yellow

I have a crisis of personality from time to time regarding my favorite color. Isn't it interesting that we make such a big deal of it? If you meet a child what do you ask? Name? Age? Favorite color? When we find someone who shares our favorite color, we have a bonding moment.

My nephew decided when he was very young that, because the photos of me in his home were of my wedding day, white must be my favorite color. This past winter, long winter of long winters, I lived through a few weeks where I was fairly confident that gray was my favorite color and I thought, "What kind of person thinks gray is their favorite color?" Perhaps it was a coping mechanism.

The moral of this story is that, on this day, I am declaring yellow to be my favorite color. It is everywhere at present, and that suits me just fine. It is so cheerful a color. What's not to love?

What is your favorite color? What colors fill your world this week?

In my yard-en

Its a jungle out there!! We've been getting good rain these past few weeks and everything outside is growing non-stop. We added a new bed on the back corner of our lot. It does make mowing a little more difficult but we are hoping those boxwood and the rose-of-sharon will get large enough to provide a little bit of a break for the wind and snow that howls through the wind-tunnel that is the back side of our subdivision. It is nice to put things in the ground that we won't see reach their full potential. Most of the flowers and many of the shrubs are enjoying their fifth summer with us, so they are plenty full and will need dividing this fall, but the plants in the new bed will grow, grow, grow long after we are gone.

We are working on our second batch of sparrows in the nest box just outside the kitchen window. They peep all day long. The noise of the patio slider makes them pop up to the house hole but if I get close enough to get a picture, down they go. It took me days to get this bitty beak bump in my camera.

How does your garden grow?

{Yarn Along} Progress Stalled

So yesterday I waxed poetic about the spotted fawns. Today it seems they've gotten the best of me - and my bean patch. Julian specifically asked if he should run them off, I said NO! So the burden is entirely mine today.

I could see that a few things around the yard had been munched, edges of the sweet peas, a few hosta blooms, but this year has been so much better than last because of my magic potion. This stuff actually works! Throughout the spring, I applied it every Saturday and had not a nibble. I knew I needed to reapply last night but we had torrential downpours, "I'll get it in the morning, I told myself."

Anyhow, as far as my Yarn Along update is concerned, I've been listening to a Recorded Books of The Union Quilters, by Jennifer Chiaverini. I am having a hard time with it and I am really only pressing on because I don't want to quit and I like Civil War history. The narrators voice is grating on my nerves and the author uses very 1990's-movie-lines dialogue. Its not very believable to me. And I know it was a different time but you better believe I wouldn't be sending Julian off to war with a precious heirloom quilt in his rucksack. "It will be right here when you return, thankyouverymuch," I'd say.

My knitting has stalled. I knit up several of the "teeth" but I'm having a very hard time with my tension and the slippery needles and tiny yarn of the Hitchiker/Ella Rae Lace Merino. I ripped it all out in the name of "practice" and started again. It was nice to have confirmation from my mother in law that it really WAS slippery and I'm not just inept, and she came up with some different #3 needles which are easier to use. I'm seriously considering that this may not be the season in my life for crafty progress.

I'll finish the post with some pictures of the lovely things those fawns haven't munched, yet.

Dahlias

As is our custom, we were browsing the Lowes dead/dying rack for clearance plants a few weeks back. They had bins of clearance bulbs and tubers in plastic packaging, you know how they do. I saw some dinner plate dahlias, three tubers, 75% off original price. I went back and forth over it, knowing I didn't need more plants, feeling like I'd had no success lifting and saving them from year to year. But, since they are my favorite flower, in my favorite flower color, on clearance I bought them.

Because the tubers had put off new growth already but hadn't been exposed to true sunlight, I laid them out in a shady and protected spot in my yard and left them for a few days to acclimate. This weekend, Julian and I had a huge repotting party - I call it a party but it was really just the two of us in the hot and humid weather, repotting everything we could get our hands on to make sure everything is good to go this summer. (We have lots of rose bushes and berry plants in containers that will go with us to the next place, someday.)

While I was knocking around in the garage, I came across two old dried dahlia tubers that I had lifted but never took the time to pack them away. What do you know? They had new growth on them. We potted them up, and my tally of tubers went from 3 to 5.

We also have about 20 amaryllis bulbs that needed repotting as they are getting pretty big - we started them from seed about four years ago and now some of them are finally big enough to bloom. I was running out of pots.

I went up on the uppermost shelf in our garage to grab the last pot that was big enough, and what did I find? Dahlia tubers. I had actually taken care to lift them, dry them, pack them in soil and completely forget about them... and they were growing, right there, on the top shelf of he garage. Dahlia count? We're up to at least 9. I lost count.

Lessons learned:
1.) take the time to lift and prep the dahlias for the coming year
2.) my clearance purchase was not in vain, because now I may have those peachy-apricot colored dinnerplate dahlias in the coming years as well

Veg Patch Update

Its been a warm one. We had a leak in our AC and had to get the coolant recharged. Last night we slept on the air mattress in the basement with a box fan. I froze. Julian was just right, I suppose - just right for sleeping on an air mattress with a sinus infection and a box fan whizzing at his head. All better now, me thinks. [*update - not better yet and Julian froze too, he said]

The plants are going wild. We've had outstanding luck keeping the deer away. Plants I never knew would get so big are huge because they've not been munched. [*update - the deer just munched this morning]

Now that the deer seem under control, it is time for the slugs. Ewww. I loathe them.

Wrenny (we name everything, and not very creatively), the male house wren has taken up residence in our house for the third year running without finding a mate. The males build the nests and coax the females to them. While I enjoy his near constant bubbly tune, it makes me sad that he hasn't had any luck yet with the family. A lady friend was here for a bit in early spring but she didn't stick around.

Anything nesting in your garden?

{Bloom Day} May 2013

Linking up with Bloom Day May 2013, Storey Publishing.

*****

Top: False Indigo, Heirloom Iris, Hardy Geranium

Mid: Knock-Out Rose, Candytuft, Heirloom Iris

Bottom: Coreopsis