No Knitting, No Ceramics, but Green Stuff Galore

To make sure we're taking full advantage of our Portland Chinese Gardens Membership, D and I headed back there Saturday (with a quick detour by St. Honore for almond croissants and choquettes, super delicious). Two months have gone by since our last visit, and the perrenials that were marked by bamboo sticks and little hay tufts have now started to shoot up.

Also, we got to visit with the Flying Dragon bush again, which now has some small leaves on it.

A closer look - get a load of the talons!

We scored one to take home (they apparently only rarely get large ones, so we bought the biggest we could find $$$). Naturally, ours is much smaller, more leafy green, and far less pruned than the official Garden bush. It will take some work.

We also got this odd variety - I'll have to look up the name. It has 7 or 8 sided leaves - really bizarre, and the flowers hang below.


My mom was saying that China did not go through the multiple ice ages that Europe went through, and so has a greater variety of plants. Who knows, maybe this is a decendent of a jurassic plant! It sure looks it.

Knitting-wise? Not a huge amount of progress. I'm halfway through the 2nd sock of the Trekking XXL pair, where I seem to have a 2nd sock curse. I was almost to the heel when I realized I'd been knitting with 4 fewer stitches than the other sock, and it would be...noticible. And would have to be fixed unless I wanted my toes turning blue. So I frogged 6" of foot and started over. I'd pretty much caught back up to where I had been 5 days later, but in turning the heel, I somehow managed to get it slightly off center. Crap. That, I think I can live with, so I'm onto the endless ribbing needed for the ankle. But I'm starting to be charmed by many other patterns. Alpaca sweater (Finally found the pattern). A lacy shrug. A lace scarf. Monkey socks (why not hop on the bandwagon, a year or two after everyone else). The Socks that Rock yarn would be perfect for that pattern (neglecting for the moment that I've gotten distracted from knitting with Lisa's Xmas sock yarn...

Gardening? D took a stump grinder to the laurel hedge stumps. Take THAT, laurel hedge! Ha! And I spread a half yard of compost around the front yard (being very grateful that I did not succumb to temptation and buying more for the sake of frugalness and buy a FULL yard, because that's a Lot Of Compost). But much to be done before we can do fence work.