almost sort of like summer

These first 2 pictures are from over a month ago when I planted some ginger.  I use quite a bit of ginger, and I had some roots that had begun to sprout on the kitchen counter, so I had the thought that perhaps I could grow some myself.  I read several pages about growing ginger in pots - I already knew my climate is too cold for it to survive outside.  As usual when looking things up online, there was disagreement among people as to whether the ginger would just make a nice plant or would grow enough to harvest roots.  So we'll see.  This is not a good picture, but you can see one green shoot at the top of the picture and one at the bottom. 

Below the green shoots just barely show above the soil after I finished planting.  One of these shoots is now about a foot tall and growing leaves while the other has not grown at all.  I will take a new picture soon.

My little leek harvest, overwintered in the garden from last year.  This was the first time I grew leeks from seed (or any other way) and since I basically ignored them ever since planting them I was really happy to have this harvest though they didn't get very big.  I turned these into a pot of vichyssoise, one of my favorite winter soups.  And yes, I know it isn't winter any more, but it was still pretty much feeling like it when I made the soup a couple weeks ago.

First strawberry harvest earlier this week.  Late this year because of the weather, of course, but finally!  I've had 2 harvests of about this same size now.  And got a very small first raspberry picking today too.

The evening sun highlighting roses (and weeds :)) against the bedroom window shade.

Tomato plants at left and at right a bean teepee made of an old Christmas tree trunk and twine all ready for the pole beans to sprout after planting yesterday.

 I also planted a row of cucumber plants yesterday.  Mostly pickling cukes but also a few plants of slicing ones. 

I am without a washing machine right now.  I want to get the laundry room painted before I get a new one, so that is taking me awhile to get done since I can't work at it for very long at a time.  I could do wash at my sister's house, but didn't really feel like loading it in the car and driving there.  Then I remembered I had a wringer and some other hand laundry stuff in the attic that I bought a couple years ago before I was sick but I had never used yet.  So I set it up and washed a load of towels last night/today.  The main problem is that doing something like the plunger washer is about the hardest thing on my lungs so I knew I couldn't do it very many times at all, so I let the towels soak in the wash water overnight and then only used the agitator a few times now and then during the soak.  Then I did 2 rinses similarly, though not overnight of course.  They may not be the cleanest laundry in the world, but they looked pretty good to me.  Fortunately the wringer was easy to use.

Here are the towels ready to go on the line.  The wringer really gets a lot of water out!  More than a washing machine, I think.  And the nicest part is that it was actually nice enough here to have the clothesline outside today. There have been very few days like that this year, very few...

Those are a few things going on around here the last couple weeks.  And now we are even having a whole week of days that will be in the low 70s, so it is practically like a miracle to have so much sunshine without rain! :)