My little vegetable garden

My little vegetable garden is humming right along. I've had to water it frequently because we haven't had a good rain storm in a few weeks.

See that little fella there? That's my First Cuke of 2016. It has grown considerably since I took its photo a few days ago. I'll be picking it soon. I only hope it and I make it into the house, where I can share it with Ken. Last year, I'm ashamed to admit, I ate the first cuke while walking to the house. Ken was none the wiser.

I plant 18 tomato plants each June. The planting is quite a ritual: Into each deep hole I place some cut-up banana peels, crushed egg shells, an aspirin, some Epsom salt, some coffee grounds and, if I have them on hand, some shrimp shells. I cover this mess with some soil, then I place the tomato seedling as deep into the hole as it will go, with many of its lower leaves below ground level. Sometimes I lay the seedlings on their sides, with only the top of the plant above ground. This entire ritual makes for healthy, happy, robust tomato plants. I spray the plants with an Epsom salt solution on the day of planting, then I spray them ten days later. This increases the yield from each plant. In late August/early September I'm madly canning tomatoes, roasting tomatoes for tomato sauce, making relish, making dynamites, you name it. I love tomatoes and we eat them in one form or another all winter. I've often thought that if Ken didn't like tomatoes, our marriage could not have lasted these 46 years.

Here we have my green pepper plants, also sprayed with the Epsom salt solution, and some just-planted beets. The yield I get from the pepper  plants has increased dramatically since I started the Epsom salt treatment.

Oh, in the top photo, see the wash tub turned upside down? Under it is a radio which plays 24/7. We have deer lurking just on the other side of the woods line, so we try to keep the radio tuned to a station they're sure to dislike.

I also place bags of human hair (Ken's, which I cut and save throughout the year) and shredded soap on posts throughout the garden. Periodically I sprinkle blood meal around the garden's perimeter. Deer don't like the smell of human hair, strong soap, or blood meal. In addition to all of that, I make a deer deterrent solution: Blend well two eggs and two cups of milk (I use water and dry milk powder), then add a few drops of Dawn dish detergent. (Do NOT add the soap into the blender. Been there, done that, had soap bubbles all over the kitchen counter.) Place in spray bottle and head to your garden....)

Here are my cucumber, zucchini, and butternut squash hills. I started all of these plants from seeds in late March/early April. I also plant lettuce and kale for our fresh summer salads. I add a zucchini or two to many of my tomato/spaghetti sauces and no one knows the difference; we love roasted potatoes and butternut squash in the fall. Roasting brings out a delicious sweetness in the squash. Just toss cut-up potatoes and squash in olive oil, sprinkle with salt and pepper, and roast. Really, really tasty.

(The marigold plants spaced here and there are also helping to deter the deer.)

And this is Ken's potato patch. He became a gentleman potato farmer about four years ago. He grows the potatoes in what used to be my vegetable garden space, and he has great luck with them. He now harvests enough potatoes to last us from September to May. I bought my first bag of potatoes for this year just two weeks ago.

So that's my little vegetable garden. I enjoy it so much and can't wait to get out to it each morning.

Recent "doings"

My African violets are certainly happy summer is here. This is my most generously-blossomed one. It hadn't bloomed for a couple of years, so I moved it to a north window and voila! It's happy now.

  

We went to the Montsweag Flea Market up the coast near Bath and Wiscasset on Sunday. It was a perfect day to be poking around at a flea market, but I found nothing I couldn't resist. Ken found a couple of antique auto treasures, so he came home happy.

Before we came home, though, we did a couple of other things.

First, we went to the Wiscasset Antique Mall. I enjoy looking all old treasures, although I seldom add to my already-abundant collection of "stuff."

This door certainly caught my eye: Someone was inspired to cover the glass of this old door with pieces of sea glass. Very beach-y, I must say, but not terribly attractive.


Usually I like sea glass, but I prefer it in jewelry.

Our final stop, before heading home, was to drive due east from Brunswick and visit Holbrook's Snacks in the Cundy's Harbor area of Harpswell. We seem to find our way there at least once a summer. We enjoyed lobster rolls and fish and chips as we sat on the dock and watched the harbor activity.

We came home  feeling as if we'd spent the day in the sunshine and salt air, which is exactly what we had done.

Finally, see the baby birds in my header photo? Those are phoebes. Momma Phoebe builds a nest under our sundeck every June and adds to her family. I took this photo last Friday, went back to check on the babies the next morning, and found the nest empty. I caught that family photo just in the nick of time! I got a kick out of the four babies making sure each one got into the photo.

Fairy house, "new" benches on the deck, knitted hats, and my sweet potato vine

Violet visited us this past weekend (Yes, that's turquoise hair. She's almost ll...), so we decided it was time to do something about the fairy house.

The old fairy house was basically a tree stump with a convenient opening for garden fairies. It had served its purpose in my rock garden for at least six years, and it had fallen into serious disrepair. In other words, it has rotted away.

Violet and I decided to go with terra cotta this time. To the casual observer who knows nothing about garden fairies, the new home might look like flower pots in disarray.

Actually, the fairies' "compound"consists of a main house, a guest cottage, a garage, and an in-ground pool. So there.

This is the smaller of the two benches on our deck. We've had them for at least twelve years, probably longer.

The wooden seats had become warped and rickety over the past couple of years. I was thinking it was time to toss them.

Ken came up with a better idea. He spent a little time in his workshop sawing boards from some trees he cut and had planed a few years ago, and voila! "New" benches.



On the knitting front, I've been knitting hats to donate to various charities. I'm doing this as I continue recuperating from that Potter's Shawl experience, which perhaps you recall.

I used the "Nice and Knit Beanie" pattern, free on Ravelry (or free if you simply google the info in quotation marks above).

The pattern is well written, and it gives me an opportunity to use up various worsted weight yarns.

Finally, if you look at my new header photo, you'll see that my sweet potato vine is thriving. In the pot to the right on the bench is the second vine to come off the same sweet potato. It, too, is doing well.

Now I need to go out to the fairy garden and continue to spread bark mulch. I've procrastinated long enough.

Potter's Shawl: Done (at last)

Hallelujah. The Potter's Shawl is done at last.

There were many hold-ups in getting this shawl off the needles and blocked:

*I bought one skein of yarn, rather than the necessary two, so I had to wait for my sister to come to my house with the second skein in tow. She'd bought a single skein for the same pattern but decided to use a different yarn.

*The attached border, which is knit perpendicular to the body of the shawl, threw me for a loop. I wasted may days trying to figure out how to knit this leaf design, and all of my attempts were wrong. Finally, responses from some Ravelry knitters who had made the shawl, plus a response from the designer herself, Jen Lucas, finally put me onto the right path.

*I ran out of yarn, even with the "required" two skeins! I'm not sure how that happened, but I spent about a week trying to track down one more skein in the same dye lot.

Finally I did what I should have done at the outset: I contacted the yarn shop in Skowhegan where I bought the original yarn. The kindly shop owner promptly mailed an additional skein to me. It arrived Friday, I finished the shawl Friday evening, I blocked it yesterday, and Bam! It's done.

I love the softness and drape of this Classic Elite Silky Alpaca Lace yarn. (Interesting that it's $13.95/skein at Jimmy Beans Wool; I paid $9.95/skein at Happy Knits.)

Now on to my next knitting project.

Antique shops, flea markets, and craft shows

We love it when flea market season in Maine rolls around each late spring.

Ken and I went up to Montsweag Flea Market in Woolwich, north of Bath, on Mother's Day.

(These first photos, however, are from the Cabot Mill Antique Mall in Brunswick. They were uploaded ahead of the flea market photos and I don't want to wrestle with blogger to put them in the intended order.)

We went to Cabot Mill on Mother's Day, too, because the flea market wasn't too well stocked with finds.

Flea market season doesn't really get under way until after July 4, when the tourists arrive in Maine in droves.

So here are some Cabot Mill antiques photos to whet your appetite before we move on to the flea market....

Lobster kitchen items. Any self-respecting tourist to Maine leaves with at least one lobster item of one kind or another.

I like the  E. Swasey & Co. crocks on the top shelf here. I have a little collection of Swasey crocks but have run out of room to add to it.

I confess I lusted for a while after these cobalt blue dessert dishes. They'd go great with my Scottish Thistle dinnerware. My willpower won out, though, and I moved on.

 OK, now we're at Montsweag Flea Market. You can see the many empty tables to the far left. In July, every single table will be loaded with goodies and there will be vendors galore.

I loved my Bobbsey Twins books when I was a child. It was always a thrill to get a new volume at Christmas.

I don't know this family but thought they looked like they were very nice folks. Eleven children, and all of them dressed in their Sunday best for the photographer.

This family was undoubtedly a lovely one, too. Much smaller, but still good people.

Dishes! I never tire of looking at dishes.

Now, suddenly, we're in Meredith, New Hampshire. We drove up there this past Sunday to go to a yarn shop and browse some antique shops.

First, however, we stumbled upon this huge craft fair on the Mill Falls Inn grounds.

We didn't buy a thing, but it was fun to look at all the handmade crafts.

After a good look-round at the craft fair, we browsed in three antique shops.

Again, we bought nothing, but we enjoyed looking for a possible treasure.

I did, however, come home with some yarn after stopping at Patternworks in Center Harbor. Great yarn shop!