Trouble in the garden, plus various yarn and a little hockey

Yes, it's another one of those "everything but the kitchen sink" post titles. They're descriptive, though!

Yesterday, I went out to the garden at work to check on the crops (it amuses me to call the little-bitty plot I have "crops"). The gate was found to have been closed but not latched by another gardener, and I can sort of sympathize: I find the latch hard to close myself, since it has a bit of a rust issue, and my hands having a bit of an arthritis issue, well, there's a bit of an issue there. I wasn't even worried at first when I opened the gate and a chipmunk hurried out. They're cute, right? Unfortunately, they're not nearly so cute once you learn that they like peas, too:


It turns out he (I assume it was the same little bandit) ate through several stalks, leaving dying plants dangling from above, and stubs below. What a waste! I am not amused! And although I wouldn't have been happy no matter what he ate, for him to go for the peas, the nearest to my heart, that was a low blow.

As though they wanted to console me, the pea plants produced a pod that was ready to harvest. I love growing peas! These things rock!


And by the flowers on the cukes, they'll be working it soon enough, too. (I know, not soon-soon, but it's promising.)


Still ... that little devil.

Anyway. This flower isn't in the garden, and true to my usual, I have no idea what it is, but isn't it neat?

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Now, to yarn. I finished the second hat.

I almost finished it last night, but the pom-pom had a set-back after it was attached. I was only just rational enough to realize that, one, it was fixable, and two, I was too tired to fix it and stay sane. I very carefully put it away and managed not to have a total meltdown, only a very slight outbreak of the vicious snits. I had a really long week, and to come so close to accomplishing something only to have victory snatched away by a very firmly attached pom-pom that was trying to disintegrate would make anyone cranky, I like to think. Anyway, I repaired it today (after spending the morning and half the afternoon finally reading The Harlequin, which was a lovely way to while away time), and it turned out fine. Next, I will wash the hats and make sure the yarn doesn't do anything funky, before I wash the sweaters. Cute, right?



Now, some other yarn to show. When my friends visited from England, I heard something I never expected to hear: "I read your blog, so I think you'll like this." I did know she read my blog, of course, but the idea that such reading would lead to something ... fascinating! And what, exactly? This:

Close up:


It's gorgeous. I don't know what it wants to be yet, but I can't wait to find out.

Similarly, I don't know what I'll do with this:


But aren't these fun 'problems' to have? One of the women in my stitch and bitch went to a wedding in Peru, and happened to find a yarn outlet while she was there (she had to buy another suitcase to come home). She brought some to share, which was so nice of her. I can tell it's alpaca of course:


But the rest of the label is a little harder to read.


It's nice and soft, though. Maybe after I make the second sock for the one I was working on before I started the baby sweaters, I'll make another pair of socks? Or maybe it wants to be something else. Decisions, decisions.
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I did watch the first round of the NHL entry draft last night, up to the point the Bruins picked. Not that I'm excited one way or another about who they picked, and that's nothing personal against Zach Hamill, but from the way the announcers make it sound, only the number one pick this year has a chance of playing for his team in 07-08. The way the Bruins have played the last ten years or so, I can't get too excited more than a year in advance. I hope he's a great player, but if he's not playing for Boston for a few years, and we all know that he may not sign with them, he may get traded, and that's if he develops, if he doesn't get injured, etcetera, I'm just not throwing much confetti today.

That said, I still watched, I was just knitting at the same time. There's all the drama of the ones who were ranked higher but not getting called, the ones who were ranked lower but got called early, the guy who started to call the wrong team name and gave someone in the audience a heart attack I'm sure, and did anyone else notice Peter Chiarelli, congratulating the Stanley Cup champions, called them the Anaheim Mighty Ducks? Um, sorry, that used to be their team name, yes, but they're just the Ducks now. How long have they been just the Ducks? I bet the other GMs are going to tease him about that all season.

The Bruins had our own Hall-of-Famer Cam Neely announce their pick, since he's from British Columbia and so is Hamill. That's nice, eh? I did feel a little cheated, though: each of the first seven picks, the TV guys had an interview right after, usually with the kid and someone from the team, but at least with someone from the team. Right after the Bruins picked, the next team picking traded their pick, and all the media guys did was talk about the move and all the possible repercussions and never talked to anyone from the Bruins (well, not in the next five minutes, at which point I figured they had well and truly moved on, and I turned it off). Humph. Was Andy Van Hellemond in charge?*

*Van Hellemond used to be a referee in the NHL, and a long time ago when he got between Terry O'Reilly and someone else in a fight, O'Reilly shoved him, dumping him on ... the ice. After that, Bruins fans never felt like VH gave their team a fair shake, and he was an official on and off the ice for a long, long time.

So, it was a little bit of hockey, and now I have to go the rest of the summer on stories of free agents and contract signings. Training camp will start in September, and while I'm looking forward to it, I don't want to rush summer by, either. I like summer. I just made an appointment this week that's for the end of August, and I'm in no hurry to get there.

Off to laze away the rest of the weekend now. Enjoy whatever you're up to.