Daily Notes- January 14th

From a website.  Plant based cloth dyeing.   Eucalyptus leaves.

I still have my steaming pot filled with onion skins.  Using it to "deaden" bright fabric.  The yellow adds a layer to cover and change bright backgrounds.  And soften any bright printed details.  Where once I enjoyed the sharp contrast between light and dark--I am now appreciating a lower contrast level.  Perhaps I understand the comments of older quilters 20 something years ago---they said my fabrics "hurt their eyes".

I promised G a pot of chicken soup today.  It warms him up when days are long and cold.  Bright sunshine here in Maine.  26 degrees.  I think this is the high for the day.  There are reasons only 2 million people live in the entire (large) state of Maine during the cold months--like 8 months of the year.  28 degrees is the high.

I am right on the edge of setting up my empty milk bottles and filling them with soil and seeds.  I also need to work on my labeling.  Didn't work so good last year.  I have stick on numbers for each bottle but I think I need to make a chart.  A big chart.  Because last year I started the same seeds two and once three times.  A mistake, for sure.  A Big Chart would stop that nonsense.  G hates it when I clutter the kitchen cabinet doors with charts.  But--I need a chart.

The Fairy Garden Class is coming up fast-- Saturday the 26th--twelve days.

I'm reading the first of three Permaculture books.  And the first book gives directions for finding the one place in your yard where the sun shines most--summer and winter.  That's where the greenhouse goes.  Not--like we were thinking---where we have room for it.  But actually--the sun does shine there (all day) in both summer and winter.  Dumb luck, huh?  Now we need to figure out how to add a heating barrier to the north side.  Well, and get the guys over here to put the damned thing up.

The book also said a sunporch could be a little greenhouse--like the vestibule.  It's 45 degrees in the vestibule right now- without any heat other than sunshine.  The fig tree, the two large geraniums and the asparagus fern are happy.  Oh, and my rosemary plant.  The citrus is in the house.  It's getting ready for the flowers to open.  I am spraying with insecticidal soap to keep the bugs down.  Would be nice if it actually made a piece of fruit--but the scent of the flowers will be wonderful.  Last winter we lost all the leaves right after the flowers opened.  Thought the plant was dead.  It wasn't.  I can't come up with the name of the insect but it left a sticky surface on the leaves. Scale or mites.

Well, I'm on to the soup.  Great games yesterday.  Patriots and Saints.  On to Kansas City.