Fenceline Garden, the (former) Veggie Garden, the Triangle Garden, the Round Garden, the Tree Nursery Garden and the Back Fence Garden.


From the firepit, with my back to the green shed, out to the front fenceline. This garden area is new as of last year. I got tired of mowing in circles around the fruit and wedding trees and the grass next to the fence on the right was in terrible condition, being in shade for most of the day. So we added a HUGE amount of newspaper and mulch. By the time the newspaper breaks down, the grass and weeds underneath are largely dead, and the area becomes prime garden space.


And finally.... the Front Garden.

picture fest to come! and allergies

I've been sick again. I think it's my allergies playing havoc with my sinuses.

In 2003, when I was last tested for allergies, the results said I was allergic to cats, like my pretty Ginger, seen here being unhappy about being indoors while I am out...


...and on a lesser scale, to dogs, like the bundle of energy friend that is Leif the Licky.


In the last 3 years since that allergy testing, I've been having this growing passion for... growing things. Gardening. I think I may be becoming seasonally allergic as well. I'll find out on May 16, when I have an appointment with the allergist for re-testing.

Anyway, since I was home from work yesterday with a raw throat and massive congestion, I wandered around taking nearly a hundred shots of the gardens and house. In between taking out what feels like hundreds of dandelions, the hard way, before they start to self-seed. And just as many mini maple trees, just because.

Instead of my usual post once a week or more with a ton of pictures, I'm going to try to post 2 or 3 new pictures every day for the next couple of weeks... so hang on.

Here we see apricot blooms closeup, from a few days ago....



And in perspective...



And yesterday...the blooms are going away, while the leaves are coming out.



Now, I'd like to say that soon we'll have apricots growing, but sadly that isn't true. I think this is one of those fruit trees that need a partner tree to cross-pollinate with, and we have only one of them. This is a tree that we inherited from the previous home owners and they either didn't know that, or just wanted the tree for it's Pretty factor. It's not a big deal, since apricots aren't high on my list of fruits.

Karen

What do you do?

Looking over my list of what I'd bought at Richter's Herbs, and how I'd broken it down into categories, it occurs to me to ask - what are your garden goals?

Are you growing for the Pretty?

Do you know, or want to learn, the use of medicinal herbs?

Are you a natural dyer crazy enough to risk the seriously invasive woad for that wonderful blue?

It doesn't have to be a crazy thing, it can be controlled. Or so I tell myself about the forget-me-nots and creeping charley and peppermint every darned year. But those are the previous home owners problems that I inherited. I'm choosing woad, and hopefully in a careful manner.

Anyway... is it a cooking thing? Growing veggies and herbs for your next meal? Or for sustainability?

Gods but Anti-V must want to kill me sometimes. Her Zone 4 climate and the esker running through her land makes gardening difficult, and she's passionate about cooking!

Maybe it's a Zen thing... the peace of gardening?

Or the pride of having bounty and knowing you've worked darn hard for it?

I'm in the 'all of the above category'. Though admittedly the dye plants and Pretty factor usually end up with top priority.

I'm hoping the dye plants will keep me busy through the next winter. :)

Karen

Errrr... Hi! Still here.

Time to catch up a bit... it's been a busy week apparently. Thank you for the good wishes on my blogiversary.

Let's see now... Richter's Herbs, the visit. I should listen to my husband more often. He suggested that I call ahead, and ask to have some woad and weld plants ready for me. I didn't. They didn't have any available. I had to settle for seeds and I'm not all that good with seeds.

Climbing strawberries. Leopard Lily. Comfrey. Calendula. Rosemary. Madder. Purple Bush Basil. Pennyroyal. Lobelia. Chinese Rhubarb. Yellow Bedstraw. Valerian.

Dye Plants - Yellow Bedstraw, Madder, Calendula.
Medicinal - Comfrey, Calendua, Pennyroyal, Lobelia, Valerian.
Foodish - Climbing Strawberries, Rosemary, Purple Bush Basil, Chinese Rhubarb.
Pretty - Leopard Lily, Calendula, Purple Bush Basil, there may be more but I don't know yet. :)

In the Fiber world: Saxon Green (sort of*).
A passing glance at research says that Saxon Green is Weld overdye of Woad. Jo gave me the remains of her weld dyebath from FITP. I put a skein of alum mordanted lopi in, and left it overnight on the heating vent. There was a definite colour change but I wasn't entirely satisfied with the results - it was fairly mottled. I probably didn't sufficiently wet the wool before adding it.

Next step was to take a handful of fleece, previously dyed with chemical Indigo and throw it in the rubber tub on the heating vent. This stayed in for several days. I'd check it once in awhile and didn't notice any change happening in the wool. So I decided that perhaps it needed greater heat then the heating vent was providing.

I failed to notice that the dyebath itself was changing colour, until I dumped it in the dyepot to heat on the stove. "Oh" I say to myself "This could be interesting."
I also added the skein that had previously been dyed with weld, better saturated with water this time. Heated all of the above on a low simmer for about an hour, and then turned the heat off and left it overnight. Rinsed both throughly in the morning and got all excited.

What a pretty colour!



The skein on the left is the first exciting colour, and the skein on the right is the exhaust colour. I'm delighted with both.

I didn't get a picture of the handful of fleece.

I say "sort of" because while Indigo is the dye chemical in Woad, chemically formed Indigo is apparently a slightly different creature, and hence I 'sort of' have Saxon Green. Re-enactors get fussy about the details sometimes.

And on to the Gardens:

Not fully open daffodils, but still pretty.


Fully devoted to the sun..


Not quite open yet apricot blossoms.


Fritillaria Imperialis, "Aurora", also not quite open yet. But wow...tall. And Anti-V is right, the flowers are stinky.


Now, these things, on the other hand are very very tiny. Grape Muscari.


And finally, Lungwort. Surprisingly pretty. After it's done flowering, it's pretty unremarkable and looks a lot like Creeping Lanium.


There was a single lone squirrel-planted-on-the-far-side-of-the-yard tulip that has bloomed as well, but I didn't get a good picture of it. It's been raining all day and the one trip out I made to try was enough for me. I'll get more pics of tulips soon enough.

It's still really really early for some of these flowers. Very unseasonable warmth. As a human being, I'm loving it. As a gardener, it's worrying. How much of my garden is going to die in next week's predicted frost when the weather finally starts heading back to normal?

Karen