A Joyful Christmas Quilt

I bought the Christmas fabric I used for this quilt probably five years ago. I didn't want to get rid of it, but I had always planned on something daring like wonky blocks or a disappearing nine patch, something like that. Truth be told, I no longer felt the same love for these fabrics and I've grown in my knowledge of selecting fabrics, at least enough to know that two of these were directional prints that wouldn't look as good in block form. So after a bit of Pinterest inspiration and seeing simple holiday type words added in a strip pieced quilt, I knew what I wanted to do.

I laid out the backing and batting I had to determine what my finished size quilt should be to help figure with cutting my strips. Then I folded, stacked and sliced imperfect 8" strips of the three fabrics in one fell swoop. I didn't iron anything on this quilt (except the word) until I had it completely pieced and then I only did a quick pass over the seams.

I freehand drew the letters to the size I wanted and used a piece of muslin and wonder under to attach the green letters to the muslin. I embroidered around the letters to hold them permanently in place with black thread and a tight zig zag stitch. Then I added the muslin piece into one of my strips. I bound the quilt in a green cotton from my stash and used a zig zag stitch for finishing the binding.

It's a simple cozy Christmasy throw size quilt, and my boys are fans of it. I'm going to make some slip covers for my sofa pillows with the left over fabric to match.

 

Autumn Flowers and clearance plants

County Fair Zinnias and Autumn Beauty Sunflowers are beginning to bloom.

 

My rattlesnake pole beans are suffering from spider mites and some sort of chewing insect. I'm planning on making an onion and soap spray to try to deal with them.

In spite of the bugs, they continue to grow and are even putting out little green beans. Maybe I'll have enough for thanksgiving!

These were all on the clearance rack at Lowes for just $3 each! From the left there are two Ischia Green Figs (supposedly a very heat hardy slightly smaller variety with very sweet figs), a Sunshine Blue Blueberry bush (self pollinating, compact 3' bushy plant with excellent blueberries), and two Dwarf Everbearing Black Mulberry bushes.

You can see the difference unrestricted growth in good dirt makes for the mulberries. These are the two I potted up about a month ago. They are fast growers and I'm hoping that the new ones bounce back quickly.

The new mulberries were seriously root bound, so I used a clean sharp knife to cut off about the bottom two inches of thick roots circling the pot. The picture above is after the trim. The photo below is what I removed.

I potted them in larger two gallon pots with mushroom compost and sand from my garden. With the roots trimmed up they now have plenty of room to grow until the new garden bed is ready. I also pruned off any dead or poorly placed branches from all the plants.

 

Sometimes Florida Sucks.

The title pretty much says it all. Sometimes gardening in Florida just sucks. Our growing seasons are hot and long and winters very mild and usually frost free which allows for the often unchecked growth of the appropriate tropical hardy plants and fruit trees. We can have bananas, papayas, oranges, sweet potatoes, hot peppers and tomatoes growing almost year round. The nearly limitless amount of things we can grow is definitely a plus. But with these tropical conditions come some serious disadvantages too, namely in the form of pests and humidity. Folks from up north feel like they can't hardly breathe when they come down here for the 98% humidity in the middle of a summer day. They describe it as breathing water. It can be oppressive for many plants too and a transmitter of a host of problems. I'm pretty sure that the high humidity is why my poblano pepper is still dropping its tiny pepper buds.

But on this 85 degree fall day, the thing that has me in near tears are the pests. I lost my corn to army worms a few weeks ago. My peach tree has been seriously attacked by weevils, a non native species that has been introduced and gaining ground here over the last few years. None of our native or localized predators seem to like the Sri Lanka Weevil and it is carving a path through just about everything. It's food list is as long as my arm. So my poor peach tree has deep chew marks on nearly every leaf. I'm trying desperately to save it and am this. close. to breaking out the hard synthetic pesticides.

I lost half my cucumbers to root knot nematodes at the same time my corn went kaput. My Nevada lettuce transplants that I started from seed and wrote about a couple weeks ago were completely mowed down two days ago in the garden, maybe from snails, maybe something else. Something chewed through and killed a couple of my sugar pumpkin vines, but I cut them open and didn't see any vine borers.

My pole beans are suffering from spider mites, and now my remaining cucumbers are being attacked by them as well.

In spite of it all, I was remaining optimistic. I bought a four pack of Celebrity Hybrid tomatoes this morning. They are resistant to darn near every wilt, virus, and even nematodes. So I planned on putting them in the garden an hour ago. But then I saw even more damage.

Overnight, my hybrid sangria ornamental pepper seedling which had been thriving and was a bushy 2" tall was chewed to a stem. My ornamental 2 yr old Purple Flash pepper (see pic) which was filling out really nicely was completely defoliated. And the larger of my two Black Krim tomato seedlings, a nice 3" tall healthy plant yesterday, is now a .5" leafless stub. It wasn't even planted yet. It was just sitting in a nursery pot in the garden.

I am so disheartened. I looked around in the garden and tilled the soil a bit around the purple flash pepper but didn't find the culprit, just some nice looking earthworms. The lack of pest indicates that the cutworms are most likely the culprit and that without the corn to entertain them, they have moved on to my Nightshades.

I'll be spreading diatomaceous earth over the soil at dusk since they tend to come out at night and hope that I can get them under control in the next couple days so I can plant my Celebrity tomatoes. If the DE doesn't take out the cutworms, I will have to look for a bottle of Bt, like Thuricide to fight them.

I don't even have the hope of winter killing back the pests for an early start next year because winter doesn't usually go below 45 degrees here. And the last several years it hasn't even gone that low. That means a wonky season for my peach tree and possibly too few chill hours. And the cool season veggies are quite susceptible to damage from pests like cutworms and nematodes. So, I don't know quite what to do next.

Hopefully the tiny top bunch collards that have just sprouted in the garden don't get leveled by the cutworms tonight, but I won't count on it.

I watered my remaining plants with a strong vermicompost tea that I've been brewing the last few days and will put some in a spray bottle to try to deal with the spider mites tonight also. Maybe it will give the purple flash pepper the needed verve to bounce back.