Flower Friday. : : Echium

Often called Pride of Madeira, we have clearly found the right place for this striking plant. It gets huge and outgrew its first spot but it can get as big as it wants below the olive hedge that lines our driveway. When my mother lived in Pacific Grove on the Monterey coast it (the coast) was lined with echium and kniphofia (red hot poker plants). We planted some of those down there too, but they couldn't hold their own against the echium and have now been engulfed. One never quite knows what will grow in our 'soil' but the echium is a great success story.

Tobi was busy with her Harvest for the Hungry plant sale this morning. It is a garden which was started decades ago by my friend's sister and her husband. The idea was that it would be a place for food insecure people to grow their own food. That never worked out, but it continues to be worked by a team of volunteers who support their efforts by selling plants they grow in their own gardens once a year. The produce from the garden is given to food banks . I remember visiting the couple who started it long before we ever considered moving here, and I still can't remember exactly where their one room house built on the back of  friends property was, but I'm pretty sure it was around where we live now. They have long since moved on, but the garden they started continues to thrive.

I spent much of the afternoon starting the knitting project I bought along with Dana a week ago. It's a top down sweater starting with the neck. It is knit on fairly small needles and the neck ribbing started with a row with a stitch involving a cable needle. It took me forever to knit that first row because the cast on is tight, the needles are small and my arthritic thumbs, though not really painful just aren't very cooperative. I was rolling right along by the time I got to the third or forth row but then I realized the work was twisted on the circular needles. I've put it away for the time being. I'll have to take it out and do it over, but will have to decide whether that fiddly first row is really worth it.

We're going to the neighbors' for dinner. Spike is invited to play with Hazel, their basset hound. He doesn't really know how to play but Hazel continues to try to teach him.