Adventures at Home

Blogging rule #1: Never forecast the day's events, as they surely will not happen.

I was planning on finishing up the quilt and hoping to have a Ta-Da moment for the blog today. Ha!
However I was also expecting the cable TV guys to arrive with new cable boxes for our TV's sometime during the day so I wanted to make sure I was dressed and the house looked less tornado-aftermath-like, so a bit of tidying up was necessary. Quickly losing interest in that, I started a new knitting project to make use of waiting energy. This is a scarf which will have a string or ribbon running through it to make it scrunch up prettily. I got about half way done, ripped back ten inches, reknit it better (designing on the fly) and now it is the way I like it.

Merino and silk from Knitpicks.com
Speaking of knitting, I am still doing socks and just mailed these off to Teresa in Florida.

But I digress...
The cable guys arrived at 11:30 and installed four new boxes on our four tvs (I know!) which required ripping out old wires (YAY!!!) and going under the house and through the pantry and up the stairs, etc. Perhaps I should have made the beds.. O well. In less than an hour they were finished and gone.
 Dave came in and I attempted to demonstrate the new remote, but the TV didn't work...at all. Nor did the guestroom one work. I called the cable people and was on hold for ten minutes and when the service person finally answered, the phone began to go all static and then died too. This is all one company, Bubba's Bar-B-Que and Fone, so what's a girl to do? Luckily my laptop was working so I logged onto Gmail and made the call through the computer. Ha!
The same guys returned and made everything good again, and relief flooded into the house. Of course I immediately had to knit and watch my shows... a marathon of Curb Appeal, The Block, my fave...
Thus I never once touched the quilt. Sorry.
Moving on... I got this email and decided to do a bit of before and after.

Thank you for you great blog. I love your quilts and garden. It's fun to watch the antics of your adorable doggies too. I have wondered about something for a long time...Since you are out in the country (like I am), how do you keep the varmints (deer, raccoons, skunks, rabbits, moles, gophers etc) from ravishing your plants? How do you keep the koi safe in the pond? Raccoons ruined all of our pond plants, even without the temptation of fish. Also, I would love to see how the garden boxes are filling in along your fantastic deck. Best wishes, Maria


Answer: I do nothing to protect the plants. The deer have so much to eat around here and I haven't seen them in our yard in two years. Raccoons are frequent visitors, but haven't gotten at the tomatoes yet. We'll see what happens the day before I plan to harvest. It seems they know.
The 'koi' are just goldfish, and now the pond is so low, green and muddy that they are gathered in the
deepest spots, invisible to everyone. I doubt the raccoons could find them, not to mention the neighboring heron. We have so many fish, that missing a few wouldn't be noticed. And our mini-pond is 3 feet deep and I am sure those fish stay deep at night.
You asked about the deck flower boxes, and here is the before and after shots of one side.



Va Voom! The white liriope is completely hidden under the sweet potato vines. Liriope are very hardy and will still be there when all this dies down after the first freeze.

Another view.

These are the blue salvia which I love love love. They will continue to add blueness for the rest of the summer. With the red salvia and the underlying white impatiens, we are all ready for the Fourth of July.

The begonias, which were $.08 per plant are just growing like mad/ I am thrilled with this whole planting.