Reprieve

Reprieve! Ugh - yess, it has been a blessed and balmy 87° today, even though the humidity didn't give us much of a reprieve - it was pretty much a 95.5% humidity situation. But it's much more bearable at 87° than at 103°. And so I opened all the windows turned and turned off the air conditioners. Aaaaahhhhh..... nothing beats fresh air.
I went for a bike ride, came back completely sweaty and thought - well, I'm already sweaty, lets tackle the garden. (which I've been ignoring in this heat)
So I did. I mowed the lawn (three weeks forgotten). Watered the weeds so that I could pull them out. I don't know if you can tell in these two images (above and below) but on the right side I yanked out a ton of weeds. They were all edible of course which caused a bit of guilt - I must confess. I had the Asian day flower, lots of grass, poke weed, and the pink flower weed that I don't know what the name is, plus a ton of lamb's quarter. Of course it's been really hard to "weed" the lambs quarter now that I know how good it is. But today - maybe I came to my senses (because of less heat?) - I decided... it's time to weed. I don't need to eat the weeds. I also had a good look at the majority of them. They seem to have been hit hard with the birdy poop. Then I looked up. Amazingly - the densest weed growth is directly beneath the telephone wires running across my garden. Which is great... except that this seems to be an annual station of "relief" because the lambs quarter in that region is very pooped-on looking. So... since I am NOT starving, I decided to sacrifice the lambs quarter for the tomatoes and collard greens. I have plenty from my farm share and I don't need to try to make use of everything edible in my "garden".
The rest of my garden is going bananas: Here is the Melisse plant. A month ago we could still see earth around it.
It turns out that the lantern plants I planted last year are doing okay as well. They don't really like it here though.
I moved two stalks I thought might be the same thing to a different location and they are much happier. Both have lantern buds and the leaves are much greener. For those of you unfamiliar with these - these will turn bright orange in the fall. They are very beautiful.
I don't know if I've mentioned my indigo plant on the blog yet....
This is a gift from Jennifer - of knitting fame Jennifer. She grew a huge bush in her yard last year and I was extremely envious. This year - I don't remember what we traded for - but it was worth it. I have a beautiful little indigo plant.
I did have to rescue it from the weeds. But apparently when the leaves die - they turn the tell-tale blue:
The tips of these little ones seem very blue to me. I did have to rescue the plant from the weeds. Hopefully this one will go crazy now. I also had to rescue my cockscomb from the weeds. It's just started to "bloom"? Is that the right word for this plant? I don't know. Jennifer also sent me the instructions on how to make indigo from the leaves... I can't wait! I wonder if it's a perennial?

And then in other news... I knew I wanted to post about this but wasn't really sure where to post.
I decided a couple of months ago that if I was trying to twist a bunch of people's arms into joining my charity project (www.pinkknit-a-thon.blogspot.com), I should probably pay it forward and do some charity work for others. So this weekend while the weather was unbearable, I decided it was time to crank up the air conditioner, watch movies and knit some swatches for Heart in Hand Project. This is a project to make blankets for those hit hardest by the tornadoes this late spring/early summer (remember them?) especially in Missouri. I found this yarn at AC Moore when I was there this weekend, and I knitted five squares from one skein.
It was fun doing a no-brainer project - just knitting. Maybe the good people at Heart in Hand will get another set, if I get my act together.