Fiber Fool

About a month ago DH and I took advantage of a sale at one of the local nurseries and purchased an Improved Meyer Lemon tree. We’ve harvested about 5 lemons from it, with two more about ready to be picked. About ten days ago or so it flowered. The smell was soooo sweet! The livinging room smelt like a pixie stick.

Today, the tree looks very sad. Okay, not very sad. I get very sad when I look at the floor around the tree. It is dropping leaves like crazy. It doesn’t seem appreciatively less leafy, but I can’t help but worry.

It seemed just before it flowered to have aphids. At least I think that was the case. There were shiny speckles in places and light colored tiny little bugs concentrated mostly near the buds. I’ve sprayed twice now with Neem II, an organic pest control. But it seems worse.

Anyone have experience growing meyer lemons indoors in the winter? Shall I continue with the regular spraying schedule recommended on the Neem II bottle? Is it not the pest that is causing the leaf drop but over or under watering? Help! It has been in our home such a short time (especially for the amount of money even if it was on sale). I don’t want to loose it.

Well, I had all these intentions to get some blogging done, but I found myself under a pile of to-do’s and sweating profusely in an 80 degree house most of the week. And, in fact, I’m only writing today because I thought I should let it be known that we do not have working Internet at home right now. We’ve exchanged cable modems but can’t be certain that will fix the issue. So, if you e-mail me or message me on Ravelry etc. answers may be delayed because of this. Hopefully we’ll get home from the coffeeshop and find the new modem did the trick, but in case it doesn’t that is why you may not hear from me.

We did kind of kick of the weekend a tad early and spent yesterday afternoon and evening down in Boulder. We met up with Niki at the newish Purl Knit Cafe, and then met Kristi and her husband and one of his co-workers at Avery. Then Debbie joined us as well. We wrapped up the evening at Leaf - a real nice vegetarian/vegan restaurant near Pearl St. Mall. Between meet-ups DH and I even snuck in a cuppa at Dushanbe! Oh, and I know you all are on pins and needles to know what the real colorname of the fiber in the previous post was, right? It’s Rose! Kind of what I figured, but I’m glad I got to see a color card in person before making that decision.

The photo at the top of the post is of one of the blooms we got on the baby daylily that Cathy shared with us last year. It’s still in a rather shallow pot so I wasn’t expecting blooms, but that little pot must have produce a good 6 or 7 blooms over the course of a couple weeks. It is right on our front step so it was really nice to walk out of the house and see that spot of color. Thanks, Cathy!

Wow, I should post about alcohol more often ;-) Thanks to all you lurkers who came out of hiding on Friday’s post! Welcome and don’t hesitate to comment again!

I’m up to my ears in finishing work at the moment. I’m trying to get two patterns out before the end of the week. Blogging will be sparse until one of those is ready to go.

In the meantime, I’ll share a few photos I’ve been saving up. These are some columbines we grew from seed DH got from a co-worker. It appears two came up and bore flowers this year. These are all under our maple in the front yard. The two photos were taken a few days apart, but both days were overcast, giving them a nice green background to contrast with.

I’m currently in the process of uploading them to my Zazzle account so there will note cards and post cards and prints available of them later today.

Due to the mint’s success last weekend founds us enjoying our first mojito of the year. So, mint is good in mojitos and iced tea and cucumber soup, but what else do you use fresh mint for? Other minty drinks? Salads? Minty pestos? Please share!

Have a great (and refreshing) weekend!

One of the mints on the front patio that we transplanted on April 6th (first photo). The same plant (I swear) on June 3rd.

Robins in that nest I showed a while back. The first is from May 27th and the second form June 3rd. They barely all fit in the nest anymore!

The socks nearly flew off the needles. Especially considering that I took a few days off between sock 1 and sock 2. The first photo was what I shared on May 27th. It was sock 1. They were completed yesterday. These shots are with flash (due to rain, yea!) and are pre-blocking. I’ll share more details when the pattern is ready for release. I’m shooting for sometime next week.