The Herb Garden Conundrum

The husband had a dentist appointment yesterday morning—no cavities—so he sent the employees here for a couple of hours until he got back. They helped me pull the billboard tarp off the old strawberry bed at the back of the big garden and moved some other stuff that was just too heavy for me.

I can’t decide what to do about the herb garden, whether I should try to salvage the old one or put in a new one. The husband thought he might turn the old herb garden here by the house into part of the chicken run, but we’ve been talking about that for three years now. That old herb garden is horribly overgrown. I wouldn’t mind cleaning it up and starting over. Ideally, I would expand it into the old vegetable garden next to it, which is even more overgrown, but to clean that part up would involve a lot of work. I literally have to dig it by hand and pull out the quackgrass roots or the quackgrass will just keep coming back. The other option is to put a tarp down in there for a couple of years like we did out in the big garden. Thanks to a billboard tarp being down for two hot summers, I have a nice piece of sterile ground where the old strawberry patch used to be, but it’s horribly uneven and needs to be smoothed out before I lay down landscape fabric and make a new herb garden out there. The husband could take the track loader back there and level it, but that would require taking down part of the fence. Or I could order a load of topsoil, but that would involve someone—probably me—carting wheelbarrow loads of dirt. I could just plant herbs in and among the other plants in the garden, but I prefer the idea of it all being together.

The husband would do all this work for me if he had time, but the fact is that it’s building season and he is meeting himself coming and going. So I am pondering my options and taking advantage of help when I get it.

I’ve settled into a routine, mostly. Mornings are for working outside before it gets hot. The garden is coming along nicely. The peas are up. The potatoes are looking good. The rhubarb is almost ready to harvest. The grapes are about to bud out and I am very glad I got them pruned when I did. I’m happy with where things are right now. This morning, if it’s not raining hard, I plan to get the rest of the watering system set up.

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I made another table runner yesterday:

I am becoming quite fond of this pattern. It works up in about half an hour—great for when I have a bit of time but don’t want to start a big project—and uses up those large-scale prints that are hard to incorporate into quilts. The center piece on this table runner is cut at 10” wide by width of fabric, so it’s perfect, too, for smaller remnants. I try not to buy remnants that are less than half a yard, but sometimes the print is just too cute.

The husband’s crew was over at Elysian’s yesterday afternoon, setting up the foundation for an addition:

She’s putting a mud room/root cellar onto the back of her house. I am not sure when they are going to pour this; the husband is having to schedule his concrete pours days in advance because the demand is so high now.

I’m teaching a serger class at the quilt store north of town on Monday. This is an intro class and so far, four students have signed up. I was at Joann Fabrics the other day, looking at their book selections and trying to get a sense of what the next big thing is going to be. These crafts are all cyclical. I saw a lot of crochet books, so I’m wondering if there is going to be a surge in crocheters soon, although at the rate I’ve got people signing up for serger classes, serging doesn’t seem to be far behind.