It’s been a busy week. Definitely paying with muscles for all the moving mulch, raking compost, and planting drought tolerant herbs. The roses are LOVING it. Anyone else feel like the weather this year leaves one guessing? Thankfully herbs are easy to grow. Like you don’t even know what questions to ask to find the answer? Feels human. We should all strive to ask better questions. Finishing the new website, finally getting to use some AI thumbnails to overhaul the product service pages. Hopefully people will enjoy it, the backlinks to older works like Instructable tutorials and YouTube videos remain for nerdy fashion people who want to see how the sausage is made. Ten to fifteen years ago, it was crisp, clear pictures of your retail venue for customers to get an idea of what to expect when they visited your store...still works today with the Google and makes money. Five to ten years ago, it was editorial photos on Facebook and Instagram which did not make money. Then video for...
Pentecost was delightful, full of baked breads and sweet treats with coffee. The beloved apple tree is coming back which is excellent. The festival celebrates wheat loaves and people will often add eggs and milk which feels French? Italian? One word: delicious. The original festival involved 2 loaves of bread made from 18 cups of wheat flour each which screams huge trays of sticky buns or breakfast treats. Time to find that turkey baking dish. The high school kids ate them up. Definitely a festival worth sharing. Found a great new bread cookbook, Beard on Bread by James Beard. It’s got some lovely British recipes and currants. So far love everything made. It’s a classic book and definitely deserves the reputation. Enjoying the new website finishes and posting our first free class: Embroidering Linen Bread Towels. They are popular for a party or church communion. We’re focusing on pomegranates which are pretty. It’s a beginner class using a running stitch so great for home schoolers and artists looking for an easy project. No...
Redid the driveway which was fun. Neighborhood building spring’s deck craze is replaced by a summer fence craze. Will we see fence murals since wood is so easy to paint on? Maybe flower sales? Very little in the news is making it into a day-to-day conversation, especially the UFO files. Given all the decades of scifi tv and movies especially Marvel and Star Wars didn’t expect it, but live and learn. People seem more wrapped up in family and life. MET gala was a snooze.
Pentecoste is next weekend so neighbors are busy swapping plants and prepping bread recipes. Kinda nice. What’s your favorite yeast bread? May you be blessed this week.
In gardening, plants do both alive and dead/hibernating better than any Schrodinger's cat. We see it every winter before they come back in the spring. Or a pack of seeds. My favorite apple tree has been struggling the past two years from getting whacked by the yard guy’s weed eater on the trunk. It’s a fantastic tree so copsing it in hopes of seeing it regrow healthy from the root stock. A great book on this agricultural topic, Olives: The Life and Lore of a Noble Fruit by Mort Rosenblum is worth reading. Olive trees are basically immortal, beautiful, and delicious. The apple tree trunk is green and it’s a fighter. Time will tell. When one door closes, another opens. And plants often bounce back. Thanks neighbors for all the raised English flower beds for the backyard in the meantime. Assembly time. Planting cosmos, dahlias, and these beautiful teddy bear sunflowers. The mulch holding in the new soil in the rains we’ve been getting...
What a lovely week of gentle rain, the marigolds are coming up and all the Italian herbs are filling in their front bed. Thanks everyone who dropped off really great flowers and plants for the birthday. The neighborhood kids are out playing hide and seek while the rest of us are stuck on paperwork indoors. Child laughter and muddy puddles is a specific joy too many of us forget as we get older. Worth remembering for a day. Speaking of fun, we’re a couple weeks out from Pentecost, a delicious yeast bread festival. Practically, it’s a chance to grill out and eat sweet treats and cakes with coffee. Or go to Boulted Bread in downtown Raleigh. Yet another whole grain bread shop worth trying. Enjoy. Have a nice week all.
