Gardening and Knitting :-)

Yesterday was 'one of those days' so I ensured that today involved some horticultural therapy: I took some hardwood and root cuttings from my rosemary and oregano plants respectively, and a couple of sage cuttings too. My fellow Country Craft Guild member Nicky had been speaking about her garden and we got on to discussing herbs, which reminded me how much I love them; they're great pollinator plants, hardy, beautiful in an overlooked and understated way and respond well to propagation - and that's before the medicinal/culinary uses. Rose helped me, as part of her horticultural training, (and also because WWIII was about to break out between her and Amber over some minor incident):

I've put them into 3" pots with gritty compost and placed them in the greenhouse so hopefully they'll take and reward me with a few new plants :-)

On the sock front, things are progressing well:

The sweet pea yarn is beautiful to work with, and I am aware it looks like something the dog's got hold of but I'm actually about to knit the instep, which won't take long as it's only 20 something stitches. I'm using a pattern Nicky gave me, and so far, it is all making sense! The gumboot sock is fantastic, and I am debating on whether to get some shortie Hunter wellies to show them off but I'm not a great fan of Hunters as I've had so many pairs that have split on the sole...I'm more of an Aigle gal these days.

Tristan has gone to his friend's this afternoon so after doing some physics with him, checking his handwriting exercise, and packing him off to Joel's I was able to do some history with Rose about Hannibal and his elephants, as part of Susan Wise-Bauer's brilliant History of the World curriculum. Amber joined in too so that was nice. Amber has learnt how to make chocolate brownies (essential education) although there is still a requirement for the Clearing Up Fairy and her trusty sidekick, Dishwasher, to be on hand afterwards but hey, I shouldn't complain. Tristan said yesterday he wanted to become less fussy about eating, so I suggested he helped me make bolognese sauce which he struggles with, as it might engage him a bit if he'd made it. He didn't get on very well with onion chopping (tears/scary sharp knife) and baulked at handling raw mince (blood/feels slimy) but he did manage to open the tin of tomatoes, although I had to get the lid off in case he got tomato on his newly washed favourite jumper. Hmm, didn't quite pick the baton as I'd hoped but anyway, I'll try something less complex next time like um, toast....