A Full Day

We packed a lot into our Memorial Day yesterday. The weather was cloudy, but warm, and so we did some work in the yard early on. It was high time to plant the zucchini and one of the sunflowers. It's the only one that sprouted early on before I mended my ways with them. Also, I scattered some "candy" for the slugs.

For this, we got a nifty tool I saw on Instagram, of all places. Usually I avoid those ads, but this one caught my attention. It's a short auger that fits on an electric drill. It made digging a good hole in our clay-like soil slicker than hot snot on a doorknob. (Like that?)

And even though I first saw it on Instagram, I bought it from Amazon, and I can recommend it if you have trouble digging a good hole in your own soil.

With that finished, I took a little walk around to see what's going on elsewhere in the garden. I noticed the first cherry tomatoes coming on. They're just itty-bitty now.

Still hoping for more from the dappled willow, but it looks pretty just the way it is.

The first buds are appearing on the hydrangeas.

There are more chive blossoms, and I found one of those entranced bumble bees. He let me pet his furry body.

Another lily is coming up. I forget what this one looks like. The leaves look like a calla lily, but I really can't remember it. It was one Mike brought home from the grocery store.

The first buds are appearing on the echinacea.

We have an abundance of cattails.

Checking inside the greenhouse, the red leaf lettuce is big enough to start picking.

And the butter lettuce is making a stronger showing now.

There are lots of sunflowers coming along now. You can also see more poppies on the left of the image below.

Their seeds are so tiny, and so I just plant what I can pinch between my fingers and let them fight it out for space in the pot.

Back outside, this is a bush we call a "Burning Bush," or Euonymus alatus, if you must know it's snotty botanical name. In the fall it turns bright red. In spring, it produces these tiny white flowers.

And you probably wanted to see the poppy again, didn't you? Please say yes.

Okay, so enough of that. Let's get back to our sewing, shall we? Yesterday, I sewed these sections together.

Now I have all of these sections to sew together. I'll start with the ones in the lower right-hand corner and sew those to the ones above. Then I'll sew that to the left side of the block. The remaining gray strips on the far left are the sashings between the horizontal rows of blocks.

Here's how the blocks will look when they're all sewn together. I'll be using a random distribution of fabrics, and the blocks will be rotated in different directions when they're sewn into the quilt.

So, it's coming along. I believe I'll be able to finish it off by Friday, which is my #onethingwithAmy goal for the week.

By then, it was time to head to Erik and Mae's house. They have a beautiful tree in their front yard in full bloom right now.

These are Mae's poppies from Ireland. One of hers is purple.

The others are all this brilliant orange. Hers are from the same seeds I brought back from Ireland, but she was able to get hers growing sooner than I was.

I went in search of a picture of the original Irish garden where I bought these (seen below). They were a mix of colors when I saw them in Adare, and so I expect to get more colors among my own buds too.

Erik and Mae have done a lot of work on their garden and their yard, and everything was looking so nice. Here, they have tomatoes and peppers.

Below are herbs, different kinds of mint in the foreground, and more culinary herbs in the background.

These are different kinds of berries and flowers.

Erik knocked himself our smoking and barbecuing four different chickens in four different flavors. They were first marinated, then basted while they cooked, then smoked. There was one each of Teriyaki, Tandoori, Jerk, and spicy BBQ sauce from the farmer's market.

Mike helped quarter them with kitchen sheers. That's Erik's friend Eric in the background there.

When Mike was finished, we had a whole lotta chicken to split between ten people.

There were several different side salads and breads, and that was one tasty meal.

Making a rare appearance was Clementine the scaredy cat. She was rolling in catnip when I caught her in this image.

Clementine is next on my list of pawtraits. Hopefully, I'll get to her at the end of June. I've had this image below for a long time, but I think the one above will be a better one to use.

As expected, I finished up the fifth of the barn stitcheries yesterday. This one is called "Hole in the Barn Door."

Here are the five I have so far.

And that frees me up to start working on Block 2 for Dancing Chickens and Flying Pigs. I have it hooped up and ready to go. I'm going to use some leftover metallic gold floss for the angel's halo, and so I decided to start there.

It's too soon to say what the rest of the day will hold. I'm either going to get after some weeds in the garden, or I'm going to go grocery shopping. I'll let the weather help me decide. It's cloudy, but dry. If there's no rain in the forecast, I think the weeds will get their due. And then I'll get back to my Guatemala quilt. By the way, Lyndsey (or somebody) suggested "Quiltemala" for the name. I kind of like that. What do you think?