Great gardening weather

Here are a couple of the peonies that opened up fully this morning.

It's been a beautiful day to be working in the garden. I finished weeding and mulching the strawberries bed, planted three more beefsteak tomatoes, two more French tarragons, penstemon and did a lot of weeding and general garden cleanup.

The heat pad set on low worked for some of the seeds, and in a matter of hours! By nightfall, pot of squash seedlings peeked through, and even one of the South American peppers sprouted after doing nothing for a couple of weeks in the pot! I put some corn seeds in a tiny bowl covered with water and set it on the heat pad yesterday morning, and by last night they were showing signs of starting to sprout!

After a quick almond and water lunch I got right back out to do another two hours of planting (zucchini, buttercup squash, and a French variety whose name escapes me at the moment, several Serrano and other chiles, some marigolds and Swiss chard. I got it all mulched and of course there was more of the never ending weeding to do.

The early afternoon thunderstorms that were forecast never came, so I kept planting. One more planting day and I should have all the bigger veggie starters and some more flowers planted. It's been a good gardening day. Time for a big glass of water and a shower and some computer work before dinner.

My photo setup

Well, here it is - finally - my new photo setup! I took Joy Tanner's wonderful photo class and learned how to make my own light box and other accessories, as well as how to take better photos, use a gray board and reflectors and diffusers. Next I have to take some test photos; but probably not for another day. The garden calls today. 

It's going to be around 70 degrees this afternoon and I need to plant some late parsley and continue general garden clean up and harvest what I can.  I'll probably be too tired after that to do anything more than make dinner and vegg out over a Netflix movie tonight.

This morning I baked the sourdough version of the "no knead" bread. The dough, from an on line recipe, was way too wet, so I kept folding more flour in without kneading, until it would hold it's shape a bit. Obviously, the poster has a much firmer starter than the one I use. The loaf looks good; but I don't know what it will look like when I cut into it. Even if the texture isn't right, I'll get an idea of the flavor and just adjust the amount of water next time.

We had another lovely dinner at the Knife and Fork in Spruce Pine. I had their stack cake - my first time eating this local cake. The history of stack cake goes back to early weddings in these mountain, where many of the woman brought one cake and then all of the cakes were stacked with applesauce in between. It was delicious, as was the rest of the meal.






 

Nick Joerling mug

Here's the first of some of the mugs in my collection I'll be posting. This one is by another wonderful Penland potter, Nick Joerling.

Today turned out to be a gardening day. Just one more "man plans, God laughs day". The construction crew came for a bit to unload the tiles and vanity we bought yesterday and then took off to finish another job. The painter stayed and worked all day, so I was somewhat housebound with the painter here,since Jim had appointments in town and had a whole list of stops to make which took half the day.

My friend Laura came over early morning and we dug up some perennials and divided them. Laura did most of the work and I just supplied some help and tools and dug up a volunteer penstemon and potted it for her. We split half of the day lilies that were dug out. They needed dividing and I wanted to get them in a new location since they got too big for their current home.

This mid 60's degree, sunny, February day, was perfect for yard work - a day I was not going to waste in the studio. I also got some more garden clean up done. This warm weather isn't going to last so I was glad that I made the decision to enjoy it!

Tomorrow morning, if the rain stays away till later, as is forecast, I'll try to get those day lilies transplanted. They're already up a a couple of inches from this unseasonal spring like weather so I need to either hole them in or transplant them.

More of my perennials seedling sprouted overnight. If they all fare well I'll be sharing them with gardening friends because I don't have room for thirty or forty verbascum!

Tomorrow afternoon we have to shop for the new tub and toilet. After that we have one more shopping trip Thursday or Friday, for the hardware and then I can get back to a some what normal work schedule! I'm feeling guilty about all this time away from the studio!



Till later,
June