When Samera showed up at my tea party last month (a wonderful surprise as I thought she was 1800 km away) the first thing she did was present me with goodies. There was some giant rick-rack - for purposes yet to be determined - and some delicate lace - perfect for a project I was thinking of - and a piece of mint.

Being me, I can remember Samera telling me what kind of mint it was but, though I can hear her voice and picture the way she looked as she spoke, I can't remember what it's called. She has some orange mint drying on her blog right now and since I know this sprig of mint was a cutting from one of her plants I will assume it is orange mint until someone corrects me. It smells delicious anyway.

Samera said if I put it in some water it would root and it spent three weeks living happily in a shot glass on our kitchen table. Everytime I watered it (or put it back because it had fallen out) I would see a little more development around the bottom of the sprig. It was a magical process. Last night I decided that it was probably time for a little soil and dug around my gardening supplies until I found a good pot.


My mint is now sitting prettily in its pot on the table and I am thinking of things I can do with it once it's big enough to harvest (or share).

Our Christmas present from my parents was a tree for our yard. We picked it out a couple of weeks ago and it was delivered and planted this afternoon. It's an ornamental crabapple that will have pretty pink blossoms in the spring.



It makes our yard look so grown-up.

We've been busy. After a trip out to the nursery and another to Canadian Tire we spent most of last night and this afternoon playing with plants and dirt.


I've got boxes of flowers along our front deck. My sister, Jane, and I grew the sweet peas and morning glories from seed and then picked up a few more plants to fill things out.


Rob put together our new lawn mower and cleaned up our front lawn. It still needs a good drink but looks so much tidier. That's got to be the fastest possible way to get rid of dandelions.


Two big half barrels (in an awesome yellow) are now hanging out next to the tomatoes Jane gave me. In a few weeks they'll start to show the tops of carrots.


Abby stayed outside with us the whole time we were working. She had a lot of fun chasing bugs and chewing the assembly instructions for the lawn mower but got pretty hot being in the sun for so long.


We were feeling the heat too so, along with an ice cube for Abby, I got some lemonade and cherries out of the fridge. We enjoyed them while admiring our handiwork.

Yesterday marks our first anniversary in this house. It's incredible to think we have been here a whole year. It feel so different now that it did when we moved in.

Oh ... and I got some yarn ... from the nursery.

Yep. I was walking around looking for someone to tell us what the tree we were looking at was, turned a corner in the shop and discovered a nice little display of Knit Picks yarns and needles and some good looking knitting books. It's just to the right of the seed potatoes.

I wanted to get some - to show support for their endeavour you know - and saw the basket of pima cotton at the bottom of the display. The blue and green were so nice and summery and I instantly thought of the Classic Washcloth in The Knitter's Book of Yarn. I scrounged up some needles and cast-on after dinner.


It's so soft!