We're in the middle of several days of near-constant rain. Well, it's good for the garden. That's what I keep telling myself. And in truth, plants are springing up all over. We're even getting edible asparagus! The first few years you can't pick asparagus; the stalks come out skinny and you have to leave them to let the plant develop. This year for the first time we're seeing big fat stalks, a good size to eat. Unfortunately we're only getting one or two asparagus stalks at a time. Oops. Maybe that's because it's so early in the season and later on we'll be able to pick enough for a meal.
This morning we went to the farmer's market, where we saw lots of people we knew. I ran into someone I had known from the Obama campaign. It was really nice actually, because I had seen her a couple of months ago and approached her, and she clearly hadn't recognized me. Which had been disappointing because we had worked together every Wednesday morning at the campaign office for a couple of months. But she was at the office every day, so I figured she must have worked with so many people she couldn't be expected to remember all of them. Well this time she saw me first, called out my name and greeted me with a hug. That made me feel a lot better. Maybe last time she was just having a bad day or something.
I also went to the Scrap Exchange's warehouse fabric sale, which was a crazy scene. As advertised, it was in their warehouse, and it was crammed with people rummaging through bins of scrap fabric. I wasn't interested in small pieces; I was there for the fabric bolts. The one I liked best they only had several short ends; it would have taken three bolts to be sure I had enough. At $5 a bolt that wasn't much of a bargain. I found another that was almost as nice and had plenty of fabric. yay!
In the afternoon the rain stopped enough to get some weeding done. Georg did the really hard work, digging out wild brambles. They are taking over one part of the long flower bed along the driveway. Well he made a lot of progress. They aren't gone (those bastard brambles will probably never be gone) but he certainly set them back a lot.
I weeded too, and also cut a bunch of plants back. The three verbenas we planted last year really took off; one of them is threatening to overwhelm some lime thyme that I love. The thyme took a long time to get established and I don't want the verbena to swallow it whole. So I pulled up all the verbena that was too close to the thyme, and planted some of it on the other side of the yard in a bare patch where it can grow like mad, to its heart's content.
I also transplanted the tomato seedlings. Tomatoes are unusual in that the stem can grow roots if it comes in contact with soil. When you plant seedings, you're supposed to keep staging them up into larger and larger pots, each time burying most of the plant. That encourages a stronger root system. Well I've been pretty slack and am just now getting around to transplanting them. The poor things had gotten so leggy in their cell packs. I was able to sort of loop the stems and get them all the way inside the 3" pots. Next I'll go up to quart size pots and won't wait so long next time.
In the evening we went to a gallery opening for our friend David, and then a party at his house. I was hoping to get some recordings for the vox pop (I'm going to have to expand it pretty substantially for the radio show on the 12th) but it wasn't workable at all. Really noisy inside, and we couldn't go outside because it was pouring. Oh well, I know who I really wanted to get on tape and I can contact them privately. And I met an older lady at the party who told me she had grown up in Durham and had all kinds of stories she wanted to tell me. She didn't want to be recorded right then, she wanted to have get together later so she'd have time to tell her stories. I'd like to hear what she has to say.
We left the party early, because we were tired from yard work and also because I'd had as much as I could handle of a house jammed with people. I think I did pretty well though. We were there for about an hour and a half and I didn't get stressed out about being in a crowd. Well, not too stressed out.
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