Outdoor Weather

It's coolish this morning, and we're expecting some rain by tomorrow. Yesterday's weather was perfect, however, and so most of the day was spent outside. Let's take a little tour, shall we? I haven't shown you what's going on in the vegetable garden for a while. These are some of the green beans.

I planted three seeds around the bottoms of the poles. Most came up...certainly enough to feed our little family. Assuming we get some beans to harvest, I'll cook them up fresh or can them as straight green beans. I always make some dilled beans too. They're good as a garnish in Bloody Marys or else as a snack straight from the jar.

There are two rows of beets. I've thinned these some, but they probably need to be thinned some more.

There are four rows of corn, and most of that came up. One row is only about half full, which makes me wonder if I forgot to drop seeds in the other half. Vaguely, I remember running out of seed from one seed packet and switching to the next. Possibly my feeble mind might have played a trick on me. In any case, there is plenty of corn. Just looking at this, I don't think there's much chance it will be knee high by the Fourth of July.

There are three zucchini plants. One had to be replanted when the deer ate it, but it's already caught up to its neighbors. No matter what else happens, zucchini always seems to come through. When the Big One happens, depend on zucchini to save the day.

This is the champion of the sunflowers. I probably planted 50 sunflowers this year, and only about ten have survived. It's been maddening. Between the deer and the squirrels, I'm about ready to give up on sunflowers. These ones planted in the vegetable garden are doing pretty well, and this one is the largest. It's one of the American Giants, and it could grow very tall...over the top of the fence I'm sure. I'm looking forward to seeing its big beautiful flower.

Looking inside, I think a flower is starting to form.

Turning to the flowers, these are some volunteer pansies. I let them grow wherever they will.

More daylilies have opened.

Here's one of the roses. I've had a hard time getting a good picture of them with the rain we had last week. The rose put out hundreds of buds this year, no doubt as protection against the deer. The deer have eaten their share, but there have also been blooming flowers to enjoy. This rose is particularly fragrant.

The fruit trees are doing well. The cherries are close to being ripe. I'm just hoping the raccoons will leave them alone. Usually when they get to this stage, we walk out one morning to find the tree has been cleaned overnight. No cherries left. Not a single one. Fingers crossed this will be one of the years we get to them first.

The apple tree is doing well too. I believe it has shed some of its apples. I checked it to see if I should be removing some myself, and I watched a YouTube video about how to do that. Then, when I checked the tree, I couldn't find any I thought should be removed. I'll just let them shed naturally and we'll see what we get.

The plums are about the size of a jumbo olive now. There are lots of plums.

We've been watching this pair of parent birds coming and going from one of the bird houses Mike built last year. He built the houses especially to attract these pretty violet-green swallows. When we first started living here, they used to nest under the eaves. Then, the starlings bullied them out of those areas. They continued to come around each year in early April, but they would only stay a few weeks before moving on. With the houses, we've had swallows all spring. So these two are sort of tag-teaming. One flies in, the other flies out, and we can hear the nestlings cheeping inside. Pretty cool. And, of course, this is very gratifying for bird house construction manager, Mike.

It was a dismal day of hunting for the kitties. Sadie only caught one mouse. Here, they were discussing their next moves. By the way, all that debris around them is the casings from pine cones.

We called them to join us on the "friendship bench," and eventually they did. Smitty first.

Then Sadie.

It was a nice spot for grazing on the always-too-tall-even-after-just-being-mowed grass.

We had some lunch, and then I got to work on my sewing projects. I made a sort of "color block" back for the Fancy Cats quilt. I used up the last of the paisley, one of the panel borders, most of the purple, and most of that light aqua from my stash. The one small Cat-I-Tude panel used a lot of fabric from my stash.

Next, I got to work sewing together the Paintbox Pizzazz quilt blocks. There are 42 blocks, laid out 7 blocks by 6 rows.

I was pretty sure I'd get some help rearranging these, but my assistants were too busy outside hunting up mice. By day's end, I had three rows sewn together. The bottom row isn't yet sewn to the top two.

Now here, I'm making a design decision. Here is the picture of the quilt from the book that contains the pattern.

Incidentally, the pattern can be found in this book:

So see the black border fabric at either end of the original quilt? Originally, I'd planned to add first a narrow black stop border, and then this "paintbox" fabric. 

Only now, I like how the blocks look just on their own without the addition of the border fabric. What do you think? Should I add the borders? Or is that gilding the lily? Not really sure. When I have all the blocks sewn together, I'll probably lay out the fabrics and see how it looks before making a decision. Your input is appreciated. I only have a yard of that fabric, so I can't get too fancy with it.

Okay, so most of the outside work was finished yesterday, and the weather has turned kind of overcast. It won't be as warm today. I'll probably stay inside and sew. I'm hoping to have all the blocks sewn together for this quilt by the end of the day.