Glorious Summer

It is an incredibly beautiful day in Laval today, the kind of day that you dream about all through winter (and that's a mighty long time!), when you imagine yourself surrounded by all of Mother Nature's offerings, which seem to spring forth all at once in an incredible display of life and growth.

What you DON'T imagine yourself doing is staying home with your daughter, who's managed to catch a pretty nasty cold in the middle of summer. Yup, Émilie is sick (again). Maxime is too, but he's only got a little cough, whereas Émilie has a really nasty cough and a constant fever to boot. It's been fun.

I just put her down for a nap, and I really hope she sleeps. At almost 4 years old, naps are only 50-50 at best lately, but she really needs the rest, and frankly, Mommy could use a break!

I just stepped out to take a gander at my veggie and flower beds, and I realized it's been quite a while since I've posted any pictures of the results of my horticultural endeavours, so here goes.

My vegetable garden. (It's really a very small patch). This is only my second year attempting a vegetable patch, so I went with the basics again this year: zucchini (which is doing great!), one cherry tomato plant (lots of flowers and some green tomatoes in there), basil, cilantro (which has begun to flower, am I supposed to trim those?) and lettuce (lots and lots of lettuce!). I love having fresh lettuce at my disposal for salads!

This is my cucumber plant and carrot patch. What, you don't see any carrots? That's because they never sprouted! I sowed carrot seeds TWICE, and all I wound up with were a bunch of weeds (yes, they really were weeds, of the same variety that grows in my flower bed). I sowed a bunch of rapini in that spot this afternoon, and we'll see how it goes. I'm hopeful, since from what I've read they're relatively fast growers.

Here we have a few Bee Balm (or is it Bee Bomb?) buds, getting ready to bloom. I love these little shrubs. Their perfume is so pungent, but detinitely not flowery. It's more herbal (Wow, quite the description... I think it's pretty clear that I was NOT the ghost writer of the novel Perfume!).Finally, my beloved Delphimium. I've actually got 2 varieties in my flower bed, but while this one's flowers are my favourite in terms of colour, the other one is much fuller. I need to move these to the back of the bed next year, I had no idea they grew to be so tall when I planted them last Spring!

And since this IS a knitting blog after all, here's a picture of my newest project: Can you guess what it is?

How about now?
It's the Pinwheel Baby Blanket, knit with Katia Jamaica Cotton on 4 mm circular needles. Saying this is an easy project would be an immense understatement, but I'm enjoying it nonetheless. One of my girlfriends is having a baby in September (why yes, it IS a girl, how'd you guess?), and she's the only one in our "core" group of friends that I didn't knit anything for when her first baby was born (I was busy with my own baby at that point). So I'm trying to make up for it now.

Well, it would seem that the nap is taking, so I'm going to pour myself a glass of Sangria and sit outside with my knitting for a few.

Happy Knitting Everyone!