Raise High the Roofbeam

This is a little better! Now my house block for the RR looks like a house! I need to finish the roof and the chimneys, then put in a bit of greenery and a couple of birdies, and maybe a pet or two, and I'm done! This stone house is featured on my blog a few weeks ago (in April, actually--it FEELS like just a few weeks, really); it is a Vermillion stitchery design, believe it or not, and is called Plantation Sampler. It's likely out of print; I bought it with a little bunch of samplers from an ebay seller. I like it because it looks like the old houses in Pennsylvania.

This weekend was a whirlwind of stitching, grocery shopping (tell me why we need to go each of the three days to the grocery store where there are just two of us living here) and gardening. Lots of gardening! Here's my 20x10 foot veggie raised bed. The neighbors all think it's hysterical and call me the "farmer." Guess they've never seen a tomato growing before. What? They think they grow in plastic packages in the store? Oddly, although all the houses in this neighborhood have large lots, nobody seems to try to grow anything edible. In fact, the covenants of this neighborhood association were quite strict regarding how close to the lot line the garden should be. Why? Are they worried my melons are going to make a break for it?

Bananarama

I'll make this quick because a thunder storm is headed our way. I'm not sure if the banana plant is putting up a shoot or just sent up a periscope to look around.

I made jam (5 jars) of the wonderful fresh strawberries I bought at the farmers' market yesterday.

I've been working steadily on my house block for the RR neighborhood. Mail date for the RR is Friday, so I've been working hard on it this weekend. I'm enjoying everyone else's progress. Next round though, I'm starting a bit earlier. All the same, it's been fun to stitch a lot this weekend instead of tearing up and down the road.

Yes, We Have No Bananas

It's been a while since I've posted since I've been busy at work and at home, and little stitching has been accomplished. At home, mostly I've been gardening. We put in tomatoes and squash and brussels sprouts and melons and peppers in the 20x10 garden plot at the rear of our yard. We've been tending the borders that the previous homeowners left--they're fairly nice, if a bit hosta-heavy. And because I wanted to see what exactly was already planted, I'm not doing much with the borders until I see it all come up, so I've been expressing myself with containers and trying my hand at different plants. Like bananas. We're hardiness zone 7, so bananas have to be brought inside in the winter, but because we have an approximately 20 foot ceiling in our family room, it shouldn't be a problem. Bananas are shipped as a goofy looking bare rhizome with a reedy-looking thing on it. Supposedly during the warm humid season it will grow one-two feet a week. Hard to believe, but here it is (any bananas are inedible but if the season lasts long enough, there will be little bunches of them). It gets enormous leaves that are quite interesting and dramatic, and I'll have to transplant it to a larger container later probably. I also got some bare root orchids and planted them from the same tropical plant company.

Since we're talking about inedible fruits, here is a pineapple plant, also with a purely decorative fruit. Looks good enough to eat, though, doesn't it?

And some yummy iris. The previous owners planted these, and several other varieties of iris, all along the north edge of the house. They're all so heavy that they're flopping over onto the grass, and I've been cutting them and bringing them inside to enjoy.

And finally, some stitching. This is for the group 1 Neighborhood round robin that I'm in. I'm not telling right now what it will look like or where it's drawn from, but see if you can figure out what type of house it will be. Right now it's a mystery, like all those interesting shoots and buds in my garden...