Squirrely

The day started yesterday with my usual walk around the yard to see what's new. Which is only an excuse because I really want to see if the peony has bloomed yet. And just to be clear, I've already been outside in my pajamas and slippers this morning to check. Still nothing. It's a heart-breaker of a plant.

The poppies have been my therapy plant while I'm waiting on the peonies. They keep blooming and budding and thrilling me. I've wanted to see how they open because I find the shells of their guard petals lying below, as if they've opened explosively at some point. I always thought they would open from the top, but it appears the bottom lets loose first. After I took this picture, I plucked them from the top of the flower with my fingers.

The greenhouse whiskey barrel poppy has five buds on it. If it blooms like the patio whiskey barrel, I should start seeing even more buds.

The sage plant has flower buds on it now too. It puts out a purple edible flower. They look pretty when added to a salad.

While I was out walking around, Mike was busy cutting off excess stump from the tree he felled last year. Now that he's taken out the butterfly bushes from behind the garage, he's going to rent a stump grinder to remove the rest. As long as we have the stump grinder for the entire day, he's going to grind out the stump near the RV and another one from a tree that fell some years ago due to insect damage. Here's the stump from yesterday. 

This was a big Douglas fir in its day. We had to take it down because carpenter ants were getting into the RV by dropping off the tree onto the roof of the RV. You can't even imagine the horror of getting to a campsite and finding our bed infested with carpenter ants. It's a long story, and it happened before I was blogging, but just know that it still gives me the heebie jeebies just thinking about it.

Now here's where bad words were spoken. So, I've mentioned we're having problems with squirrels in the greenhouse. A couple of days ago, I suspected they'd been at it again, and they'd eaten the tops off the most tender sunflower seedlings still in the greenhouse. I walked all around the greenhouse looking for signs of digging, and could find none. The only explanation seemed to be the open window at the far end of the greenhouse, although this also seemed unlikely. There is really no way to climb into the window unless they were to climb up the slick fiberglass wall of the greenhouse. Just to be sure, I closed the window, and then planted the remainder of some of the sunflower seeds. I'm especially wanting some of the big giant sunflowers. I had three seeds left from my packet, and so I planted them in the tiny pots that were the former homes of the tomato starts. When I checked the greenhouse yesterday, I found the squirrels had dug up the seeds in all three little pots, cracked them open, and eaten the insides.

Now...how did they know to dig them up? And how the "F!" did they get into the greenhouse? I'm telling you it's a mystery wrapped up in an enigma. I can only think a squirrel has taken up residence inside the greenhouse. On the right side, there are some 64-gallon drums filled with water and painted black. You can see them in the image below. They provide thermal mass and warmth.

They are too heavy to move, but I have a feeling if we could get behind them, we'd find a squirrel living there. We're going to set a trap and see if we can catch the little rat bastard. In the meantime, I've used all the giant sunflower seeds. I might try ordering more. There's still time.

But that's not the end of the story. While Mike was out getting his mower running, he discovered this:

It's the power cord that delivered electricity to the camper. We keep it plugged in when we're not using it, mainly to keep the batteries charged. And who knows when this happened, but one would think the chewer ended up a crispy critter. We didn't find a carcass anywhere, but we imagine some scavenger picked it up...cooked and everything! Deep fried! Seasoned perfectly! The caramelization was divine. But I digress.

In the saddest photo you've ever seen, Smitty thought his life had taken a turn for the better; but yesterday, he found himself confined to the indoors again. 

After I took that picture, he walked over and rubbed around my legs. He thought that might get me to change my mind.

Of course he has access to his catio whenever he wants, but that isn't what he wants. He wants to go outside and snag himself something good to eat. We're playing it by ear with the coyotes for the time being...and I do mean, "by ear." We haven't actually seen any coyotes, but we've heard them just on the other side of our tree line. We're playing it safe for now, but they may not be residing here this year, as they were last year. If we don't see or hear them for a while, we might resume with outdoor play.

Yesterday evening, Mike sat outside with Smitty for a while. He's less nervous than Sadie, and so he's willing to stay close if we want him to. We can probably train him to stay right with us if the alternative is to be put back inside. Sadie, on the other hand, is too wild for that to ever be a possibility. I'm still waiting on her new harness to arrive, and we're hoping it will make it possible for her to be outside too, especially when we travel.

In the sewing room, I finished sewing together the final two Charm Stars blocks. I wondered how the brown would look in this configuration, and it turned out okay.

Here's the second one.

Sadie assisted me with getting the orientation correct. She has excellent eyesight.

And then she assisted as I laid out all the blocks for a picture.

Here are all 20 blocks for this quilt. They still need to be sewn together, but that will have to wait until later. There's supposed to be a pieced border around the outside, but it's large enough as it is. I'll probably just put a binding on it and call it good.

Finishing that up left an opening on my WIP's dance card, and so I got started on the next Shop Hop quilt. I should probably give it a different name like, More Hopping, or something. The next one will be done in polaroid camera picture blocks. But I like this little camera block from Crafty Staci. She provides some templates in her tutorial.

I suppose this can be paper-pieced, but I made freezer paper templates by tracing over the printed pages and cutting them out. Then I ironed the pieces to the fabric and cut them with my rotary cutter, leaving a 1/4-inch seam allowance around all the outside edges. 

When it was all sewn together it looked like this:

Okay, so first block done, many more to go. I'll make this quilt as I usually do...one block at a time...starting with this one. I purchased this when we visited Copper Canyon Quilting in Lake Havasu City, Arizona. You can find the link to my post about Copper Canyon Quilting right here. I really liked this little printed on fabric block when I saw it. I wasn't sure it work work, and so I purchased a different fabric just in case. As it turns out, it's almost exactly the right size.

This little card was contained in the packaging.

And here's the business card from the quilt shop.

It was one of the few shops where Mike came inside with me because the shop also sold wind surfing boards. The owner said she wasn't really interested in selling vacuum cleaners, and so she decided to sell wind surfing boards instead. She was also an avid wind surfer, and she and Mike yucked it up about wind surfing while I explored the quilt shop in peace. 

So I'm making polaroid camera quilt blocks for this quilt. The tutorial I'm using is also from Crafty Staci. I first had to decide how I was going to apply the names to the block. I briefly considered machine stitching the words with my domestic sewing machine, but that seemed like it would take at least as long as simply hand-stitching them. And so I printed off the name and place on a sheet of paper, using a font that would translate well into hand embroidery.

Then I traced it onto my fabric...

and hand stitched it. This took about an hour. 

It was nearly dinner time by then, and so I stopped for the day. I'll finish making the quilt block today, and you'll have a better idea of my scheme.

In closing, I'll say I'm still struggling with the new Blogger platform. The way pictures are uploaded is extremely confusing and funky. One can "upload" from one's computer in the traditional way, or one can drag and drop. The problem I'm having is that there is no preview. The pictures appear directly on the blog, and so they must either be uploaded one at a time or else in batches. I've always done mine in batches, put them in order, and then uploaded them to the blog. With the new platform, I need to select them in the order I want them to appear, and then upload them and resize them. 

The confusion comes from the delay between selecting and then appearing. It can take several minutes, and so when you try this, just be patient. Wait five minutes before giving up. I'm beginning to think it makes more sense to drag and drop them one at a time. Also, it's possible to move them around once they're on the blog, but then it's hard to get the alignment right. They can end up side by side, rather than one above the other. Resizing them sometimes forces the issue, but they may not appear in the correct order. 

I can imagine none of this is going to make sense until you try it for yourself. I'm persisting, but I'm not happy, and you probably won't be either. So far, Blogger help has been no help at all. I've been blogging for too long to try to change to a different platform, and so I'll just keep working with this. Eventually, it will become second nature, but for now, it's making these posts a pain to produce. And that's some awesome alliteration right there.