triskaidekaphobia or Friday the 13th phobia

That is not a trait I have.     I just find it neat that this June's Full Moon (aka: Strawberry Moon or also known as the Honey Moon) falls on the same day as Friday the 13th.  Not that we could see the moon in our area with all the rain fall.

 My apologies to my readers and followers of the inactivity here lately. In the future I hope to post at least once a month of whatever highlights are going on. But the yard and gardens have been taking most of my time with my abilites and energies.

I've been planting whenever I can between raindrops, extreme heat with that humidity or errands pulling me away, it's amazing that anything has really been done..... but the gardens are really taking great shape, the process is close to getting completed, YEAH ME!!!.   Synchronistically an email highlight I received today from Neale Donald Walsch  states:  ...that when you see the light at the end of the tunnel, it is not beneficial to go out and build more tunnels.
Message received, LOL!

My sewing and quilting though have taken a third row seat with all the gardening chores I've been attending, besides of course medical appointments, grandchildren tending and the normal duties that eat up my time. Notice that's a third row seat not even a back seat!

First up, I'll share a photo of my March UFO finish.  Just in time for 2015, I'm not late, I'm early!  LOL 

This was one of my finishes from the annual quilt retreat I attend in March with Trudy. 

Actually worked on the binding on National Binding Day.  Purely just by coincidence. 

We  had a blast as usual.   Great time reconnecting with friends and also got some UFOs progressed with.  A win win situation.  My double four patch is all assembled together for the center area, next is the border treatments.  Will be using both that WOW and the bolder lime green for it sometime in my future.

 

The blocks consist of fabrics I've had in my stast for years.  This dark purple floral print in the center was leftovers from a top I made my baby girl back in 1978 or something like that.  Great to see all those family fabrics thrown into this quilt top.

 

Also at the retreat I finished a couple of pillowcases with fabric I've had in since forever it seems. 

Mardee's quilt she uses on her bed that I'd love to make some time.  What a sweet little quilt.

 

Trudy was working on a fantastic Leaf quilt.  It is the last promise made for a friend's family (made from Cherl's start and  stash).  I know I have a picture of it somewhere but think it might be on my phone camera that I need to download.  Will share a photo of it when I find it. 

 

My PGD#1 has been crafting as well.  She's made so many of these rubber band bracelets that she's been taking and making orders from her friends at school.  She's only charging $1.00 per band and is becoming quite the entrepeneur. 

 

 

And the youngest grandson is a joy and loves assembling puzzles.  A nice family activity that we all enjoy.

 

It was rather late, but we finally got the fruit trees pruned and our oldest tree looks heathier for it.  Probably no fruit for this one this year but that's okay with me.  We are true gardeners at heart and will sacrifice now to enjoy the harvest later if need be.

Much has been going on will be back to share more soon. 


 

Finally

Spring Patchabilities is done.  What was the holdup besides my natural tendancy to procrastinate and to overthink a process, you might ask.  Well I had a vision of daffodils dancing in front of the embroidered gate and I finally made got some time to play.

First I tried coloring the recyled Tevlar (sp?)  mailing envelopes to hold onto the color.  That was a bust.

So I then  cut out diffferent sized circles to heat shrink it.  Thinking I would paint them afterwards with an acrylic paint.  Some shrinkage did happen but I wasn't satisfied with the end result so ditched that option. 

May have to try that out on another project with more shapes baked in molded cups before using the heat gun.

Then I thought, perhaps I could fuse 2 fabrics wrong sides together to make my imagined dancing daffodils and use some of those Shiva Paintsticks and the other brand of fabric markers that I bought at Michaels to blend more colors.  So I played around with that for quite a while.  I couldn't manipulate the fabric to come out like I envisioned, so ditched that.

Then I thought perhaps some silk flowers could lend their way into helping me to create those daffodils.  Natta!

This is her, SPRING PATCHABILITIES.

That's when I called it done and proceeded to quilt, bind and hang it on the wall. Now you know why I am slow to finish things. I am my worst enemy for finishing as I always am thinking more and what if I tried that scenerios. Seems like I start with a baby quilt and before you know it I get a king quilt done.

 

Despite having thatunseasonal 80 degree weather several weeks ago the gardens and landscapes are really looking like Spring is here. These two pics are where I tore up my garden and transplanted , weeded and mulched last year. Can't wait to see how much better this will be. Crossing my fingers now.

Next gardening focal point will be to revamp that section  that sets behind the gas tanks and the garage.

Jane

.

Going, going, going along smoothly...

My schedule is still rather busy and the days are just flying by. Actually got out to do some yard work with DH this am since cardiac rehab doesn't happen on Tuesdays, Mom is visiting a sister in Vt and the grand kids are now at day care. Felt so nice to work several hours without any interruptions, just the times needed to take a break with our health issues. We actually transplanted rhubarb and created a newer bed near the grape arbor.



The technique to make this raised bed was done by the mode I learned last year on the garden tour. A gentleman with an absolutely gorgeous raised bed gardens told me how he did his so we are trying that this year. His method was to cut the sod in a 10x10 area on three sides and then flip it onto the tops on the neighboring sod. It allows an edge around the garden perimeter while elevating the interior of the garden. He said that by flipping the sod it kills the grass especially when mulched. We did leave one rhubarb plant alone since it is rather hot for transplanting. For the rest, we actually cut off the rhubarb vegetation and nested the split roots into a manure compost before burying them with thick layers of newspapers and finally topping them off with mulch. I hope this works, time will tell.



The island garden where the rhubarb was, had overgrown badly with weeds, so I suggested we cut it down and then start working the soil. While in the middle of doing this, I thought, why bother having this garden here at all. We could have the perennials planted as edge type along the property boundary. So we plan to move the rest of the perennials in the spring, when we have more raised beds ready. It will be so much better than these smack dab in the middle of the backyard. As for the camper, instead of storing it near the back boundary of the woods, we could park it behind the garage, away from the eye sight line while on the decks,m but readily available and much handier behind the garage.

Last week while Mom and I had a few hours we managed to make these small purses. Guess what the fabric is?

They are Dish towel Bags. What cute towels. Mom brought these towels up with her from Florida thinking that it would be a fun and quick project and she was right. It took more time thinking about how to make them than it did actually making them. There is an outside pocket that has a separating seam down the center and the inside of mine, I also placed a pocket along one side, that's the aqua one. Mom place a smaller pocket inside her cahrtreuse one too.

Here are a couple of snaps of my current focuses:

Shabby Chic's BOM and I finally got the January block embroidered!

The quilt I am making for Cheryl's nephew Chris.


We did have a couple of family BBQs this past weekend. DH and our son stoked up the smoker grill and we dined on turkey, pork butt, bratwurst, kielbasa and even a few Chicken breasts. We didn't actually have all of that at one dinner, just smoked them all at once while it was smoking. Makes meals easy this week with everything all cooked, I just needed to throw some salads together. What a breeze!
While the smoker was cooling down, the grand kids decided to have a little race, even the fourteen year old had fun. Of course I was still in the kitchen picking and washing up, so they called me outside to have a chuckle too!





The 14 year old (PGS#3) actually was riding the hot Diego hot wheels too! Kids! Gotta love em!

Jane

Gardening.

Lupine growing where it wasn't planted but looking great where it is.



One of my poppy plants. This one had around 40+ flowers, it was spectacular!




The grapes on the grapevine are abundant this year. Those nasty schaefer beatles haven't gotten to it yet, but they have devoured my snowball bush. Seems like they love the white or very light colored flowers and tender shoots. I'll get hubs to spray and try to protect our grape clusters tomorrow.


The hurrier I go, the slower I seem to get. Despite my repeated efforts at organizing and cleaning my home there remains an unending list of areas that need attention and chores that need to get done. We had started some seeds indoors for our garden, but as yet, they need to be planted outside. A friend went to a Kripalu retreat recently and she came home with a new mantra- "HURRY SLOWLY". Makes you think doesn't it.
Perhaps I should take that mantra up as well besides already actually doing it because of my my pain conundrums. Hopefully I'll be able to report that the little bit of garden we will be putting in this year will be done by next week.

The problem that our old garden has it has a WEED from H*** in it and I can't get rid of it. I even removed all of my perenials and stripped them down to the bare bulbs sacrificing the flowers for a season to try to eliminate it before being replanted but the pervasive weed still remains and thrives. I'm leaning towards the thought that I need to place a barrier within my garden to totally stop the invasion towards the rest of my perenials, rhubarb, pear tree and such and call that area the weed garden. Hubs has started mowing paths through the lower garden to try to enjoy some of the flowers there. He even used killers in my garden which worked great on the plants but not on the weed! Go figure.

This is what it looks like:

See how the vegetation reminds you of a Chrysanthamum leaf. Sorry if I tortured the spelling.


Any ideas? I need help. I'll be stopping by the Cooperative Extension office tomorrow to see what they recommend.
So with that going on in the garden, we thought of having some raised beds with new soil and start again. GRRRRRRRR..... It's hard enough to feel well enough trying to keep up, without all that extra work, but it is worth it and there is nothing better than home grown tomatoes and freshly picked peas.

Jane