First of all, Happy Easter! I hope if you celebrate Easter, that it was wonderful! We thoroughly enjoyed our new parish. Our priest did such an amazing job over the Triduum - beautiful homilies, and just lovely, lovely. As Catholics, we celebrate Easter for 50 days, so the party is just getting started around here!
We are finally, finally, seeing signs of Spring! And oh, it is so welcome after this icy cold winter! A Spring hard won, to be sure. We worked quite diligently in the garden last week, when the last of the snow stubbornly melted away. We cleared the flower beds and the vegetable garden. So much raking to be done. And spreading compost and planting some fall bulbs that we'd dug up before the first frost last fall. As I type this, it is another cold and blustery spring day with the wind howling outside the window. A day to cozy up with some tea and knitting and a good book!
This afternoon, since it was far too chilly and windy to work in the garden, we went to the seed store and had so much fun picking out our seeds for our vegetable garden! I do so hope our little vegetable garden succeeds. If not, at least we have a wonderful Farmer's market within walking distance of our house - ha ha. But gosh, it would help our grocery budget so much if we could grow some of our own veggies!
Tomorrow promises to be a beautiful sunny day, so out in the garden we'll be finishing up some of the beds and then planting some of those seeds. Most of our seeds we'll be planting throughout June, but a few crops we actually get to plant now - some onions and carrots for later in the year, and some sugar snap peas which with any luck will have in early summer maybe? Not sure yet. Anyway, those three vegetables can be planted before the last frost of the season (which around here is the end of May).
Most of trees have buds on them and every day we see more green! We'll soon have lots of blooms and I promise more pictures once those blooms happen. We check every day after our walk! Oh, they are growing quickly now! We can hear the frogs in the creeks when we go on those walks. And the chives have come back in my little kitchen garden. Isn't that amazing that they can survive under the snow? Some other changes around here...new birds arriving all the time at our feeder! Some to stay for the spring and summer, others on their journey to Canada. We keep the Birds of Maine field guide handy and refer to it constantly. I think I need to start some kind of little nature journal in the mornings to keep track of all of that...
We also discovered a local farm and now have fresh dairy and meat delivered right to our door once a week! Can you believe it?! The beef has been wonderful, and they also provide us with the most wonderful feta cheese and fresh Greek yogurt! Plus milk and cream of course. I just love it!
Okay...onto knitting news. As most of you know, my knitting skill set has been pretty limited prior to our move. I have *loved* to knit for years, but was never able to spend much time practicing...and I am just one of those people to whom knitting did not come naturally or easily. As a result I usually just knit scarves or dishcloths. Nothing wrong with those - in fact, I love them both so much! I would rather use a hand knitted dishcloth any day than a commercially produced one. My daughter (who happens to be an extremely talented artist in many areas) knitted me some ball band dishcloths years ago and those are still my favorite to this day. And this winter I finally knitted my first shawl which I love love love and wear all the time. I've got a second shawl on the needles, and it's such a relaxing pattern to work. I'm taking my time with that one as it's a good one to knit on while I watch a movie. But...I have wanted to learn to knit socks for the longest time! I finally have taught myself, between books and podcasts, and the result is what you see below.
I have the second one on the needles and am knitting the cuff this afternoon. And I have to say...although learning to knit an actual sock (look, it has a heel flap, a heel turn, and gussets and everything!) was HARD WON let me tell you (oh how many I started and had to unravel and started and had to unravel) ...I'm hooked! Absolutely had so much fun knitting this up. And can see myself making lots of hand knit socks in the future! (Look out family! Ha ha)
I hope wherever you are that it's warm, and green, and Spring is all around you!
