I’m home with the girls for a couple days, and so we went for a leaf peeping / car nap in the rain yesterday. This is why I live in Vermont.
And the gardening is easy,
Well. Easy may be the wrong word. But at least the harvest has started!
The tomatoes are finally producing faster than the squirrel can eat them. Although the Matt’s wild cherry tomatoes live up to their amazing reputation. Which is to say my girls are now eating them all straight off the vine. Maybe by the end of summer I’ll get to dry some.
The bean pole tent is also growing to plan! I think it has somewhere between 10 and 20 bean vines, which produce just the right number of beans for us. At least for now…
I imagine I’ll be over run with cucumbers soon too.
I can’t wait!
Foggy spiderwebs are the best
No, really.
Although cute warblers are good too
And you can never have too many wildflowers, right?
Right.
These are coltsfoot, not dandelions. I see them most often along roadsides as soon as the snows are melted. They’re usually home by May but I found some still in bloom at the top of smugglers notch!
A family weekend in photos
Visiting montpelier
Hiking and scrambling
Planting wildflowers
Building our new fire pit!
Maple Open House weekend. A chance to drive all over Vermont, visit neighborhood sugar houses, and drink large quantities of maple syrup. Well, that was past years. Windsor doesn’t love her car seat, so more recently we’ve gone to just a couple of them. That was just as well since half the sugar makers weren’t even open. The maple season is wacky. (I mentioned that recently, didn’t I?)
Saturday, at least, was seasonably cold, sunny, and generally perfect for maple weekend!
Also perfect for making friends with the donkey
And the pretty draft horses.
And I had a chance to take some scenic photos
and some close ups
Saturday was the right day to get outside, because Sunday was cold, rainy, and then snowy. We stayed inside, made soup, and had a lovely quiet weekend.
Back in 2008 the Yarn Harlot issued a challenge: could knitters everywhere try and get heads of state to hold a sock?
“Perhaps its because I think that politics sometimes does more harm that good in the world,or perhaps it is that the image of a person out to promote their own purposes being asked to momentarily have to serve ours – frankly, just charming. Perhaps it is simply the juxtaposition of a candidate for Head of State holding a sock is just so wholesome, that I am amused to no end. Perhaps it is simply that there is a part of me that really enjoys seeing powerful people befuddled and confused by a handknit….”
Note that this is not a new photo. At the time of the last election I didn’t get near any candidates. But I did happen to find myself flying economy one row in front of my state congressman, Bernie Sanders. So I asked him to hold my sock (I mean, I was on a plane, of course I happened to be knitting socks)
He was very gracious and seemed fairly comfortable holding a half knit sock. I don’t know if he, or anyone in his family, knits. But we do live in Vermont where it gets quite cold, so we have a lot of knitters…
Tomorrow is primary day in Vermont and I’ll be going down to the town hall to vote for Bernie. But I’m also going to keep Stephanie’s point in mind and make a donation to charity. Because politics can get ugly, but if we all think about how to serve others I think we can counteract that. I hope that’s something we can all agree is worthwhile.
Autumn is a lovely time to be in Vermont. We headed down to the local winery to play tourist during their harvest festival. It’s the sort of place that really is fun, even for Windsor. We all took a ride in the hay wagon
But we didn’t get to do much of the winery tour itself. Turns out that’s too boring for a hungry little girl who was promised grape juice…
They have a gorgeous old farm wagon set up for decoration. The patriarch of the family came out to tell us about it while I was busy taking photos. His story is that they used these wagons, pulled by horses, to harvest corn when he was very young. Then the wagons sat, neglected, in a barn for decades. Until someone thought they’d make pretty decorations. Someone was right:
The tractor pulling the hay wagon was a bit of a scenic piece too… Windsor loved it.
But possibly her favorite part was this little garden path. Not really related to the harvest fest, but kids are so good at finding places to play when you give them a little space!
Vermont’s maple open house weekend happened last weekend. It’s been so SO cold the sap has only run a few days so far. A lot of the local sugar houses weren’t open because they simply don’t have anything to boil yet, and they may or may not have anything left from last year to sell. It’s just been a weird winter…
But Boyden’s was open, and as usual, the place is shockingly photogenic…
And of COURSE we couldn’t go eating all that sugar on snow without sharing any. Windsor has had a little yogurt on a spoon so she sort of knew what to do when we offered her some sweetened snow:
That’s her “new flavor” face. Trust me, she loved it. She started reaching out to the bowl of snow with both hands! Then after just two stops she got tired and it was nap time. But all in all, a successful outing!
Vermont Public Radio’s summer school program* learns to spin yarn this week! They visited my friend Kim Goodling over at Grand View Farm.
VPR recorded an audio postcard for you! Listen to the MP3 on their site. You’ll hear Kim talk about carding and spinning her wool. It’s a great little spot for one of my favorite local farms.
*I love my local public radio. These Summer school tidbits come on at the end of the lunch hour and cover all sorts of fun things from throwing a curve ball to tying a fishing fly.
Becky rambles on about fiber, knitting, other crafts, environmental stuff, her chickens, other pets, and her life in general.
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Ramblings 