This past weekend - belated Memorial Day

Don't go through life,

grow through life!

~ Eric Butterworth

Friday evening, we went to Sarah and Kyle's so that they could open wedding presents.  They received some beautiful things.  I drove home.  Dave's instructions were that if there is a deer in the middle of the road, don't swerve to miss it.  Just for the record, there wasn't any deer.  And I didn't hit anything.

On Saturday, Lindsey had her senior pictures taken.  They are beautiful.  Well, they are beautiful on the computer.  We go this Saturday to preview them.  The local photographer that does all the schools charges an arm and a leg. 

I went to the Great Lakes Fiber Fest this weekend (on Sunday).  It was hot and hot and hot. 

Even though I brought a huge tote bag, I controlled myself and only bought four skeins of yarn, including four ounces of buffalo.  I told my new son-in-law that I would make him a pair of socks.  He hunts and is always cold.  I should have looked at the size of his feet first.  He wears a size 12.

My sister bought a spinning wheel and she said that if I bought some fiber, she would spin it for me, so I bought 4 ozs of something else (I don't remember what). 

After I got home Sunday, we worked in the yard getting ready to do the planting on Monday.  Our rototiller broke.  I did get all the flower baskets planted.  Dave is horribly allergic so we don't have very many flowers around and he tolerates my love for flowers.  We put hanging baskets (with New Guinia (sp?) Impatiens) on the porch posts and I have three large jars with geraniums.  I put petunias in the long planters which go in front.

On Monday, when it was very hot, we planted the vegetable garden.  We planted 64 (yes, 64) tomato plants and 64 green peppers.  We also planted 16 Hungarian yellow peppers.  The peas are coming in nicely.  We also planted green beans and he wants to plant green bush beans. 

Lindsey cut the back third of the acre.  I cut the front and the other rest of yard (thank God for the pool).  Dave weed-wacked the entire fence, around all the beds, sheds and play-yard!

What a weekend

This past weekend was so jam packed, it will be good to get to work just to slow down a tad.

We had a funeral to attend on Saturday morning. After a long illness, my sister-in-law's sister passed away a week ago. She had been in the hospital for two months but has suffered with Crohn's and diabetes for years. She was 50.

After we got home, Dave and I went to a local grower's green house to get our garden plants. We got 36 regular tomato plants (beefsteak and another kind), 18 roma and 18 grape tomato plants. We also purchased 18 eggplant and 18 cabbage, 36 regular sweet peppers, 18 Hungarian yellow and 18 Jalapeno peppers. After Dave had finished preparing the beds on Sunday (alternating between the two rotatillers), we planted. Besides the seadlings we had purchased, we also planted a bed of zucchini and yellow squash and another entire bed (although a smaller one) of green string beans. Seriously.

On Sunday, Lindsey and I joined my sister, Peg and her daughter, Amy, and grand-daughter, Allyson and we went to the Great Lakes Fiber Fest in Wooster, Ohio. It was FABULOUS. Of course, Lindsey and Allyson only went because they didn't want to get stuck having to do work around the house.

Anyway, I showed tremendous amounts of restraint and limited my purchases to one skein of Briar Rose's Grandma's Blessing yarn (1200 yards), two skeins of Trekking sock yarn, and a couple of patterns XOXO (hat and scarf) and Boxleaf Wrap and another scarf pattern from Briar Rose.

My sister spins, so except for one skein of sock yarn, she only bought fiber (some alpaca and alpaca blends and, her absolute favorite, buffalo).

After we got home, Lindsey was horribly disappointed to find out that Dave had not yet started planting. Remember, the whole goal of going to the Fiber Fest was to get out of the garden planting. However, since he had spent so much time getting it all ready, we easily planted everything within about 90 minutes. It was incredible. And, you know what, it doesn't matter if we spend an entire day or 90 minutes, my back and legs are killing me today.

On Monday, Sarah and Kyle came over, along with Lindsey's friend, Andrew. I made macaroni salad, potato salad, cole slaw (I guess I was having a salad kind of day) and stuffed hamburgers (cook and crumble bacon, saute onions and mushrooms in bacon fat, drain well; I then flatten half of the package of ground meat into a large rectangle, spread the bacon mixture on top of the meat, add slices of American cheese, top with another layer of ground meat and cut into about 4" squares, grill and serve . . . . yummy).

Later, Zachariah and I "balled" some of the yarn, including the Grandma's blessing (1200 yards is a lot of yarn). He also was going through my stash and found some Lorna's Laces in Black Watch and asked if I would make him mittens and a hat. We then wound that yarn too, along with another skein of KnitPicks bare wool.

I am exhausted.