Snappyfriends youth and garden loom

They say on hot summer nights you can sit in the front porch rocking chairs and hear the corn grow. That's how I feel about Charlie. He's 4 1/2 now and I feel like he's growing so fast I can hear him grow. He's my snappyfriends youth assignment. He lives three hours away and we miss him terribly.

OK, here's the weekend project we spent last weekend on. But first, you have to understand, Patient Husband isn't called Patient for no reason. He definitely got the short end of the stick in this partnership. Let's just say I'm not the easy one. I admit it.
I saw this garden loom in a magazine and asked him if "we" could please build it. If we did then I wouldn't bug him about a barn or goats or chickens anymore - though I'll miss that!
You also have to understand that we are sorely lacking in the tool department. When we decide to "make" something the neighbors gather to watch. What we use for a screwdriver or hammer or vice or even a pencil would make any man cringe. But we cobble things together and somehow make it work.

Good Neighbor Bill, came to help with this step, digging the post holes in clay, the levelling, the loan of a level, drill and grips. About the only thing we contributed was the shovel and the posts and the idea! Patient Husband is the one in the pics, though. I kept after him about trompling my lavender plants. This particular part of the lavender bed is where I put the baby plants and they were fighting for their lives.

Thank goodness for bifocals!

Ta Da!!

The one I saw in a magazine was 3 feet wide by 6 feet tall. Patient Husband thought that if 3 x 6 was good, then 4 x 8 was better so that's what this is. I fretted and fretted when the frame was up that it was just TOO big, but after a couple of days I decided it's good. It's a big house and a big yard and proportionally it works. As long as that pear tree behind it is alive, you really can't see it from the road right behind it, so it does blend in. It's pretty cool.

It's strung with simple garden jute and I completely depleted the supply of jute in our small town. I'll have to go to another city to buy more to finish the right side. But it's done enough for the picture to show you all. My daughter has some roving from her spinning days I'm going to use when the birds are building nests. I'll string grapevines, flowers, cattails, whatever I can find now. String berries, hang whatever I find that strikes me. It will be an ever changing work in progress.

This is taken from the front porch so you see it doesn't look THAT big. This is all lavender in the front yard. Both sides of the walk.

Enticements

We are so lucky to live in the part of the state that supports farms, orchards, small fruit growers and vineyards. With everything looking so good it's hard to stop buying and harder yet to get all this freshness eaten in good time! We hardly turn a corner without coming face to face with someone selling their garden bounty. Yesterday I picked green beans for dinner. Just a handful, but they were fresh from plant to pot in two minutes. Wow. Summer.... This Saturday we'll visit our farmer's market downtown and stock up on goodness for the 4th of July gala here on Sunday. I'm expecting about 30, give or take 10. The weather is going to be beach hot and not raining and that's just about all you can ask for the 4th of July.
I went out with my camera last summer and took pictures of farm stands. There was no shortage of originality and honesty around the countryside. Not a soul in sight but mason jars, boxes and buckets served as cash boxes. Take some and leave some they all trustingly said.

This farm stand was just that. A board balanced on two saw horses. The potatoes were taking a bath in that tub, waiting for customers.

This is the same stand on a different day. No potatoes but look at those tomatoes!

Fresh! That's the name of the game and everyone around here seems to have chickens but me!

"Me! Me! Me! Pick Me!" they all say. Ya gotta get your sign out there if you want your fruit picked. Sweet Cheeries anyone?

Biggest berry

Last Saturday we were driving along the country highway and saw a sign for raspberries that wasn't there a few days ago. Being complete suckers for raspberries, and mine aren't ripe yet, we stopped. We found a brand new patch of the biggest berries I've ever seen. Ever. I immediately went for the black raspberries and we picked two pints in about two minutes. They were as big as a quarter!

I hated to boil these berries into jam. I gently constructed a pie - one of the best pies I've ever made - and the berries held their shape they were so perfect! We just finished the last piece and even my non-dessert eating Patient Husband said it was a perfect pie.

My black raspberry picking has always been confined to what I could find in the woods and fields around the house. I am not afraid to tromp through brush and tangled prickers and poison ivy to get a good berry. I come out looking like I've been scourged and welted with mosquito bites but there's a bag of black raspberries in the freezer for a pie in January when I savor each bite and remember what I went through to get them. Remembering each scab and mosquito by name .

When my son was a little guy I remember coming home from a particulary wicked picking experience and my legs were really, truly scourged, the blood dripping and dried in rivulets down my legs. Cuts and scrapes on top of each other. One cut keeping the other moist with my dripping blood. Really. I was filling the bathtub to soak my cuts and he walked by the door, saw my legs and asked, "Mommy! What happened!" I told him and he looked at me with huge eyes, "Why aren't you CRYING??" I knew the moment I lowered into the tub and the water hit those scrapes I would be crying. But he wouldn't see it. I didn't want him to think picking berries was something that made you cry.

quilting

I am, I really, really am working on a quilt! I would have finished today but there's a big yard project we spent the weekend on and I'm still fiddling with that. More on that later!

when do you have time??

No pictures right now. I'm not at my computer or camera. I'm at a neighbor's house waiting while the carpet is cleaned and while I wait I'm checking out blogs, blogs, blogs on his computer. Not reading the book I brought with me, but enjoying the view of the lake from this desk and reading blogs. This makes me wonder. How in the world do you guys get any quilting (or crocheting or sewing) done? What time of day do you work on projects? Are you so prolific because you use sewing machines? I quilt and piece by hand 99% of the time. Yes, it is slower but the sewing machine and I are not friends. I get too tense, it stares at me, it keeps me tethered to the outlet. Piecing and quilting by hand gives me the option of being on the back porch conversing with Mrs. Wren, or sitting in the yard or curled in my favorite chair with old movies going. Or sitting anywhere listening to an audio book. Besides, there are so many other things that need doing! And then there's the blogging. I absolutely LOVE this meeting of the minds from all over the world, even if I don't comment on many, I do read them and marvel at the wonders everyone is creating. But it takes time!!!
Yesterday we (my daughter and her two daughters) went picking raspberries and cherries. We missed great photo opportunities because in the haste to get the 3 year old and 8 month old out of the door during our small window of opportunity (read: good moods) we both forgot the cameras. So, as Elizabeth picked her own berries and Adelaide watched and nibbled on berries, and Elizabeth ran and ran over the hills at the cherry orchard and peeked at us through the fruit full branches, we missed it all except for in our memories.

Self portrait

Snappyfriends photo assignment for this week was a self portrait. So I chose my bookshelves to represent me. I am a reader. I read books. I read book reviews, I read about books. There is never a moment when a book is not nearby, even if I'm going to a baseball game, I have a book with me. Just in case. In case I have a moment or several or I have to wait for a train to go by or the baseball game goes into extra innings or I find myself with 15 minutes. Or less. Some of you have crochet hooks and a ball of yarn in your pocket for these moments. I have a book. This pile represents my taste in fiction, my love of photographers Walker Evans, Dorothea Lange and Jacob Riis, my cooking style, my quilting life. It's a mere sampling. There are many, many hundreds of books in this house but this is a quick sample.

And this is just one small section of shelf! So - as I wondered and wandered this past weekend looking for something to show myself, I realized I was looking at it all along.
Just today I finished reading A Reliable Wife by Goolrick. As I browsed the shelf for the next (there is a very large pile waiting to be read) I chose Day After Night by Anita Diamant. I got that one at the library sale, in a hardcover pristine condition (not library processed), for $3.00! I just purchased The Outside Boy by Jeanine Cummins. This summer I'll also re-read A Tree Grows in Brooklyn since I haven't read it since I was a child. Waiting also for this summer is Little Bee by Chris Cleave and these for school for next fall: Darby by Fuqua, Truth About Sparrows by Hale, A Nest for Celeste by Cole and Alchemy and Meggy Swann by Cushman ( I love Karen Cushman's books). Always open and ready for a quick pickup spot read: A Homemade Life by Wizenberg. Wonderful book!
I'm struggling through The Kindly Ones by Jonathan Littell. It's disturbing and I need to put it down and go with something else sometimes, though I never, ever do that. I read one book at a time, and I give a book 50 pages to grab me. If it isn't to my liking by then I need a really good reason to continue. Life is short and I don't have that much time left to be stuck struggling through something I don't like. There are too many waiting in the wings.
That is a sampling of what I PLAN to accomplish this summer....in between quilting. I did start on Christine yesterday and find training myself to use a floor frame awkward. The back porch was bright and sunny so I worked on the Sunbonnet Sue for my soon to be grand-daughter while listening to Audrey Niffenegger's Her Fearful Symmetry on audio book.
OH! I DO love audio books. And I listen to very different books than I read. I don't read mysteries but listen to them. I don't listen to heavy books, but lighter ones because I'm usually driving or painting a room or canning tomatoes or quilting or.....while listening. Though while painting the attic this spring I did listen to Barbara Kingsolver's Lacuna and enjoyed it.
So. That's my self portrait. What would yours be?

berries and peas

Aren't these tiger lilies gorgeous? They don't bloom till the 4th of July and yesterday none of these blossoms had opened, but we have a very hot and muggy day going on today and they just couldn't contain themselves. They had to show off.

I had to drive 30 miles today to find a spool of thread. Really. There is no place to buy a spool of thread in this city unless you consider WalMart's huge selection of black and white. So I did the drive and splurged on SIX spools! Anticipating some colors for Christine waiting patiently over there for me to uncover her and start stabbing away.
On the way home I stopped for some strawberries at the picking place I frequent and the owner told me if I wanted to go out in the field for the first of the RASPBERRIES, I was welcome to!(I'm there a LOT) Well, she didn't have to twist my arm!! My daughter and her troops are coming for Father's Day tomorrow and they'll devour these four pints before they put the car seated Adelaide down!Aren't they gorgeous? It was just what you'd want raspberry picking to be. Hot, sunny, a little humid, the berries practically jumping into my hand. There is nothing, absolutely nothing like a warm piece of fruit right from the plant onto the taste buds. THAT, my friends, is summer.

The peas are in, too. Yuck. But Patient Husband likes them, especially the fresh ones, and Elizabeth will eat these fresh out of her hand gladly. Her idea of a good time is to go out in the yard and eat basil or fennel fronds or lettuce right out of the ground. I have to admit these DO look good enough to eat, but not by me.

It is a very good summer day, even if I did have to drive for a 1/2 hour for a spool of thread.