Spring is here

the red onions has moved out in the green house

This weekend was devoted to gardening. Saturday was spent at the country house where I raked my flower beds and borders giving little squeaks of joy every time I found a bulb or little plant that had survived the winter. I also made plans for my vegetable garden. This year I will grow three different salads, potatoes, onions, squash, beetroot and sugar snaps. Hopefully I will get some rhubarb, red currant and raspberries too.

I spent Sunday in the greenhouse replanting the sugar snaps and planting seeds for dahlias, beetroot and white Echinea. The sun was shining, the birds singing and the cats were hunting the first mosquitos.



...got it!!!!



I drank my afternoon tea in the green house enjoying the fact that now spring has really come to stay.   

Jeanette

All in a days work!

This is a busy time of the year for me because I have so many plants that I want sow from seeds indoors in order to develop a healthy transplant of appropriate size to then be moved outdoors. Today it was red onions (red baron) and yellow onions (Rijnsburger 5), sugar snaps ( Oregon Sugar Pod) and Isop (Hyssopus officinalis).



Sugar snaps planted in containers made of toilet rolls



Red and yellow onions



Sorting out the Isop seeds



I also set my potatoes to chit in egg trays to get good and sturdy sprouts for early planting and harvest.



hopefullu I will have poatoes at midsummers eve



In the next few days I hope to sow Brussels sprouts, Texas Salvie ( Fairy Queen), orange tiny echidnae and white big echidnae, two other kind of Salvie, one arch blue and one white. The Echidnae and the Salvie are all from seeds I collected (“stole”) in a park last year. I have never used seeds that I’ve collected myself before so it will be fun to see how these will turn out.

Last but not least I finally got down to sewing the buttons in my cardigan. The cardigan have been finished for “ages” but sewing buttons bore me to death so I have been putting it of. I think the colored buttons gave the cardigan a cheery look and my button collection came to good use.

Jeanette

Willpower

There I stood with at least 25 packages of seeds in my hand and I wasn’t alone. All of us woken by the spring sun and a deep urge to start growing plants immediately. With an enormous act of willpower I put the packages back on their shelves again and left the shop without buying any. Telling myself with a very firm voice that it’s way too early to start planting seeds anyway if you don’t want tall and thin ones (which I don’t). With an even firmer voice I told myself that I wasn`t allowed to buy anything until I’ve checked out what I had already got...

Which turned out to be a lot! Some bought last year and never planted (guess I was out of willpower then) and others carefully collected (or stolen) in gardens, parks or the country side.

To keep myself busy with other stuff than growing seeds I selected buttons for my black cardigan. Yep, the second car knit is finished.

I also started on a new knitting project; a cardigan no less, but this time a tiny one for a little baby. I fell in love with the spring colors though so I just might knit one for myself too.

Before I had a shawl knitting problem....knitting way too many. Wonder if I have a cardigan knitting problem now....

Take care
Jeanette

Patience

I am not a patient woman. Passion YES but patience - no I haven’t got a lot of that. This makes me a woman who does things fast, who is no good at waiting and more often than not acts before having actually thought things true. But, and this is important I am NOT rude or impatient with people who doesn’t do things quite at my speed – I just tend to chose doing most things myself!

I want to see a result fast and I think that’s why I take photos instead of paint pictures, do wet felting instead of quilts, embroidery instead of weaving and almost never knit with a thin yarn…..and it’s why I don’t do leaven bread! Just the mere thought of having to wait for the bread to rise for days on end makes me itch all over.

The not being patient thing is also why I don’t do gardens or at least didn’t until quite recently. Gardening is all about patience. You plan, you plant and then you do what? Yes you WAIT!

My gardening used to consist of frequent trips to the nursery where I bought all the plants I could lay my hands on, planted them and then forgot all about them. I got a fast result that’s true but it never lasted for long. Nowadays I really try to fight the urge to do “a quick fix” when it comes to gardening.

If someone had said a few years back that I would own a green house, grow my own plants from seeds and have vegetable garden I would have laughed out loud. But what do you know, things can change. Who knows I might start to doing quilts next….or not!

Jeanette

My weekend in pictures

I had the cold from hell this weekend! I had planned to get most of my Christmas shopping done as well as decorating my house and garden but spent most of it in bed reading and feeling sorry for myself instead. On Sunday I managed to stay out of bed for a couple of hours and then I made a wreath for my front door and hung my newest acquisition on the wall in my hallway. It’s a deer (of course), a reindeer in fact. My husband hasn’t really decided if he likes him yet but I think he is SO cute. Especially after some Christmas pimping…. I guess my husband is grateful that I don’t want the entire sleigh team hanging from my roof though…

Take care

Jeanette

My weekend in pictures

Below zero for the first time this autumn. Dug up my vegetable garden preparing it for the winter rest, enjoyed the beautiful autumn weather and knitted, knitted, knitted. New pair of mittens and a stack of tiny flowers that are goíng to be made into brooches.

Take care

Jeanette

My weekend in pictures

Take care
Jeanette

Let the sunshine in

I made a wreath from sunflowers and elder berries to hang over my dining room table. The black berries made the yellow even more yellow, like having the sun shining from your ceiling.

Take care

Jeanette

Criminal behavior

Yesterdays walk in the gardens at Katrinetorp was a feast for the eye. All the flowers were in their most vibrant colors celebrating the last days of summer before the long gray period that are soon waiting ahead. I walked around for hours forgetting the time completely surrendering to the beauty of it all.

As I was walking among the flowers the capsules and seed-cases caught my eye and I am ashamed to say this but that’s not the only thing they did. Catching my eye that is. By some mysterious urge out of my control my hand starting to reach out picking a capsule here and a seed-case there and letting them disappear down my pockets, carefully looking over my shoulder to see if I was noticed by anyone.

In the evening as I was sitting at my work table carefully sorting the seeds and putting them in tiny little envelopes with name and date in neat letters I said to myself “OMG, I am a seed stealing criminal!” Is that a punishable offence? Will I have two years of hard labor in a quarry with not a flower in sight? Together with other convicts gone astray by their love of flowers and a need to see if they could cultivate them from seeds themselves… Who ever though that love of flowers could escalate to a criminal behavior. Not me, that’s for sure!

So a word of warning to all you flower lovers out there before you know it the capsule picking bug can hit you – big time!

Take care

Jeanette