Well it's a big bummer to have holiday plans suddenly disrupted, but at least Georg and I aren't going to just sit around feeling sorry for ourselves. We got reservations at a nice restaurant -- Four Square -- for Thanksgiving dinner, and the silver lining of having to stay home is that the dogs don't have to be boarded. (On the other hand, the coal underlining -- so to speak -- is that I lost the 50% deposit at the kennel, but what can you do.)
I'm hoping tomorrow to get done some of the yardwork that I couldn't do last weekend because I was sick, miserable and/or asleep all weekend. First, my rhubarb plants arrived and have to be planted. They're dormant bare-root plants, so it's not super-urgent, but still they have to get into the ground as quickly as possible. The bed where I want to put them is in terrible shape. I've had black plastic over it for a couple of months to kill off the weeds, but I have to take up the plastic, dig out the roots, and amend the soil which is solid clay. You're not supposed to cultivate around the plants once they're in the ground, so I need to improve the soil as much as possible now. Fun, fun.
Also I need to plant a bunch of bulbs. I've already planted over a hundred, but most of those were planted shallow -- Spanish bluebells, muscari, snowdrops, things like that -- and went into the hydrangea bed, which has nice soft earth. The mattock blade is 4 inches long so it was easy: just poke the mattock into the ground, wiggle it a bit, pull it out and push the bulb into the hole. All the rest of the bulbs are daffodils, which are planted much deeper, plus the soil is much harder where they go. I might cheat and put a few inches of mulch over them so I won't have to dig quite so far down. Will that work? Is mulch included in the recommended soil depth over the bulbs?
The nasturtium experiment was mostly a failure. I thought they would be more frost-resistant than they really were. Half of them were taken out by the hard frosts we had a couple of weeks ago & I expect the rest to go with the next frost. Oh well, I'll replant it in early spring next year, maybe we'll get some flowers before it gets too hot for them. We have the worst of both worlds with cool-weather plants like nasturtiums and sweet peas: our summers are way too hot for them, but we can't grow them in the winter like people can in the Deep South.
On the bright side, the cilantro is still going strong, no sign of frost damage. I'm having to check a couple of times a week and pick off the flower stems to prevent them from going to seed. It's really nice to have fresh cilantro every time I want it. I hate having to buy a giant bunch when I only need a little, and then invariably wasting half of it. The basil was all killed off by the frost, but clever Georg had picked almost all of it in time, to make a pesto.
I have another sewing project too, a cute wool jumper. It's a much simpler pattern than the coat so it should come together quickly. It's a knock-off of the Marc Jacobs mod design from two falls ago: the sleeveless dress with the round pocket on the hip. Unfortunately I kind of messed up the fabric by washing it. It was a beautiful crisp checked wool, and now it's much more fuzzy and indistinct. It doesn't look that bad, just not the look I was going for. But I'm not upset about it, because I know full well that if it had to be dry-cleaned I would never wear it. Or worse, eventually I'd forget or just say "hell with it" and wash it anyway. Then the pattern would be messed up and the whole thing would shrink. Better to have a dress that isn't quite as nice as what I wanted, but at least I can wear it.
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