helwen

Saturday we went to Balfar's Challenge, saw some of the fighting and archery, saw Dinsdale and watched him be elevated to the Order of the Pelican (yay!!), and chatted with various folks. I got to spend some quality time with Laurencia of Carlisle and another lady scribe (sorry, her name has escaped me just now),

lady_jade_01,

freya46, and most especially an old friend of mine,

embermwe, who found

fitzw and me on LJ just in the last week or so. We did some shopping and I bought a bowl from Tinkar to play with refinishing, and some lovely wool and linen from

freya46. L and I also talked to

swanduchess and received our QHD medallions for scribal work during her and

lucanusdux's reign. The dayboard was of course most excellent, thanks to

bytchearse and his crew (which included among others, Mistress Eleanore McC and

mizpagan). Others of our folks had a good time at the archery and thrown weapon butts, heavy weapons fighting, embroidering, spinning, etc. A very good day!

Sunday we went to the farm, where

fitzw put up the laundry line, cut down a tree near the barn, helped wash out the sap-gathering tanks, and helped unload the tanks in the barn. I'd woken up with a headache (that stayed with me until sometime during Concentus practice), so I mostly spent that time playing cribbage with Marian (my MIL). Some amazing games -- never saw that many double runs in one day before! Practice went pretty well, and then supper, then reading online -- read the latest Archdruid Report and waded through some of the comments, but not all, as a number of them referred to articles and information on other sites in their posts... eventually the brain was full and it was time for bed.

Got woken up around 4:40 a.m. by a howling Roselynde -- I had to go find her so she knew where we were, as she was apparently howling too loudly to hear me call her. Sometimes if she falls asleep in a different room and doesn't notice us go to bed, she gets stressed out to wake and find herself alone. *sigh* And it was too hot so most of the covers had to go, and then

fitzw opened a window so we weren't roasting, and finally got a bit more sleep. So, got up late but rested. Read a few emails/comments, posted a few things, then out to the backyard to start gardening!

Digging is a bit awkward, but more possible even with a problem shoulder than one might think, since done properly, digging is a whole body exercise.

fitzw did some work here and there as well, taking a couple of breaks from work. I managed to clear a 3'x8' bed and move the 7 lavendars and a bunch of lilies (tiger type, not day), and daffodils over to it from the downhill raised bed.

fitzw had wondered if we could move that bed to downhill from the lower laundry posts, so that we'd have more clearance for laundry, but that would put the lavendar even further under the edge of the sugar maple, which is bad (maple leaves are acidic, and lavendar like things more alkaline). So since I was going to clear the ground near the fence in the upper yard anyway, I put the lavendar up there, and the food plants can be a bit more unified in their location. Tomorrow I have to finish moving the rest of the plants out of that lower raised bed, which is going away, then lift the daisies and backyard sage and re-do their beds along the fence.

There's supposed to be cold weather coming, possibly on Wednesday (low of 33), so our hope is to get as much of the initial bed-turning done as possible before then, so that the cold weather can help us take care of the vegetation that's been turned over. Ideally, we should have turned the beds last fall so that the vegetation could decompose over the winter, helping to enrich the soil -- but I didn't know that then, so it didn't happen. So, we'll do our best this year, probably buy some natural stuff to mix in and emend the soil - it isn't too bad, but it's got a little more clay than we'd like. Then in the fall we can turn the dying leaves and such on some of the veggies over and back into the soil, as well as some of the maple leaves, etc. We don't have enough land to have fallow sections really, but we'll do what we can with rotation, etc. (e.g., beans are nitrogen fixers, so it's good to move them around -- also keeps anti-bean diseases from building up in the soil).

We should be able to plant by next Monday. One section that

fitzw cleared today will be seeded with echinacea purpurea. I don't really need a square yard of it, but combined with the block of daises and all the lavendars, I should have a pretty good honeybee attractor set up in the backyard. I already have an excellent one set up in the front yard -- the row of Russian Sage (blooms for months, too). Many vegetables need to be pollinated, or are only partial self-pollinators, so the banks of flowers bring the honeybees (and some other pollinators as well) over to our place, and they pollinate the veggies while they're in the area.

Massachusetts hasn't reported any incidences of CCD yet, but we do have problems sometimes with the bees getting enough supplies to make their food. A lot of gardeners grow small bunches of flowers, or the kind that don't attract bees as much, or they grow flowers for display and so often cut flowers before the bees can visit them. I don't really have time for cut flowers indoors (and they don't last as long that way anyway), so I let my flowers go, and don't cut them until they're past prime.

To attract bees, you need a patch of the right type of plants (there's a list somewhere online, I'm not where at the moment), that is a minimum of 1.5m x 1.5m. My square yards in the backyard of daisies and echinacea are too small individually, but as combined bank, in line with the lavendar bed (and the other lavendars and flowers in a bed kittycorner to them), it should have enough of a massed presence. I think they like violets too, and our lawn is strewn with those. It isn't the prettiest lawn, but it's very nature friendly :)

The two apple trees are starting to leaf out this week as well -- I'm just hoping the flowers won't come out until after the midweek chill.

Been having some interesting dreams the past few nights. I don't remember all the details, but certain things stand out... I'll try to write about those at another time, perhaps.