It's just about the garden, mostly

 Summer Garden

There's nothing quite like a garden.  Ours is a small patch, just 30 feet by about 20 feet but crammed with goodness.  Lots of bunny poop and diligent tilling and quite a bit of weeding have paid off with beautiful green, green lush plants.  We've been getting fresh lettuce for awhile and I just picked the third zucchini off the one plant that we have.  Green tomatoes are showing up on all the tomato plants and I'm watching the pea pods carefully as they swell.  This morning we saw little watermelons on the vine!  I'm hoping there will be blooms on the sunflowers in time for Folk Fair on August 21. 

Last night's dinner included stir-fry zucchini and squash from Mom's garden, finished off with blackberry dumplings made with wild blackberries gathered around the house.  Sue has been bringing us cucumbers from her garden over at Mountain Meadow Farm and Craft Market to garnish our salads and we've had local tomatoes, supplied by friends and the two other markets here in town. Not sure where the onions come from but we're doing pretty well continuing our "Eat Local" attempts!

There are a pair of killdeer raising their little family in and around our garden.  At first Papa Killdeer was nervous about having us around and went through his wounded bird display every time we came outside.  Now that the babies are larger he isn't paying as much attention to us.  It's so funny to watch them all running around in the mowed festival field; the little ones are duplicates of the parents and they stream along like little sailboats over the grass.  

Oatmeal Sweater

The only thing that might be more satisfying than fresh goodness from your own garden: nearing completion of a long knitting project.  I started this sweater on February 26, 2010, according to my Ravelry page. This is my first attempt at a knitted sweater and things have gone very easily.  It's designed to be knitted from the bottom up with no seams except for under the arms.  Love that about it.  The cabling on the sleeves doesn't show up well because I used a two-ply yarn for it.  I took a time-out from knitting the sweater, though, to spin up some more of the wool and create a Navajo-ply 250 yards to do the cabling across the yoke.  That worked much better, although I think the cabling could be more defined with a smoother yarn.  But I love the way this is working out with my handspun Corriedale.  I'm on the right side button band right now and have picked out some buttons I think will look great from the shelf here at Greenberry House.

Cutting the Corn Maze

In other news around Meadows of Dan:  the corn maze design has been cut and now they are working to smooth out the design and keep it cleared.  The mower is getting quite a workout wandering through five acres of corn field.  Everyone else is getting ready for the 6th Annual Meadows of Dan Folk Fair.  There are a lot of fun activities scheduled, crafts, lots of music and a play!

We've been seeing some lovely knitters and spinners lately at the shop and I've really enjoyed meeting some new people.  Including a new spinner that just moved to Patrick County!  Several people this weekend that came in said they found the shop through the web site.  It's always great to hear that, because of the amount of work that goes into keeping the web site going!  People also mentioned the podcast; we really haven't faded but we've been having both technical issues and scheduling problems!  Don't give up on us! 

Beating the heat

Not everyone is Meadows of Dan is busy.  TJ and Lily have been spending most of their time just laying around.  TJ is enjoying the very early morning walks we take before the heat moves in.  Lily is liking her new hair cut because it's cooler but she's not sure she's happy with the fact that I took too much fur off her tail.  When she tries to wag it she gets the oddest look on her face.