Grandmothers’ Quilts

I am very fortunate to have handmade items in my home. Many of them are Amie’s, of course, most of which I’ve already shown here. There are also  those made by strangers and mostly presented to us as gifts, a lot from India. The ones I want to show you here are two quilts made …

Your Average Sunday Afternoon

It’s coming down hard: thick globs of melting snow. The wood stove is giving off enough heat to dispel any gloom: it’s merely cozy, as long as I don’t need to go out there. Which I did have to, earlier on. One of the rain barrels was overflowing, and not through the overflow tube. In …

Independence Days – Week 8

Amie’s drawings of a flower and Amie in the garden Plant. Did that! First planted the hoop house frame, sewed the row covers together for the quick hoops (3 5×10′ covers make 1 10′ x 15′ cover), and ordered more row cover from Johnny’s. Started sprouting fenugreek as an experiment – that count as planting, …

Hoop House Frame is Up, and Winter

Over the long weekend it took us – two adults versus one four-year-old – to set up the hoop house PVC frame. Initially we thought that the simple hoop house might not be high enough on the sides for the taller plants, like tomatoes, that we want to grow in it in summer. So we …

The Ever-Recurring Year

I was talking with a friend today and she mentioned my picture a while back of my canning pantry. She said she certainly understands the feeling of growing, harvesting, putting up and getting the firewood ready from her reading of the Little House on the Prairie books – which I admitted I have never read …

Pity, but no Mercy

I finally managed to sow the row covers together. I used these 5′ wide spun covers to shield the beds from the downpours over Summer, but they were a pain to position because they were too narrow for the 4′ wide beds. Some end of it was always coming undone, and because we couldn’t stretch …

Stagnating and Sprouting

It’s Fall. Is that why I feel I’m stagnating? I’ve plenty to do: still a lot of canning and cooking, some harvesting, and a whole lot of work on next Spring’s garden, not to mention our Fall and Winter garden. But I feel the need to do new things, to keep the skill set growing. …

Independence Days, Week 7

Plant. Due to a miscalculation of the weather on my part – or the weatherman’s part? – I didn’t get to transplant the seedlings and sow more winter veggies today. Tomorrow, I hope. I did get to clean up the garden beds. Moved the pepper plants inside – but I will not call them houseplants, …