Working on the rainbow, in the garden

Saturday night, I got out my thread to pick colors for the Mother's Day Project. I have a lot to choose from, left over from many projects over many years of cross-stitching:

As you might imagine, it took me some time to pick eleven colors, for the eleven letters in Jaime Jaenke's name (by the way, Anne and I conferred and agreed that is the correct spelling, not 'Jamie' as in the original square, and she sent me a new square). I want to have a rainbow of color, as I wrote about in my first post about this project. Here's the lineup I chose:


I did think about getting started then, but it was late and I decided I wanted to work on it with a clear head, and possibly better light. I'd like to do this right, basically.

I got half of it done last night, then worked on it more today before admitting to myself that I didn't like the way it was coming out. I was using too many threads, so the lines are thicker and hard to read, almost as if it's blurry. I think I'm going to start over, but for now I put it aside to look at again before I decide for sure. Sigh.

I love a three-day weekend, especially when I have a long list of things to do, and for once I really kicked my to-do list. I didn't get to everything, but then I also did a few things that weren't on the list, so overall I'm quite pleased. And it would have been a little unnatural to get to everything, wouldn't it?

One thing I wanted to do, and tried to, was find new shoes for work. I went to three stores on Saturday, but still struck out. The closest I came was one style that I would have bought if they had my size. They had 9W, and 9 1/2 medium, but no 9 1/2 wide. The 9w seemed almost long enough, but I just wasn't sure, and you know, for $80, I'm just not even going to try. Makes me sound cheap, but there you are. That's a lot of money for shoes that might not fit. I'll have to think about where else to go, because I've been theorizing that my shoes being older and less supportive might be why my foot has been bothering me. The pain has lessened, but not completely gone away, which is tiresome. I don't want to mail-order shoes; considering how hard it is to find comfortable ones, the shipping costs and time back and forth really add up, but I'll run out of shoe stores soon. It's a dilemma.

I have some sore spots tonight, and will have more in the morning I'm sure, because I went up to work today and planted my little garden patch. It's so cute! I planted cucumbers:


and more cucumbers:


(There were two types of pickling cukes, one like I grew last year and one different, so I thought I'd compare them; I really like cukes, and I'm curious.)

Green peppers, I did them last year too, with slight success, perhaps this year I will be slightly more patient about not picking them before their time:


Peas! I hear they're a little harder to grow, but boy, I love'em, I have to try:


And basil. There were a bunch of different types, I had no idea. I basically picked one at random. It smelled right, how bad can it be? (If you know, don't tell me, I don't want to know. Today is not the day to disillusion the novice gardener about anything in any of these photos, in fact, and thank you so much. I'll be much more ready to be philosophical about mistakes I may have made at a time distance from them, and when I'm not so achy from planting, too.)


I have a bit more room, so I may add more "crops" later, but this is a fine start, and really if it ends up being the whole enchilada, that will be fine too. The only other thing I was planning to get was a catnip plant, and they didn't have one. I got one last year, and the thing was so easy, it just grew, and every so often I'd pluck a few leaves and bring them home for Pan to eat. (Don't worry, I wasn't trying to be mean to Harold, he just doesn't like fresh catnip. He likes the dried stuff, but if offered the fresh stuff, he sniffs it and then looks at me like, "OK, what now?" While Pan gobbles it out of my hand. Different strokes.)

That catnip plant from last year, by the way? We had such a mild winter, it didn't completely die. When we went into the garden a few weeks ago to clear out the tomato cages and cucumber trellises, there were live leaves on it. Hilarious.