6/15/19

Procrastinator's Pizzazz

It took me a while to get going yesterday. First, I gave myself extra time to work on September's heart.


It was tempting to finish it off, but I was kind of tired of stitching by that time. Nevertheless, it gave me a reason to make up the next one, thus giving me extra time to put off a particular housekeeping chore just a little longer. This is another small stitch sampler. 


You might remember I stitched this one recently.


They are approximately the same size, and so I'm going to put them both into a single wall-hanging configuration. It didn't take too long to trace it onto the same background fabric.


Then, there was some coloring to do. I used crayon for this one. Really, I prefer the colored pencils. They go on more smoothly. The difference is that I need to use an extender with the colored pencils to permanently fix the color. With crayon, a hot iron is all I need.


So it's ready to go, and I've hooped it for starting. Probably I'll finish up the heart this morning and get started on this one tomorrow.


So, I could put off the dreaded household chore no longer, but sewing awaited me when it was finished. I sewed the pinwheels together for the Paintbox Pizzazz quilt. Just as I was getting ready to take their picture, Smitty decided to rearrange them a bit.


There we go...vastly improved, I'm sure.


Then he held them down while I finished sewing the black and white corners to them.


Apparently, I neglected to take a picture of them finished, but here they are laid out with the rest of their brethren.


When finished, there will be 48 blocks. Now, I have 24, and so it is halfway there.

It was late in the day by this time. We had dinner and then wandered around the yard a little. Mike and I were discussing our cherry tree. You might remember when I wrote earlier that it was loaded with ripening cherries. Here's the picture I posted at the time. So, let's just take a look here...the cherry closest to the camera lens is a little larger than the ones behind.


So fast forward to yesterday and Mike and I both noticed a dearth of cherries on the tree. There are a few, to be sure.


It isn't shedding its cherries because there are almost none on the ground below. But take a look at this, and we find this all over the tree.


So, my first thought is that this is a pollination problem, and so I inquired of my friend, The Google.

The first link I found was to this article about immature cherries dropping from a tree. But that didn't really fit because there are no cherries. They aren't falling from the tree...they are nonexistent. So what happened? Inquiring further of The Google, I found this article, and it was a short answer to a question. I can snip it and post it in its entirety. I was especially happy that this question comes from someone just south of us in Eugene, Oregon.


So, having read that, I looked again at the original image, and it all makes sense. To be clear, we have a pollinator cherry in our Black Tartarian tree. The tree in question is a Bing. We can only think a spate of warm weather, lasting about a week, is to blame. The cherry trees seemed to bloom early this year, and I think the flowers arrived before the bees. Whatever the reason, it doesn't look like we'll have the bounty of cherries this year as we did last. Bummer. Oh well.

Today I'm heading out to the Portland Farmers Market with Erik and Mae. Maybe I'll find some cherries there, but I doubt it. We're still a little early here in the Pacific Northwest. There's really nothing on my wish list for today's market, but I usually find something. Mainly, I just want a yummy breakfast of huevos rancheros, and they have the best food cart at the farmers market.

But first, I'm going to try to finish up September's heart. Have a good Saturday, everybody.

3 comments:

piecefulwendy said...

Well, that's a disappointment on the Bing tree. This spring has been a weird one for sure. The farmers around here are definitely in a rough spot this year. I feel for them. At least Smitty, in his boredom, has quilt blocks to rearrange. I'm sure that's immensely helpful for you :-)

SJSM said...

Cherries have hit our market in the last week or so. Boy, do I love cherry season! Once rested from my trip a plethora of Cherry preserving will go on. Most of the recipes come from the ones you have posted over time. The preserves and chutneys will be one of the first. Last week my Eagle apoint friend had me recover her dining room chair seats, teach her how to use her serger and we made zipper bags all on the serger. She was thrilled. For my parting gift she had me take her husband’s leather jacket to shorten the sleeves. That has me quaking in my boots.

Home now and my hubby is off on a backpacking trip with daughter and SIL for Father’s Day weekend in the Big Sur area. I like flushing toilets so took a pass. It will be a good day to clean and set up my sewing room for the next projects.

Californianativedaughter said...

When we moved into our present house,, 1989, there was a cherry tree. Pollination wasn't the problem with use, birds and squirrels ate all the cherries so I took out the cherry tree. Replaced with Granny Smith for apply pie. Now I am competing with squirrels, but if I give them peanuts, they stay away from the apples! Adivised all my friends with the same problem with their fruit. Give the squirrels peanut and they stay away from persimmons, or other fruit!

Rosemary