A sampling of the bounty our garden has produced this year

It’s been almost a month since the above photo was taken and the harvest has mostly tapered off. The peppers are just now in full swing but it’s tough getting to them before the crickets do – they chew holes in them and then crawl inside…yuck. The tomatoes are still trying valiantly to produce, but we’ve had some cool wet weather and the big ones are tending to rot before they can ripen. The leaves have some sort of ick on them and there are whiteflies and caterpillars moving in on the weakened plants. I prune away the bad stuff as I pick the tomatoes — I just can’t bring myself to chop down all the vines that are full of flowers and ripening fruit — but I suspect there is a balance that is reached where the amount of viable produce vs. the amount of work and mess is no longer worthwhile, and I wonder if allowing the plants to continue is possibly even counterproductive; am I letting disease and pests get a good foothold so that I’ll have to fight them twice as early next year?

I hate being in the position of deciding who dies and when… for that reason I’ve always coped better with crops where I am harvesting fruits and vegetables the plants produce rather than the plants themselves, and have shied away from growing things like cabbage or radishes. While I perfectly understand, on an intellectual level, that my overly sentimental attitude is counterproductive, I can’t help it…  though I imagine that if I ever did have to live off the land, I’d have to toughen up quick – or starve.

The one thing that fall has going for it this year is that I am really worn out with tending the garden. Some crops did very well this year, (that beastly cherry tomato vine!) others had issues, but produced decently (the squash, the peppers) and a few were a complete bust (we got exactly three strawberries and a chipmunk stole the best one, the cantaloupe plants never fruited) but it’s been a lot of daily work making sure that as much of the harvest as possible is not wasted. I’ve got a half dozen assorted winter squash sitting in the bottom of the pantry, three bags of frozen butternut gnocchi, two loaves of frozen zucchini bread, and lots of frozen tomatoes, tomato sauce, and pizza sauce. I even canned six jars of jalapeno jelly. There have been a lot of days where I came home from work and then spent all of my hours until bedtime picking, cleaning, processing, or cooking; it will be a relief to have this time back for other pursuits.

Tomatoes

• purple Cherokee
• Matt’s wild cherry
• Pineapple
• Costoluto Genovese
• Italian tree tomato (a friend grew this from seed, it’s actually 2 plants growing too close together to separate)

Okra

• 2 Clemson Spineless
• 2 burgundy (planted these because first two aren’t thriving)

Herbs

• winter savory
• french tarragon
• dill
• 3 sweet basil
• 1 curly basil
• parsley
• chives
• 2 more thyme plants (in addition to last year’s two)
• wormwood
• rue
• mugwort
• holy basil/tulsi
• 3 calendula
• cuban oregano

Peppers

• Golden Marconi
• Jupiter
• Jalapeno
• ‘Fooled You’(mild jalapeno)
• Pimento
• Orange Bell
• Poblano (2 because first one isn’t growing well so we bought a second)

Other Veggies and Fruits

• 2 black zucchinis
• 1 Waltham butternut squash
• 2 cantaloupes from seed
• 1 ‘mystery’ squash or melon that had sprouted in our compost bin, as yet unidentified
• rainbow chard from seed
• leaf lettuce
• arugula
• 4 nasturtiums (this is an edible flower)
• 2 strawberries
• rabbiteye blueberry (for helping pollinate the existing two plants)

Flowers

• 8 giant zinnias
• 2 violet queen cleomes
• 2 gardenia bushes
• Assorted daffodills, tulips, narcissus, and hyacynths
• 1 tasmanian violet (viola) *we brought this in as a houseplant
• 3 pots of wildflower mix from seed
• 1 giant Russian sunflower

We had a blast! Above is a ‘self portrait’ by Joy – the rest of the pics can be found here.

Recently, I decided it was time to buckle down and finish it. And I did!

It’s not quite how I pictured it in my head before I started it, but it did turn out fairly decent and my mom loved it. I’m now free to go back to woodburning other projects, though I don’t think I will be trying out any more photo portraits any time soon.

I did also finish that beadwork piece I was making:

and got it sewn onto a collar:

I tried to get the loom warped again to complete a second collar design, with my original, wider ladybug pattern. Even though I now had the correct thread, it didn’t go any better than the first one and (once I’d untangled and salvaged all my expensive beading thread) I decided to just buy another loom. I was intrigued by one I had seen online that uses a technique that produces four finished edges – no snarl of warp threads to deal with at the end – and bought one off eBay.

Within two days I had my new Versa-Loom and was off and running with a small sample project (to learn the new technique before getting into something complicated) using some really pretty beads I’d bought years ago and never did anything with…

That piece became a bracelet for Joy.

Having gotten the basic hang of working with the Versa-Loom, it was back to ladybugs. One problem I ran into, which was more noticeable with my wider pattern, was that even though all my beads were 11/0, the green was a different source than the other colors and slightly smaller, which made the rows a wee bit uneven (hardly detectable in the finished pieces, but it annoyed the crap out of me) so I’m looking forward to having them gone… at the same time, I didn’t want to waste them. I am now almost finished the original ladybug design which will go on a 1″ collar. I am not sure what I am going to do with it since it’s not really Paddy’s style but I had a ton of beads in those colors to use up, and really wanted to see my original design in a finished state. The smaller one I made for Gwen lost a lot of the detail of the head and antennae of the bugs.  I am going to be using delica beads from this point on, which are a lot more uniform and come in a huge variety of colors and finishes.

I have some great patterns I found online and more ideas for designs of my own, and am having fun with the beading. It doesn’t involve a lot of setup, unlike sewing (since I still don’t have a place to permanently set up my machine) or worrying about pets snagging power cords and burning themselves (or me burning myself) as is the problem with woodburning. It’s something I can sit, anywhere, and do as much or as little at a time as I feel like, and the process is very calming, almost meditative.

One thing though, I don’t think I will want to see another ladybug for a long time after this.

• Several days were devoted to Googling the problem I had run into before.
• Another day spent trying an alternate technique for the project, which didn’t pan out.
• Several more days passed before I could pick up a buckle dog collar, which was needed.
• And today, being off work and up bright and early, I decided to embark upon the actual project!

Ideally I would need Nymo or some other nylon thread, some tiny pliers, and beeswax. Again, refer back to the “what if this is something I will lose interest in,  better not spend a bunch of money” mental argument, above. Plus all these things come from Earth Guild in Asheville, and my plans for the morning didn’t involve driving all the way Asheville and parking downtown.  I figured I could use the cotton thread I already have for sewing, a bit of a regular candle, and in a pinch (no pun intended) my teeth, for nipping out errant beads. And if I actually finished this, and it turned out well, then I could pick up the proper equipment if I was still interested in beading.

OK, so the first hitch I hit was that my existing pattern I’d made was one row too wide for the collar. Back to the design table.

• An hour was spent Googling for free patterns I could use that were the right size. Nope.
• Another hour or so looking for the original pattern and software, realizing both were apparently lost to a drive crash a few years back, and then redownloading the software, which had been upgraded since I last used it.
• Not sure if I am going to stick with this, so reluctant to pay for the upgrade, seemed to work in a trial mode so lets recreate the design. Spent about a half hour on that.
• It would have helped if I’d noted that I would not be able to print in trial mode. Went back to the site, paid for upgrade, which thankfully unlocked it right away.

From what I’d researched, to make the longer item I needed, I should cut warp threads three times the length of the actual project, then string the little craft loom as I normally would, except wrapping the excess thread around the wooden spindle so I could let out more as the project progressed. It sounded pretty straightforward.

What ensued was another hour spent trying to untangle the 16 30″ threads over and over, I thought maybe if I waxed them that might help but then they just got sticky. I tried combing them apart and now I have wax on my only comb. At one point I was actually attached to the loom with a snarl of tacky black thread; the phone rang in the middle of this and I knew if I tried to untangle myself to get it, I’d never get the knots out. The urge to take a pair of scissors to it, toss it in the trash, and Never Speak of This Again was great, but I was determined not to give up.

I tried taping down various strands I’d freed, adding uncooperative generic scotch tape to the mix. I did eventually get the loom strung, though it remains to be seen what is going to happen when I try to reel out the additional warp strings. By now I was pretty defeated, but after all that work I was bound and determined to bead. Yes, I did spill beads everywhere — I’m sure anyone reading this saw that one coming — and spent who knows how long crawling around on the floor picking them up.

I am very, very, grateful that at the last second before starting, I did realize I had the loom reversed and all that extra warp thread would have been on the wrong end once I started beading. Finding that out later on after I’d put several hours of work in would most likely have been the end of me and crafts.  I’m also thankful that no cats came to help until just as I was ready to stop and put the loom away anyway.

My eyes are a bit sore, I have a headache, my neck hurts, and I’ve wasted half a day to spend a half hour of actual beading, but here’s what I have so far:

Ladybugs!