G is for Green (and Garden.. and Glow.. and Gloves..)

We had our first spate of warm-enough-to-be-outside-without-a-jacket weather this weekend. Sadly we weren't home to enjoy it, but luckily it lasted over through to today. Jack came home after his classes and raked the lawn to get the last vestiges of autumn cleaned away and it inspired me to finally tend to the side garden. As luck would have it, it was getting on toward dusk by the time I got outside, so my first "g" is for the glow of an early spring dusk:



But it was still light enough to pull the deadbits out and let the garden greenery poke through. I'm a rank novice when it comes to gardening, so I'm still trying to figure out what all is out there. Below are pictures of what's coming up now, and where I can, I've put in what I think it is. If anyone here is more knowledgeable about any of these plants than I am (which wouldn't take much!), please feel free to chime in and correct me.



Pretty sure this is one of the hostas. I have *lots* of hostas. And they're big. Too big, in fact, and in need of being broken apart into smaller plants. I have some friends who've drooled over the thought of hostas, so I have a feeling some of mine will be finding new homes soon.



I also have lots (and lots) of bleeding heart and they're also all way too big and in need of breaking apart. I *think* this is the big one on the corner of the porch.



I have no clue on this one, but it's my first bloom of the season, so it needed to be highlighted! I think the other plants in there will eventually become the tall daisy-like flowers, but I'm not sure.



Again.. no clue.. Iris? Tulip, maybe? Something that's about to bloom in any case, so I'll know more in about a week or so if nothing else!



I'm trying to remember what was growing in this spot last year, and the only thing coming to mind are the ones that my mom wanted that I can't remember the name of.. They weren't clumped like this, though.. so this might be something else



These little guys could very well be something I don't want. There's lots of them and that makes me wonder if they're not weeds that should be gotten rid of.. I think there was some kind of viney thing back in this spot last year - wild grape, maybe? - but I think we pulled all that out in the fall.



By the time I was done cleaning out the debris and raking up the bits, the moon was out and it was getting to be full on dark.

Moving on to other greens, here's a shot of two of my current knitting projects:



The bottom one is Rogue in Wool of the Andes Evergreen. I thought I was almost done with the front, but realized this evening that I misread the directions and need to rip back the left front and re-do it. Even though tonight is Rogue Monday, the garden was calling, so I didn't get any additional progress made.

The top project is the Candle Flame Shawl from KnitPicks. At the time the picture was taken it wasn't very exciting. I'm almost through with a full repeat now and will post additional pictures once I finish the first repeat.

I also finished the elbow length gloves I was working on:



They don't stay up as well as I'd like, but they keep my arms and hands warm and they match very well with my Birch, so the two of them with a t-shirt and jeans is quite the funky little outfit.



And here's a gratuitous shot of most of my handknit (by me) socks; I'm missing one of the cotton pairs in this shot, but if you count, you can see I can wear handknit socks for a whole week and not wear the same pair twice! Left to right: lacy socks from a pattern in a recent Interweave Knits from the lovely purple/grey wool I got from mamacate last summer; the blue Sinfonia pair; a pair from one of the KnitPicks socks yarns; a pair from the CashSoft that I got from Kim; the other pair from the other wool from mamacate - these got washed and dried once on accident so they're not quite as stretchy as they were and are a little more felted than the purple/grey pair; the green Sinfonia pair.

I figured out recently why I don't seem to like the self-striping sock yarns.. all the socks made from it look the same. I know that's usually a plus, but I have gotten rather fond of my socks from hand-dyed wool and variegated yarns that result in unique socks that are still identifiably a pair.

One last "g", but this one without a picture. It's for getting off my butt and getting back in the pool. I agreed to do the swim portion of a sprint tri again this year (with a little more warning this time!), and I have about two months to get into decent enough shape to make a respectable showing. I swam today for the first time in about 10 months - only 5 laps, but it was enough to tire me out and remind my muscles how this works. I focused a lot more on my hip/body rotation since that gave me trouble last year, so we'll see how that goes.