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Friday, August 26, 2022

Hopeful Signs

It's Friday, and the last Friday of summer vacation. Rainbow starts back at school on Tuesday, though she'll be there for a bit on Monday because she's been asked to be a buddy to a new student joining her class and they have an orientation/welcome session Monday morning. I'm still in denial a bit that I will shortly have a seventh grader, and I'm also a little sad that I won't have her around all day, but I think it will be good for her to be back to a regular schedule.

A while back, Kym was using her Friday posts to focus on things that gave her hope, and those posts always lifted my mood, so I've decided to copy her use her posts as inspiration for today. First, after feeling like my sweater was creeping along, I was very pleasantly surprised to measure it yesterday and see just how much I'd knit:


You can click on that photo to embiggen if, like me, you have older eyes, or you can just trust me that the measuring tape says I have 11 inches of body knit. I have three more sets of decreases to work (I'm knitting an A-line body) and then have to work even until the body measures 17 inches before I split for the front and back. That suddenly doesn't seem so far off! I joined my third ball of yarn yesterday.

Even though the summer is coming to a close, our garden still apparently has some surprises in store for us. We've managed to keep our melon vines alive and even have a melon growing! We thought it was a honeydew, but based upon what's happening with the skin, we now think it's a cantaloupe. I've got the vines draped over the fence along our driveway to keep them off the ground, but I think I'll need to rig up some sort of support for the melon soon.


Finally, I can't remember if I mentioned it, but a while back something (I suspect a bunny or bunnies) ate all the leaves off our bell pepper plants. I figured that was it for our attempt to grow peppers this year, but I just left the bare stems in the ground and continued to water them along with the other plants in the front yard. To my delight, more leaves grew, and then yesterday, I discovered flower buds:


Although September is usually still warm here, we may or may not have enough time to actually grow some peppers, but I'm delighted to see these buds all the same. I have grand plans for next year's garden, including putting in a raised planter in the front to lift what we plant off the ground and, I hope, out of reach of local wildlife.

I hope (hehe) that you're finding some hopeful signs in your life this Friday. Happy weekend, all!

7 comments:

  1. Look at that melon! A real reward for the gardener, if you ask me. And I love that you left the bare pepper plants in + kept watering...they made quite a comeback. Whether there's enough summer left of not, I'd say that whole story illustrates hope. Happy weekend to all of you, and good luck to Rainbow as she begins a big year!

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  2. Posts about hope are always welcome. I hope (see what I did there?) you have a great weekend.

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  3. You've given me hope with these! After seeing your sweater, I've got hope for my Hitchhiker that doesn't seem to be getting bigger at all. And we've had some great garden surprises in September and even well into October. Happy Friday to you and Rainbow, and I hope she has a wonderful year in 7th grade!

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  4. Oh my, school already? Best of luck to Rainbow for a fun and rewarding year. That melon looks great and I sure hope it's tasty!! And new pepper flowers - that's awesome. You've got a green thumb...and with your red sweater I'm thinking Christmas! (I think I'm weary on this Friday afternoon and ready for weekending.)

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  5. Hooray for sweater progress. Getting past that "black hole" in a project is so nice and it sounds as if you are at that point. Oh man, a seventh grader. I always thought my children were officially a year older on the first day of school. How wonderful to have some nice surprises in the garden. I appreciate your focus on hope. It' good to remind ourselves of the hopeful possibilities in life.

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  6. Ooo! Lovely sweater progress and I love these little bits of hope! May Rainbow's school year be amazing... for your both! :)

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  7. Here's to inspiration! and to finding hope in all the things. also all the love for bottom-up A-line sweaters where the rounds get smaller as you go. I'm sure you're nearly to the (past the?) underarms by now. Best wishes for the start of school. Hard to believe our guys are into week FOUR already. It is nice to see how quickly they settled into the new routine (along with a new school and new friends) ... how cool that Rainbow has the chance to help someone new find their way :-)

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