LIFE: Small Things

As much as I love summer, and as much as this Brit is getting more and more use to the heat that Michigan summers like to throw at me (okay, okay I'm still a bit of a whimp when it gets over 32C/90F) I'm looking forward to the cooler (I say cooler being in the 20's) days ahead. Cooler days get me feeling a little bit more crafty (if that's even possible), TV shows are about to restart for the season and my birthday is at the end of the month. Lots of doing and planning ahead!

Also other happy happy things!

• Three baby pengys at the Detroit Zoo - too cute and I URGE you to check out the video if you ever need a pick me up, or even if you don't. Because penguins.
• Decorating cheap notebooks with cross stitching, just because
• Talking of cross stitching - working on a Pusheen design, starting two new projects, framing up Dinobot and completing another self designs cross stitch piece - home sweet home design for friends buying their first house. More on the last two to come - once I get around to it. 
• Reading Station Eleven - what a great page turner
• Finally getting around to watching The Mindy Project - what a great show
• Pretty sushi presented on a boat as a treat for Joe getting a pay rise and a bonus. Yey. 
• Drawing up an endless shopping list of bulbs to buy for next spring
• Spending all of yesterday morning (Thursday) pulling out the longest flower bed back to the main sturdy plants (the Iris's, the poppies and day lilies) to just build it back up from scratch next year. 
• Two zoo trips in two weeks!
• Cooking (and eating) with tofu for the first time, still a little bit on the fence and it'll never replace chicken in my curries completely, but it's okay ... kinda
• Baking lots of mini zucchini breads in the toaster oven because of the still broken oven. Wasn't sure they'd turn out edible but they did, yey! 
• Pretending to be very adult (well Joe was) and pretty much paying off a very large debt on a credit card
• Waterproofing the basement aka giving my arms a work out with a roller and 5 gallon tub of latex paint
• The thought of cooler days ahead, of being able to work in the garden without melting, throwing windows wide open and the changing fall colours 
• Going on a Detroit haul at the library - noir, food, fiction, biographies I grabbed them all
• Finding the most amazingly quirky vintage wallpaper (here and here) hanging in a basement at an estate sale down in Detroit 

So that has pretty much been my life in the last couple of weeks. Who else is ready for cooler times ahead?

GREEN FINGERS: On the End of Summer and Fall Crops

With summer drawing to a warm close, I thought it was high time to work on a little post reflecting about our first summer attempt in our vegetable garden. As other crops start to fade, some still offering their treats and space being cleared for new additions, it's time to take note of what worked and what was a bit of a fail. 

The successes;

Basil - perfect for throwing into curries (our favorite being a green basil curry) and making home made burgers. Basil turned into a great little herb, it pretty much looks after itself and it gets limp enough to give you a heads up when it needs a water. For someone with a tendency to kill plants, it worked out great.

Cilantro - I would have loved to have picked more leaves for curry making from the cilantro but it sadly bolted while we were away. Fear not, letting the flowers turn to seed I have row upon row of bags of dried cilantro seeds which I'm looking forward to crushing and turning into coriander powder. 

Hot Peppers - I have more hot pepper then I know what to do with. Pretty easy to grow, keeps itself to itself and doesn't need that much water. Happy times.

Raspberries - we inherited these with the house, always a winner.

Rhubarb - granted you can't eat it in the first year, but one of the two bulbs grew and it's happily entertaining itself.

Carrots - mentioned previously, the carrots turned out pretty decently, certainly colourful.

Zucchini - Mmmm all the curries and breads. Love me some zucchini. It pleases itself, kinda taking over it's corner of the veg patch and something likes to try and eat it before I can get my hands on it to pick it. Certainly to growing it again next year.

Hit and Miss;

Salad Greens and Radishes - being British a summer salad is one often filled with salad greens and radishes, but Michigan heat in the height of summer is too warm that they turn to seed. Lesson learnt.

Cucumbers - we started off with 12 plants ended up with five living - cold snap and not enough water. Then we had more cucumbers then we could ever eat and cucumbers don't appear to be something you can hold out to grateful friends (until basil and peppers). Then they got all mildewy. I'm on the fence about trying them again.

Tomatoes - perhaps because they are a heirloom variety but our tomatoes have been a little picky and something likes to eat them. What I'm not sure. They also take forever to change to red. I think I'll try them again next year, but a smaller or cherry tomato for sure.

The Fails

Sweet Potato - not for the want of trying, the groundhog dug it up.

Strawberries - one of the three original plants were again dug by the groundhog, the replacements were perhaps brought too late for this season. Hopefully they'll make it through the winter with a bit of luck.

Bell Peppers - Michigan throw a late cold snap in March (or it might have been April, I forget) but it was just after the bell peppers were planted. The result was stunted growth, few flowers and zero peppers. We'll try again next year.



So more hits then misses and a couple of who knows. Pretty decent for a first go. I've learnt a lot of things along the way - that groundhogs are evil, wire fences are excellent things to constantly trip over and that bees really love veg patches. Eastern Market will be our go to place for buying crops next year and I'm a bit of a whiz at constructing trellises.

My head is buzzing with ideas for next year. Planting wise, I've learnt the need to spread seed planting out across a couple of weeks so everything isn't ready all at once. We're off to construct some kind of wooden fence (with a gate for no more tripping for Rayray), thinking of planting either some apple or cherry trees.

But before next year, there's fall and some cooler weather for getting some new crops started - broccoli and carrot seeds are already in the ground. I have some salad greens and radish seeds to finish off and I'm going to attempt at growing garlic.

 How did your garden grow this summer?

LIFE: Butterfly Gardens Around the Detroit Zoo

Scattered around the Detroit Zoo you'll come across a number of Monarch Waystations between and around the animal exhibits. Certified by Monarch Watch, such waystations provide food and shelter for the monarch butterflies through their metamorphosis and during their migration to and from Mexico. On our latest visit to the zoo, the waystations were crammed and bursting with blooms and colour. 

With a backdrop of autumnal shades creeping into the trees, the dusty pinks of sedums, sunshine yellow daisies to grasses and milkweed the gardens are as pretty as they are essential to wildlife. Additionally for me, they give me so much inspiration for working on that butterfly garden I would love to have in my back yard. 

CREATIVE: The Detroit Skyline

The idea of stitching a Detroit cityscape is one that's been kicking around on my to stitch list for longer than I care to recall. City scenes I guess are one of the "in" things when it comes to popular stitching of late - you might even remember my London stitching. But one one seems to have come up with a Detroit one (surprise surprise). But hey I like a challenge and designing one myself, well it became a lot more personal and in honesty, I probably enjoyed stitching it all the more. 

With Detroit having an international riverfront, it has a natural edge for it's city limit and place to start the stitching from. Sadly the only way to actually see this scene in real life, is to view it from across the Detroit River while standing on Canadian soil in our southern neighbours of Windsor. Luckily there is always google to doodle from. Lots and lots of doodling.

The Ren Cen stands proudly in the middle, bordered on one side by it's smaller buildings and carparks (we have a lot of those in Detroit) and to the west, a juxtaposition of the old (Fisher) and new buildings that make up downtown Detroit (Cobo, One Woodward etc).

And compared to the real thing, it doesn't look half bad ...

Downtown Detroit (source)

Made up of varying numbers of black thread, the design is a simple composition of back stitching and the odd grouping of cross stitches for shadows and depth. Jazzing up an old frame I grabbed for cheap at an estate sale and the picture hangs proudly on my living room wall.

There's a couple of reasons why I really enjoyed stitching this piece - working on something of my own from scratch certainly makes yourself proud of your work, but getting back into drawing, creating something again takes cross stitching to a whole new level.