I finished spinning a second loop! bump!

Now I can get down to the business of plying. This morning was rough though, we had a major storm overnight, and that kept me very awake, so I didn’t wake up this morning with enough time to get started. I DID have enough time to put my jumbo flyer on though, that’s as far as I’ve gotten today. I am really excited about plying these together though, I like how one is bright tones and the other muted. I can’t wait to see how they work together.

There was more garden progress! Yesterday I showed you photos of where I left off in the rudbeckia garden, basically having exposed the lilies that I needed to move and that’s it. I am glad I left it overnight, though there wasn’t much choice since it was late and daylight was leaving. I had to decide just how far back I was going to take that garden!

As it turns out, pretty far. I only left one small portion of rudbeckia, a sedum that is nicely established against the fence and probably holding dirt in where it needs to be, and a peony (Which had to be cut down due to a case of powdery mildew.)

I didn’t do quite as good a job with the sifting of the dirt as Mr. Ink would, but I did dig up some firmly established vine root system that was probably about 2.5 foot in diameter. And then hacked through the entire thing with a hoe to make sure the flower roots were mostly gone. I then began the process of planting.

I had dug up the crazy tall lily and it’s neighbor which was too close to it, separated them, and then replanted. I also took a few pieces of those bulbs to see if I could propagate some new ones myself. If that works out, it’ll be 3 years before I have viable lilies, but with Mr. Ink’s mad skills with indoor plants, we can probably keep them going if we can get them growing. I added in a third lily that I picked up at the plant rescue this year. It’s yellow, and we’ll see how that one goes.

I pulled out the phlox from this garden bed, separated them into two sections, and replanted those toward the back of the garden, and then moved my 4 little purple coneflower plants into this garden, since that seems an entirely appropriate place for them. Yes, yes, it still needs to be edged and mulched, but it’s SO much better!

I asked Mr. Ink what he thought about all this. He said “It seems like you enjoy destroying gardens more than you like creating them!” Touche! But, I still think going from picture one to picture two is an improvement.

Next up? That veggie garden edger disaster. I shouldn’t even call it a disaster, as I’d said from the start that it did not matter, but it felt a bit disastrous. I finally came to the conclusion that for $5, even if the edgers didn’t match, it would be ok. So I put them in, but first, we cut back the burning bush like crazy. Mr. Ink needs to get in there and cut some of the branches farther back, but it is much more manageable looking now, despite being a bit scrappy looking.

Here’s the part of the edging I really like….

And then there’s this part. Ah well, it will hold in the dirt, and that’s important. And after a couple hours devoted to that burning bush, it’s smaller, and tidier, and there are no more shoots around it, and no more weeds under it.

Edging did also give me the opportunity to take out more flowers, which is great. Little by little, I’ll get a handle on this veggie garden bed!

Mr. Ink planted two more trees, and prepped a sight for another. We’d discussed starting on some edging or a rock wall garden, but we’d spent SO much time on everything else that getting started would just mean we’d have to stop too soon after starting.

This week is a very busy one for us, AND, it’s going to be the hottest week so far. I am guessing we’ll be in maintenance mode with the garden throughout this week. Then next weekend? We have decided to just remove the remainder of the rotting wood edgers and take the entire pile of rotting edgers and rotting fence pieces to the dump. It’s time to get everything out and cleared up, starting fresh.

In other news…I finally took the time to block a finished object that’s been done for a week or two! So, you can look forward to Actual Knitting Content tomorrow!