T Stands for Garden Cleanup

   Hi everyone. Happy new week to you. And hello to everyone who stops by Bleubeard's and Elizabeth's blog for T day.

   What's  new with me since now I'm home from my travels? First of all I am still in PT for my shoulder/arm and have an MRI scheduled for next week. My shoulder is doing a lot better, but my arm is still sore. The physical therapist thinks I have a bicep muscle injury, and I agree with her. I believe I injured it back last winter when my husband was down and out with his herniated disc and I was doing some "heavy lifting" because it was quite sore then. The thought is it wasn't quite healed when I started all my spring gardening, and I've reinjured it. I also wonder if it has to do with my thyroid, and I'll be getting that tested once I get rescheduled with my Primary care doctor. I was supposed to see her this week, but she's out on  a personal medical leave herself. The office says they believe she'll be back at the end of October and will reschedule me then. So for now,  let's see what the MRI says. 

   When we first got home a week ago we had some wet and windy days. Once that weather improved I decided it was time to go do some garden clean up. Luckily the clean up isn't very heavy duty, and my goal for the past weekend was to get some of it done.  The biggest thing was to pull out most of the veggies and trim back a few perennials.  I had hoped to put in a little stone patio this fall, but I am not going to do anything to make my arm worse. 

   Here's the veggie garden before I did any cleaning up.

    In some ways I hated to pull out some of the veggie plants because they were still producing.  But, with the prediction for some almost freezing temperatures a few nights this upcoming week, they wouldn't have produced for very long anyhow.

   You can see up against the greenhouse I still have kale, carrots and beets growing. Plus, there is some lettuce in one of the raised beds that I planted at the end of August. I've decided to cover that and see if I can get some more growth because lettuce actually prefers it chilly.

   It was a super garden season for me; my best in several years. But autumn is here as so many of the flowers are telling me.

  I still have a few blooms though, including some roses which have had a super second round of blooming.

    Let's see how long it will be until they are done too.

  Anyhow, I need a drink to share for my ticket to T this week, so let me share my new 2 sided mug that I bought while away in Canada. We visited the Nova Scotia Museum of Art in Halifax mainly because I wanted to see the Maud Lewis art. I will share her work in another post (my other 2 Canada posts are here and  here if you missed them and are curious) once I get a chance to go through my photos better. However, I really love her art so I wanted a souvenir of the visit. Here is my mug, both sides, when I had some tea one afternoon last week.

    They had several choices in 2 sides mugs, and I chose this one because we had visited many Nova Scotia harbors and also (even though the color wasn't this bold) it was autumn. I liked the size of this mug too; it's tall, thin and on the smaller size. I have plenty of big mugs, so it's nice to have one that isn't quite so large.

   That's it for me. Wishing everyone a happy T day and  week ahead. 

In The Garden

    Hi everyone. Happy Thursday. We've had some much needed rain these last couple of days, but not as much as we could actually use. Right now we're in a severe drought, and there's no outside burning in the whole state. 

    Since I came home Monday night from my trip to Nova Scotia I've been busy with some small chores, including the other morning in the garden.  The deer were quite busy while I was away. 😟😠😡

     So much for letting my carrots and beets grow more.

This is what my peppers and then beans looked like when I came home.

     And even this hydrangea right next to the deck got a good chowing down on.

    Add that to the severe drought we are in, I decided it was time to pull the veggie garden. Plus it is almost October and the end of gardening season .

    Here's a few of my beets and carrots. The carrots are small, but so are baby carrots you buy at the grocery store.

    I pulled a few last green tomatoes and the last of the peppers still clinging to the bare stalks. 

    Surprisingly my zucchini is looking great. It's in a different spot from the rest of the garden, and the deer cant't easily get to it. I picked one, and have a few others still growing on the vine. If it doesn't get too cold in the next week or so, I should be able to pick them.

     I also pulled my second batch of baby potatoes. 

     And ha ha, I think a squirrel must have tried to bring this treat back to his/her nest.

      That is the strangest place I have ever seen a tomato. It certainly didn't grow there.

   I moved a few plants into the greenhouse. Some of them were perennials/house plants that I still need to carry into the house, and a few of them were garden plants that are growing in large garden bags.  I hope I can get some more grow time from them if they're not outside. Of course there is no heat in the greenhouse, so I can't overwinter in there. Moving plants inside is just a temporary stopgap measure. And once we get a dry day, I have more garden cleaning to do. Wasn't I just setting up these gardens? 

   Have a super rest of your day.

  

Weekend Chatter

 Hi everyone. It's Sunday again.  I hope you are having a nice weekend. It's been a bit chilly and windy so far this weekend in my area, and it sounds like typical November weather has arrived, compared to the middle of last week when we had some more beautiful mild weather.

     Today I have a journal spread to share for Wendy's On, In or By the Sea challenge at Art Journal Journey. I am also linking up to Gillena's Sunday Smiles.

     By now you probably know my husband and I went to Quebec back at the end of September, and many of you might also already know that I like to make trip journals. Since we spent so much of our time away near the ocean, I'll have some pages to share this month  that work for Wendy's AJJ challenge. Here's my first one, a 2 page spread about our visit to Mighasha National Park.  This link takes you back to my original post about our visit about this premier fossil site on the ocean.

     I made the background yellow and grey to match both the cliff's color and also the grey many fossil rocks are. I used a couple of sets of Paper Artsy rubber stamps and stamped fish on both the actual background and on some printed paper. The fish on the printed paper were fussy cut. I also stamped the background with some label rubber stamps and a few design images. The green circle is the actual sticker  I needed to wear in the park, and I used some stickers to make the title for the page. Finally I cut out one black and white fish image from a travel info brochure and added that. It's a modern fish but since fish are still an important part of the Gaspe area, I thought it fit. 

    And how about a few photos to wrap up this post?

    I went for a 5 mile hike with some friends the other day.  I took photos of the trail signs as we walked because a few years ago when we did this hike we ended up on the wrong trail and had to backtrack a couple of miles. Luckily we didn't need the photos this time to find the right trail back to the car.

The end of the trail for us was on top of this cliff that had a nice view.

Even though I didn't get a great photo, we saw a pileated woodpecker. We also saw a couple of squirrels. But I think most likely we were talking too much and scared away anything else. 😏

     We had some gorgeous weather this past Wednesday, and my husband wasn't up to going to work, so he took the day off. He went up to close his mother's house on the lake for the winter, and the dogs and I tagged along. 

And I thought my yard was full of leaves. Here's my  mother-in-law's driveway.

I had my husband drop me off at the end of the road, and the dogs and I walked in to her house. It was a lovely day to do that.

I also had to go to Maine one day last week for an appointment. I stopped to grab some lunch at a local restaurant, and in their waiting area they had this fun cow bench.

Finally, my own yard clean up continues. Believe me, I don't get rid of all the leaves that fall (I'm not that obsessed), and it is probably even impossible to do that. 

   Of course with the strong winds earlier this weekend, all the loose leaves have shifted. I watched them blow around the other day and even got hit in the face by a few when I went out to get the mail. 😏 I may not have any more lawn clean up until spring, which would be great.

Have a super rest of your weekend and start to the new week.

T Stands for Last Week

      Hi everyone. Happy Monday to you. It is time once again for T over at Bleubeard's and Elizabeth's blog.    

      Last week we had some gorgeous weather at my house. My roses have forgotten it is just about fall, and they are blooming beautifully again. ❤

     I also finally gave my living room a good cleaning. I've been meaning to do this since early spring. Ha ha, you can tell I don't really like to do it. It's a good thing I had started when my brother called because after chatting with him for over an hour, if I hadn't started, I wouldn't have.

     I washed the windows, washed the curtains, gave a good cleaning behind the couch (boy was that full of dog hair-YUK!), and vacuumed the cobwebs out. However it is good to have it done. 

    One evening I even made an apple pie from some of the apples the hubby and I had picked the week before. 😏 It was yummy.

     This past Saturday I got together with 2 friends from college. One drove down from Portland, Maine and the other drove up from the burbs of Boston, Massachusetts. We went into Portsmouth (New Hampshire) for a day of window shopping, lunch and then an afternoon ice cream. Here's a couple of photos I snapped on our adventure.

The beautiful little petunia plant growing in the cracks of the sidewalk. I think someone planted it there in a space between the bricks but maybe not.

This cool wreath outside of a chocolate shop had cocoa pods on it. The pods were real, but dried.

A lock fence. Isn't it Paris the home of this custom?

The gardens in Prescott Park were really lovely.

 Peeling paint and a patina door knob. 

A very nice old front door.

Apple hands at a daycare center.

And my drink today is my beer with my lunch. We ate at a place called the Clipper Tavern, called that because the owners graduated from the high school where I taught and the school mascot is the Clippers.

     The salad was delicious, the water was cold and the Clipper Pale ale was tasty and really reasonably priced. And Lyn (Spyder) asked if I'd share my teapot/cup combo, but when I went to photograph it discovered it is in the way back of my cabinet, and I didn't have a chance to dig it out. Sorry Lyn. But I will get it out to share for another T day.

   My husband is  taking some time off from work, and we're heading north into our beautiful neighboring country and province. Besides practicing my limited French,  we'll be traveling this upcoming Sunday through  October 1. Since we're driving on this trip,  I won't be around for T day for the next 2 weeks. But I do have a couple of scheduled posts for AJJ and one for TIOT  so I won't be totally off the blog. I hope to have enough down time to stop by and comment on some blogs, but time will tell if that will happen (which is why I won't be joining T day). I hope everyone has a great couple of weeks ahead, as well as a super T day.

T Stands for This and That about Last Week

 Hi everyone. Happy Monday night/ Tuesday to everyone, especially to the lovely ladies who join in for T. It is already time for T once again over at Bleubeard's and Elizabeth's blog.

Last week was a good week for me. It was a nice mix of having some time to myself and  some social time too.  I also started  a cleaning project which maybe wasn't the smartest thing to do seeing my daughter announced she was coming home for part of the weekend and that meant I had to push the whole project into a corner so she would have a bed to sleep in.  Plus we even had a little bit of snow one day. I'm definitely not ready for winter, but Thursday's precipitation was a reminder it is coming at some point. 

Let me start this post with  2  T related views for this week. Last Wednesday I went out with a friend, and we had a sandwich with a cup of   tea  at a coffee shop in a nearby town. They had this hand-drawn poster on the wall that I thought you coffee lovers might enjoy.

Down the street from the coffee shop is a wine bar, and  at this wine bar there were these fun scarecrows at a table outside. They even had some wine-like substance in the glasses.  The pumpkin lady looks like she is enjoying the sun on her face, but I think the pumpkin man might have been the one to drink most of the bottle-hee-hee.

Of course I forgot to take a photo of my chai tea latte. 😞

And as I mentioned, last week we had our first snow too. Just a little over an inch (2.5 cm),  and it mostly melted the next day.

The day before it snowed we had a lot of wind, and that brought a lot of the leaves down off the trees.  Since there are mostly oak trees in the woods around my house, oak leaves are everywhere.

I read an interesting article about oak leaves recently too.  In order to use them as compost, they must be shredded. Otherwise the leaves stick together and form a thick mat that the plants underneath (i.e., those shooting up in the spring) can't easily  break though. (Yup, been there, know that.)  Other leaves decompose much easier than oaks. Here's the article if anyone is interested: Garden Myths-Oak Leaves.

I don't know if anyone remembers, but when I visited Iceland this past June I bought some yarn for a sweater. I think I showed you part of a sleeve I'd started knitting. Now that the weather has cooled off, I am cranking away on this project.

Icelandic pullover sweaters are knit in the round. I like to make the sleeves first, that way when I get up to the armpits on the body, I can then insert the sleeves and finish up the sweater. I will share more when more gets completed.

The other thing I worked on last week was the cleaning and purging project I mentioned at the beginning of my post.  My mess is an oddball collection of some books I cleaned out  quite  a while ago  as well  as some clothes.  I will donate these.  However, I also had 4 bins of craft supplies that I never emptied. These bins were packed up almost 2 years ago when my husband and I redid the spare bedroom (which is my craft space.)

I had piles all over in my daughter's old room, and then she called and said that since she had last Friday off for the Veterans Day holiday she was going to come home. I ended up pushing everything  into a corner so she'd have some room.  What a mess.

I did a great job purging lots of the old craft supplies. I figured that if they'd sat in a bin for 2 years, and I didn't miss them, then I didn't need them. I thought I would separate them into  big  lots (filling a box), and I would first try listing them online for sale. I may not get them listed until after the holidays, but I sorted and boxed them up. 

Oh  boy!  Hopefully this week I can take care of some if not all of that mess-😏

That's all for me this week. I'm wishing everyone a great T day and week ahead.