Olive Knitting

One of the basic ideas have about how to live life is that each year I should do it better than the last. The "it" is just, well, everything. Next year I hope, am working toward, and therefore expect that I will make more beautiful jewelry than I do this year, I will be a kinder and more thoughtful person, my garden more colorful, my orto more fruitful, my house more comfortable, and I will be a better wife, step mom, daughter, sister, in law, friend, teacher, knitter, and viola player (I'm a little dubious about the last one, but I'll save that for another blog).

Along these lines, when winter did its annual job on our kitchen wall, I asked myself "how I can do it better this year?".



Yuck. Let's see if that looks better in sepia...



Yeah, um, no. It doesn't.

Since what I did last year was shit, it really wasn't that hard to improve on. Seems that it takes more than a little paint to keep the humidity out of an underground stone wall. This year's attempt at the kitchen wall included some help and some kind of space-age super anti-humidity plaster.



And some sunflowers.






Ps. Does anyone have cucumber recipes for me. This is one day's harvest



I'm getting anywhere from 3-6 everyday. That's a lot of cucumber salad for a single girl. And I can't give them away because EVERYONE has too many cucumbers. Maybe growing cucs is one thing that I don't need to improve on next year.