If You Don't Like the Weather Here

"If you don't like the weather here, wait five minutes."

I think people say this everywhere. They certainly say it here in Michigan, and yes! It's true.

Last week, steamily hot and rainy. In Grand Rapids they recorded something called a "record high low temperature" of 74 degrees, which made my brain do a loop-the-loop for a second there. They meant to say 74 was the warmest overnight low recorded on that date. I find "high low" just confusing!

This week, a jump back to late spring/early summer weather, with highs in the low 60's (a whole 18 C yesterday) and overnight lows in the high 40's (around 8 C).

Knitting

As if I didn't have enough partly-done projects whimpering for my attention, I cast on another. At least this one is almost finished -- I'm grafting the edge in the photo.

This is a no-pattern wristwarmer knitted using some of the tussah silk yarn I dyed with Easter egg coloring back in 2007. (In those photos, this is the skein on the bottom of each photo.)

These (when, if, I knit a second one) will go by the computer for those chilly winter mornings when I've just built up the fire in the soapstone stove. Between the half-circle Pi shawl and wristwarmers I expect to be warm except for my cold nose.

Birdwatching

Summer is a great birdwatching season. This morning I saw two brown thrashers checking out the rose tangle where they nested last year, and got to hear and watch the male singing right outside my window.

I've been trying to get a good photo of hummingbirds, but that's hard! They move so fast, and I have two layers of glass and one of window screen between the camera and the feeder. I have at least two different female hummingbirds chasing each other away from the nectar.

Gardening

Much easier to get pictures of things that don't move around, like plants.The slender green stems on the left are volunteer four o'clock seedlings, and the more robust reddish shoot on the right is coming up from one of the four o'clock roots I replanted.
I'm finally hardening off my tomato seedlings, and hope to put them in the ground today if it ever warms up. I have a Black Krim, a couple of Siberians, a Roma, and two Yellow Pear tomato plants in there.

Afterwards I'll have to sit out there with a stick to beat off the chipmunks and groundhogs. Chipmunks usually just dig newly-planted plants up, you know, to see what you buried there, in case it was something tasty. Groundhogs, also known as woodchucks, will eat the whole plant, or just bite it off to see if it might be tasty.

Hell hath no fury like a gardener who finds her carefully nurtured and tenderly planted seedling gnawed to stubs!

PS: Holy cats! I use Bloglines to keep up with my blogroll, and I just logged in to find 937 unread posts! Dating back to early June. Looks like Bloglines burped, and I have some catching up to do.