Planet Nice Crafts

  Hello Everyone! Finally, some rain the past week which lead to a few free hours to write to you instead of setting up and watching sprinklers. I hope the summer has gone well for you so far. Funny that kids are going back to school next week but summer goes until September 21 technically. The emphasis as of late has been the garden, not just watering, but feeble attempts to contain the weeds, harvesting, cooking, and taking photos. The longest duration harvests have been kale and poppy seeds. The green beans came in with a flourish but were finished and just not looking very good, so they were extracted and a few bean seeds planted in their place. The tomatoes have started ripening, the fruits are big and tend to be very juicy and messy. The peppers look great and just started too with the tomatillo and ground cherries not quite hitting their stride yet. The cucurbits - cucumbers, watermelon, and pumpkin - are growing and doing battle with the cucumber beetles. We ...

Hello Everyone. This month has been an actual blur. I feel like sewing has not been the focus. Looking at my notes and photos, however, I must have done some sewing because I did make a mask drop-off. I can’t recall it at all. The mask grand total is 361. My last mask sewing machine needle broke this past week so I did switch to a little garment sewing with a specially reserved needle. The machine was actually singing for a recent change. Multiple layers of fabrics, incorrect needles, and edge work have given it an interesting repertoire of sounds. This coming week I am looking forward to shopping for some machine supplies. For today, I was going to focus on a garden update. There have been successes and failures. Luckily, I think the successes edge out the failures. The latest challenge has been pests. I mentioned to you last month that I had to protect the sweet corn very soon. This is what I came up with. It worked fairly well. I did lose about three primary ears to foraging ani...