Friday, May 30, 2014

When the Sun Comes Out

We had a nice, mostly sunny day today so we wanted to do outside work as much as possible.  I've been dyeing some Cotswold and this is the first day I could lay it out on the concrete side porch to dry. 

 
Yes, the color du jour is GREEN.  Actually there are several shades of green in there but it doesn't show up well from farther away.  There's a good amount of your basic medium green.....
 


....some that's more of a blue spruce type of green......


....  and some locks are either kind of acid green.....


......or a dark green like seaweed.  I think the yarn you could spin from this when it's roving will be lovely with subtle color shifts that will give it depth.  We'll see.


One reason the wool can be laid out to dry here is that we sacrificed the hedge.  Yes, while it was nice for many many years the time had come - parts of it had died out leaving big gaps.  I also had a hard time keeping it in check.  That was a lot of time with pruning shears!  Also, in the semi-near future we're going to have to address the fact that the concrete porch slab is tilting toward the house and running all rainwater right onto the foudation.  The concrete has to come up.  NOT a job we're looking forward to and not going to happen right away (unless there's a crisis - please, no!) and the hedge would have to come out at that point anyway.  Andy took it down right at ground level with the chain saw so we can mow over that area.  I'll sure miss the perfume of the blossoms.  Sigh.

 
The fields are still too wet to plow (we're skipping corn but would like to put in oats) so Andy got started on cleaning up the mess left from having the two middle silos taken down.  He used the back blade on the tractor to smooth out the ruts and now can work with the tractor to ferry away the short towers of compacted silage left behind.
 


This will take a lot of loads with the dump trailer as there is probably 50 tons between the two.


Thank Heavens for hydraulics or we'd be out there with pitchforks slinging it onto the wagon one teensy smidgen at a time.


Check out the giant allium!  They are just coming into full bloom.


I love a plant that thrives with neglect.


Lots of little stars making perfect spheres. 


Dexter says,

"I can't believe they won't let me be an outside cat.  It's so depressing.....enough to make you bang your head against the wall... until you fall asleep."

9 comments:

  1. Wow, what you are calling "basic medium green", I'm calling "what a luscious color"!! Beautiful.

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  2. Those are lovely shades of green. That second one almost has that blue/green shimmer of new oats, I love that color.

    I bet that old silage would make some great compost...

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    1. You'd think so but since it's silage the pH is pretty low - too acidic for most plants although I think blueberries would love it!

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  3. You have such a neat operation there and the colors of the Cotswold are pretty. I have also never seen such vibrant and healthy alium plants. Is Baxter kept indoors for his own safety? (I ask because my three cats here in Tanzania are indoor cats!) Hope you're having a great weekend so far. Greetings from Jo

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    1. Yes, Dexter and Calvin are indoors only. Much to busy a road to risk it. Plus fighting with roaming cats, and illness, and bringing fleas and such inside, catching songbirds in the yard.... I even bring them in some grass to eat every few days.

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  4. I bought a dyeing "starter kit", but just, can't open it. So will all the greens go into one combo roving? Or will you be blending these by hand? Love your allium!

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    1. It will all go into roving but I'll tell the mill not to worry about trying to blend all the shades into a homogenous color - I'd love it if there are blips of the various greens popping up as you spin.

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    2. We'll see what we can do! Cannot say often enough that Robin's fiber is so nice that it makes my job very easy (and fun) (aka Acorn Works Fiber Processing)

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  5. We had the concrete slab outside the garage raised a few years ago. I wonder if something like that would work for your porch floor? I'll ask Don for the contact info.

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