Over the weekend I wanted to try my hand at doing something new. A while back I'd bought myself a little booklet on making home crochet and home knit dish clothes. I tried my hand at it this weekend and made my first ever crochet dishcloth. I did pretty good, though it's not perfect and I had to pull it out several times until I understood what the pattern was trying to tell me. Reading a crochet pattern is like reading another language to me. So this first one was not perfect but it works and I had to give it a go with a few dishes. I love how it scrubs. So I had a little yarn leftover from making the first and I used that to practice, practice and practice the stitches I had learned---V stitch and Shell stitch until i have them down pat now. When I get through making myself a whole set of them I can start making them to sell and barter with or to give as gifts. Who wouldn't want one of these? They are very sturdy and I can make them in any color I want. And on top of that, it really did not take that long to make. I'm sure the next one will be faster as I know the stitches now.
I LOVE teaching myself new skills.
Other then the stitching, my weekend was filled with running errands and working in the garden getting it weeded and more things potted up for future plant sales. I found some fun things while I was weeding--the best were seedling liatris and seedling daylilies. I couldn't believe my luck. I love how nature makes propagation so easy sometimes. So I potted up the seedlings I could find into 3.5 inch pots with potting soil. Where they were they were getting shaded out by big daylillies. The daylily seedlings will probably look like stella d oros, but they may have crossed with other daylilies so who knows. The liatris are purple native ones I winter sowed a few years ago and planted around my native tulip poplar. I let them go to seed for the birds, not that I've seen birds eating them. Seems the wind decided to deposit some of those seeds in a favorable enough location for germination.
I also split up a giant lemon balm plant and put several large pieces in gallon, 1.5 gallon, and 3 gallon pots. Boy do those things have root systems. No wonder it's so hardy and impossible to kill. I moved one on over to my herb garden for myself and I KNOW more will come up in the spot I dug it up from.
I've started digging up shasta daisy divisions as well but I'm running out of containers so had to get creative using cut plastic milk cartons.
I planted another old pair of shoes with Sempervivum 'Emerald Empress' and noticed ants have moved into my tire planter rock garden where I grow my hens and chicks. They are not doing any real harm that I can see and though I have an ant phobia I will leave them be and just use big ol gloves when harvesting hens and chicks.
When I mentioned that I was getting plants ready for a plant sale at work, I had several co-workers jump up and ask for hostas. So I agreed to split the hostas and sell them. This is something that would give anyone nightmares and something I keep meaning to do but keep putting off every year. I have gigantic hostas. One plant is over 5 feet wide and devouring it's neighbors and has obliterated the little path completely. It started innocently enough a few years ago with 3 leaves.....If that weren't bad enough, the dirt they are planted in is always dry and rock hard and a difficult spot for digging. I plan to attack it on Friday, my day off for the week as I work the weekend so I'm sure I will have my hands full indeed and will be getting my exercise in. I'll be selling them chunks of Hosta (mixed kinds) for $3, and chunks of the Blue Angel hosta for $5. I am not selling any of my seed grown ones yet. I want them to get a lot more size on them though I think the yellowed leaved one is "mini" as it gets no larger then a dinner plate in full summer.
Other then all that, I did not do too much during the weekend.
No comments:
Post a Comment