Hello Gentle Readers. May arrived here with a few warm balmy days. The rest of this week will be cooler but I love fifty and sixty degree days. The lavender irises bloom as does the flax. I love the old-fashioned scent of these irises. To me, it's a mix of bubble gum and grape soda at my Gram's home.
Yesterday I planted seed for cosmos, bachelor buttons, and calendula. If they don't feed the bunnies, I might grow some bright annuals among the perennials. The flower bed survived the construction of the new fence. How or if the fence changes that microclimate will be the garden experiment of the summer.
This Wednesday I will link with Kat and the Unravelers. I continue to knit on the Gemma Shawl and the Baby Blanket, gaining yardage on both projects. Larger projects take time and aren't the most exciting blog topic but this is the way I knit. I try to work on the blanket each day. It will be forever tied to The Unselected Journals of Emma M. Lyon. I am currently listening to Volume 5. Emma is a delightful heroine and I'm speculating on how the story will end. I have been able to check them out sooner than the hold times would indicate. While they are a quick listen, I wonder if patrons put a number of them on hold at one time and then have to pass them on to the next reader. My local library system adopted a new hold policy which may also be a factor. Anyway the little blanket is a peaceful knit.
I'm also enjoying the shawl. I have the pattern memorized and the wool/alpaca/linen blend has a slightly crisp but not unpleasant hand. The yarn color has some subtle shading as the three fibers absorbed the dye differently. I'm easily entertained by my knitting.
This week I read The Last Quarter of the Moon, written by Zijian Chi and translated by Bruce Humes. The narrator of the story is an old woman of the Evenki Tribe looking back on her nomadic life in remote forests of northeastern China. The tribe, although the men hunt and fish, depended on reindeer for clothing, shelter, and sustenance. She tells the story of what happened in five generations of her clan as Japanese, Soviets, logging, and climate change came to the forest during the twentieth century. Their life was beautiful, idyllic, cruel, and brutal. Although the story arc was tragic and contained a lot of sudden sometimes violent death, Chi wrote a quiet dignity into this novel. Learning a little about a people who often chose the common good over individual need was thought provoking.
I am not including any links in this post to see if that makes a difference in my ability to respond via email to your comments. Something in the gobbledygook in the email of blogger's response mentioned links. Google recently changed privacy settings policy so that may be part of my difficulty. When my dear son has a little free time, I'm going to ask him to help. I'm at that stage of life. I used to understand computer terminology but it's much more complex. Remember Claris Works on the first Apple computers? It's been awhile.
Carry on friends, what else can we do? I wish you an easy heart on this Spring day.
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| Flax at the edge of our pollinator garden. |
