slowly she turned

(Life Update Update: I wrote this nearly a month ago and never posted it. Thought I’d get back to it with some photos and forgot about it. So it goes this season. I’m taking a day off and decided to write a little, and this popped up, so I’m posting it with the addition of those photos.)

April is almost getting away from me. I was so busy this month! Mainly with my remote job, which takes a while even though it is only a minimum of twenty hours a week. I have to take lots of breaks due to eye strain and losing focus after reading dozens of essays on the same prompt. I like it better than I used to, though, especially the fact that it is paying for my Ireland trip and Edwina’s fiber art retreat at Wildacres in September. I don’t think that I’ve mentioned that I was awarded a week-long artist residency to do tapestry design at Wildacres, which did my sorry ego a world of good. It is the week before Edwina’s retreat, so I’ll be there two full weeks!

As usual, when I wait too long to write these posts, there’s too much for one post. So I’ll try to get part of the stuff here and do a separate post for the event that I just left.

I worked HARD on the garden in breaks between scoring papers. For the most part, the weather has been beautiful but very dry. However, I have suffered from some of the worse allergies ever, especially in my eyes. A lot of eye drops have been applied in the last two months! Once I realized that I am not going to get those metal raised beds filled and ready for spring/summer, I turned my attention to the one raised bed I filled with the Costco soil, weeding out the “womb” garden, planting containers, and making fencing wire cages to go around them. Because yes, of course there is a fat groundhog living under the studio again. I do hope she isn’t pregnant. Raccoons are back, as well.

The cages have seemed to do the trick as far as protection, but I really want to plant field peas (Pat Bush’s “beautiful beans”) and butterbeans. Those critters will eat them to the ground if I don’t make some kind of fencing. I may have to save that for the metal raised beds next year. I can put metal hoops over them and cover them with wire fencing. I think that will do the trick. As for the womb garden, I don’t know. A farmer I met in Burnsville said that I needed to put hardware cloth 18 inches on the ground and 18 inches up the fencing. Ay yi yi. Not sure that’s gonna happen.

Most of my tomato and sweet banana peppers are doing well, despite a cold snap and the drought. The lettuce and basil were the only seeds that survived the experimental winter sowing jugs. I’ve had one big salad already and I planted some radish seeds among the lettuce and carrots. Sadly, the green peas died. There is a grey surface fungus on that raised bed, which I suspect originated in the raised bed soil (Miracle Gro Organic with Compost). I won’t be buying that again, but I hope to get my compost bed going again this year. I treated the fungus with an organic copper fungicide which seemed to work and then the peas died suddenly overnight a couple of weeks later.

The seedling tray inside is what was the big success, and I have butterfly blue tea peas, artichokes, scarlet bee balm, dyer’s chamomile, and borage all planted in the front garden bed. The tomato seedlings were getting so big I had to plant them. Some did not make it, but I had plenty. I was happy that keeping the electric heat on in the studio where I had it did not raise my bill too much.

Bad news is that I did something to my knee and I’m going to have to lighten up on it for a while. Just as I was getting my stamina up! I hope that I don’t have to see a doctor.

Sandy and I went to Oak Island with friends at the end of March. It was lovely as usual, but my allergies were bad enough and it was chilly enough that I didn’t get out on the beach much. I love the deck on that house which looks out over the salt marsh around the Intercoastal Waterway. There had been dredging and people were digging at the little sand bluff on the beach that the high tides had made. They were pulling out amazing shells – thousands and thousands of olives but also scotch bonnets and nutmegs, which you rarely see.

Two weeks later, I drove down to Lake Waccamaw with my Baby Wolf loom warped and folded and loaded into the back of the Volvo wagon. I dressed (incorrectly, but I tried to stop obsessing over that ) in 18th century clothes that I had donated from my reenactment days to a historical house society that was having a living history event. I did not stay long – had too much to do here at home – but I did get to spend a little time with my sister and niece and of course Miss Sissy Girl, my feline niece.

Still weaving the weather tapestry diary, which I so enjoy! And I was in a group show at the Artery Gallery for a month, in which I entered the two framed tapestries that I had in Preston’s Christmas show. I apparently sent in an application that was not ready to the Marshall Muse Gallery, so at some point I will revise that and make an appointment with them.

Reading: I finished the Hyperion series, and Dan Simmons just died, so I guess there won’t be any more. “The Bee Sting” by Paul Murray completely captivated me and pissed me off. I read a sweet, lovely illustrated novella starring Bast of Patrick Rothfuss’ “Kingkiller Chronicle” series called “The Narrow Road Between Desires.” “The Remains of the Day” by Kazuo Ishiguro was a surprising slim read. I never saw the movie but I imagined Anthony Hopkins and Emma Thompson throughout. Loved “Writers and Lovers” by Lily King and I will find more of her work to read. Now I’m supposedly reading “The Hunter” by Tana French, the second of the Cal Hooper books, which I was eager to get in Libby but it might expire before I read it. I sent “The Likeness” back without finishing it. It creeped me out and I’m not sure why. I may take it back up at a different time. Along the way I’ve been reading “The Age of Homespun” by Laurel Thatcher Ulrich and “Tapestry with Pulled Warp” by Susan Iverson.