Good morning, my friends. It was an all slow-stitching day yesterday, and I was able to finish off two quilts. Yay me! Before any sewing could be done, though, I wanted to do some things outside. Thunder and lightning were in our forecast, and so there was no time to waste. The lightning never materialized, as far as I could tell. Later in the afternoon, we had one big thunder clap, and that was all. It rained off and on, but really, nothing to write home about weather-wise. (You'll note that I am writing about it, however.)
Outside, I filled the bird feeders and then took a walk around. It's been a couple of days since I checked on things. This Red Cardinal clematis seems puny this year when compared with years past. It’s still putting out flowers, but not as many as previous years.
Right beside it, the purple hydrangea is covered in flowers.
It’s a large bush. In a few more days, it should be spectacular.
Around back, this poor little thing didn’t get watered enough when we were traveling in Alaska last year. It’s much smaller than it was before, but it is surviving and blooming.
It has both blue…
And pink flowers on the same plant.
To its right, the variegated hydrangea is doing just fine.
It too is covered in flowers at the moment.
The vegetable garden is looking good. It can probably go a few days without hoeing again. Checking the bee garden, I noticed some St. John’s Wort has joined the party. We never know what we’ll get in the bee garden, and so I keep scanning it for more color whenever I’m out there.
The Checkers dahlia is in full form.
I expect we’ll begin to see more from the Fuzzy Wuzzy dahlia soon. So far, it has just this one flower, but more buds on the way.
In the greenhouse, there are several tennis-ball sized tomatoes and more that are smaller. I believe it’s going to be a good year for slicing tomatoes.
More flowers have appeared on the Stargazer Lily. You can also see the deer have been nibbling at it.
This is the calla lily I mentioned a few days ago. It is putting out another shoot where I’ve marked with a red arrow. If it blooms, it will have a pink flower. Maybe we’ll see something from it this year.
The cherries are deepening in color. These are probably still at least a week away.
The blueberries are driving me crazy, ripening one berry at a time, it seems.
Okay, so back inside, I went to work on the block for “Le Jardin.” It was close enough to being finished I spent a little extra time on it. It still needs borders. I’ll work on this today.
With that finished, a stitching emergency was imminent. My next stop was to head directly downstairs where I could trace the “Love Sampler” for this morning’s stitching pleasure. Phew! Close call on that stitching emergency.
Satisfied that my stitching self woud be safe with a new project, I was ready to spend some time finishing off the quilt binding. Sadie was my helper cat for this.
With her assistance, I turned the fourth and final corner, and then stitched it to the end.
There’s a wall downstairs where I hang some of the larger quilts for display, switching them out seasonally. I was ready for a change, and so we hung it there. It ends up at 55 x 78 inches.
And that was my goal for June’s
So I’ve finished with a day or two to spare.
After that, I had to decide whether to spend time in the sewing room or finish off the Hawksbill Honu. I decided I was still in a slow-stitching zone, and it seemed like a good way to spend the remainder of the day. It was a quick trip around for that binding, and I had myself a second finish. This ends up at 21 x 24 inches.
Okay, and that brought me to the end of my sewing day.
Lobster tails have been on sale at our grocery store, and so it seemed like a good time to try this. I made just half the recipe. The lobster tails were small, and so I asked for three. Earlier in the day, I dropped those puppies in a pan of boiling water, cooked them, removed their shells, and then cut them up to use in the pasta. They were refrigerated until just at the end of finishing off the dish.
I made it pretty much as written. The recipe would have you divide the tomatoes, cooking some at the beginning, and adding the rest toward the end. That didn’t work very well since most everything was already hot and plate-ready while the newest addition of tomatoes still needed to cook some. In the future, I’d just add them all at once. There didn’t seem to be any advantage to adding them later. It’s a keeper. I’ll make it again.
Okay, so today I’m going to be spending some time in the kitchen. Maybe as much as a year ago, I learned I could freeze egg yolks or egg whites that had been separated and not used. I’ve been freezing them in zip-lock bags, occasionally using one or two, here and there. Recently, though, with all the birthday creme brulees and Father’s Day Eggs Benedict, I’ve accumulated way too many frozen egg whites.
It’s embarrassing to admit that I currently have 27 egg whites in my freezer. (By the way, egg yolks can also be frozen, and I’ve used frozen [thawed] egg yolks to make hollandaise sauce. You wouldn’t know the difference.) I’m going to try a couple of things today. In the process, I’m hoping to use all of the egg whites. I’ll say more about that in tomorrow’s post. Also, I’m going to make some more watermelon sorbet. There is still puree left from the last batch.
If there’s time for sewing, I’d like to get the borders sewn on the block for “Le Jardin.” Also, I’d like to make July’s aqua inverted star. That will probably take me to the end of the day. If there’s still time left, I can start working my way through my list of WIP’s. There’s always plenty to do to keep me busy.
All right, my friends. I hope y’all enjoy your Sunday. We’ve had some weird weather here, but it seems as if things will improve over the next week. I hope your summer weather is treating you well.
