October

We had 213 Trick-or-Treaters come by the house Sunday afternoon -- the official time and day for Trick-or-Treating here.  That was less than the year before -- perhaps because the Bears were playing during the first hour of Trick-or-Treating??

The leaves have fallen from the trees.  And, we're waiting for the city to pick them up.



We had to move the leaves from one side of the driveway to the other yesterday.  The mailman wouldn't deliver mail with them so close to the mailbox that she couldn't put mail in the mailbox without getting out of the truck.  So, we were without mail for a couple days.  Yesterday, I spent an hour moving leaves from one side of the driveway to the another.  Then, after my DH got home from work, he spent 2 hours doing the same.  And, we got some mail today -- all junk mail.

What's almost worse is that most of the leaves weren't from our trees.  They were from our neighbors'.  We live on a circle.  So, one neighbor would move leaves from in front of his/her mailbox to the next one over and the next one would do the same.  If we had figured it out beforehand, we could have been raking leaves all along to the other side of the driveway instead of doing it all at the same time.  The city is also supposed to be picking up the leaves.  But, so far, they haven't been by yet.



And, of course, the Post Office didn't deliver something that had been overnighted to us on Monday.  We have to go to the Post Office to pick it up.

September

September is almost over, and I've been trying to post at least once per month...

The garden was a big disappointment this year.  I think the main problem was that the compost added at the beginning of the springs wasn't fully composted.  (I wasn't the one who did the composting.)  So, this fall I'm planning on adding extra leaves to the soil. Leaves tend to soften the soil. And, maybe if I add enough, I'll be able to grow some root crops.

I'm still working on dishcloths.  Here's my newest one, in Peaches & Creme Potpourri:


It's a clone of my sandbar pattern -- to make a pattern that will look better as a scarf and/or hat. Plus, the back looks almost as nice as the front -- which is good for a scarf.

August

This year has not been good for the garden.  We didn't get as many peas or pole beans as last year.  However, we are getting more tomatoes.  Homegrown tomatoes are so much better than anything one can get in the store.  The broccoli is starting to bear again.  So, maybe the fall will be better for broccoli than the spring was.  (It certainly can't be worse.)

We ended up getting only 2 peaches from our peach tree and zero apples from the apple tree.  But, as they are fond of saying here "wait till next year" -- though that applies more to baseball than crops.

I've signed up for one of Monika Eckert's mystery patterns.  This one is socks.  It's been quite a while since I've knit any socks.  I'm looking forward to it.  Plus, I've always enjoyed her patterns.  Otherwise, I've been keeping busy knitting scarf sets and also dishcloths -- among other things.

Woodstock, Illinois

We drove out to Woodstock yesterday.  We'd been there once before, but this time we brought a map.  We also watched the movie "Groundhog Day" the day before.  Woodstock was where that movie was filmed.  (And, we're glad we didn't make a special trip out to Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania. We would have been very disappointed that it didn't look like the movie.)



Here's where Phil stepped before stepping into the water (several days in a row).



Here's where the bed and breakfast that his character spent the night in. There are plaques all around the town telling what part that particular building played in the movie.

 
And, finally, since I was looking up info on the internet, I came across information about a shoe tree just a few miles from town.  We, of course, had to drive past it.

2013 calendar

a pleasant surprise....  One of my crochet patterns, a pansy motif, was chosen to be in a 2013 day-by-day crochet calendar (Accord Publishing, Ripley Designs).  And one of my knit patterns, cornstalk socks, was chosen to be in a 2013 day-by-day knitting calendar (same company).  :D

June

The garden is really growing but isn't producing much.   The broccoli has stopped producing for the summer.  The weather is just too hot now for it to.  But, I have hopes for more broccoli this fall.  One of the pepper plants has started producing.  But, neither the jalapeño or bell peppers have started to do anything yet.  The tomatoes are starting to remind me of a horror movie.  (They're really taking over.)  But, they don't have any tomatoes on them yet.  However, we have gotten some peas!  (I think the wrong kind of fertilizer was used -- one for vegetative growth instead of flower production.  I've planted things just as close in previous years.  And while I did have plants growing over each other, they at least did produce.  But, maybe it's just too early to expect anything yet.)




(We have a few peaches on the peach tree, but there aren't any apples on the apple tree.)

I've been knitting some dishcloths for a church bazaar this fall.  I wasn't sure about selling dishcloths from patterns available on the web.  So, I made up a couple patterns of my own.
The first is an acorn motif.  It turned out reversible with acorns on both sides.



The second is a wavy one that looks like sandbars to me:

May

The garden is doing well. At the end of last year, I had decided that I wasn't going to plant cucumbers ever again. (They more or less took over the garden plus the area surrounding the garden.)  But, one of the stores we went to was selling single cucumber plants.  So, I bought one, and we'll see what happens.

The broccoli is now bearing.  There's nothing like broccoli straight from the garden.  None of the other plants have started to bear yet.  The tomato plants are Rutger's, Early Girl, and Park's Whopper.  The cucumber is Boston.  The peppers are jalapeno, habanero, red salsa, and Early Bell.  There are also some Brussel sprouts, pole beans, and peas.  I still haven't been able to grow radishes here.  I planted some asparagus yesterday.  We'll have to see if it does anything.  (I've planted asparagus every year since we moved here and still have no asparagus plants growing.)

The peach tree has some peaches on it.  (I was worried that a frost after it blossomed might kill the fruit.)  We haven't been able to find any apples on our apple tree -- even though it bloomed.


We did a little sightseeing on Sunday.  Here is a picture of the outside of McDonald's #1 (in Des Plaines).  It's the first McDonald's opened by Ray Kroc.  (It wasn't open for visitors.)  We also went to Woodstock (where the film Groundhog Day was shot).  We'll have to watch the film again.  Nothing looked that familiar.
 
For Mother's Day, we went to the Volo Car Museum -- and enjoyed it immensely.  There's a lot there -- old cars, cars owned by celebrities, and cars used in movies.

April

It's been a long time since I've posted anything on this blog. ....

Here are a couple of pictures of the yard.  Here's the garden with wire fencing to hold up pole beans and peas.  This year I managed to find some broccoli!  Since the picture was taken, I've also planted a Rutger's tomato plant and an Early Girl tomato plant.  (Both have wire cages to hold them up.)  I've also planted a couple jalapeño pepper plants, a habanero pepper plant, a salsa pepper plant, and a regular bell pepper plant.... and also some Brussel sprouts.  (The jugs at the back of the garden are to protect a couple baby filbert nut trees from the squirrels and chipmunks.)  I haven't found any tabasco pepper plants.  The one we had last year produced fruit so hot that even my DH had trouble eating one.

We now have a couple lilac bushes behind the house as well plus some other assorted greenery.


Both the peach tree and the apple tree bloomed this year. This is the apple tree. So, hopefully, we'll get some apples this year.
 
And, we've finally taken down the evergreen at the corner of the house. Every time there was a heavy snow, it toppled over (twice) or had a long branch lean down under the weight of the snow (this past winter).