T Stands for Tuesday-more gardening

   Hoping all you mothers had a wonderful Mother's Day here in the States last Sunday. The lake was very busy all weekend despite the off and on rain with boats and those noisy personal watercrafts. The sailboat was out again too on Sunday and he had the perfect wind for his sailboat. We had a warm and very humid long weekend

  This brings us to Bluebeard and Elizabeath's T for Tuesday where we share a post with a drink related photo. Find link in my side bar to join in 

   

  I have been outdoors every day either weeding, planting or weed eating our yard. The weed eating was done in between small spurts of rain for three days now, I have one more area to finish. I use up 3 to 4 batteries at a time which is close to 2 hours-that's enough for my back in one day. Then I charge them back up for the next day. I know it's allot of hours, but the lawn service people are just too expensive, and I don't want to buy a lawn mower either-knowing me I would end in the lake haha.  We are also working on bringing in rock to get rid of most of this grass

  We had a lovely surprise down by our lake front. When we first moved here I dug up a few plants including our blue flag iris that love wet feet. They love being near a pond so they can get their feet wet. Larry thought they would grow well here at the lake by stuffing them in cracks into the rocks that is our natural sea wall here where we live.  A  couple years ago the lawn service continued to cut them down even after telling them not to-I finally fired them.  Last year we thought we lost them since they had been cut down so many times the previous year.  When I was weed eating grass over the weekend in that area-Wow so happy to see them again!!

Sunday morning the first bloom. These are Larry's favorite flowers-so I was thrilled to see them again. 

    They look like an inspiration for a painting

The electric company here that uses the lake to make power lowers the lake after summer and then brings the water back up by Memorial Day weekend. Once the water is back up-it will rise up to these plants but not totally cover their roots-just keeps them moist. So the lake will be much deeper here on the edge when that happens

  Last year I learned about hummingbird plants from one of my blog and slow mail friends  They are a perennial and the butterflies and hummingbirds love them-so thought perfect for my garden.  I bought 3 plants that were quite small when I received them in the mail and this spring I had lost two and then accidently pulled the third one out when weeding grrrrr  So I went back on Ebay and bought a different color and from a different seller-this is the seller's photo 

This is the name of this perennial   Agastache kudos silver blue hyssop mint  This was a different seller and the plants came so well packaged, were large and healthy. I gave him an excellent review I was so happy. This is a photo of them. The box even had a couple air holes for the plants.  I planted them early Sunday morning-in front of a rocked area I have been working on-to the right of the big copper pot. They will have room to spread up there and they will be tall with the rocks behind them-should look nice.

                                 

   I also got the area in front all weeded-saved the wild violets, and brought over allot of those chocolate mint plants which will then turn this area into a ground cover.   

   Behind that area I finished more of the weeding where the goldenseal plants are that I had planted last year and Monday the bloodroot plants should arrive so I can get those planted. There is just enough shade for those two plants in this area-they naturally live in the woods where it is shady. I will place bark around those plants too.  

 So the off and on rain the last couple of days has been perfect for gardening.

    I have a couple drink shares.  A couple weeks ago I started a batch of limoncello which is so refreshing on a hot summer day.  I used around 12 large lemons-peeled the peels into vodka, where it will sit for a month. Strain add sugar and a little lavender, can't remember now if water is also added. If interested in the recipe tell me in comments. We keep the finished limoncello in a plastic jug in the freezer where it stays nice and cold.

   So now I had a dozen lemons with no peels on them, so I made us fresh lemonade and used splenda instead of sugar to sweeten it up.

  The pottery lemon juicer is one of my first handmade pottery purchases-back in the early '70s. I love using it and have not seen another one as nice. I think I bought this one in North Carolina where I lived for awhile back then.

I also brewed up a flavored decaf coffee for something different, I decided to bring out another very favorite handmade pottery piece of mine. This was a 4 piece set of cups and I also bought the pretty pitcher that matches-which I need to bring out and use this summer. These pieces are soooo light weight. I had asked the potter how she did that and she told me her pieces are electric fired.

  I baked us up a big cast iron skillet full of apple crisp with the fresh rhubarb I had found at the Amish store a couple weekends ago. Makes a nice snack in the evening or I like it for breakfast too.

    Saturday I received the little mending loom in the mail, it is a cute little piece, will try it soon.  This is already long so will share a book next week

  Happy T and new week

T Stands for Spinning Yellowstone & Sailboat

 T Stands for Tuesday, where we gather over at Bleubeard and Elizabeth's to share our "doings" with a drink related photo. Find link in sidebar. 

  I am writing this post early afternoon on Sunday where the weather is glorious!  I still don't have a working car as of yet, so Larry drove me for a few groceries early morning. By mid day we had full sunshine,  light wind, and warmth-up in the 60's F  Loving it!! Tomorrow more of the same.

 I had a pretty thick layer of fall leaves on top of the creeping thyme ground cover that I planted last year-and that needed to come off so it would not kill these plants. I ended up with a huge black trash bag full of leaves. I hope to be able to get allot of leaf burning accomplished on Monday as we will have the same weather pattern.

  I have dug out my folding table that I use for allot of projects like soap making, and planting seeds in my gallon "greenhouse" bottles-I have a huge bag of bottles ready to use for planting.

 Larry caught a sailboat out on the lake Sunday-perfect day for it-very few boaters on the lake, and the perfect wind too.

This photo below is a bit blurry as I had to really zoom in to enlarge. This is to the left of us looking out the wall of windows.

  Friday I grabbed my spinning project-which I have not gotten back to since last year fall. These are the spinning fibers I picked up back in 2018 that reminded me of Yellowstone Park.

The sunshine was really pouring through the window here-this is the coffee table in front of the couch. Behind you will see  my drink share-a cup of green tea and lemon balm

  I had bought a big bag of small amounts of different rovings at one of the last Fiber U events I attended before we moved to the lake. I am down now to a couple more colors to get spun-then to decide want I want to weave with these handspuns-thinking of some sort of wrap for me. I will add in the buffalo yarn I have spun too.

  This one  below I just started today.  I still don't make "perfect" yarn, but for weaving I don't mind the thick and thin yarns I am ending up with. This one below is mostly wool and I am having an easier time making nicer yarn. Mine are usually singles. and some of these I will ply together with a fine angora yarn.

  I am really  loving the colors of this one too

 I also have the pretty one below to spin up next. I have a bit more of this color to spin than I had of the others, I also have a light grey to spin-time is passing by too fast-My goal now is to get all of these rovings spun up and ready to weave by end of this year.

This past week I made us biscuits and gravy-yum, and a rice dish also made in cast iron with poblano peppers, onion, and beef chorizo to go with the boiled shrimp that I found in the freezer. These are a couple of our favorite dishes.

   Amazing-haha the biscuits on the right are gluten free and they gave me a nicer rise than the wheat ones to the left-I used a King Arthur white whole wheat for the biscuits on the left.

  I have one more drink share-in the back of our frig-I keep a few ciders, I haven't had one in months-so grabbed this Pineapple cider to go with our left over lunch today.

  Happy T and an awesome new week

Weekend Photos-Sunrises-Birds-Sailboat

   We had glorious sunrises over the weekend, a sailboat early morning Saturday using just her sails, I would have missed it but Larry was out fishing and called me to watch out for it coming towards our house. I was out working on my garden project.     That evening another sailboat using their motor sailed by along with several huge ocean boats. Larry's sister and husband stopped by to visit on their personal watercraft-which is much quicker time wise then driving from their lake home I didn't have my camera out then.

   I have redone the threading on my weaving project-third time-so far-was the charm. I am realizing I have too many threads and another reason why these towels looked too wide to me. I have never done that before-but I warped this up in several sittings and messed up the count-I will just take those off once I get to that point.

 My camera did not pick up the bright red suns, but the reds did show up in the lake

  Sunday

 The hummingbirds have been quite active-many have already left for their long migration.

Can you spot the hummingbird? hint in the middle to the left

The eagle visited on Saturday

 The sailboat early morning Saturday

Happy new week everyone