Gardens, Textiles and Tea and art

The start of the heatwave kept me away from the needlearts group today, and since another member was stuck waiting for a service call, and another was out of town, I wonder if there was a quorum.

I was out early visiting plants and admiring my solar lantern, now hanging in the Japanese maple. It casts lovely soft interesting shadows around in the dark, very pleasing.

Indoors I checked out my favorites, succulents and the offspring growing in a miniature pot, fingernail nearby for scale.

Some weaving happened and as usual gave me ideas for more weaving. 

Then I thought about maybe painting a bit or drawing and said self, you're waving your arms,  giving unwanted advice to Mitch about trying a different art form, why not stop weaving for a minute, and do a bit of something else yourself?

So I did. First drawing I'd done since this time last year. A kind of rusty here goes nothing few minutes.  This is my entire watercolor setup. Little painting then a little drawing.

That was a nice little interlude and my hand started to remember how to do this. It's so much more subtle movement and closer observation than crafting work. Maybe I'll do it a bit more.

Later came Textiles and Tea with 

She's a weaver and mixed media artist, Caribbean tradition, who uses artificial hair as her main weft material. Her warps are cotton.

This was a commission for a special event 

She takes part in Carneval, and these pieces reflect her costume 

 

She's very young and I think we'll see a lot more of her work,  already appearing in juried shows and good galleries. She'll be in New York in September, check her website for details.

So that's today around here, happy day everyone, do something different to take your mind off whatever you need to take your mind off.

And while you're at it, US blogistas, please call or message your senators to urge passage of the bill before them, S4814. 

This bill restores and extends temporary protected status to Haitian residents. It's a workaround against the misbegotten SCOTUS decision to rescind it. 

It occurs to me to mention that every time I urge you to take some action, I've already done it myself. It's not just doasIsay! Just sayin.

I have some ideas about the hilarious range if Lyft drivers I've met recently, and the weird bosses I've had. I was reminded of bosses by some revenge fiction I've been hearing, terrible writing, so bad it's funny. But since the bad guys are exposed and shamed and the good guys win, it's clearly fiction. Another day for that.

Life goes on, meanwhile, there's Festivus

It's the season again, of aluminum poles and grievances.  One of the few funny bits from Seinfeld, the deeply depressing series about desperate New Yorkers. Anyway 

Frank Costanza rules!

And a while back Gary asked me to rescue this succulent bowl.  He thought he'd over watered.

Mainly I didn't water and I did prune a bit, and you see new life here and there. I accidentally knocked off a couple of leaves and just inserted them into the soil, where they're now rooting. I love how obliging, if slow, succulents are. 

This time I'm not putting them outside in summer. Last time I did, in less than a day, squirrels reduced my whole collection to shreds, not even big enough pieces to plant. These are going to be indoor plants. 

The ecard finally landed, and was appreciated. It took a series of texts to get there. No, I didn't know the exact URL of origin, no I can't resend from my own email, check spam, check both emails. Never mind I'll resend. It arrived in no time and went over well. I usually make him a card, and that would have been faster. But he liked it a lot. 

Our water is tasting more like water today, and the barrage of information has slowed down. I wonder if we'll ever know what it was about.

To restore my faith in the water company, this arrived by email, text and voicemail 

This explains why different people tasted different flavors -- I coal oil, another woman turpentine, Handsome Son rubber! All getting different perceptions of the parts per TRILLION.

Happy day everyone, don't bloom where you're planted -- move to where you want to bloom!

Lunch Monday, which I finally realized was not in fact Tuesday, my days tend to blur, was fish cream soup with the last of the orzo tuna bake added in. It's the fish motif. That and a handful of chopped parsley work fine.

There's also rice pudding made on top of the stove, with evap, creamy and very good.

Followed by The Bishop's Wife, wonderful old black and white movie with great old movie stars.  

And the current granny square, which I've decided to make very large, big enough for the centerpiece around which I'll attach the smaller ones.  I think it's more interesting than the usual tiled effect. 

Chapter Two in the Succulent Saga, and more kitchen thrills and spills

So the little leaves I collected the other day having developed a dry, sort of calloused end where they came off the plant, it was time to move them onto potting mix.  They talk about using trays for this, but I figured with this small a number, just move them right into pots and see what happens.  

The fiber is coco fiber, comes in a compressed little brick, looks quite tiny, until you hydrate it and now you have a bucket of material to work with.  They say put it in a container without mentioning what size.  I'd heard that this stuff is surprising, so I used a large bucket, just as well.

So here are the three pots with two occupants each, just doing nothing for a few weeks, I guess.  I found another great idea for my next adventure in this, a box garden.  You cover the top with hardware cloth, the box being filled with potting fiber, and insert tiny succulents through the meshes, in a tasteful design, or just random depending on your mood.  

All I need is a bit of hardware cloth, to get going on this. I have a wooden box.  Once this gets rooted and under way, it can be hung on a wall or somewhere. So that's a future experiment.  There will be plenty of chicks from the hen and chicken flock in the strawberry pot, plus I can swipe some leaves from neighbor, and we'll see what else I can add.

They suggest attaching the hardware cloth (you know that half inch galvanized mesh stuff you use for fences, not really cloth), and then inserting the mix through.  But I see no reason not to fill the box then attach the hardware cloth, then all you need do is insert the plants. When I try it I will no doubt find out why they say to push the mix through after attaching the hc.

I repotted a big crown of thorns plant today, way too tall and leggy and spiky looking.  I don't much like doing this, because those spikes are really deadly.  But I just cut off the tops a few inches below the top foliage, and stuck them into a pot of soil.  No special attention given.  Then I read up on how to do it, and found that real gardeners do all sorts of things I never have.  But I notice that my crown of thorn plants don't seem to mind, in fact I keep trying to give away the extras I end up with.

The repotted stems look pretty good already, given that they're just precariously pushed into the soil.  They'll root pretty soon. The parent plant and rootball are just lying around outside in the groundcover at the moment, and I realize I can pot that up again, because new leaves will push out of the stems again.  These plants have a lovely pink flower, very small, very pretty, and often in the middle of the winter just when you can use a flower or two.


I also realized that my Autumn Joy sedum is a succulent, duh, hadn't thought of that. So I'm trying a few leaves taken off that, too, and see what comes of it.

Meanwhile back in the kitchen, that same cookie sheet which refused to release the bread rolls did the same with a batch of sugar cookies, even though I had remembered to grease it.  Very annoying.  But when stuff happens, reframe the issue, which I did.

I chipped off the cooked cookie crumbs, and used them as a crumble topping for a nice holiday dessert, for Handsome Son, visiting last evening.  

Local blueberries, cookie crumbs, then some fake whip (you have to have some bad food at holidays), and it made a dessert which vanished at warp speed.  I also resolved to use parchment paper from now on for that baking sheet, which is far too expensive to be doing stuff like sticking.

Something weird about having the Fourth on a Tuesday, though.  All the other holidays are now celebrated on the nearest Monday, so this is one that can't move, and nobody seems to remember what day is which and when the holiday is.  I was amazed to find the library open today, and mail delivery, and ordinary things happening.

My plans for the Fourth are to loaf about, mainly.  Very hot again. 

Enjoy your Fourth, or your fourth, depending on which it is for you.  May the Fourth be with you...

Music not on today, gardening rushes to fill in the opening

I used to explain to Handsome Partner that it was no good waiting till I was unoccupied to talk to me, because that would never happen.  Always something going on.  Funny, since he was very much the same way, but he used to get het up when I moved from one thing to another without a pause.

 I'd encourage him to just barge in and say what he wanted. That's the difference between someone who grew up the elder in a family of two kids, and someone who grew up the youngest in a cast of thousands.  You don't wait for a space to talk, because there won't be one. You make a space!

Today, case in point, music originally moved because weather expected to be very hot, hard for me to drive, park, walk, play, retrace journey in blazing hot car, etc.  But then cancelled anyway because one player under the weather.  So gardening seemed to just rush in and take over.

I went out this morning before it got too torrid, to the nursery in search of hens and chickens. Been wanting some for ages, never succeeded with them, largely because they need good drainage, and the  &*&*&*& sprinkler system which drowns our areas daily in season never gives them a chance in the ground.  

But the advent of the nine hole strawberry pot was great, much better for drainage.  And today that took over half the day, just as well I wasn't playing, too, used up a lot of energy on gardening.

Found a nice colony of hens and chickens, and estimated that, separated, they would be about right, and here they are, in progress. 

 I should explain I never did this before at all, was just more or less guessing how to handle things, but I think plants sense when you mean well and have a kind touch, so I'm hopeful.

Anyway, this is how it worked out.  

The white tube thing is a Martha idea,  for once I tried a Martha idea. I had pvc piping in various lengths left over from building bits of weaving and spinning equipment, and my next door neighbor kindly drilled holes in the length of this piece, after arguing that I'd cut it wrong, he would cut a bit more off, so what the heck, he was doing the drilling, I let him go ahead.  I think it's too short now, he thinks it's fine.

The idea is that you can water much better this way, pour the water down the middle of the pipe, let it seep out the drainage holes drilled at intervals, and we'll see how well it works.  I poured in about a quart before it started to seep out the bottom, so now we'll see.  And hope the little chicks don't fall out before their roots get settled.  I'm wondering if this might be good for other plants, too, to get water deep into the plant rather than seeping down from the top.

Anyway, back at the strawberry pot, I put in soil at the bottom up to the first level of three holes, settled hens and chicks in, then filled up to the next holes, more plants, and so on.  The pvc pipe was inserted before all this, and the rising soil level held it steady after a bit.  Then the remaining plants filled up the top nicely.

Here you see the top of the pvc tube from another angle,but it's pretty well camouflaged by plants.

This lovely setup will come indoors once the weather turns in the fall.

I seem to have got off on succulents lately.  I took care of some over the winter for a friend, and they did fine with my somewhat inexpert care, so I investigated how to propagate from them, since they're now home in his yard, and I'd taken a fancy to them.  A bit of research persuaded me it would be workable. He agreed fine to my taking off a few lower leaves to try out.

Here's the parent plant, looking very nice if I do say so, sitting in its antique copper and porcelain scuttle aka its summer home,  and here are the leaves, gently turned and snapped off,
 

And here's the plate of them, back in my kitchen, and their eventual clay pot homes. 

Now comes the hard part. Waiting.

It can take days for them to scab over at the point where they were broken off the plant, then I will lay them on top of the planting medium that is even now on its way to me, coco peat. Then weeks more ensue before I see if tiny roots emerge, and after that plants which can be transplanted. But I'm ready for it, as you see.  

Some of my best plants have started with a leaf or a little cutting. A lot of my houseplant and other gardening involves leaving stuff alone.

Gardening is a great antidote to the stress of today's political scene, and handling plants like this just feels more important than fretting. You can't rush it, so you may as well slow down, observe, just see all the details of what's happening indoors and out.