Crafty Girl

I heard on the radio the other day that Grand Traverse Bay (Lake Michigan) used to freeze 7 out of every 10 years. It’s only frozen twice in the last decade. What does this mean? High temperatures and more snow due to evaporation, or as a friend once said “It’s not snow, it’s lake effect”. Also more and heavier frosts to damage the fruit tree crops we grow up here. Big fun.

This weekend marks the six weeks before the last frost date in my neck of the woods and we need to get on with the planting! This weekend!

There hasn’t been much progress on the Ribby Cardi. I finished off the collar a couple of weeks ago and didn’t like the way it looked so I ripped it out and started over. Basically, the instructions said to pick up the stitches with the right side facing me, but the “seam” showed once the collar was done and folded over. When I restarted it took me three tries to get them picked up evenly.

Work has been crazy lately! We’re supposed to have a new version of our software out on March 31. No way in hell is that going to happen. In fact all us programmers new that in November when we started. To many delays, requirement changes, tool changes, etc. Oh, and a complete lack of planning. At some point in last couple of months my boss started being more and more verbally abusive. He would go from telling us we were doing a great job to saying he “qeustioned our ability as programmers”. He’s always had mood swings but it was really getting ridiculous! I’d spoken to him before about his threatening and combative methods of communication and that helped for little while. This time I went to the president of the company (we’re a small company with no HR). It worked! I suspect that there is storm building, but the last few weeks have been relatively peaceful.

We’re planning our first BIG garden this year and intend to start everything from seed. To that end I’ve purchased seeds! I bought from Seeds of Change and Seed Savers. Seeds of Change was out of stock on a lot of items. Guess I should have ordered earlier, but up here the last frost date is at the end of May. Of course with the exceptionally mild winter we’ve had it might be quite a bit earlier this year.

Here’s what we’ve ordered so far:

Bean, Cherokee Trail of Tears
Bean, Empress
Broccoli, Nutri-Bud
Broccoli, Waltham
Brussel Sprout, Long Island Improved
Cabbage, Red Drumhead
Cauliflower, Early Snowball
Cucumber, Northern Pickling
Flower, Grandiflora Mixture Sweet Pea
Herb, Basil, Genovese Sweet
Herb, Chives
Herb, Cilantro
Herb, Cumin
Herb, Dill, Mammoth
Herbs, Chamomile, German
Leek, Winter Giant
Onion, Newburg
Pea, Snow, Sugar Pod
Pepper, King of the North
Popcorn, Tom Thumb
Potato, Red Gold
Swiss Chard, Rhubarb Chard
Tomato, Amish Paste
Tomato, Cherry Roma
Turnip, Purple Top White Globe
Watermelon, Small Shining Light

I still need to get carrots, lettuces, more greens and peppers. I also plan on getting some asparagus crowns (I think that’s what they are called). I think I might get those from Johnny’s Selected Seed.