Gardening in the Heat and Messy Crafts

This morning, I took DH to the airport. A few days ago, his office realized that he was needed on the west coast for something very important. It shouldn't take long and hubby will be back before I can make too much of a mess of the house. ;-)

I spend the morning planting until it got too hot. I got in most of the tomatoes and all of the okra and a hyacinth bean plant that was a gift. There is also a volunteer tomato plant in the garden, so we should have plenty of tomatoes. Our yard is probably too small for the okra, but I had to try it anyway after I saw it growing at Great Hopes Plantation in Colonial Williams burg. There are plenty of other plants waiting, so I hope it gets cooler soon. Planting in our yard involves digging up the dirt with a shovel and then adding compost and peat to the soil and then mixing it up. I am concerned by the severe lack of worms in the soil this year. It may be time to research buying some.

I plan to do some spinning, knitting and fish printing onto t-shirts while DH is away. I will go to the Asian market to see what fish they have to use. I picked up t-shirts and fabric paint yesterday at the Jo-Ann's in Columbia. Fish printing or "Goyotaku" is the Japanese art of taking a print directly from a fish. Actually you can now buy rubber fish to print from, but I'll try it on real ones for now.

On an unrelated note, I have two female Betta fish sisters in one tank together. They have always gotten along well together and used to swim side-by-side. Recently, they seem to be getting on each others nerves, so I may have to separate them. My pet store crowntail male died of old age last week, so I have a free tank ready if needed.