There is so much to write I’m not sure where to begin…
I will start by saying this is a challenging day, this morning I woke with a start, and looked at the clock, 4:34am. It was this exact time, 10 years ago, my husband passed. I laid there for awhile, this day for some reason has been more in front of my mind than in the past few years, where time puts distance between hard things and how we feel about them.
I have written many times about my ponds. They were my late husband’s pride and joy. He spent hours counting fish, sitting by the ponds, finding peace there. I have spent a fortune trying to keep those ponds alive. Because he had traveled so much prior to his illness, the ponds had started to deteriorate. By the time he died, they were overgrown, I can’t remember if there were any fish, and they were in sorry shape. Because I have replanted most of the property with native plants, bushes and young trees, water features are an important part of the ecosystem of the yard. There are snakes, and frogs, and all kinds of pollinators flitting about, and I now get to spend hours, counting the fish and finding peace in that rushing water.
Unfortunately, over the last 10 years, problems arose, and it has been a challenge to keep the ponds going and keep the fish safe. One pond has goldfish, and that has stayed largely maintenance free, other than routine filter work. The other one, closest to the deck, has 8 koi, some of which are now 10″ long. They are affectionately known as pond pigs. They are hilarious, and are an endless source of joy.
I’ve had huge issues over the last few weeks, coming out in the mornings to feed the fish, and finding the pond half empty. My beloved pond guy, Bob, has tried hard to find the problem, and finally, I just told him to completely rebuild the waterfall, once we determined that was the source of the water loss.
He took it completely apart and found a couple of chipmunk nests, and some nice size holes in the liner under the rocks. I watched him completely rebuild the waterfall, it was air tight! Daryl 0, Chipmunks 1…
Twenty-four hours later, the stream or spillway I call it, which is where the filtered water dumps, failed. I came out in the morning and the pond had completely emptied and there were flopping 10″ koi in 4″ of water. I was heartbroken. And angry. I had a few choice words for my late husband, through tears, not understanding why this all can’t just work the way it is supposed to. I called my pond guy again, and he came out and we spent a long time talking about what to do. I had many well meaning friends not really understand the dynamics and emotional connection to these ponds and my late husband, who just said, “sell the koi and back fill the whole thing”.
Bob and I talked about options, I let him sit for a long time and stare at the spillway, which turned out, that a patch from last winter had failed. It has been an emotional roller coaster of a week, but yesterday, Bob came back with a liner, and an underlay, and he pulled the plastic tubs that created the stream bed, and started from scratch. I scampered around the yard, finding appropriate rocks and flat stones. I helped as best I could.
By 5pm last night, I came to the understanding that time isn’t kind to ponds, and sometimes they need to be redone, and that my late husband knew it was time, and maybe in his divine presence, he directed this to all fail at the same time, so that by the anniversary of his death, the pond would be fresh, and renewed, and good for a number of years. I’m sticking with this version of the story, because it gives me peace. I knew this was the correct thing to do, when Bob turned on the water and it all worked the way it should.
I sat out there today, watching the pond pigs (koi) feasting on Creeping Charlie (who knew it is considered a snack for those piggies!) A young grackle flew in, just a few feet from where I sat on the deck. I grabbed a photo (to help identify it, I’m not a birder), and he proceeded to jump into the top shelf of the waterfall and have a splash. He was having a great time.
I had a tree company come in a couple weeks ago, and remove the last of the horribly invasive 10 feet tall burning bushes, Morrow’s honeysuckle, and forsythia that lined my neighbor’s driveway. We do plan to plant the area with perennials in the fall, and there are baby baptisia growing there from my seed dance last fall. We had planted a small sumac tree and had hoped it would fill some of the space.
I have a neighbor across the street, who comes out every hour to have a cigarette. Joe sends me pictures of deer activity in the lower end of the street. He texted me the other day to tell me there were five gold finches in the front yard. He is loving the activity in my native plant yard, and understanding that having the perfect lawn, and mulched beds, isn’t good for diversity of species. It creates a sterile environment.
So of course, the deer herd made its way to my poor sumac tree, and with the invasive wall of burning bushes gone, they decimated my poor sumac in one go.
I was crushed, and sat for a while on my porch trying to think of options other than 6 foot deer fencing. I noticed an unused hanging planter on the decking of the porch, and placed it over what was left of the sumac tree. I tied a half bar of Irish Spring Soap, which I use prolifically in my textile studio to deter moths, to the hook of the plant hanger. It was a long shot.
Twelve days later, this is my sumac tree, and there are babies popping up all around. Daryl 1, Deer 0…
My gazebo, that my husband and I built, laying the circular patio, 25 years ago, while I was going through breast cancer treatment, had collapsed last winter, which I mentioned in a previous blog. My daughter rebuilt it for me, and I hoped the native vines I had planted would survive.
Survive they did, there was an explosion of native honeysuckle…
And crossvine…
…and more than half the replaced canopy is covered now in vines. Good vines.
My yard is incredible. My dogs love nosing around, finding odd things and critters. They all seem to live in tandem.
They seem to leave alone my yard crew, happily munching through the ground cover.
I have a pair of cardinals that came up to my open window every day for a week or so, the female, I named Ethel, and her mate is Fred, is quite the chatterbox. She chattered away for hours, little chips. Mostly towards Fred.
And I named the pair of Finches that hung out eating the seed heads from the Packera, Lucy and Ricky.
And last night, my daughter and I sat by the newly repaired pond and she captured this photo of a Northern Flicker. I’ve never seen one before. Her birding friend identified it.
And I have to share this cool tool my daughter gave me for Mother’s Day. It isn’t actually a garden tool, but I thought it was perfect for cutting edges in the beds, it is a throwing ax, shaped like a Uterus. You can’t make this up… So here I am, using it to edge a bed, it is really well balanced, and doesn’t matter which side I pick up. It is called a Uteraxe…
This has been an intense season of rehearsals, and concerts. I had one, the beginning of the month, that required a Viking costume, preferably in white. This was as close as I could come. I was playing recorder for this concert, so didn’t need my split skirt like I do for cello, so I used a walking skirt I’d made a few years ago, from a Folkwear pattern. I made the vest last fall, and the blouse was from an older costume I haven’t worn in awhile.
The following week we had another performance, this time for a Steam Punk Festival. If you don’t know what Steam Punk is, look it up. The costuming is like a fantasy Victorian. So I came up with pieces from my wardrobe that I could modify into something that would work for the day.
My cello recital was last weekend, I’m glad that is over so I can work on some new music. I have one more concert in a couple weeks, with cello, and then there is a breather until the end of August, and right into fall performance season.
And yes, the studio is quite active. And there are no coincidences. One of my cello teacher’s other adult students is a young nun, and along with the teacher, we played a trio of Shubert’s Ave Maria, along with a pianist for the recital. This young nun, from a local convent, and I have become friends. Turns out, her spiritual advisor’s mother was a weaver, and this young nun has had a huge desire to learn to weave. There are no coincidences that our paths have crossed.
I loaned her the small Leclerc 4-shaft sample loom, which was warped with the Learn-to-Weave sampler I designed for teaching purposes. I told her to finish off the warp, and meanwhile I would think of something more permanent. She sent me this photo, very excited, that she thought she was finished. I told her to keep weaving until the knots came all the way to the back of the castle.
Meanwhile, though she would love a floor loom, practicality insists that a small table loom would have to do for now, until she really shows that this is going to be a lifelong passion that will benefit the other sisters in the community. I have an 8-shaft Frankenstein like Structo I put together a few years ago from assorted parts, that I kept with a warp set up for the Rosepath series of borders in Carol Strickler’s 8-shaft pattern book. I really wanted to at some point go through the 40-ish different borders. I wasn’t planning on doing it this month.
So I wove, one or two a day.
…and I wove some more.
I now have maybe a dozen borders left to do, and then I’ll work with my friend to see what makes sense for her next. I know she ultimately wants to weave stoles for the nuns who are ordained as priests. (This is an Episcopal order, nuns can be priests.)
And I had a warp that I had moved from one of the Structos to a floor loom, so I could weave it more efficiently. Or so I thought. This was not one of my brightest moments. I mentioned in a previous blog, that I had set up a Structo with an 8-shaft Honeycomb sampler from Malin Selander’s Weave a Weave.
Selander’s book is written for a sinking shed loom, which I don’t have. My floor looms are jack looms, rising shed, which means for you non-weavers, that when I step on treadles to separate threads to create an opening for the shuttle to pass through, I’m now lifting 7 of 8 36″ rock maple shafts. Which is completely impractical. And I can’t weave Honeycomb upside down because the back is such a floaty mess you can’t see the pattern.
So I spent an afternoon, and moved the warp yet again, to my bigger table loom.
This is weaving so much easier, and I’ve already done two nice size samples of one of the honeycomb designs.
I’ve been documenting for the last few months, a different warp I transferred from another Structo table loom, to my small 8-shaft floor loom. This one is called Quigley, it is an 8-shaft four-tie unit weave, that is fairly complex, but the designs are stunning. I was using a handout from a three-day class given in 2015, at the Florida Tropical Weavers’ Conference, by Diane Click. She generously sent me the handout when she heard I was interested in the structure.
Many of you have written me that you would love to get in touch with Diane, and obtain a copy of the lengthy handout. Unfortunately Diane had a hard drive crash and lost a lot of her documentation. We have corresponded back and forth, and ultimately decided that I would scan the handout I have, and offer it free to anyone who wants it. I scanned just the part I used, and you can get it here in my eStore.
I had a dream early this morning when I finally fell back asleep. I was taking a workshop at Peters Valley School of Craft, a place my husband loved, and someone came up behind me and gave me a big bear hug, which freaked me out in the dream because I didn’t know who it was. I was able to wrench myself free, and I turned around, and it was Kevin, my late husband. I took from that that all would be OK, and that he was still watching out for all of us, and that what I did with his beloved pond and gardens, is what he would have wanted and that he was still watching in the background. I’m going with this interpretation, it was a pretty powerful dream, and I found that the rest of the day, I was at peace, and spent a lot of time with my pond piggies.
And if you are still reading at this point, I know this was a long one, here are some lovely flower pictures to make you smile.
There are no coincidences…
