The Best Things in Life

I spent a lot of money over the years, trying to have roses like my parents had, a beautiful rose garden, with a huge variety of colors and sizes. I would do everything right, feeding, spraying, covering them with mulch in the winter, only to have very limited success in summer and all of them dying over the winter. I had given up until I saw some roses for sale a few springs ago at the hardware store. They were $1.99 each, so I bought three, thinking six bucks for a few roses that summer was a bargain. Here they are three summers later still alive and blooming for the third or four time this year! I do little more than dead head them and they have been spectacular.

This is one of the many sunflowers that pop up all over the garden, a gift from the birds that drop them randomly as they eat. This actually is growing in a huge pot by the pool. I have culled them back in the garden to a manageable amount and there are a couple of small plots that I fill with sunflowers from a few packages I bought in the spring. It makes for a sunny display at a time when the garden is shutting down as we race toward fall! (It is 59 degrees this morning, no pool again today. I'm having serious withdrawal.)

This is a spiderman afghan that I have started for Baby D's 2nd birthday. Not sure I will have it completed by the 6th of September, but I'm going to give it a try. I knew hanging on to all those skeins of Reynolds Utopia that I have had in my stash for years, would come in handy some day!

Cheap, free, stash diving, it's all good!

Clean Up

This was a vacation week for the kidos (they went camping at Watkins Glen), so we were almost kid free this week. Just one kid for a few hours on Wednesday. So we have been doing some cleanup around the house and garden, especially since the weather has been much more reasonable, mild days and almost cool nights.

Having overnight guests this coming week meant cleaning out the guest bedroom, which is usually used to house little kiddies. So all the bedding was washed and aired on the line, toys were put away and books were straightened.

The Buffalo Garden Walk was last weekend and we spent several hours touring the teeny gardens in the Cottage district, a couple of blocks that have adorable little houses dating from the 1850's. The way that the tiny space is used to create such high impact is always an inspiration, so I added some touches to my own garden.

I went to the garden center and found a sale table that had herbs and scented geraniums for half price, so I put together three aromatic pots for the patio,

took out this old lantern (circa 1914) that we found in the crawl space of an old house

and put succulents in these itsy pots. I have so many more ideas spinning round my head, it gets the creative juices stirring to see what others have done.

There was a trip to Seneca Lake for a family get together on Monday, which was lovely. The rest of the time we cleaned out gardens, weeding, dead heading. Today I think I will move a few plants that need more elbow room and some that have popped up in the wrong spaces. There has been much harvesting of cherry tomatoes, broccoli, peppers, eggplant and raspberries. I love it when the grandkids go looking for a handful of berries or tomatoes to pop in their mouths. It looks like the tomatoes are going to make it this year and we will have a bumper crop soon if all continues to go well.

Knitting? Ah yes, I continue to make progress on my diagonal afghan ( now on the decrease side) and Diamond and Purls Shawl (only 15 rows of the last repeat then the last chart of 6 rows and bindoff), but have conceeded these will continue into August. I can almost feel the call of fall knitting and the desire to start a cable sweater!!

My SIL wants me to teach her to make socks this week, so there will be a time out of regular knitting for some teaching moments.