milly and tilly

Garden Update

2026-08-06T08:00:00.000-06:00

The few seedlings I started are still inside and wrapped up in their snails. I ended up buying some seed starts and never added more soil to the snails so they've not grown very much, but they are still mostly alive. I should send them to the compost bin to make space. The garden is growing quite well though, I've not been neglecting it too much.

Most of the vegetables are growing in straw and are doing quite well! We've got some tomatoes, two types of cucumbers, and some beans.

The peas are doing less well, I am blaming the heat and am going to start a few more plants with seeds I've collected from these plants so we can have a fall harvest too.

Everything else is growing in soil. There are watermelon, dahlias, potatoes that were not harvested last year that started making new plants (not pictured), and sunflowers! I threw all the sunflower seeds I collected last year into a small raised bed so they are quite dwarfed, but they are still blooming!

Dahlia Bouquet

2026-08-04T08:00:00.000-06:00

Hello Again! The dahlias are blooming and I made another bouquet!

This bouquet is made with dahlias and dusty miller, both from my garden. It’s a simple bouquet, I thought the silvery leaves would look nice with the showy pink flowers. I should have several more weeks of dahlias for bouquets so I’ll need to try something different next time.

Another foraged floral bouquet!

2026-03-31T08:00:00.045-06:00

This one was made with the help of my niece. We decided the bouquet needed ten flowers (the greenery did not count towards this total) so she picked some dandelions and grape hyacinth from the yard. Then cut some coyote brush for the greenery and Japanese pieris for the remaining flowers. I think the flower clusters each counted as one, but we still went over our target of ten flowers.

Seedlings

2026-03-26T08:00:00.086-06:00

I’ve got some seedlings! The seed starting is going okay, tomatoes are growing and it might be a bit too cold in the basement for the peppers. I’m going to try to find my little heat mat this weekend and hope it helps the other seeds germinate because having only two pepper seedlings is sad.

Speaking of seeds not germinating, my direct seeding outdoors has so far been a flop. The slugs could have gotten to them, but I think it’s probably just been a bit too cold. Maybe I’ll be surprised by some seedlings as it starts warming up.

Another weekend task is to place the second raised bed. After a lot of digging, the first now sits in the slope. I think I’ll be postponing a soil purchase for these two beds and sow sunflowers directly in the ground inside one or possibly both beds. I should also look at my garden plan and figure out what other seeds need starting!

Cherry Blossoms

2026-03-24T08:00:00.042-06:00

It’s Sakura season and instead of heading down to the riverfront to check out those trees, I drove east to see some other trees. This park had their flowering cherry trees lit up at night so we headed over just after sunset and snapped a few photos.

Rainbow Photo Walk

2026-03-17T08:00:00.027-06:00

Over the weekend, I went on a little garden walk that turned into an impromptu rainbow photo walk. While walking, we looked for each color of the rainbow, starting with red. My niece was the photo director, pointing out what colorful thing I needed to photograph. She even took over the camera to take the "Green" photo. Here is the rainbow we found:

red. orange. yellow. green. blue. purple.

Yesterday was my birthday!

2026-03-12T08:00:00.022-06:00

Yesterday was my birthday! I don’t have anything new to share so I’m sharing this birthday bear painting I made almost eight years ago! It’s pretty cute and now I’m thinking I should add a few more paintings to the series. Any suggestions?

Craft Fail

2026-03-10T08:00:00.037-06:00

I've been wanting to make a spiderweb trellis as a gift for my friend and I finally got started on it yesterday. The plan was to use some of the leftover heavy gauge wire from my row cover as the frame and weave some smaller gauge wire to make the web. It turns out it needs much more support because the frame is way too floppy. I gave up with this design basically immediately. The next try will probably use branches for the frame. Hopefully it works out.

Basement Wall Makeover

2026-03-05T08:00:00.071-07:00

We are working on giving the basement some 70's vibes and a big step towards that was installing this fun yellow and orange floral wallpaper!

This project has been a wish for quite some time and earlier this year I placed the wallpaper order. When it finally arrived we had to get to work prepping the wood paneling. We filled all the grooves, smoothed out the surface the best we could, then primed the wall to make sure no brown peeked through. This is the wall after the first layer of filler.

While hanging the wallpaper I got very frustrated aligning the flowers and could only do a few panels at a time so I could calm down. There are some places that the flowers don't perfectly align, but when you step back the wall looks pretty good. I'm pretty happy with how the basement is looking so far. The next little project is painting the window trim on the wall to the left. I think that middle orange color will look quite nice!

Shorten the Daffodil

2026-03-03T08:00:00.001-07:00

I made another foraged floral bouquet! One of the flowers even came from a neighbor’s yard (after asking permission though).

Over the weekend I noticed that the Japanese pieris in the yard was now blooming so I clipped two branches to start this bouquet. After wandering around the yard for a bit I picked a few sword fern fronds then started building my bouquet. It definitely needed a large statement flower at this point so I got up the nerve to take a daffodil from the neighbor’s yard. They happened to be outside so I got permission and don’t have to feel bad about taking their flower.

Now that I’ve been looking at the photo of this bouquet, it would probably look better if the daffodil was shortened a little bit. I might do that, but probably won’t.

Garden Update

2026-02-26T08:00:00.079-07:00

I’m slowly starting my garden seeds. In January I direct sowed brussels sprouts, broccoli, cabbage, snow peas and some spinach. So far there might be one seedling that is growing. It’s very tiny and I think it looks like a brassicaceae, but it could also be a weed. I’ll find out when it gets true leaves.

This week I did my next round of seed starting. These were sown indoors since they are tomatoes, tomatillos, and peppers. I tried the snail starting method for the first time and made only a little bit of a mess. To make these soil roll ‘snails’, I took some scrap fabric added soil, folded the fabric over, and rolled it all up like a cinnamon roll. Next I watered the rolls very well and added the seeds on top. One drawback I’m realizing is that if you are doing multiple types of the same plant in the same roll it is difficult to label them. I decided to not label my seeds so hopefully I have enough of a gap between seed types that I’ll know which tomatoes are which.

Bingo Progress

2026-02-24T08:00:00.116-07:00

Two months of the year are (mostly) gone so I’m doing a resolution check in! In hopes of getting a black out on my bingo card, I need to regularly look at what projects remain. (I had already forgot I wanted to make a photo calendar.) Here is my progress:

I’ve completed three tasks on my crafty bingo card. That’s 12.5% and we are done with only 15% of the year. The socks are still in progress which has had me feeling discouraged (knitting isn’t interesting me right now), but I am planning on marking another project from the card tonight so I’m doing alright. What project should I start next?

Not a Snow Day

2026-02-19T08:00:00.082-07:00

This winter has been the most dry of Portland's history and while I have been enjoying the frequent sunny afternoons and clear night skies (winter stargazing is such a rarity!), I was really looking forward to the snow that was forecasted for this week/today. Unfortunately, the forecast of snow for today turned into a forecast of a mix of rain and snow which then turned into a forecast of rain which ultimately ended up being mostly no rain.

Whatever weather you are having I'm sending you a virtual snow day where you can spend some time cuddled up on the couch with a cute kitten or pup or book or whatever makes you cozy. Hopefully this sweetie will cuddle me for a bit tonight.

Foraged Bouquet

2026-02-17T08:00:00.054-07:00

I made a bouquet this weekend! I felt a little weird about taking parts of plants from my neighbors so I just used plants from my own yard. This bouquet is made with sedge, arborvitae, and rosemary. The rosemary is blooming now and their little blue flowers are just so cute!

Maybe when things are flourishing more I'll feel okay about taking bits of my neighbor's plants. Even when I don't, I should continue making foraged bouquets. It can be my new frugal hobby!

Foraged Floral Arrangements

2026-02-12T08:00:00.052-07:00

My neighbor's daffodils are blooming, we still have dandelions and beach daisies, and I'm thinking I need to make a foraged floral arrangement for Valentine's Day.

This is an arrangement from a few years ago when I was making foraged floral arrangements on a semi-regular basis. It has dandelions, muscari, honeyberry branches and possibly some maple flowers in the bottom right corner. None of these plants are traditionally used in floral bouquets which is why I find foraged floral bouquets so interesting. I think I'll wander around my neighborhood tonight with some pruners and a basket. Hopefully I find some interesting flowers and foliage for my bouquet. I'll share my creation next week!

A Pony!

2026-02-10T08:00:00.060-07:00

Lunar New Year starts next week! 2026 is the year of the horse so I dug up a very old photo of this Shetland pony I took when visiting Scotland. It's so cute and I really want to take a vacation now. I've got nearly a week to finish shedding my skin (2025 was the year of the snake) so I can start this new year off right. My metaphorical skin shedding is cleaning out my closet which I've slowly been working on since January.

And if you didn't know, I've made printable masks of each of the zodiac animals that you can decorate and wear. They are a quick and silly craft project. All 12 of the animal masks in my Lunar New Years series are linked below. You can wear a horse, your zodiac animal, or your favorite of bunch! Enjoy!

Rabbit mask, Dragon mask, Snake mask,

Horse mask, Goat mask, Monkey mask,

Rooster mask, Dog masks, Pig mask,

Rat mask, Ox mask, Tiger mask

Sock Progress

2026-02-05T08:00:00.045-07:00

I was really expecting to have one of the socks done by now, but I’ve been spending too much time playing Animal Crossing it seems.

Anyway, I haven’t been knitting and if I want to finish these anytime soon I think I need to put on an audiobook and get to it. I also think I need to make several little projects for back up blog posts since I like having lazy weekends.

Asters

2026-02-03T08:00:00.047-07:00

I was taking photos the other day of the interesting flowers in the yard. Some are still blooming, it certainly doesn't seem like winter here. All of them happen to be in the Asteraceae family.

goldenrod. new beach daisy. beach daisy. false dandelion. coyote brush.

Sock Progress

2026-01-29T08:00:00.023-07:00

I decided on brown to go with the pink toes and added a few stripes. The top will probably need some pink stripes too or some sort of flair.

There is still a sock and a half to knit so I need to dedicate more time to knitting and less time to scrolling the internet!

Raised Garden Bed

2026-01-27T08:00:00.041-07:00

We finished making one of the raised beds this weekend!

The other raised bed is sitting in the garage ready to be assembled. One we finish it, we have the really hard work of digging into the rockiest soil to get them mostly level on the slope. Here are a few more progress photos.

Knitting Socks

2026-01-22T08:00:00.068-07:00

After finishing the scarf for Ruby, I was planning on knitting a shawl with the new mohair I recently purchased, but too many of my socks are wearing out and I'm not interested in mending them since they are so thin basically all over so I'm knitting some socks instead.

These will be tube socks with a spiral rib. I'm using some cotton worsted weight yarn that I bought some time ago with the intention of crocheting granny squares. Crocheting just isn't my thing though, but I'm a bit worried about my yarn selection for these socks. Cotton should be fine, and I usually like a thicker sock so maybe the worsted weight will be fine too. I've just finished the toe on the first sock using this pastel pink color and I'm trying to decide which of the other four colors I want to switch to and if there will be stripes in this first pair. Lets hope I finish this pair of socks quickly!

Garden Plan

2026-01-20T08:00:00.120-07:00

I’ve got a garden plan for 2026! It’s a series of spreadsheets and notes with dates of when and where to plant things.

After sorting everything I'll be planting by date, I realized I’m officially behind on seed starting for the cool season crops since our last frost is in March so broccolis and Brussels sprouts will be direct seeded this week (or probably weekend) along with some snow peas and spinach! But I'll have plenty of warm season crops to start over the next few months so I'll still be able to try the snail seed starting method.

Part of my garden plans include building the two raised beds I have the materials for (hopefully this weekend too) and make two additional raised beds (that I still need to purchase materials for). I also want to do some more seed organizing. I have this rainbow seed organizer I made years ago plus a shoe box full of seeds. My goal is to get the seeds I'll be planting organized by date of planting so I'll be easily able to grab the seeds I need to plant when I need to plant them. I'm also hoping that I use up most of the older seeds since I'll be really gardening this year so when I get more seeds there will be space for them!

Have you figured out your gardening plans for this year?

A Scarf for Ruby

2026-01-15T16:30:00.004-07:00

I finished the scarf and my niece wore it to school yesterday! She is very pleased with it and I get to mark off one space on my bingo card!

Vintage Tapestry Needlework

2026-01-13T08:00:00.142-07:00

Another project I completed last year was framing these vintage tapestries my great grandmother made.

I think these floral tapestries were originally intended to be seat cushions, but they never made it on to chairs. Instead, they were stored in boxes for decades until my mother and I decided they needed to be displayed.

We started this project by looking for frames. This part took a very long time, months and months until I finally found these green ornate oval frames. They were originally mirrors and I think they are perfect for this project.

The next part didn’t take long, but I put it off for months and months per my usual style. We blocked the tapestries so they were more straight then I cut them into ovals and attached them to some very thick fusible interfacing. To finish, they were placed inside the frames and the backing was glued on. Now they are hanging on a wall!

Knitting Progress

2026-01-08T08:00:00.042-07:00

This is the start of one of my resolutions, A Scarf for Ruby. I’m knitting a basic garter stitch and using left over yarn from my stash. It’s about a third of the way done and I will probably be switching to a different color of yarn because I think I’ll run out of this pink.

I need to get knitting and finish this so I can mark the first item on my bingo card. With 24 projects, if I complete just two a month I can get a blackout!