Ahh, Summer

Even though I love to wrap myself in hand knits, summer is still my favorite time of year.  I love the long days and warm nights that invites one to wander outside, stay up too late and maybe do a little outside knitting.  This is my favorite place in my yard to hang out and knit.  It’s a little mini patio to the side of our house that’s nice and sunny in the morning.  It’s the perfect place to sit with a cup of coffee and do a little knitting before the day get’s started.  In a couple of weeks there will be huge orange lilies blooming all around this space.

One of my favorite things about summer is gardening.  I guess it’s that growing up on a farm thing but I love to put a seed or plant in the dirt and watch it grow.  I’m really excited this year because I’ve always wanted an herb garden.  I’ve always grown herbs in pots but I wanted a permanent place where perenials could come back every year.  A few weeks ago, my sweet husband built me some planter boxes and I finally have my herb garden.

There’s everything in there from four kinds of mint to lemon verbena.  The marigolds are to keep the rabbits from nibbling on everything.  I was skeptical about this but so far it’s worked just fine.

Because we don’t have a ton of room in our yard for vegetable gardening, we are giving Topsy Turvys a try this year.   I’m a little bit surprised but it’s working out really well.  We’re growing three types of heirloom varieties and they are all doing really well.  Tomatoes are so rewarding to grow because it seems like they grow about a foot a week.

We had such a cold, wet spring that I kept these little plants in the house until June.  It seems like that strategy was a good one because we have tiny little tomatoes already:

I’ll be back next week to talk about some of the new things coming in at Doodlebug.  I decided to leave the Cascade sale up through the 4th so if there’s something you’ve been wanting, now is a great time to buy.

If you’re in the US, I hope you have a wonderful 4th of July holiday, if not, have a lovely weekend!