You know you got it, if it makes you feel good

That's one of my favorite weeds, Prunella Vulgaris, AKA Heal-All.



It's related to mint and basil and is quite fetchingly pretty, I think.

It's been an uneventful week of getting used to living without a gall bladder. The pain is subsiding, the incision on my navel is driving me mad with itching, and it's getting easier to sleep by the day. A very curious thing is that my skin, especially on my face, looks much better than it did before. I can't really prove this, but Bob concurs that I am a lot less blotchy so chances are the gall bladder issue has been around and has been making me less than optimal for a while now.

Moving on to more flowery news, I may have mentioned in the past that I am not very good at house plants. The exception to that rule appears to be orchids. I got these orchids three years ago at Home Despot in the clearance section of the nursery. They were something like 2.99 each. I didn't hold out much hope for them growing or even flourishing, but apparently, I'm good at orchids. Each year has brought more blooms. Here they are now.







I haven't done a blasted thing to these except water them, and just this week, adjust the support so the blooms aren't falling all over the place. They're amazing to me.

In other plants, here's a brief garden tour, starting with our lilac bush. Spectacular this year.



Some grape hyacinths...


Violas, taking well.


The obligatory annual photo of the snow caps.


Looking down the weed-ridden "side-of-the-driveway" garden.


This year has been very strange. Some of the tulips never budded, and many of the daffodils didn't either. I think the spell of 80 degree weather did them in or fooled them into thinking spring was already over. Not sure what the case was but hopefully they'll come back next year. The sage is exploding in the side herb garden area and the peonies are the tallest I've ever seen them this early.





And finally, my painted fern seems to like the fact that most of the weeds are gone from the front.


In crafting news, the march of the socks goes on. I came up with these little lovelies this week, and a pattern will be forthcoming. Roman Holiday Socks is what I'm calling them as the stitch pattern is loosely based on Roman Stripe from the Barbara Walker books.


I had some biasing issues but I think I've got it all worked out now. The yarn is handspun, and more on that when I do up the pattern.



The entrelac socks are moving along. I'm into the squares on the second sock so hopefully I'll be wrapping those up in a week or so.





We're not going to talk about the Decimal sweater right now. It hasn't been touched in weeks. I did, however, finish the Thelonious socks.

I'm ashamed to say they're a bit baggy and tend to fall down on my leg. Maybe washing and drying by machine will help but I'm not actually very hopeful on that count.

And I cast on another pair of Cookie A socks, Kai-Mei from her Sock Innovation book. Not enough on those to show yet, but I'm doing a knit-a-long on Ravelry that is focusing on a different Cookie A pattern every month so I wanted to get these started, even though they're mostly miles and miles of 3x3 rib before you get to anything interesting.

So that's my week in a nutshell. Hopefully, I'll have that pattern up soon-it's been too long since I've done one.