Not Quite Friday the 13th

Another Saturday off, loving it, despite the fact the weather's turning chilly again, and I will have to bring my plants back in and hope that the fruit blossoms don't get frozen.

Coolest thing this week (although I didn't get a picture): we saw a fox one morning across the road from one of our jobs. Just walking through someone's front yard in the Alta Vista area. I do love that aspect of working outside in the mornings. It's quiet, and you never know what you will see!

I was rather wondering what yesterday would bring, being Friday the 13th, and rain predicted. But I would say it was rather good for a 'bad-luck' day. Sure it rained, but only a few hours, and we were warm and dry by the end of the day's work. And I am rejoicing, just a little, because it was the last day for one of the new garden guys - he has decided on a nursery job. And another new gardener starts Monday, a woman this time, so I am being cautiously optimistic. It sounds really sexist to say it, but really, in three seasons and something like 9 other gardeners and students I've worked with, the guys have been very disappointing compared to the girls, in terms of combined speed and ability. I expect there are good male gardeners out there, but I haven't met them!

Just to round out a nice Friday the 13th, my tax return arrived (with an adjustment in my favour even!) and my lettuce is up, and the lilacs and my little apple tree are starting to bloom.

My Hypnosis socks are finally finished, so that is exciting. Even if I can't wear them until after fair season, because I want to enter them in the fair. I am tempted to make something else for myself (after the gloves for Johanne's stash I cast on the other day), but I know I need to start prep for shows and such...we shall see.

Oh, and good news on our side, at least, from the Fort Mac fires. People are starting to go back home, and my cousin reports that things look better than they did on the news, and in particular, his truck and buildings are safe and sound. Plus there's now lots of work for him in helping with rebuilding.

Spring Scramble

First three weeks of work already done, and busy - we did two Saturdays in a row, and having yesterday off felt like a luxury. So much free time! Two new faces on the garden crew and both, um, not up to the speed of our other (amazing) gardener, who has been helping out with the lawn stuff as well as gardening this spring. This week there was some improvement, so with any luck we won't be running behind all season...Only I'm waiting to see how this works out when one has grass allergies and back pain, and one has pollen allergies and can't kneel for long because of pins in one ankle.

Most of the back bed I wanted to rearrange is done and replanted. What's left is mostly the things that have come from a greenhouse and are still being hardened off. Mom was nice enough to take my wish list with her to a local plant sale at a horticulture school, and brought me piles of pretty things - a fragrant white clematis with a purple centre, and some liatris for the back bed, a ninebark and a fuzzy annual lamb's-ears for the front, and a bunch of things for a planter in yellows and whites - variegated ivy, daisies and coreopsis, New Guinea impatiens, and lantana, plus a few herbs. And since my veg bed is now free, I may just put in my lettuce today.

Knitting pace, of course, slows significantly now we're working. Especially since I'm nodding off in the bus half the time when I could be knitting. But I'm now on the leg of my second sock, and I did a pair of mitts for Johanne's pile, with duplicate-stitched roses on a diamond trellis background.

The cat let me sleep in until 7:30 this morning, presumably as a Mother's Day present, which was much appreciated, since a friend and I went out to contra dancing last night, and bedtime was late. Yesterday it was 5:30 when I gave up the battle and got out of bed, but it was such a lovely morning I forgave her, and went out and gardened for a few hours after breakfast. Actually, I kind of felt sorry for the people who were still asleep and missing the birds twittering, the mild air, and the sweeps of geese going north against the morning sky.

Such a contrast to what it must be in Alberta. I'm keeping an eye on the news from Fort Mac wildfires. A cousin and his family live (lived?) there. They got out safely, but financially it will be awful for them - his work truck and all his equipment left behind, and the two buildings he had bought as an investment (and was still paying for) - not to mention all the personal stuff lost. And to think it will be essentially a whole town in the same boat. It's been great to hear of so many people stepping up to help the evacuees though.

AKC and PSA

The chiengora scarf I was working on is done, shipped and received.

Now I'm trying to get my quilt square done this weekend, and working on my Hypnosis socks, which are coming along slowly (I'm still on the first sock).

And since it's supposed to be a gorgeous weekend weather-wise, there will be garden time. I want to re-arrange the back garden here, maybe turn the compost (if it's thawed), plus all the plants I was holding over the winter for a friend get dug up and go back to her this weekend.

It's kind of a warm-up and finish-everything-else idea for the weekend, because work starts Monday. Well, I suppose it's about time. It will be nice to get back to work, once I get used to the waking-up-early part again.

I tell you though, one thing I'm going to be doing more of this year is checking for ticks. I've been lucky so far, and never had one. Not sure how prevalent they are in the Ottawa area, even. But my parents aren't that far away, in southern Quebec, about two hours from here, and the tick situation seems to be getting bad there. Several people in their area have been diagnosed with Lyme in the past few years, one probably from a bite months, if not a year, earlier. Both parents and almost all the pets have had ticks, and get checked almost daily. This was a warm winter, with lots of mice around (which are carriers), and the first ticks on the pets showed up before the snow was off the ground. And one of those ticks gave the dog Lyme disease. She was all lethargic and not eating, and seemed in pain, so Mom took her to the vet. And this one vet said she's seen 13 cases of dogs with Lyme so far this spring.

It's treatable, especially if caught early - the poor dog is on antibiotics and vitamins, and is starting to feel better. But obviously the ticks are out there already, hungry, and infectious. So please, keep your eyes open. Check yourself and your pets. Save your ticks if you get them, so they can be tested if necessary. Watch for symptoms in yourself and your pets. Untreated Lyme can cause permanent damage, and it's not pleasant. The Canadian Lyme Foundation is a good place to start for info on prevention, symptoms, and treatment.

A Little Bit of Everything

So what about this weather? Can't make up its mind - Easter Sunday it was so warm I sat out on the porch at the parents' in a t-shirt and bare feet and was too hot, then it got cold again this week, and today it's snowing. My library pile, with books on famous English gardens at Sissinghurst and Munstead, seems a nice escape from the snow.

The preparations for spring are moving forward, though. Clean-up outside is mostly done. My seeds have all arrived, and all the windowsills are occupied by flats (spaced so the cat can still jump up in her usual places, though). The zinnias and salpiglossis are up already, and I check the window boxes more often than I check my e-mails, waiting for the next little plants. I feel really happy about the salpiglossis, since they haven't had a textbook life so far. The package said they had to be sprouted in the dark for 20 days at 80 F. Well, I wrapped them in black plastic and put them in the windowsill right by the stove, since I couldn't think of any other way to keep them warm. After less than a week (!) they were up, tiny, pale,  spindly things, so I thought they might be better off with light, and switched the black plastic for clear. And promptly managed to drop the flat upside-down while putting it back on the windowsill. But there were still seedlings on top, in the soil, when I turned it back over - thank goodness for that bag I had over it - so I thought no harm in seeing if they'll live. And they are - they are bigger and they have little green leaves, so all is well!

Assorted items done: Got things up in my Etsy store again - and this time they are set up to auto-renew if they expire. Yay, because I'm really bad at paying attention to that little job. Got my taxes done today. Finalized the garden plans I made for Liz last spring (she had a busy year too, so it wasn't like she was twiddling her thumbs waiting on me), and did some estimating for a patio a friend wants.

Work hasn't started yet, except for our first job of the season, which was building a garden at the Home and Garden show the other week. We took a day and a half to do the planting, between deciding how things would look best, and juggling the plan when some plants didn't show up in good condition. Trees, shrubs, perennials, bulbs in bloom, we had it all, in a stone and wood backyard patio setting the construction team built. I was worried tear-down would be a long job also, but it went like a team of army ants had gotten in. Three hours only, and we kept all the plants for use this summer.

A treat Easter Monday - a whole flock of Bohemian waxwings showed up and hung around for a while, eating the little crabapples on a tree in the front yard at the parents'. Gorgeous birds, and watching them eat crabapples is a hoot. They were eating them whole, but if the apple is too big...bird opens beak wide, apple slides down, bird closes beak, apple slides back up!

There has been fibre stuff going on as well, of course. Mitts for the ranch store, and now I'm on an interesting project; a request for a chiengora lace scarf. The dog is more of a hair than a fur type, so I mixed it with half Romney wool, spun a couple bobbins of fairly fine 2-ply, and now it's on the needles in an Estonian floral lace pattern.

The mitts are both from a book by Solveig Larsson, and it is a lovely book.

I Aten't Dead

...as Granny Weatherwax would say. (From Terry Pratchett's Discworld series, which I consider highly addictive.) No pictures today, just a quick post to say I'm alive. (Heck, I haven't managed to get the last four knitting projects photographed and onto Rav yet.)

It's been a crazy fall. Mostly fun and all, but I find myself needing more hours in a day, every day. There's been Havelock Fair and the Roxham WoolGathering,  a dye class to teach, a baby shower, Rhinebeck, the Knitting Guild vendor's night, and now next weekend is the OVWSG Exhibition and Sale. On top of that, work hasn't had the September slowdown we did last year, and it looks like we'll be running another 2 weeks at least, when last year the garden end wrapped up a week or two earlier. I really hope we don't get early snow or really cold weather...

We worked yesterday, the first Saturday in a while. Today the apartment is going to be very warm and steamy, fan and open window notwithstanding. Damp socks hanging in the living room, damp skeins hanging on the rack in the bathtub, two dyepots simmering on the stove, and the week's baking (pizza and apple muffins) in the oven. Tags are on the table for writing out whenever I have 2 minutes to spare. With any luck I can get the lion's share of the prep for Ex and Sale done today, (apart from reskeining things once they dry), and do all the other little chores that are piling up (like sorting the recycling, which is also piling up), then I can concentrate on reskeining and packing during the week. I'm thinking the Sale should be pretty busy this year. Carole, the co-ordinator, has arranged an interview on TV this week (Wednesday on CTV Morning Live, I believe) where they will try to teach the interviewer spinning, weaving and felting. Sounds like a fun session!  

...And there goes my timer. One batch of skeins ready to rinse, one dyebath ready to put skeins in, and the pizza's done, so I can start muffins as soon as the next round of pots is simmering.

Man, I'm looking forward to end of season. I want a nap. And then Kristina and I are planning a fibre prep day later in November, and then in the winter, Heather of HelloMello, who I met at Rhinebeck, and I are planning a SAL, like a little Tour de Fleece. I have ambitions to make a serious dent in the fibre stash this winter, and knit a few things for me, and...yeah, need more time again ;)

Everything Going On

So here we are, at the official start of summer. Just over a week to July, folks, and the time's been going fast. This weekend seems to be my first breathing space in a while. A nice quiet Sunday with a little mizzle in the air, and a chance to sit down at the computer for more than the time to check e-mail or do work. At least for a little while, before I have to see about lunches for the week, and tidying the place for a friend's visit, and getting some work done on Liz's garden plan, a few changes to be made following a chat with her last weekend...

It's been busy in the gardens this year. We've had more clients at work, more jobs coming in, than last year for sure. No early finishes to the days. Little chance of getting rainy days off. More Saturdays worked than before. And then our head gardener let us know she was leaving, so the next little while will be more fun than ever. Thankfully Emily (the other gardener remaining) and I work well together, and the organizing of jobs we've been doing this week seems to be getting a good amount done. But if you know of an experienced gardener looking for work (a slim hope, but whatever), send them our way!

Actual knitting content has been happening also, no fear. I mentioned that I was doing one for the boss for his fundraiser, right? It got done, working on it right to the last minute. Under 4 weeks, dudes, and I am not trying that again. There are changes I would make another time, but it turned out well, the boss liked it, and he was happy with the auction results, and said it got a lot of positive comments. Phew. This was the final product (although you can't see the cables very well; they're on both red and grey stripes:

Please note the cat is helping. She's usually very good about not touching my work, so I don't know what got into her, but every time I had the afghan pieces out to pin and arrange for sewing, she was there rolling on my work, and I was panicking that she would coat it in cat hair or snag it. I ended up putting a tablecloth over whatever parts I wasn't actually working on.

The logo is from their website, and I will note that Photoshop or a similar image manipulation program is your friend if you want to copy/adapt something like this for knitting, especially if you're like me and can't draw. If you want to know how I did it, the process goes like this:
1) I grabbed the image from the website, then in Photoshop, I cropped it to the area with just the logo I needed.

 2) I did a gauge swatch of my yarn, figured out how big a panel I wanted to make with the logo, and used that info to get an approximate stitch and row count for the panel.
3) Back in Photoshop, I changed the image size width in pixels to match my stitch count desired for the panel (I wasn't too fussed about row count, as I figured I could just make the shorter strips below it whatever length I needed, and I didn't want to distort the image.)
4) Then I magnified the image until I could see the individual pixels well.

5) I opened up a page of electronic graph paper (I found it as a free download somewhere a few years ago) in Photoshop as well, and copied the image outlines to the graph paper.

Since the original image had pixels in multiple colours and intensities, and I wanted essentially a black and white version, I had to decide for the in-between shades whether a square should be graphed as black or white, and I adjusted the lettering to be more regular than it would be by using strictly dark/light decisions. But the idea worked wonderfully on the whole, and I love the idea that it means there doesn't have to be a graphed image out there for something I want to do, because I can create one fairly easily in whatever size I want. (Of course, be respectful of copyright, if you are going to try this at home. I wasn't worrying about it because of it being done by request for the actual organization in question.)

Sort of funny that I had been working so hard on this afghan for a cancer fundraiser, when one of the other recent happenings has been that this week Kim, a knitting friend with cancer, got moved to hospice and subsequently passed away. It's not like we all didn't know this would happen at some point, short of a miracle occurring. And I'm glad for her sake that when she started going downhill, she went pretty fast, so didn't suffer as long. But it's still a hard notion to get used to, that she's gone, and she won't be at knit-outs or on Rav anymore, and I will be glad to be busy for a while and not think about it. She was a nice person, and will be missed around here.

Of Mice and Men

Ok, seriously guys? It's Saturday suppertime and I'm having the second half of my lunch. The first half was at 3. I'm starving and in need of tea, which is steeping right now. And I need to whine a little. It's been one of those days. On the plus side, Emily (the new gardener) and I are having a lovely time exchanging tales of the co-op students...we laugh so we don't cry.

I had been hoping to get to the Glebe Garage Sale today, but no dice. Through a combination of factors, we ended up working today, 9-5:30ish. For one, it's first round of maintenance for some places, so we're doing gardens we haven't seen in over 6 months, and which are consequently a little, um, weedy. Then we have the fact that the co-op students are not getting any faster at working, and apparently are incapable of recognizing some basic weeds, so the work goes rather slower than it should. That meant we had a backlog of something like eight places from this week to catch up on today. And the head gardener took the day off.

Just to start the day off right, I discovered on the way to work that I had left my knitting needles at home. Had the wool, just not the needles. So no knitting during travel time. Fine, I spent the time doing a bit of planning towards Liz's garden on a scrap of paper.

I get to work and Emily and I divide up the jobs and the students, and head out. I took west end, since the biggest job there was one that I knew would be a mess. I figured it would be easier if someone familiar with it went in - they only came to us halfway through last summer, and it took two people two days to get it in shape to do maintenance the rest of the summer. And I don't think they had a fall or spring clean-up. Well, we took 7 bags of weeds and stuff out today and took 5 hours to do it. And just to make things more fun, I managed to kneel on a dog bomb in the back yard. Both knees and kneepads. So I used a spare handkerchief and some of my drinking water to clean up as best as I could, and kept going. My estimate is that I did about 3/4 of the place...

By the time we finished, it was going on 3. Emily and her student were done two small jobs and on to the third - Emily also doing about 3/4 of the work at each site. We stopped for a bathroom break on the way to our second place, and ate what we could while travelling, which added up to half a flatbread with hummus for me. Then another 2 hours work at site # 2. Emily finished their site #4 and got back to the shop maybe 20 minutes ahead of us. And bless the girl, she waited and drove me home - her new place is only 5 minutes from me. I was not looking forward to catching a bus - it comes every 30 min, I think, on Saturdays, and is 15-20 minutes walk down the road from work. She is getting cookies from me, since she is making a habit of driving me when the bus is not being convenient.

And we had our laughs on the way home. One site they went to, I had told her there was only the one bed in the back. She passed the information on to her student - who managed to walk right by the bed in question (which is in a raised masonry surround, filled with rosebushes, and right there when you go to the back). He went all the way down to the back corner where there was a patch of tallish weeds near the fence, and apparently started weeding between the weeds. Ten minutes later he comes to her saying he has a question about which ones are the plants...

I guess they haven't learned weeds yet at school? My student has been making a habit of leaving grass in the beds. Couch grass and lawn grass. He carefully cultivated around a patch of the latter at one place today. I told Emily if their prof ever gets arrested for losing his temper and killing them, I will totally support him on grounds it was extreme provocation and justifiable homicide...

Oh, and the mice? Somehow one or more have gotten into the building for the first time I've noticed since I've lived here. Woke me up one night scritching around and gnawing, apparently in the ceiling above my hallway light fixture. Reported to landlord after a couple episodes, who came and put baits in the ceiling and a few other likely places, and reported some chewed insulation and stuff in the ceiling space. With any luck the baits will take care of the problem before they start chewing electrical wires.

Ah, well. Off to enjoy what's left of the weekend. There's bread rising right now, so I will have fresh bread with butter later on. And maybe tomorrow I will try sleeping in a little, if the cat permits!

Must Be Monday

Otherwise known as apparently not a good day for getting things done...

Work started last week, and the weather was gorgeous. Today, not so much. It went from cold and overcast on arrival to cold, windy and raining shortly after we got to the first site of the day. We stuck it out for a couple hours, but finally admitted defeat with the place half-finished, and drove back to the shop (with the heater on full blast). Everything I was wearing was wet enough to need changing when I got home. Oh well, I'm dry now, and at least gardeners have the option to stop for the day, unlike mail carriers or the people who change advertising signs, both of whom I saw working outside today.

All right, so free day, what to do? I noticed the blue yarn in the sweater for my cousin's baby was bleeding colour onto my fingers when I knit, so I wound the yarn into skeins and washed it. Apparently the bar of laundry soap I used wasn't a good idea, because the yarn is all patchy now and will probably need re-dyeing before use...and since I already have that blue in the trim of the cuffs and sweater body, I will probably have to rip ALL of it out and restart with a different colour combination.

That was a depressing thought, so while I was working my courage up, I decided to sew some of the patches for the quilt square in progress. Got a piece done, corners lined up, and came to the conclusion that how I was lining this section up was wrong and I will have to rip out and redo. Thankfully it was only the first of the four sections with that layout.

I'm starting to sense a pattern here - and it's making me very hesitant to try and get anything substantial done. Maybe the best thing to do with my free day is going to be make a cup of tea, put on a movie, and (sigh) rip out the errant quilting seams, frog the baby sweater, and turn my attention to finding a new colour combination for the latter. Yeah. And with any luck, neither the stove nor the VCR will blow up when I try to use them.

Dye Another Day

Mid September...we've had our first mild frost, and it's officially fall. The regular garden maintenance at work is finished, and it's too early to start cutting back and garden shutdowns. The boss talked to the garden team last week and told us this, and he was really sorry, but we were going to have a few weeks where we wouldn't be working every day, starting with this week having yesterday and today off.

He really did seem a little concerned, like he hoped we would be OK and not starve because work was slow. I said I totally understood that was how the industry worked, and I was happy to have a little extra time to do my own stuff. And in my head, I'm going "Yes! Perfect timing! Thank you!"

So much going on outside of work between now and the end of October! All fun stuff, happily. It turns out I may have not one but two natural-dyeing classes to teach at the local guild, and today when I'm out doing errands, they will include picking up a parcel of yarn for the class, making an extra couple copies of class handout notes, and getting some dye supplies. Then Sunday I had a visit from someone I've done a couple commissions for, and she had a few more commissions she wants me to do, the biggest one with a deadline of beginning of November. Which coincides nicely with my prep time for the guild Ex and Sale. And of course there's Rhinebeck in mid-October. I've started a shopping list, and will be making reservations for dinners and sightseeing for our group in the next few weeks. We're planning to go to the Vanderbilt estate out there - Mom and I went the first year we did Rhinebeck, and the others haven't been at all, so it's time we revisited!

This weekend has been all about the dye pots again. There's a group my mother is part of, all multi-craftual, talented women, who are getting together and doing a series of KAL-type things, only not all knitting. Weaving, woodwork, embroidery, who knows what else. The current project coming up is knitting, though. One woman has a book with gorgeous stranded socks and slippers, so they're going to do that - only since most of them have done natural dyeing with me, and one has a dye garden, they decided to have me come and lead a workshop there, and natural-dye the yarn for their projects. And they are very enthusiastic! It was supposed to be 5 skeins each, but there was some extra, and so many possibilities with mordants and baths, that they ended up with 6 skeins each, and a bunch of things where they're going to split skeins between people because they couldn't decide between possibilities...I was there from 8am to 6pm, and we must have done a dozen colours on over 40 skeins, including woad and Japanese indigo from the garden. It was super fun, and lunch was a pot-luck, with spaghetti and salad, and fresh homemade cheese curds one of the women makes from their cows' milk! You know a good time was had by all when they're already planning next year's session...

I was supposed to do my mother's share of the skeins for the project, but saved that for the next couple days while I dyed my own stuff at home. Less crowded dye pots, and more leisure to plan. I think it turned out to be a good couple days' work:

Isn't the red something? I finally got around to using some of the pokeberries I've been freezing. Mashed a couple litres of them and soaked them in vinegar overnight, soaked an alum-mordanted skein in vinegar overnight also, mixed the two solutions and the yarn after straining the berries out, and simmered (covered, thank you!) for an hour or so. It boiled a little towards the end when I wasn't watching, but doesn't seem to have harmed the result. The other skeins going away from the red, include onion with copper mordant, dried coreopsis with alum, greenweed and onion with alum, rudbeckia with alum and iron/onion/woad, greenweed with alum overdyed with woad, rudbeckia with alum and iron, and two shades of black walnut, no mordant.

Wet

So...has anyone noticed it's a little wet out today? I sure did, because I was out working in it. And after the four-hour job my co-worker and I had this morning, (during which we got soaked, rain jacket and all), we bargained for a half-day off. It's not good to be in gardens, compacting the soil, on such a wet day anyway. We'll have to work our asses off for the rest of the week to make up for lost time - but at least said asses will probably be dry apart from the sweat. Right now every item of clothing I had on this morning, from undies to rain jacket, is hanging up drying, and my boots are under the fan, and stuffed with newspaper, which will get changed a few times tonight, to help dry out the insides. I need them wearably dry for tomorrow - and steel-toed boots can't readily be tossed in the clothes-dryer.

Ah, well. Now I'm dry, it's nice to have the afternoon off. With cocoa and popcorn for a belated lunch, plans to make chocolate chip cookies later for a work BBQ tomorrow, and a chance to sit on the couch and knit on some gloves-in-progress, and no need to go water the plants outside!

Busman's Holiday

So...a week into my new job. 5 days and a bit actually, since we worked for a few hours on Saturday. It's mostly fun - I'm liking it, despite the part where I have to get up before 5am. Get to see all sorts of gardens while we're out doing spring clean-up on them, and a fair handful of wildlife to boot. There's been a pair of ducks swimming in someone's pool, a curious robin who hung out to watch us, and several dogs either in the house we were at or at a neighbour's. Of course there are the drawbacks, like the rain all day Tuesday, and the very dead rabbit I found in a heap of fallen leaves at one garden.

And there's the learning curve. Not as much about gardening at this point (although I am picking up a few tricks from my supervisor) as the associated stuff. Here's me, coming in with about 10 minutes total experience ever with a cell phone, some ancient experience in city driving, and no experience at all with a pick-up truck - and a week in they've got me driving myself around the city in a truck, and using a Blackberry to text and call. I tell you, if I was into drinking, this week would have been the time to do it. I did go through a bag of chips in reaction, but so far so good - I've managed to recover when I missed my turn-off on a large road a couple of times, and haven't injured any people or property that I know of, even if I did scare a few.

And with a day off finally, what did I do? Finished the spring clean-up at my apartment's gardens, natch. Edged the beds, turned the compost and spread the finished stuff, weeded, and bundled a whack of prunings to go out with the yard waste. (Whoever prunes around here just leaves everything where it falls, and it drives me nuts). Indoors, most of the little seedlings I've started are coming along well, and I'm looking forward to planting things out later on - tomatoes and lettuce, sunset runner beans and cucs, and maybe a daylily from the seeds one of mine produced last fall. It's nice to be looking forward to summer.

A New Neighbour

Deep in Orleans, Ottawa, there is a Canadian Tire. And attached to that is the garden centre where I'm working.

Maybe it's because of all the plants, or maybe because the mall backs onto undeveloped land, but there's definitely some wildlife around. At least three pairs of birds have made nests under the front awning, and they chirp and twitter and talk to me while I'm out there watering (I suspect they're asking for a birdbath to be installed for them). And last week there was a toad between the shrubs in the garden centre (which I got to take out and release into the wild because my supervisor isn't big on handling critters).

This week there's another addition, which my supervisor found and showed me. In the top of one of our racks of plants, nestled between pots, a bird has made her nest, complete with three speckled eggs.

It's right in the middle of the place, not even off in a corner somewhere, so I don't know how she felt secure enough to build there. But build she did. Now I guess we'll have to try and make sure that rack stays full, so the nest is hidden, and we and the customers don't disturb her too much. So I won't be taking any pictures (sorry), but it will be very interesting to see if she succeeds in raising her brood there.

A few years ago I saw a nest in another garden centre, in among their nursery trees, so perhaps it's not uncommon for them to think it's a good spot. Still, it's very cool to have a bird family there, right under our noses, so to speak.

A Fortnight of News

Isn't fortnight a nice word? Short for fourteen-night, or two weeks. I learned that one when I was still pretty young, because it tends to crop up in the classic kids' books - Anne of Green Gables, Little Women, etc.

And it's been pretty close to a fortnight since I got around to blogging. Work's been busy, plus when you add in a few days where there were errands to do - well, there've been days when I basically got home, made supper, took Julia out, and went to bed. For the first time this past week though, I've had time to deadhead things at work, and I've been taking the bags of clippings home for my compost pile - bonus!

In that time, the garden has started to bloom. My old rosebush especially (I think it may be a Rosa cinnamomea) is covered in blooms.

My neighbors, on the other hand, upgraded their landscaping to include a plastic palm tree. I suppose it goes with the flamingos.

Knitting time on the bus has produced a pair of mittens for Johanne. Now, though, I'm working on my own stuff for a while (Yay, colour!). I'm planning to share a booth with Johanne and Chantal again for the Corn Festival back home, and that's only a month away, so time to stock up.

Less knitting at home, though, because I've got to get busy on the spinning. Looking ahead to the Guild show, end of October, which means handspun for selling and for knitting things to sell. And summer is here, which means dyeing season. Tour de Fleece is coming up, so I'm making that an excuse for getting back in the habit, even if I've only committed to being in Lanterne Rouge this year (participating but not necessarily spinning every day). So far for my 'training camp' I've gotten a skein of fine 2-ply silk/merino plied and off the bobbin, and am one skein into the 2-3 remaining to finish the Navaho-plied Icelandic I started, oh, last year sometime.

On the dyeing front, that's another thing coming at me, if not for a couple of months. It looks like I'll be teaching two full-day workshops on natural dyeing for L'Ourse Qui Danse, which should be fun. We're planning for end of August and late September, tentatively. I've got the basic timetable/lesson plan roughed out and discussed with Jo and Chantal, but at some point I will have to do the figuring to make sure I've got all the materials and supplies ready, and write the class handouts...

Hi-ho, hi-ho...

...It's off to work I go! Actually, scratch that. The last thing I want is that song stuck in my head, given that there are several shelves at work devoted to lawn ornaments. Someone thought bobble-head garden gnomes might be a real cute idea, if you can believe it.

Two days of 'official' work now - full-time from here through July. Mostly so far it's been a round of unpacking and placing plants, trying to help customers, and watering. But a few impressions so far:

- It's a long day when you have a 9 hour shift, and close to 3 hours of travel every day.

- It's really true what our nursery plants prof said - plants (especially shrubs) dry out really fast in the garden centre. The watering is almost a full-time job in itself, and this is just a Canadian Tire, not even a commercial nursery. We do have some sprinklers, but not everything is covered.

- Different CT stores get plants from different sources, and decide on their type and quantity. And this store has some neat stuff. A variegated plectranthus, which I hadn't seen, for instance, and a little euphorbia like the 'Diamond Frost' cultivar for hanging baskets, but with leaves that are burgundy-black with a green edge. Also a whole rack of native Ontario plants in biodegradable pots. Tropicals will be coming later too. Mother's Day shopping will be very easy.

- I'm a little surprised (but happy) that wearing my steel-toes and walking for 8-9h per day is not giving me blisters or making my feet too tired.

- I am super-impressed at how well people working there know locations. I'm still at the 'well, I think it's a row or so away from the shovels and things' stage. Most everyone else is at the 'oh, that's in aisle 23' stage - even for things not in their department. I have a lot to learn.

- Oh, and evidently work can sap your brain. I took my knitting on the bus, finished the hand and one finger of the glove on the needles...THEN remembered that the reason I had put it down a few days ago was that it was a right-hand glove - and I already had a right-hand glove done. It was the left I needed. Now I have to rip back to the base of the thumb and move the gusset...tomorrow. Bed calls, since I have an 8-5 shift tomorrow, and that means getting up at 5:30.

Only A Little Grouch

It's hard to be really grouchy when the rhubarb is up and showing a patch of crumpled green leaves, and the scilla will be in bloom any day. But a string of little annoyances means I'm a little disgruntled, at least.

Had my first day at my co-op placement Saturday, starting to get the garden center ready for the season.  Nothing wrong with that. But I now know for sure, and not just intellectually, that you can get a sunburn in April. Next week I bring sunscreen, or a hat (there's a no-scent policy at work, and my sunscreen's scented). And I'm having a few days of stiff muscles, since this garden center prep involved a quantity of shoveling snow, chipping ice, carrying things, and tying awning down.

I had to get up at 5:30 to make it to work Saturday, but was hoping to sleep in yesterday. Except the cat started waking me up at 5, and continued causing trouble until I caved and got up at 6:30. Then up late last night finishing stuff for our "Dragon's Den" business plan presentation in class today. Besides putting together the good copy for the paper to hand in, I had a felt-pocketed piece to sew up for the living wall we're using for a prop (living walls are what our theoretical business produces). Only, the sewing machine jammed partway through. So I finished the necessary sewing by hand. I don't mind hand sewing, but it just meant there was no time to make the wall as elaborate as planned. And now I have to get the machine fixed at some point...

Oh well. Today that project will be done with. Tonight will be Guild meeting, although I may not stay, since I have an irrigation quiz tomorrow morning. And then it's just the scramble to the end of semester.
(And that's my other grouch. Our list of permitted plants for our big design assignment is WAY limited. Very boring.)

Yes, there has been some knitting, if less than I'd like. Tomorrow maybe I'll show some off. I need inspiration for a semicircular shawl border.

 

Going Out With A Bloom

That's the title of this year's spring Show and Sale in the Horticulture Department. Coming up soon - the show runs from the 21-31 March. The second-year students are the organizers, and have been growing all sorts of things in the greenhouse in preparation. They've also been deciding what they want for wood and stone accessories, which our year gets to build.

Construction class this week, part of the class was in the wood-shop making Adirondack chairs. The rest of us were playing with stone - my group being on pillar-building again. Last time the concept was 'think outside the box'. This time, we were told, 'something formal, modern, modular'. We ended up with 4 variations on a theme:

(If you can't tell scale, each of those is about 32" high and the caps are 28" across and bloody heavy.)

So now we have to draw up scale plans of the pillars, and the ones that the second-years like best (from all the construction classes) will get rebuilt at the entrance to the building, to welcome visitors to the show.

In other hort news, I've got a co-op placement! Come April at some point, you will be able to find me out at the Canadian Tire in Orleans, in their Garden Centre. I'll be taking care of the plants, advising customers with questions, dealing with orders and deliveries of plants, putting together planters, and planning seminars on various gardening topics that might be of interest to people. Lots to learn and teach, and I think it'll be pretty exciting! The woman who came to do the interview was really great to talk to - fibre interests as well, and very enthusiastic. We talked so much that I was almost late getting back to class; neither of us thought to check the time until we'd been there an hour. I figure that's a pretty good sign!

Random Notes From the StatsCan Basement

People will ask, 'how's the new job going?', and I'll say 'OK'. That doesn't really adequately describe it, though. In some ways, sitting and calling people all night isn't exactly the most interesting/stimulating job description. On the other hand, when you're actually talking to people and not just leaving messages on machines, it can range the gamut from tragic to comic to educational to...whatever.

There was the guy who described how his horse and his dog team up to hunt coons and rabbits, which was the best mental picture all night.

And the guy who is essentially out of business because he lost all his bees to the CCD or whatever that was going around, and can't afford to replace them.

And the people in the Prairies, who've had several years of drought and this year had all the backlog of rain, and fields so flooded that growing rice would be a better option than about anything else.

And the 90-year-old man who still works in the family greenhouse.

And the lady who has sheep and is also a spinner, who I would have loved to chat with, except I was working...

And the guy who commented that he figures about 150$ would be a good payment to him for the effort it takes to fill out the form. (Note it usually takes well under an hour to do the form on the phone, based on what I've been seeing. That means his hourly wage would be 10X mine.)

And the guy who manages his mother's farm, while living and working halfway across the country from her.

And the ones who refuse to participate, but who can be gotten around by calling back another time and speaking to their spouse.

It's a jungle out there. But the work is getting done. And I, for one, am looking forward to the weekend.