All about the garden

 Every January, we get what I've come to think of as January Gardening Weekend.  It's that one weekend when the weather is perfect and I can get out in the garden and do the hard work that I can't do in summer. While the northern parts of the country were digging out from a nor'easter, we were working in the yard.  I could have worn shorts and a t-shirt, but didn't want to get a sunburn.  The mornings were cold, in the 30's, but by 10am, it was 60 and lovely.  All that's left is digging up the stone path and re-setting it.  But, I'm having trouble deciding whether I want a solid path, which I've been collecting stones for for years, or individual stepping stones and fill around them with small plants I can step over as I move around in the garden.  Both are tempting.  

In the mornings, I worked on the arc quilt.  I got the stitching picked out of a corner that I'd messed up and I tied and buried about 45 knots, then I marked it and put the lines back in.  I'm filling in some pearls now, but that's not taking long.  The corners are not all going to be exactly the same, but I'm hoping they are close enough that no one will notice.  Anyway, the brightt sunshine was too tempting and I took it out for a quick photo.  I really need this quilt to be done.  I'm feeling stifled by it.  I want to move on to something else.  It feels like all I've done is this and some quilts with large edge to edge quilting.  I'm ready to work in a different style for a while.  Get back to some of the small accent quilting I used to do.  Maybe some thread painting.  But, I'm making myself wait until this is finished...or this will never get finished.  

The garden has been looking rough.  Even from the kitchen window, I could see the dead of it and not the potential.  The 80* days with 28* nights have really done a number on it.  Plants continued to grow, then froze, then grew, then froze...  The border grass had gotten out of control, so we started with Rob mowing it down for me.  Then, I came in and dug half of it out which made the bed look wider (my secret plan is to take over the yard, 2" at a time, by digging out the "inner" half of the border grass, letting it expand into the yard).  I was really close to the beds while I was doing that, and took the opportunity to move some things around.  Smaller plants to the front, taller plants to the back.  and to dig up some violets, which were getting out of control.  The soil was perfect, firm enough to stick to the roots, but soft enough to crumble in my hands.  I got a lot done.  This is before.  

And, this is after.  It doesn't look that much different now, but it will in the spring.  

This Forsythia is going to be very confused this weekend when we get a hard freeze.  It's bloomed most of the winter, which has been nice for me, but probably isn't good for the plant.  

And, I'm showing my hot house strawberries to everyone that will stop and listen, because, yeah.  I did that.  I bought a few more yesterday so I can make up another hanging basket or two.  I can't keep the slugs and snails off them in the ground, but they do really well in hanging baskets.  

Last week, I completed step 1 of train the manager.  I scheduled 1:1 meetings with my managers.  One was excited, the other less so.  I didn't point out that my main manager should have been doing this, or that he'd only scheduled one in the 7 months I've worked for him.  I just said I wanted to feel more like part of the team and that meant getting to know them better, and that we could use our meetings however we wanted, to talk about work or about ourselves.  My manager acted like he'd been scheduling these all along and that they'd just lapsed on the calendar.  He's obviously going to be a tough nut to crack.  But, I have the right nutcracker for that.  

The deposition went okay.  The attorney was as difficult as I'd imagined.  When it was over, I felt let down that he didn't let me tell him how things worked...he just kept coming back to the same question, like I was somehow going to answer it differently than I had before.  Our counsel finally had to object and ask him to move on because I was obviously not going to change my answer.  I am nothing if not doggedly persistent.

Everybody have a great week!  Think spring thoughts.  And, have a little quilting fun.  

Lane