The Stitch Witch

Autumn and denial

Let's start this out with a gratuitous early fall shot of the maple in my front yard for Marcie, who's in Arizona and is missing the joy of autumn in New England. If I really wanted to rub it in, I'd take a picture of a cannoli on a pile of leaves. And I might do that in a few weeks. From Boston. Hmmm...

The weather has remained freakishly warm and sunny (it was 85 degrees today) thus accomodating my desire to drag tomato season out for an absurdly long time. Rumor has it, it's dipping to 36 degrees Sunday night. If it's a one shot deal and we're looking at week of decent weather beyond that, I might whip out the heating pads.    Besides, I've got two more eggplants near picking size. I may not like the damn things, but I feel an obligation to see them through to harvest. (Ok, I realize this is a little wierd, but I've invested several months in these plants. I'm rather fond of them.) Anyway, the guys int he containers can come in the house. I'll reserve the heating pads/hot stones and plastic for the guys we planted in the ground.      One plant I'm not concerned about is the mint. I planted it in my favorite green strawberry pot because I didn't want it running rampant in typical mint like fashion. No manners for mint. And I figured putting in one of the planters with the sage would ultimately lead to the sage being aggressively smothered. The pot seemed reasonable. The pot was one of my favorites.

The pot has fallen victim to a root system on steriods. Apparently, the mint has not taken kindly to my attempts to teach it manners and has retaliated accordingly. The must have been a hairline crack in it and a season of atttempting to restrain the mint was too much. Poor pot. As for the mint, I'm cutting it down and bringing it to work. In a new, cheap, untreasured plastic pot.

There's not much to see on the knitting front. Life has been it's usual hectic self and I've found I've been unable to relax enough to knit unless I've had a (few) drink(s). This has led to 3 separate occasions at the bar where Vickie ( a non knitter) has watched me pulled out Rogue and asked me if knitting after one two three drinks was really advisable.  Really, it does seem reasonable at the time, though I have to say that I probably deserve a medal of sorts for so persistantly obtuse. End result: largish sections of Rogue have been ripped after each bout of bar induced knitting. I feel like I've been crash dieting, knitting style: Knit 20 rows, rip 15 out. Knit 13 rows, rip 12 out. Knit I'm not sure how many rows because I was on a third Long Island Iced Tea (it was a really crappy day) and it appears I confused at least 2 rows of the pattern simultaneously, rip it back to the point of something recognizable, tuck in knitting bag and ignore for 4 weeks while ego recovers. Oy.

And there have been the usual kid disasters. On the, Exhibit A: Daniel's Knee.  Note the vague purple lines where the delightful ER doctor outlined the boundaries of one mother of an infection that appears to have started with either a bug bite or a splinter. And a 6 year old who didn't want to bother his father about the wee bubble of pus on his knee. Anyway, he ended up with a nasty abcess that had to be drained, followed with a week long course of antibiotics. And right now, all the skin on his knee that was involved is pretty much sloughing off (be grateful I took the picture yesterday when only the one little spot was starting to come off. By this afternoon, it was yucko city.)  In a weird coincidence, his knee got infected about a week after I read an employee the riot act about a bug bite on her leg that was infected and required medical attention.

What else? I'm back on the bike and I'm starting to lose some of the weight I've packed on since the bookstore opened. I ditched the gym membership, at least for the time being, cos I've got a bike, pilates DVDs, yoga DVDs, lots of weights, a weight bench, an 8lb ab ball, and a gi-normous excercise ball. I know how to use this stuff and it'd be swell if I at least got a return on what I've invested in it.

Delaying the inevitable

It's September 20th and the tomato plants are still weighted down with bazillions of unripened tomatoes.  Have I ever mentioned that I hate green tomatoes? More than eggplant. And I refuse to let the vestiges of summer juiciness go to waste which is why I've opted to be completely irrational and wage war on the inevitable.

It's going to be a little tricky because, try as I might,  I have no control over  the sun being lower in the sky. As a result,  my neighbor's gi-normous sun blocking silver maple (it's an oversized weed fer chrissakes) casts a shadow over the entire backyard for about an hour every afternoon.

  And tomatoes like the sun. Look at at them, they're so happy!

So I've moved the container plants to the far end of the yard, into a carefully chosen microclimate-the most possible sunlight during the day, while still being shielded  from the wind by the house, fence, and hedge. On a slight "bump" so they're not sitting in a pool of cooler air in the morning. If I can find a sunny enough spot, I'll move them closer to the house so they can take advantage of the heat reflected off it. (Yes, this is perhaps a little crazy. But in another 6 weeks, New Hampshire's going to be brown. I'm not ready to quit just yet.) 

And for our gloriously autumnal nights (something I'm actually enjoying a great deal except the part where I'm just obsessed with these freakin tomatoes) I've resorted to the 4mm plastic barrier-tacky, but quite effective. And a great way to keep tabs on the extra clothes pins.   The cherry tomato is planted next to the deck and it's not going anywhere, unfortunate given the size of the damn tree, though the deck reflects a fair amount of heat and it seems to be thriving with just that. The weather's supposed to warm up the next 5 days or so. After that, I'm bringing out the heating pads. And then we'll see how long I can drag this out before it becomes a quality of life issue for the plants. Heh. Maybe I'll bring them to work.

amusements

Apparently, she who played Sabrina the Teen Witch (I never watched the show so I don't know or really care about her name) is featured in Maxim this month under the heading "The Witch without a Stitch"

Let me not tell you how many (hundreds) of hits my blog has taken from a bunch of weirdos who apparently have been waiting for this young woman to appear semi-nekkid.

And no, I'm no linking to the Maxim article or her various apologies...but it is rather amusing to think there are a bunch o' men out there desparately seeking her in a bikini and instead finding a contrary knitter.  With combat boots. And not the least bit inclined toward bikinis.  Poor bastards.