A Little Sewing & Another Garden Experiment

Hello, friends.  For the first time ever, we ran out of our drinking (rain)water.  With the skoolie project, a lot of maintenance-type things on the homestead have been neglected, including cleaning out the gutters to that tank.  I swept the shed roof while I was up there, and cleaned the muck off the gutter screens, which were covered with soil-like material.  It's no wonder there was no rain getting through, to fill our tank.  The forecast is showing little to no rain in the 15 day forecast, but in the meantime, we're able to use the main tanks to fill our Berkey.  As long as they last, that is.

One of our game roosters had a bad habit of flying out of the chicken yard, to explore other areas.  Last week, something killed him.  So, now our flock is down to 11, including three roosters, which truly is enough.  All but two of last year's sweet potatoes were used in a curry.  It's time to bring in this year's potatoes, as they should be done curing now.  All the houseplants were brought in.  Last year, we dug up one of the pomegranates, and brought it indoors in a pot, to see if if would bloom earlier once taken back outside, thinking it would have a head start..  It didn't.  In fact, this year it didn't bloom at all, so we're no closer to getting ripe fruit.  A few years ago, J placed a large rock in the backyard, to use as thermal mass, and planted one of our olives in front of it.  It didn't make it, so we're now trying the pomegranate in that spot, and hope it thrives.  Gardening is always an experiment.

Two of the roses started in the spring, from cuttings I'd pruned, were still looking happy, and were planted in the rose bed.  One even has a rosebud, which looks like it will soon open.  A volunteer borage was transplanted.  Three tomatoes were picked to use for the Amish tomato starting tip Stacy shares, and are ready to winter in the basement.  Last week's harvest included peas, lettuce, eggplant, tomatoes, lemon verbena, green and noodle beans.  I gathered zinnia seeds for saving.  Making new covers for the decorative pillows on our bed has been on my to-do list for some time.  I finally got around to sewing them, using the remaining quilt square, which matches the bed quilt.  As there was only one, I cut it in half, and used thrifted linen fabric for the remainder.  I've gotten to attend a couple of performances with a neighbor recently.  The first was Sense & Sensibilities, and was a very humorous take on it.  This week's was Constellations, which was a somewhat dark, more serious play, but also good.  My niece and I are making plans to volunteer together in Western NC in a few weeks, which I'm looking forward to.  I hope you have a lovely week!