Hah! The cherry thieves have not managed to rob me blind.

Not yet, anyway.

There are only a few truly ripe cherries so far. The birds have taken a few. That’s OK. I don’t mind sharing some. I just don’t want to share all. Because that wouldn’t be sharing, would it?

This is the sum total of my harvest so far. I’m being optimistic. There will be more!

The champagne flute was my mother’s. I rarely have an occasion to use Mama’s crystal or china or silver or any of that stuff. I’ve decided I will use it when there isn’t an occasion. Such things are made to be used and not just stuck away to be look at now and again. Right?

And I will use the antique tea cups I inherited from Grandma and her sisters, The Aunts. I will eat Ben & Jerry’s with a sterling sliver spoon from an antique china bowl. And, damn it, I’ll drink whiskey from the tiny, hand-blown stemmed glass (the family calls it a wine glass but it will hold only a shot) that was used at one of my multi-great ancestor’s wedding in 1860 or so. And I will serve cherries in Mama’s champagne flute. Yes I will.

Blogging may be sporadic for the next few weeks. Large project. Tight deadline. Much to do.

Cherries! Yum!

They’re almost ripe too. Now if I can just keep the birds away from them.

Every year the same thing happens:

1) I see that the cherries are almost ripe, but not quite.

2) I tell myself to give them one more day and then pick them.

3) I come out the next day to pick cherries, only to find that the local birds have completely stripped the tree, leaving me with nothing but a few seeds.

4) I promise myself that next year I’m not going to wait that extra day!

So… the countdown begins. I will report back on my cherry-picking luck.

And this is the promise of good things to come in September.

The grape vines were severely whacked back last autumn, so I didn’t think I’d have much of a harvest this year. But it looks like there will be just as many as there usually is. And that means all of my friends, my colleagues at work, and 1/2 of the neighborhood will be eating grapes until sick of them until I get sick of picking and leave the rest for the racoons until they’re all gone.

I really planted the grapes in order to shade the back patio. It’s in full sun all day in the summer and really needs the shade. But I wanted a deciduous vine because there’s no sun in the winter and I need the light. Grapes grow fast and fit the bill nicely. They covered the arbor and tried to take over the whole yard in 3 years. Now they get whacked back every year.

I only have two vines. Two. They produce bushels of grapes. I prune to keep them off the roof and to prevent a stranglehold on the cherry and silk trees and to keep them in line. I do not prune for production — never even think about it. I just whack. I don’t fertilize them. Heck — I don’t even water them. Makes me wonder why grapes are seen as touchy and hard to grow. Of course, if I planted an entire vineyard my luck would probably be decidedly worse.

No knitting news. I’m knitting, but nothing noteworthy right now. I frogged out the mermaid socks. I’m just not feeling the love there. I’ve strated that pattern twice with different yarns, and both times it’s gone in the frog pond. So I’m considering what to do with the rainbow yarn.

Well, I didn’t get the Tipsy Knitter socks finished last night during Lost, although I knit before, during and after. I still have about 1/2 a pattern repeat and the ribbing. Then done. That’s a hard show to knit through, though. I had to keep stopping and paying closer attention. Some questions got answered. Only to raise new ones. What was with that ending, eh? It will be a long Lost-less summer.

So, since I have no pictures of the socks, I will give you more pictures from my garden.

When I was a little girl, my great aunts – my grandmother’s sisters – lived together in a little house. Or at least most of them did. Aunt Allie lived in her own apartment. I used to love to visit Aunt Allie because she baked her own bread, She would make special little loafs just for my brother and I. She baked them in a muffin tin, so they came out looking like little chef’s hats. It was the best bread I’ve ever had – flavored by memory, I know. And her apartment was on the parade route, so we would always visit her on parade days. I’m not sure why she lived alone, but the location was certainly good.

Aunts Bertha, Bess, Florence and Jose, who were all either widowed or had never married, and who were all childless, lived together. Some day I might write more about all of my great aunts, who were truly great. But this is really about their garden.

In the back yard, they had a bleeding heart bush. The climate there must have been better for bleeding heart than it is here, because their bush was as tall as me (not that tall back then), and mine isn’t even knee-high to a toddler (at least this year). I was always fascinated by this bush and by the heart-shaped flowers. Every time we would go to visit, I would ask if it was blooming. And if it was, I had to go out to the back yard and just be with it. Since I’ve grown old enough to have my own gardens, I’ve always planted some.

The Aunts also had a really cool little tractor sprinkler. You’d lay the hose out where you wanted to water and then set the tractor on the hose. It would follow the hose, watering as it went. I loved that thing.

Helga writes:

If you like the tea pot (I do, too!) go ahead and google “Siglinda Scarpa” and check out her pottery You will LOVE it, I’m sure. She is a (formerly) Italian artist now living and working in the USA.

I did and I found this site. And I love it! Thanks for sharing that with me Helga.

Shelly said:

Blogging is kind of like writing a book don’t you think? A tiny little bit, but over time a real body of work.

I guess you could think of it that way. But writing a book has always seemed to me to be… work. This is more like having my brain leak around the corners and catching the drips, except with more pictures.

The second picture is for you, Shelly. I took that picture yesterday. That’s my gallica, blooming away! So it’s time to visit Heirloom Roses!

Please report on what’s new this year! I must be able to squeeze one more rose in my yard… just one…

Bus stations are such interesting places in the middle of the night, aren’t they? You can see from the expression on #1 Son’s face that he certainly thinks so.

We sat in the waiting room with all of the other bus riders and those there to see them off. And we waited.

#1 Son is off to hook up with a band he is touring with. He started later than the rest of the tour because he needed to finish recording with his other band. He purchased his own bus ticket over the internet. I skipped reminding him that he always gives me a bad time when I do that. (Mom, why don’t you just go there and buy it? Why do you have to do everything on your computer?) It was he that chose a 12:15 AM departure time. Midnight bus stations being such fascinating places, and all.

I do not send him off without the proper equipment. See? Down on the floor between his right foot and the guitar case? Alpaca fair isle fingerless gloves. His hands, at least, will be warm.

#1 Son will be gone for almost a month. He will be back for about three weeks and then turn around to do it again.

My house is very quiet.

I have heard from him. He made it to his destination and hooked up with the rest of the tour. Tonight they play Sacramento.

It was very cold driving home from the bus station last night.

The garden thinks it is spring even though the weather has turned so cold and rainy. Even so, the trillium is trying to bloom.

Sometimes I think the garden looks only at the calendar. Other times I am sure it is the warmth or the returning light. I hear the song birds out looking for dates. But it seems like a cold, wet world to bring little ones into. I want to tell them to wait a week, or maybe two.

I am knitting. I am working on a scarf pattern. Pics tomorrow if I get anything worked out that I like.

These are the rose pictures that I really meant to post this morning, but couldn’t because I stupidly didn’t upload the actual pictures. I tell you, my mind just keeps getting leakier and leakier. Maybe I need a vacation? At any rate, click the pics for the close-ups.

This is the Apothecary’s rose, R. R. gallica officinalis. This is the oldest gallica rose still in cultivation. It was brought to France from Damascus during the Crusades in the 13th century. Used extensively for medicinal purposes it became a symbol of pharmacology. As “The Red Rose Of Lancaster,” it figured prominently in the War Of The Roses during the 15th century. (The House of York used a white rose, R. alba as its symbol.) There are roses that are showier, yes, but I appreciate its history, its medicinal value and, since I don’t spray, its hardiness. (My garden can be a good example of surviving under extreme odds.)

This is the David Austin rose Jude The Obscure. It’s the most beautiful pale yellow changing to apricot in the center. It’s one of the most fragrant roses I know of, with a scent that is sort of fruity, vanilla-ish, rosy. Before this flower even opened, I could smell it from my back door — a good 15 feet away. One blossom can perfume an entire room.

Like many David Austin roses, Jude is hardy and disease resistant.

And besides, there just aren’t that many roses named with my name!

This is one of my very favorite roses ever — Eyepaint — one of the McGredy “hand-painted” roses. It seems to be getting hard to find, since I had to go to Canada to get it, and I think that’s a shame. It deserves to be more widely grown. A floribunda, it covers itself with smallish flowers for a long blooming period.

This picture is a little washed out, at least on my monitor. The petals are actually a very bright fire-engine red with a white center. The reverse of the petals is white, so when the bush is loaded and a breeze blows the blossoms appear to be winking on and off. It always looks so cheerful when I see it out in my garden. I think of it as a “lift your spirits” rose.

The roses I planted this spring are blooming, finally. I took some great pictures of flowers this weekend, but since I forgot to upload them to the site server this morning, I won’t be able to post them until later.

On the knitting front, I’ve started on new socks for E, and managed to complete about 2″. I’ve shaped the armholes for the sweater and I have about 6″ left to knit on the two fronts and the back. I decided to use a sort of tweedy pattern for my bright Cascade socks, and I’ve cast on and knit most of the toes in bright pink.

Of course I totally forgot to bring the socks for E today. They are pouting on their shelf and I am knitless during lunch. 😥

I’ve written before about Queen Kahuna’s Crazy Toes & Heels book. I like some of her techniques, but others I’m less wild about. I love the way she increases at the beginning of her toes, for example, but I’m less wild about her cast-on because it leaves purl bumps on the outside. I’m a fan of the figure-eight cast on, which is pretty much invisible with no “cute little purl bumps” at all and no grafting.

It just seemed to me that there should be a way to combine the figure-8 cast-on with the Queen Kahuna quick-increase method. I’m working on it. I cast on E’s socks using a combined method followed by the Queen Kahuna “fan toe.” I’m fairly well pleased with the result. But I think I can do better. If I come up with a method I really like, I’ll post the results if there is interest.

On a totally separate note, fireworks started in my neighborhood at about 6:00 last night, and went non-stop until about 1:30 this morning. Completely non-stop. My street looks like a war zone. I saw things that were in no way even close to being legal. And I saw a lot of people doing really stupid and unsafe things. Luckily nobody was hurt and no buildings were burned down. I’m a fan of fireworks, too — but enough is enough. Next year, how about a little common sense?