Grand Opening

Flower-wise, it was a pretty exciting day at the Three Cats Ranch. Sadie was completely worn out from all the thrills.

After breakfast, I walked outside to see what was going on with the peonies. I found Mr. Smithers on his catio. We noticed he has a bite mark on his cheek, no doubt delivered by a gopher he caught. We'll have to keep an eye on it to make sure it doesn't get infected. Fortunately, he's up-to-date on his vaccines.

And outside...(insert the Hallalujah chorus right here) IT HAS BLOOMED!!! This isn't the one we've been watching day by day. This is the one to its left: Coral Sunset. This is the same one I gave to Sue, but hers bloomed about a month ago. It just goes to show what a difference 1,400 feet of elevation can make.

There was another one close to blooming as well. 

On the right side of the peony bed, I noticed the petals opening on this one too. This one is called "Fairy Princess."

Making a little loop around, I took a few more shots of things that are blooming. I love these happy little daisies.

The volunteer snapdragons are starting to bloom now.

I forget what this next one is. It's in the pots with the other annuals.

Checking the vegetable garden, the beets are sprouting. No sign of the corn or green beans yet, but they were planted deeper.

Another of the greenhouse poppies has bloomed.

Back inside, I wanted to get the ice cream freezer working on the watermelon sorbet from the day before. When it started churning, it looked like this:

Fifteen minutes later....mmmmmmmmm. We had it for dessert last night. So yummy. If you want to know how to make sorbet, I've written a post about it right here. It's super simple.

It was after lunch by the time I made my way into the sewing room. I pieced together a back for Friendship's Garden and cut the binding strips.

I'll use the same dark green from the blocks for the binding. It feels good on Sadie's toesies.

After that, I tidied up the sewing room. I had fabric and rulers everywhere. There's something very satisfying about finishing all the parts of a quilt, and then cleaning up to make way for the next project. In this case, I decided to sandwich Sweet Land of Liberty for quilting. It's a small quilt, and easy enough to do on my domestic machine. Besides, I'll have it ready for the 4th of July...such as our celebration will be this year in the land of COVID. Anyway...here it is, ready for quilting.

So I used the same stylized star motif. I like this motif and use it whenever I can...mostly because I've mastered it and so it's easy for me. I did just a star in each corner for the embroidered center block. They're connected with a wavy line...the "stripes" that go with the stars, if you will.

Then I did some more in the middle border. When I finished up for the day, I was just getting started doing a sort of "piano key" motif in the outer border. For that, I switched from my BSR quilting foot (that's, Bernina Stitch Regulator), to a regular wide foot. It fits right between the stripes, which will make it easy to center the stitching line in the white stripe. I'll do every other one, and finish up by stitching in the ditch around the remaining border seams.

I'm hoping I can get the binding sewn on by the end of the day. 

We're going to make a little trip into town today. There's a clematis at a local nursery we have our eyes on. We also need to replace our wisteria plant that died last year. Interestingly, the nursery tells us they don't have wisteria this year, and that it was hard to get. No doubt this is a pandemic-related issue. But all of that to say we want to go out for some items for Mike to grill. He got an early father's day present in the form of a new Weber gas grill. We've had our older one, seen in the background of this next photo for over 30 years. Mike has rebuilt and refurbished it twice already, and it was time for a new one. Some assembly required.

He spent nearly the whole day putting it together. Now, he needs something to grill, and I don't have anything on the menu for the next week. Obviously, this requires a special trip into town.

When I was finished sewing for the day, I went back to take some more pictures of the flowers. I had my DSLR camera with a macro lens for some of these pictures. It was just for photographic grins. By then, the Fairy Princess peony was opening some more.

And the second blossom on Coral Sunset had opened.

In macro world, I love these fuzzy poppy buds.

And I liked how the sunlight looked shining through Coral Sunset. I wonder if I could make a quilt from that. Hm.

Now let's take a look at Rosy Prospects in this next image. This is what I think is going to happen: I think those center three (or four) "nodules" are the flower's center. I think the surrounding ones will open into white petals with red tips. Let's just see if I'm right. 

Or maybe some of you are right, and the thing is a Frankenstein flower bud. If it is, then it has a partner in crime on the same plant that looks exactly like it. It's supposed to start raining tomorrow, so I hope the rain doesn't ruin it before it has a chance to open all the way.

Also, I noticed the bees buzzing all over the thyme plant. They were hard to photograph in focus because they were moving pretty fast. Those flowers are tiny.

Here's a close-up of one of the sage blossoms. It looks like a little orchid. I'm hoping enough will open for sage blossom vinegar, but it won't be today. Maybe tomorrow. I hate it when rain is looming and threatening the flowers.

And look at this guy with his dirty nose. He caught his third gopher in as many days.

Later, he took a good long sunbath. Ahhhhhhhhhhhh...Burn me, Sun!

But I'm not finished showing you the peonies yet. This morning, Fairy Princess had opened all the way.

Here's another one to its right.

There's still one more coming. I expect it will open before the day is over.

After publishing, I had to come back and add this photo. Matthew has been doing a lot of camping up in the Mt. Hood National Forest during our good weather. Yesterday, he shared this picture with me, taken by a friend. I thought you might enjoy it too.

And so we have a trip into town, already mentioned. If there's time left in the day, I'll get back to my quilting. With this being our last day of sunshine for a while, I'll probably get some more gardening done outside too. Gotta keep checking on the corn and beans, you know.