Sunny Sunday

The weatherman promised us one more day of sunshine yesterday, and so I got out for a walk. It gave me an opportunity to play with my new Like that Garden app as I photographed every blooming thing. Since my post yesterday, I learned a little more about it. So let's see what I found yesterday.

This yellow was one of the flowers I was uncertain about after my walk on Saturday. Based on the foliage, I've gone with Summer Rape as the name for it. (Sounds like the name of a bad movie, doesn't it?) This is the plant canola oil comes from.

This one is laurel.

I studied this one for quite a while trying to determine what it is. My money is on dewberry, but maybe one of you knows better. It grows on a vine, if that's any help.

This next one is lilac. That kind of blew me away because I've only seen lilac in purples and pinks. When the app told me lilac, I started looking at it more closely, and I'm convinced. It definitely has lilac foliage, and the flowers and buds are the same...only the color seems off. So there you go.

No question here...these are apple blossoms.

Here's another one I studied for quite a while before settling on Winter Hazels. These lantern-like flowers hang from tree branches. The information told me it was a native of Asia, and that threw me off. Nevertheless, it is sold in Portland area nurseries, and grown here in the Pacific Northwest.

Here's another one I studied for quite a while and then settled on Spanish Bluebells. Again, I was thrown off because it is a native of Spain and Northern Africa. But when I searched more on the internet, I saw lots of pages devoted to identifying this as an invasive species, including our own National Park Service. So there you go.

Also...wheat. Only I just knew that. I didn't need the app.

The walk at the bottom of our hill is about a two mile stretch down and back (four miles total). At my turnaround point, there is a kind of nasty, stinky drainage ditch. It's next door to a nursery, and so I think the runoff from the nursery accounts for the stinkiness of it. Lots of fertilizers and so lots of nasty-looking stuff growing there.

As I walked by, I heard a "plop" into the water and a chirping that sounded like a bird. I stood and looked for a long time. I saw a splash as if someone had chucked a rock into the water, but still couldn't see any sign of life. Finally, I walked on, and about a hundred yards down the road, I heard the sound again and then saw about half a dozen frogs jump from the dirt into the water. Cool!

Also...these tracks. The road has just received a shiny new coat of asphalt, and so tracks and tread marks show up very clearly. I have a feeling Mr. Raccoon was walking along right here.

When I got back home, I checked the new starts in the greenhouse...nothing growing yet, but the basil looks worse than ever. Sigh. As I was coming out, I noticed these tulips the squirrels forgot to eat.

Also, the bleeding heart is very close to blooming. Look toward the background and you'll see we're growing cattails too.

It was mid-afternoon by then, and I decided to get a start on the April block for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge. The color for April is orange with bits of black or brown. I decided to make this block with the awning because I had some good fabric for the awning. I'm going to make it again when red is chosen because I have some great red awning fabric. This is the picture off the pattern...sorry about the poor quality.

This is as far as I got before I had to stop for the day. I'll probably finish this one up today.

This morning I finished up Block #49 for the Live, Love, Teach quilt. This is Jackie's original submission.

Here it is rendered in fabric and floss. I avoided having to stitch through that stiff applique by cutting the center out of the fusible and just fusing the edges. 

There's another block almost identical to this one that I'll be doing later on. The two women were student teachers together...or something...I forget what Lisa told me about that. I know she'll correct me and I'll get it right next time.

So we have a day of rain and then we'll be back to sunshine. I could get used to this weather. This week I'm hoping to get my annuals planted in their pots and then I'm going to tackle those flowering plum trees to prune out all the dead stuff from their centers. They're really quite a tangled mess, and so that will probably take me quite some time. As for sewing, I'm going to finish up the rainbow block, and then I'm going to piece together the flimsy for the Cats of a Different Color. I have some great fabrics and a good idea about how to do it. That's always a good place to start.

Finally, I need to announce the winner of my April Fool's Day Giveaway. I've consulted Mr. Random Number Generator, and came up with...

#17--works4me

Congratulations, works4me! I've send you an email, so check your inbox.