Saturday

Roaring storm, rain, high winds last night, most damage south of here, handsome Son getting home from work at nearly 9 pm texted to say he'd made it okay, despite being blown around.  We're losing count of the number of storms at this point.

Before the storm I had made it to the knitting group, yay, four whole people, biggest crowd I've been in for a couple of years, and great fun. Two knitters, one crocheter, one stitcher. One new member is knitting a prayer shawl as part of her church ministry, with donated yarn, the shawls to be given to people who need them.

Our fearless knitting leader yet again announced she was going to learn to crochet. This is a regular announcement, and I'll be quite sad when it happens, really. The running gag will be over. But I don't know how much danger there is of that. 

She also shared a picture of a great piece of knitting. This is at the Shetland Textile Museum, home of world-class knitting for generations, this fence created by one knitter. It's based on a traditional lace design.

I've knitted a scarf years ago in a Shetland lace traditional pattern, catspaw, with much groaning and demands for quiet and no interruptions, and lifelines.

This pattern. My own is downstairs somewhere, but this shows the pattern, see the catspaws?

I was quite proud of my accomplishment, until I discovered that among Shetland knitters, it's considered so simple women, they're mainly women, do it walking about outside, chatting with their friends..

My fall indoor gardening is all about seeds. The moringa and Rose of Sharon are coming along, and I noticed on the fence an outcropping of the bitter melon gourd which climbed from next door. 

Now overripe, I thought I'd give the seeds a chance of growing like a vine indoors. So it's in its new home. You can see it's an appealing vine shape, so I'm hopeful.

I also have a few cucumber seeds which maybe I'll do the same thing with, just to see what happens. 

I'm definitely losing the space race with plants, despite Winnowing elsewhere.

He followed me home, I have to keep him, and philosophical musings on winter pansies

While my cleaners are at work I always make myself scarce, and use the time to do a few things I don't tend to get to on other days. So a trip to a  distant grocery for various items such as whole black peppercorns, pure honey, steelcut oats and so on, that I can't get more locally, then a detour via Mazur's, the lovely, family run, four generations, nursery where I get my plants when I have space and budget.  This is not the farm, also a four generation situation, where I'll be getting my farmshare this afternoon.

Today I came home from the nursery with white mums to put out front, annuals just sitting among the pachy, and they'll get more spectacular as they go. 

The cat followed me home, showed up on my step the other day, so I have to keep him, and he's earning his keep supporting the sedum.

And blue and white pansies to sit on the fence out back, along with the other plantings.  They're not planted yet, just looking around at their new digs.   

It's taken me years to get around to getting winter pansies, because of an enormous moral objection to making spring plants work like winter ones.  It's going against nature, I tell you!  and every year I've looked at them and thought, no, it's better to stay with the seasons.  

Then this year I finally thought, well, I don't want to assume too many more springs in my life, so why don't I just get them now and enjoy them.  So I will.