The Rabbits Didn't Win

Edited to fix an obvious but possibly amusing typo which nobody could be bothered to tell me about. Oh no, I had to discover it for myself. Probably you were too busy laughing at me.

So, as you may recall from back in the spring/early summer, I had this little issue with cute little furry bunnies ravaging my garden. There's a reason that God made some animals especially cute; it's the only thing that saves them. Out of all the veggies I originally planted, the only things remaining are the crook necked squash, the tomatoes, and one lone banana pepper plant. It goes to show just how hardy nature can be, because that lone pepper plant had been completely denuded (why "de" nuded? Shouldn't it be just "nuded"?) of leaves. But it survived and has a single actual pepper on it right now. If the weather hold, I may yet get a second one. But I digress.


It wasn't just the veggies. At one point the furbags had gone through all my flowers, too. They had all been de-flowered (I'm sure that's right) and some had been et right down to the ground. But, as I said, nature is hardy and it looks like they've all come back. Because of the bunnies I only got this one corner planted. I didn't see much point in putting flowers into the long bed (slightly visible to the left of this photo) just to feed the critters, so I let the other bed go barren. But as I said, nature is one tough gal, and I actually had a few tenacious pansies hang in there for most of the summer. They're gone now - pansies don't like the heat much - but they flowered for much longer than I had anticipated. Oh, I did put in some bleeding heart on the other side of the fence which is doing nicely. I even spotted a lone flower which was a nice surprise because I wasn't expecting anything from it until next year.

Here's a close up of one side of that corner garden. Those bright orange/yellow things are lantana. That's one of my favorite things to plant because they grow like crazy but require no upkeep, not even deadheading. The pink stuff is pentas, the long green blades are from a variety of lily - I forget which - that won't bloom until next year. As you can see from the photo above, there is also some purpley stuff, as well as some coreopsis, which has some buds but not current flowers.

The lantana and a few other things are annual and so won't repeat for me next year. But that's okay because it's too crowded in there right now anyway.

Is It Just Me?

I'll admit that I'm not the most active person. I live by the motto "why walk when you can lay down and take a nap." I know that there are oodles of people out there who are way more productive than I am and are happier for it. But lately it seems to have reached maniacal heights.

These people are tiring me out just listening to them. And it's nearly impossible to not listen since, along with the hyper activity, there also seems to be a need to justify their existence by telling everyone. Hello? I am not in charge of awarding gold stars, keep it to yourself. Am I supposed to be impressed by the person who belongs to three separate running groups? I'm not. I think it's insane. Running with one group could be considered exercise; more than that and I have to wonder what it is they are trying to run from.

If they aren't obsessing about exercise, it's something else. Work two jobs, save the planet and, if there's any time left, raise a back to nature family by growing your own granola. And they want everyone else to join them in jumping on the hamster wheel Squeak, squeak, squeak. Am I the only one noticing that hamsters never actually go anywhere?

I think it's a conspiracy. There's a radical group at work here whose aim is to keep everyone so busy that they never notice that (a) they aren't accomplishing anything other than wearing themselves out, and (b) the planet is being taken over. Probably by a giant rodent species from another planet who think it's amusing to watch humans run around in circles for a change. And we won't be able to fight back because we're all too tired to think straight.

I propose a counter attack. Everyone take a day, once a week, and do nothing. If you really can't do a whole day (some people will need to build up to it slowly) try for an hour. Don't improve yourself, don't join anything, don't start something, don't be productive. Instead, sleep in. Then get up and take a nap. If that gets old, read a book, count raindrops, watch clouds go by or look at the night sky and wonder what drugs the ancients were on when they decided that a group of stars looked just like a bull, fish, goat, whatever.

Slow down. Take a deep breath and relax. Tomorrow will still come, but today won't last forever. Take some time to appreciate it while you can.

Yarn Tails

I've got a few things I'm working on. Over the long weekend I tackled the sleeveless top I had worked on in June. It was supposed to be finished, but I was never really happy with the edging aroung the armholes. And I had no excuse for ignoring it because I had spare yarn and I knew the edging would be easy enough to unravel without harming the the rest of the garment. I don't know why it took me this long to fix it, because it's only a few rows around. Anyway, it's done. The original edging had an odd flair to it that was unintentional and seemed to get more obvious as the fabric softened. I don't know what went wrong. This time I added slight decreases with each round and I'm much happier.

Nearly finished with the t-shirt. Into the home stretch, anyway. The back side is completely done and I'm into the sleeve portion of the front (working bottom to top) so this should be done in a few weeks, tops. I'm debating giving the pieces a soak in hot water to tighten the stitches. Probably I should experiment on the swatch first. Here is a picture of the work in progress. Note that I still need to work in the neckline, in addition to to finishing the sleeves.

Oh, and I've been fooling around with knitting! I learned as a child, same as I did crochet. I took to crochet more readily but I've encountered so many tempting knit patterns recently that I'm thinking I want to try it again. I picked up one of those "teach yourself" kits and tried out a few stitches one afternoon. Just knit and purl, and getting the hang of binding off to finish a piece. I need to work with more techniques but I think this might work out. The kit included two sizes of needles and a booklet with decent illustrations. We'll see, but I'm feeling inspired.