The Independent Stitch

The Big Project: hints can be revealed (pertains to fiber, surprise, surprise)

Last weekend I drove south and into the mountains to spend a couple of days working on The Project.

(I've finally got the energy to see if I can cover the information the computer powers-that-be evaporated on me just as I'd finished writing a post on Monday. This time I am working in an offline composing program called Ecto. I don't know much about Ecto, so we'll see if this goes better than Monday did!)

I stayed in a cabin courtesy of Carol Ekarius and her husband, Ken Woodard. Ken went off to spend the time playing music with friends, leaving me and Carol to work on The Project. Yep, The Project requires two of us, and we both are the sort of people who are challenged, rather than daunted, by large, complicated tasks. Still, we haven't felt comfortable talking about what we're thinking (and working on) previously. Even though we've been working on it for a lot more than a year already. It's big. We do, now, suspect we will be able to pull it off in the foreseeable future.

Here's Carol at the cabin with Red, one of our weekend companions.

Chickens are not allowed inside, although Red forgets that from time to time in her quest for yummies.

Carol is passionate about livestock and small-scale farming. Her books include Storey's Illustrated Breed Guide to Sheep, Goats, Cattle and Pigs: 163 Breeds from Common to Rare (Storey), which just won the Colorado Book Award in the general nonfiction category; How to Build Animal Housing (Storey), which won a Colorado Authors' League award; Storey's Guide to Raising Sheep (Storey), written with ground-breaking handspinner Paula Simmons; Storey's Illustrated Guide to Poultry Breeds (Storey); Pocketful of Poultry (Storey); Small-Scale Livestock Farming: A Grass-Based Approach for Health, Sustainability, and Profit (Storey); and Hobby Farm: Living Your Rural Dream for Pleasure and Profit (Bowtie).

I'm passionate about fibers and rare breeds, as those who know about my work at Interweave Press and Shuttle Spindle & Dyepot and as a freelancer and as the publisher of Nomad Press are aware.

We've both been involved for years with the American Livestock Breeds Conservancy.

I'm doing fibers.

(That's Tuf, one of Carol's dogs.)

Carol's doing critters.

We're both working day and night.

Theresa and Red are doing eggs. They helped out a lot over the weekend.

Even though there is a MASS of work left to do on The Project, we made great progress and feel hopeful that we'll be able to change it from a bunch of separately written pieces into a coherent whole—while continuing to generate still more separately written pieces.

One of the things I like best about working with Carol is that when we get together and compare notes and I show her my research and the charts I'm drawing and the details that I'm endeavoring to condense into useful summaries that take into account geographic and biological variations and all sorts of other random differences . . . she doesn't say that I don't have to do all that and she doesn't tell me It would be faster if I just pulled somebody else's information and got on with it.

No, what she does instead is tell me about the weird and obscure and interesting books she's gotten through interlibrary loan and ask me for a reminder about a weird, obscure, and truly fascinating book that I got through interlibrary loan (because she's going to request the book, too, now that I've returned it). . . . She also doesn't imply that it was silly of me to pay $25 to borrow a book for a couple of weeks from the National Agricultural Library because it was the only copy of that book in the United States and it's not in print elsewhere any more. No, she gets on the computer and finds sources for more fibers and orders them and has them sent to my house.

It's great to be collaborating with Carol on this project. We're both nuts in some of the same ways. We won't ever do as much research as either of us would like to (we would like to finish), but we'll get enough done to have fun and to produce something we think fiber- and critter-appreciating folk will find useful and informative in a way that's unlike anything else that's come before it.

Of course, we also both work full-time at other jobs while we're doing this. Carol is the executive director of the Coalition for the Upper South Platte (we met when she was in this role and I was working on a heritage preservation project in Park County, Colorado). I juggle this project around freelance writing and editing and Nomad Press.

We might get tired from time to time, but neither of us is likely to get bored.

Time to get back to work. I don't think this is as good a post as the one I lost, but at least it is written and about to be published.

More about this project will be revealed as it moves (reasonably swiftly, we hope) toward completion.

THIS is what Nomad Press is all about

I've been catching up a bit on what's happening outside my office while I'm meeting deadlines.

I came across this pattern in the summer issue of Knitty. It's a gorgeous shawl by Kieran Foley, who has called his design "Cold Mountain." His description begins this way:

• "This shawl is based on my first attempts at designing after reading Donna Druchunas’ inspirational Arctic Lace a couple of years ago."

This reminds me how much I love happening across notes about how knitters are expanding their reach and solving problems by using Nomad Press books, and what a kick I get out of it when when they start a description with words on the order of "this was the first time I. . . ."

Here's evidence of a few seeds planted by Priscilla Gibson-Roberts' revised edition of Knitting in the Old Way (which I helped out with, in addition to publishing . . . Priscilla herself was going to publish it, and I was "just" the editor and design/layout/production person, but there was a shift at the last minute which moved Nomad Press from her house to mine . . . ):

• Jen at Looking Glass Knits gets over nervousness about steeks and makes a gorgeous Fair Isle baby sweater with a non-felting yarn
• Professional designer Dawn Brocco gleans inspiration for a delightful Fana-style sweater
• Ashley at Postcards from Pemberton makes a wonderful gansey ("my first sweater with a stitch pattern")

These bits of news make sitting here in front of a computer screen with yarn and knitting needles close by (for testing) seem worthwhile.

It takes a while before these remarks start appearing. The books have to go out into the world, then people have to read and absorb them and let the ideas percolate, and then they need to begin implementing. Which makes it all the more fun when I come across the comments.

Knitting in the Old Way has been out in the world long enough to have this effect, as have Priscilla's Simple Socks and Donna's Arctic Lace. Donna's Ethnic Knitting Discovery and Ethnic Knitting Exploration are still in their early stages of finding their way into people's hands and imaginations.

A Wensleydale day, supplemented by Shetland and seasoned with Lincoln

I spent a chunk of yesterday morning at the coffee shop writing a post that was lost into the land of loose electrons just about the time I finished it. Then I spent the evening discovering that the sock I was knitting was a few stitches too small and ripped it out. For the second time. It was one of those days.

It was a good post, if I do say so myself. There was lots of cool stuff in it, including a whole lot of links.

Here is a piece of the information that was in the earlier version of the post. The complicated stuff will need to be revisited after I've rested.

I haven't decided what I'm doing about the sock yet.

Wensleydale

Part of what that post was about is that more of The Project can be revealed now. The bigger details will have to wait. Here's a portion.

I spent some of the weekend in the cabin spinning samples of rare-breed wools.

I started with the sample just below. That mix of near-white and light gray in with the black was irresistibly interesting and I didn't want to homogenize the fiber and turn the end result into a not-quite-black (a valid choice under some circumstances, but I'm playing here and can do whatever I want). So I combed with one quick pair of passes and came up with a preparation that was inevitably going to have texture as well as color variations when it was spun up.

When I spun it, I left it as a singles, again because I wanted to make the most of the unusual combination that I started with. The skeinlet is at the far left in the photo at the bottom of this post. Knitted, it would probably work up at 4/inch (16/10cm), but considering the breed and the weight I more easily see it in a weft-faced weave, possibly a tapestry or a bag or a rug.

My second Wensleydale sample was white, and I put it through two passes on the combs (two-row Vikings are my favorites right now) and spun a smooth two-ply (second from left in bottom photo). I went for "thick" because with this fiber length I can do that and still get a structurally sound yarn. The yarn is about worsted weight.

Wensleydale is a luster wool, so of course we expect a luminous quality, but the shine on this one is over the top. It came out with a slightly warm shade to the white—a little creamy, or, plied, like a string of gorgeous pearls.

For the third Wensleydale sample, I had a lovely all-black fleece. I combed it for a smooth preparation and spun about a sportweight two-ply (third from the left in the photo).

Although Wensleydales are strong wools (a term I'm coming to prefer over "coarse," because nothing this pretty should be called "coarse"), and according to micron count should not be used for next-to-the-skin clothing, those long fibers with their smooth scale patterns sometimes can, in my opinion, be used for garments that do spend time on bare skin, if they're fleeces on the fine end of their range and are spun to keep the fibers running parallel and minimize any sticking-out (potentially prickly) ends.

I'd like to keep going and actually make things from these wools, but for reasons that will be revealed soon (and would have been revealed today if the computer had cooperated), I'm moving right along. . . . Also it will become apparent later why all of the yarns I'm spinning these days are singles or two-plies. . . .

Three Wensleydales, two Shetlands, and a bit of Lincoln

Here are the weekend's skeinlets. A lot of non-spinning work also got accomplished.

From the left:

• the dark-and-lighter Wensleydale, spun for texture and to preserve color variation (singles)
• the white Wensleydale, spun for its luminous qualities (two ply)
• the black Wensleydale, spun for smoothness and crisp drape (two ply)
• a white Shetland, spun into a two-ply about Aran-weight, nice and sturdy (two ply)
• a different white Shetland, finer, spun into a two-ply somewhere closer to fingering than sportweight, very sweet (two ply)
• a gray Lincoln lamb, spun into a textured yarn with the curls sticking out, just because I could do this while maintaining structural soundness . . . and because the curls here, like the color variation in the first Wensleydale, were so appealing (singles)

Topics for another day:

• US as opposed to UK Wensleydales. A long, interesting, sometimes controversial story.
• Selecting the right fibers for novelty yarns that won't fall apart, although a few comments on that now. . . .

All of these fleeces, including the Shetlands, were long enough to play with as low-twist, textured spinning, even though I chose to do that only on two of the samples. With a five-inch staple (all of these were in that vicinity), I can go to low twist, even in a bulky weight, and have ends sticking out in a scenic manner and still have my yarn hold together in use.

__

Now I'm going to post this, in case it threatens to vanish like yesterday's post. I'm shifting to off-line composition and going to train myself to USE it.

There's something so reliable about yarn. Even after I lost the post, I could look at these yarns and smile.

Where I'm working on the project this weekend

Here's where I've been fortunate enough to be able to move some of my boxes to work on the project this weekend:

The big yellow and red container is the backup water supply (it backs up what is in the kettle inside). See the large black bell on the pole at the edge of the deck, to the right of the big windows? Before walking down to use the facilities, especially after dark, it's wise to pull the rope and make it clang loudly to let the bear (which I have not seen) know that there are people in the area and it should amble off as quickly as it can, if it happens to be around.

There's a fantastic view from the front deck:

Although I have the cabin to myself, here are some of the neighbors who live just past the facilities:

That's Jewel; Dancer, who is a BLM rescue horse; and donkey Duke (sort of hiding). The aspens in front of them have had their bark chewed off by the equines (who are not allowed near most of the trees) because these trees are intended for use in some projects and stripping aspen bark is difficult, whereas horses like to eat it.

Here's Nickers, who is a chow-hound:

The person feeding him is Carol, who is also involved with The Project and invited me to use the cabin. Behind her is one of today's visitors, Tuf:

 
Lou also spent the day here:

 
Because of the rain, of which we had a bit more this afternoon, the wildflowers have been blooming abundantly this year. Here's a kind of penstemon:

and wild geranium:

We accomplished a number of things by working all together. Yet it took much longer to get here last night than I thought it would, and then I didn't get to sleep easily, so now it's time for bed. Tomorrow we have another day to make the most of—although I'll also need to drive back to where I usually work, which will cut the available hours in half, unfortunately.

Who needs running water and plumbing?

Why I have been leaving home to get work done

There's way too much happening in my work space at home. This is far from unusual. The professional organizer that I work with just says I'm doing too much in too little space. Then we work together on making the best of it.

I like the space, although I sometimes express a desire to work above ground. I do have windows set high in the wall and, in summer, a view of rose bushes (or at least their bases). Neighbor cats occasionally prowl along under the shrubs and look in at me, curious. The angle from my desk to the window lets me see the sky.

In that space, I do freelance editorial work—in the past several weeks, I've edited two entire books there, and done a final review on parts of a third, and I'll be working on another starting today. The freelance projects cycle in and out. They take time. Each needs a bit of space.

I also run Nomad Press there, Nomad being a very small, independent publishing company that releases about a book a year, technology and energy and finances permitting. These books are on knitting and spinning. They require some space, too, as do all of the functions that support a publishing company—bookkeeping, shipping, promotion. I'm working on three books for Nomad right now, as well as a special pattern by Priscilla Gibson-Roberts for Sock Summit 2009.

Generally, I don't do my own writing in that office. Several times a week, I head for a coffee shop or library or other neutral territory to do that work. It's easier to shift mental gears if I change locations. The laptop makes it possible for me to use these alternate sites. I'll do things in these outside spaces like plan my classes for Sock Summit and write blog posts, as well as any personal writing I can fit in (it's been a while).

I'm also working on a rather large research and writing project, and I work on it everywhere: in the office, at the coffee shop, in bed. Twice in the past few months, I've had the opportunity to set up a base of operations for a week or so at a time in a different space entirely, and I've devoted that time to this research and writing project (and a few blog posts). It's been heavenly. I've gotten so much done.

Here's a view of the desk in my home office before I left for the second of those opportunities, a residency in Salida, Colorado, last month:

The file boxes piled up there went with me: there are more boxes, the ones that didn't take this trip, in the hallway and in the adjacent bathroom, as well as in the part of the office that's around the corner to the left . . . I think the project as a whole is up to around fifty of these boxes, with perhaps another twenty or thirty to go before I'm done. . . . There's a space challenge. Twelve of the boxes have gone with me on each trip out of town. That's the number that fits in the back of my car. So far, I've been able to work on seven or eight boxes' worth in each of those extended trips away.

Here's the space I worked in during the residency:

The space was heavenly! There was even a closet where I could put the items I wasn't working directly  with. When I went into the bedroom, it was amazing—there was just a bed!

Of course, if I'd had other freelance work and the publishing with me, I wouldn't have had any more space than I do at home. But the point is that those other responsibilities weren't in the away space, and so I had this lovely, productive environment—one that lets me continue to hold in my mind the idea of enough space and the possibility of working with a lack of the clutter that simply can't be avoided in my "normal" life.

More materials arrived while I was gone. Here's what my home office looked like when I got back:

The pile of plain cardboard boxes and shipping envelopes behind and under the white file boxes are new materials for this project that arrived while I was gone. Some of the white boxes that came back with me from the residency had to be stacked around the corner in front of the washing machine, which was the only available space. The new stuff needed to be logged in and processed and assigned to its own file boxes. A month later, I've almost completed that task.

The trick with the office under these circumstances is getting to the desk chair. Once I'm there, I'm okay. Sometimes it feels like I'm in the cockpit of an airplane. An underground airplane. Fortunately, all the work I do is interesting: my flights head for intriguing destinations.

But this morning, I'm heading for one of the coffee shops, taking the laptop and just one or two jobs to think about. Simplicity is a form of bliss.

A little bit of the Estes Park Wool Market

Estes Park Wool Market took place in the Rocky Mountains last weekend. It's relatively near my home, so I drove up for the few hours that I could carve out of my current editing schedule.

On the way up, I wondered at the near-complete-stop slowdown of traffic in the Big Thompson Canyon. Minor slowdowns are normal. This is the main road from the east into Rocky Mountain National Park. The narrow road twists a lot, and people from outside the area or in large vehicles get apprehensive and appropriately (for the unfamiliar) cautious. This line-up was far beyond that normal clogging, and I began to worry that there'd been an accident.

Nope. Here's the other reason things slow to a crawl in the canyon:

Those are bighorns. I have no idea why, with all the rain we've had, they thought the scraps of vegetation on the roadside were tastier than the bright green stuff farther from the road. But lots of people had to either shoot photos from their cars or stop on the narrow shoulder and get out their cameras. I only took this photo because I was stopped anyway and figured folks from out of the area would like to see.

It's much more common around here to see elk close-up than bighorns. There are often bighorns in the canyon, but they normally blend into their background so well that they're easy to miss. Imagine these critters up higher and against those rocks. They pretty much vanish.

Here's what the wool market up here looks like—quite different from, say, the Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival!

In the photo below, you can tell it's a little windy. We also got some rain, but not enough to put a damper on things.

There were yaks, always a crowd-pleaser.

 

 

And I like noticing textiles that are not as obvious as those offered in the market:

 

Which is here. It's much smaller than Maryland, but there's never a problem finding wonderful things to admire and, often enough, take home. The collection of vendors at Estes Park always seems unusually fine—both regulars and newcomers.

 

Here's one of the regulars, Sue McFarland, of Susan's Fiber Shop in Wisconsin. She shows up at a lot of festivals, including Maryland. Those who see her in her booths at the festivals, always teaching people on the spot how to do the next thing they want to learn, may not know that she's even busier than she looks (and she always looks very, very busy, usually doing a demo or connecting people with the equipment, books, or materials they need).

 

Fortunately, with that hat and shirt she's easy to spot:

 

She ducked out of the booth to show some sheep she'd brought with her (in addition to all the goodies from her shop):

 

While I was watching, it was a little hard to figure out what group of sheep was being judged. On-site announcements of show classes were perfunctory at best. These were obviously young rams, but of several different breeds. When I got home, I looked up the catalog and discovered this was the "White Handspinning Sheep" show, and its category was one of two, the long wools, grades 48 and below (the other was medium and fine, grades 50 and above). No wonder there was an array of types!

Susan's sheep has a significant percentage of Teeswater genetics. The Teeswater is one of the breeds being produced in the U.S. through what is called "upgrading."

The whole business of working to recreate Teeswaters and Wensleydales in the U.S. using imported British semen on a variety of longwool ewes is controversial in some quarters, because the ewes being used are often from other rare breeds that also need conservation. The specified, acceptable breeds for the U.S. Teeswater upgrading program are registered Border Leicesters, Bluefaced Leicesters, Cotswolds, Leicester Longwools, Lincolns, and North American Wensleydales. The breeds of greatest concern in that list are the Cotswolds, Leicester Longwools, and Lincolns, where the breeds are also rare. (Wensleydales are rare, too, but the ones listed have also been upgraded.)

In Susan's breeding program, she is using her base flock of Romneys (which are not rare). She's not using one of the specified foundation breeds for upgrading—although there's an exception in the upgrading guidelines for North American Teeswaters that is in effect for Romney-based ewes born through June 1 of this year.

Here's what Susan's website says about her Teeswater-heritage sheep: "My base flock started with a 87.5% Teeswater ram. . . . We then are upgrading the breed using the base flock of Romneys. . . . The % of Teeswaters we have for sale now is 43.75%." Note that the percent now for sale is half that of the original ram—half the Teeswater genetics from the imported semen, and half the Romney from the ewe. An excellent and proficient crafter, she's breeding for sheep that grow wools that have the qualities she wants.

This upgrading business can make it hard to identify some of the sheep! I was told the ones in the photo below are U.S. Teeswaters and Wensleydales. British Teeswaters have characteristic face markings that aren't showing up consistently here, most likely because of the upgrading process. Wensleydales have blue faces (black skin under white wool; UK and US).

All controversies aside, these critters are really nice sheep with great wool. They're just starting to grow this year's fleece.

Slow progress on building the garden's raised beds

One of my favorite phrases is the I Ching's "perseverance furthers." Around here, it's the only thing that does. Almost everything takes much longer to accomplish than I think it should.

Last week, an author I've been working with and I sent a book manuscript to its editor-at-the-publisher (I've been its developmental and line editor, working on a freelance basis). I looked into my files and discovered a document outlining our thoughts for this book that was dated April 2004. Just over five years. Well worth the time and effort. But not an "immediate gratification" sort of project.

Same with the garden's raised beds, on a smaller scale.

Here they are as of May 28:

Yup, nothing there but good intentions.

Here's June 5, a week later:

In between, we got the wood, and got it cut, got screws and nails, drilled holes, and fastened things together.

Here's June 7:

My daughter agreed to dig the sod out from inside the frames. When she finished, she covered the area with old newspapers. Her devoted helpers hung in there while she worked; it took two days' worth of spare time, and she caught up a little on some of the newspaper articles she hadn't had time to read when they first appeared. She's done with all this now. I was inside working on the book that just got sent off.

It's a week later and we still don't have any soil or plants in the beds. They'll get there. The afternoon thunderstorms have coincided with the times we might have had available to work on these next steps, and the hail would have pummeled the plants if we'd had them in the ground, so for the moment all is okay.

Meanwhile, things we planted in previous years in the front yard are rewarding us with carefree blossoms:

We're grateful (again) that the garden isn't in yet

We've been working on the raised beds between deadlines, but a few minutes ago had reason (again) to be very happy we haven't gotten the plants installed:

That's hail (again). It's our neighbor's trailer, right next to our driveway. Those clumps of ice are ricocheting off our roof.

Here's some of what accumulated in a couple of minutes. Most of those ice balls are about a half-inch (1.25cm) across.

Nearing the end of editing a book

I need to check how many years the book with a deadline this week has been in the works, but . . . as of last night at about 10:30, it's all in one piece and that piece is a near-final draft. This is freelance work, so I'm not doing the graphics or layout . . . just the words, which can be plenty. All intense editing jobs should incorporate free access to a gym (preferably within fifty feet of the desk the editor can't leave for long), regular massages, and, near the conclusion, sessions with a good chiropractor.

Fortunately, I've learned pretty well by now how to pace myself, that exercise and food are essential, when to set aside a particularly sticky task and come back to it later, what types of breaks work best for recharging both body and mind, and when (and when not) to take them.

On Saturday, I drove nearly 200 miles round-trip to go to half of an all-day shape note singing (singing from Denson (red book) and Norumbega (black book), with a few forays into Cooper (blue) for some alto harmonies). That would seem excessive if I had more opportunities to go to all-day singings, but I only have access to a few a year. I wanted to go for the whole day (9:30 to 3:30), but couldn't let myself leave until I'd reviewed (and returned to the author) everything BUT the one hardest-to-edit chapter in the book. I'd spent time on that chapter earlier in the week before I decided that this was one of those tasks that, if I let it, it would suck up every scrap of energy and time we had, so it needed to be shown who was boss. I put it back in the "in progress" folder and turned to work on the rest of the book.

At 10:19 a.m. on Saturday, I completed the last file on my list (except the set of files for that one chapter). There was not a single editing-capable brain cell left in my skull. If I'd tried to continue, I wouldn't have accomplished anything. At 10:45, I was in the car. By 12:45, I was at the singing. Home by 6:30 with groceries (no time for restocking the pantry all week), then to a play (I'm Not Rappaport, by Herb Gardner, at Bas Bleu Theatre). Straight to bed, no editing.

Sunday: completely dedicated to dealing with the final chapter, which was, indeed, like obedience-training a giant octopus. All the information was there. The author just knows his material too well. I needed to make the chapter work for a reader who does not live and breathe this particular topic (like me). I started at 7:30 a.m. and finished at 10:07 p.m., having taken three short breaks for meals, two to walk the dogs, and a couple of hours in mid-afternoon to do essential errands.

I've still got work to do on the manuscript, but it is now (finally) clear that we will turn it in to the publishing house this week.

Cue "Hallelujah Chorus." I'm trying to think of equivalent works from other musical traditions that are appropriate to the situation and I'm coming up blank. Do Buddhists have celebration songs with that much enthusiasm?

The book we are working on will, by the way, be an extraordinarily fine and useful title that will do excellent work when it is out in the world. (For those who know me, it is not about knitting.) It should be published in the first part of 2010.

Okay, we're going to try this garden thing again (starting late, but not too late)

I grew up around gardens in the Midwest, and my mother and my sister both garden, and I didn't notice that I had trouble growing things in the Pacific Northwest and New England, but so far this semiarid bit of the West has not encouraged my efforts. I did manage a few tomatoes and herbs and asters and marigolds at the first house we lived in here, but the second house (which we are still in) still has one of those blank back yards, not because I haven't tried.

Last year, we put some containers on the deck and harvested tomatoes and basil. It was fun. We probably could have bought the produce cheaper, but it finally gave us a taste of success in this environment. I've spent some time and energy seeing if anybody wanted to take on this yard as part of a SPIN farming project, exchanging use of the space and of water for a small share of the produce. Although there's an active SPIN network in Boulder, an hour away, nobody here has been interested beyond conversation.

So this year, we're taking it to the next level on our own.

Here's part of the space, and some of the supplies:

Here's my plan, and a resource book I learned about through Twitter and Facebook (with both of which I am only moderately acquainted and active):

One of the challenges for me is that square-foot gardening is pretty rectilinear, and I prefer a more natural or cottage-y aesthetic. However, I'm telling myself that anything we do is going to be aesthetically more interesting than what we have now.

When I was browsing for ideas, I came across garden plan 18 at the bottom of this page. I really like that big maze, and we have room enough for it. However, we can't afford to buy the components or fill the beds with dirt. Plus it might be too much for neophytes. . . . Just maybe. . . .

I also like labyrinths, arbors, garden seats, shade. Those are not in the plan.

Moving right along. . . .

I did figure out an arrangement of simple square and rectangular beds that appeals to me for its slightly maze-y feel. Right now, we are only putting in the beds that are drawn more darkly on the graph paper, but we wouldn't know where to place them without the whole concept (which, of course, is subject to change). We'll see what happens after we get those going. There will be two 4x4 beds and one 4x2 one. They will be 6 feet from the fences, leaving room for 2-foot beds and 4-foot aisles on those edges, should we get even more ambitious in the future. Aisles between the beds are a generous 3 feet, but I want plenty of room to play with a wheelbarrow around the periphery, if we decide we want to do things that involve wheelbarrows.

One thing that's appealing about the square-foot method is that the book gives enough information but not too much . . . especially for someone who wants to do everything right the first time, if possible, by researching the heck out of it, and is already involved with many work projects involving masses of material and looming deadlines. Another appealing aspect is that the soil amendments (of which we need plenty, being perched here on clay) get applied in a focused way to exactly where they're needed. If I'm going to use items of limited global supply, like peat, I want to use them efficiently.

While I was looking at hefty bags of compost (our home compost isn't ready yet), my daughter wandered over to the seed section at the garden center. I hadn't planned to buy any seeds without thinking the whole project through a bit more: I just want the beds in place in time to have a place to plunk down the tomato and basil plants we intend to buy at the farmer's market on Sunday.

Here are the seed packets we bought yesterday:

My daughter wants a zucchini plant (which will consume most of one of the larger beds), broccoli raab, kale, the yellow beets, and several of those lettuces. I added the red lettuce, the red beets, and the chard (I sense a color theme in my selections that I hadn't noticed before).

What's missing? Two of my favorite vegetables on earth: carrots and sugar snaps. I'm contemplating those, while browsing the Renee's Garden online catalog. Carrots need more depth than our beds will have, so I am thinking about that. Sugar snaps require support, which is beyond what I can think about right now. So do the tomatoes, but we have tomato cages from last year.

What else is missing? Wood to frame the beds. Cedar Supply is cutting up rough 2x6s for us and we'll pick them up this afternoon. I'm trying to decide if we can get away without cutting away the sod if we lay thick strata of newspaper and cardboard, topped with weed barrier, beneath each of the beds.

And here's the primary garden helper, who loves raspberries and will pick them for herself:

We don't currently have any raspberries. She probably likes strawberries, too. We're pondering this situation: it's one reason we find the square-foot gardening concept appealing. Because of the modular nature of the beds, we could make wire cages to set over the plants to limit the self-sufficient tendencies of certain critters. Although this helper is quite capable, she would probably need to ask us to grant her access to the strawberry beds (she probably, although not for certain, couldn't lift the cover off herself). We don't mind sharing. She would, however, cheerfully and daintily eat every morsel.

Our gardening assistant is ever-so-fond of the back yard even without anything other than grass to nibble on, and even though she can no longer get up the stairs by herself (that's why she wears a harness, so we can give her a little extra support when she needs to climb). She will be happy if we spend more time in the yard, even if we don't grow any berries for her this year.