You know, I’ve been spinning more the past few days than I did during TdF! I don’t know why exactly. I mean, we are having decent weather, comparatively, and that should have us working in the garden, but it doesn’t.

I think we are on prolonged vacation mode. Meaning, we are soon off work for a long weekend, and we seem to be acting, around the house, as if we already ARE on vacation. Nothing wrong with that I suppose. It certainly has been good for my wheel time.

I am still working on that crazy fat cat knits batt that I am totally in love with! It’s so fun, so bright, and every chunk I pull off to spin feels like a lovely surprise. It is pretty close to being done now.

I’ve been knitting as well, Still working on one handspun cowl but have begun a second handspun cowl. Those projects, too, have been quite enjoyable.

Most of my gardening time has been spent picking japanese beetles off my plants, treating them for budworms, and keeping up with weeding. Doesn’t make for great photos, that’s for sure. BUT, I did go back and find original pictures of the veggie garden and the rose of sharon garden, so we can do a tiny compare and contrast of what they looked like when we moved in, and where we are, just one season later.

This is the original photo from when we moved in. You can see the burning bush on the left, and then it’s just a crazy mess. We went from there to this:

And it’s actually even better now. Most of the lilies are totally gone, except for very tiny ones which happen because I’ve removed the larger ones. As soon as they pop up, I have to dig again and find their root system. Same with the phlox. I have removed the irises, some major weird weeds with thick roots that now I understand why I couldn’t get rid of them, basically all that remains is the veggies I put in this year, 3 mums which are going to be moved soon, and my huge peony that I’ll divide and move in the fall.

And then there’s the rose of sharon garden.

When we moved in. The rose of sharon is huge, and desperately needed to be cut back. That yarrow was spilling out all over the place. And there was a weird vine system that we could never understand choking out some nice plants. Now?

The rose of sharon is trimmed back beautifully, smaller, tighter, fuller, and it’s still way taller than I am. Since this photo was taken, I’ve removed the phlox and the rose bush in front of the rose of sharon, and added some mums from the veggie garden. I spend a lot of time out here right now, as the japanese beetles are having a feast on my rose of sharon. Since it’s taller than I am, this means I am gently finding the branch with beetles, and pulling it down to remove them. This also means I often find myself dislodging beetles that fall on my face and clothing. It’s unpleasant. But I am SO thankful that bugs don’t really scare me.

Revisiting these original photos really do show me how long we’ve come in a fairly short time. I can see in both gardens the fairly well established volunteer trees in the original photos, growing unchecked. Removing those alone the first year was this huge insane job that took up so much time!

We’ve come a long way, and I am glad I have started blogging about it so I can continue to see progress!