Tomato Ready

Yesterday being National Quilting Day and all, I decided to be contrary (like Mary) and clean out the garden greenhouse. Actually, it had nothing to do with National Quilting Day...it was a break in the weather. The rain is back today, and so I'm glad we took advantage of the hired help's day off to get this nasty project complete. Every year we say we'll clean out the tomatoes before the plants die and rot. Every year, we lie. It makes for a rather skanky greenhouse come spring, but now it's all spiffy and ready to receive tomatoes. I'll also be planting lettuce and starting the zucchini and sunflowers in here. Maybe a basil plant or two. I do loves me some basil pesto.

With that job done, I took a stroll around the yard to see what's what. The cherry trees are about to burst into bloom. We have some more warm weather headed our way later in the week, and so I'm hoping they'll have the good sense to open while the bees are out and about.

Then I remembered that it's about this time of year that the trilliums start blooming in the woods, and so I headed down there to see what I could see. For one thing, this wild red flowering currant that grows at the edge. It's in full flower right now.

I didn't see any trilliums...or even any sign of them, and so I don't think I've missed them. I'll keep checking. I did see some other little wildflowers carpeting the walks, including these little purple guys called "toothwort". They're about the size of a dime.

Also, these woodland violets. It's always struck me as weird that they aren't purple, but there you go.

Back up by the house the heather is in its heyday.

Recall that I was hoping we'd see more honeybees now that our neighbor has so generously installed four beehives on his property. Sure enough, the heather was crawling with them. That ought to help our fruit trees.

The star magnolia is covered in blossoms now too. It's one of my favorites.

This bumble bee seemed mesmerized by the whole thing.

Our lilac is covered with buds now too. Last year it only had a few at the top. This year, I'm expecting more of a show from it.

We have lots of yellow daffodils and also these white ones with a yellow center.

And the catnip is off to a good start. This made me miss Gracie. She loved to sit beside this pile of rocks and graze on the fresh catnip. In fact, I made this little rock wall around it so she wouldn't roll on it and break it off. 

Perhaps I should go in search of a calico cat stake to remember her by. It could be called the Gracie Memorial Catnip Garden. In fact...done. It should arrive in about two weeks.

Cute, huh?

So about that time Tractor Man had retired to the interior of the house to watch Formula One, and I took that as my cue that we were finished in the greenhouse. I pulled a few of the approximately 700,000 weeds currently thriving in the yard, and I really do mean "a few," and I went back inside to finish up the blocks for the Mumm's the Word quilt. I had seven small log cabins to do, and I'm happy to say they are finished!

The last thing I needed to do was to cut some "filler" pieces, including 28 of the 1-1/2 inch squares.

And now, Section 5 is complete.

When I work on this again, I'll be sewing it into a flimsy. Also, I pulled fabrics to use for the borders, but then realized I didn't have anything I liked for the back. I went online to Fabric.com and found this one on sale. I think it will make a great back for this quilt.

This morning I started the embroidery for the Written in Thread quilt I pieced together last week. I've been stitching exclusively with black floss for weeks, and so I've been anxious to get to work on this piece that uses many colors. Of course, I started with that "e" at the bottom of the banner which was stitched in (you guessed it) black floss. I had just a little snip left in my needle, and so I used it. Now...colors away!

It's Slow Sunday Stitching at Kathy's Quilts, and so I'll be linking up.

Today, I'll be sewing the Yard Art quilt into a flimsy. We're planning to go out for dinner and then to a movie this evening. It's going to be a pretty low key day.