Wet Weekend

It's been rain, rain, rain for days. We're expecting more rain until after Tuesday when it should improve considerably. Temperatures into the 80's are expected as summer approaches. It can't come soon enough for us. 

Most of my day was spent in the sewing room. I finished off the third "flower" block for Jenny's Flower Garden.

My able-bodied assistant helped me lay out the pieces for the "blanks,"

and he resisted the urge to rearrange them while I sewed them together.

Now I have 4 rows and 28 out of 49 blocks for this quilt. When I laid them out, they looked like this:

It you look at this, you can see that the "flower" blocks have a center made up of pink and yellow. Also, there is a green piece at each corner. The original pattern in my book is all done in pastels, and those centers and "leaves" stand out a little more. I still like my scrappy version, but I'm sorry the flower centers kind of got lost in the shuffle.

I'd been working for a couple of hours at that point, and glanced at my white board task master to see what was next on my list of WIP's. It's the next block for the Shop Hop 2.0 quilt. I needed to embroider the name and location of the next block, and so I spent some time tracing that out and getting it hooped up.

Sadie waited patiently nearby. Lap-sitting during embroidery sessions is her strong suit, and she was ready.

These don't take long. I had this one finished in about 45 minutes.

Making up the next block will be first on my list when I get into my sewing room today. After that, I'll be making up the next block for New Mexico Kitchen. Those take some time, and so it should keep me busy for a day or two.

After lunch, I put together a Dutch Apple Pie for Two. These are so simple. I use a Pillsbury pie crust for the bottom crust. The filling is a jar of apple pie filling canned last fall. And then the topping is simple too: 2/3 cup flour, 1/3 cup packed brown sugar, 1/3 cup quick cooking oats, and 1/4 cup melted butter. Mmm, mmm, mmm. Add a scoop of ice cream, and you've got yourself one decadent dessert.

During a rain break, I went outside to see what was up in the vegetable garden. While I was out, I saw these little red tree squirrels everywhere. Now that Smitty has cut down on the population of grey diggers (California ground squirrels), we're seeing a lot more of these guys. They are about half the size of the grey diggers.

The one above was sitting uncomfortably close to the sunflowers, although most of the sunflowers are probably tall and sturdy enough to resist his nibbling. (The medicated body powder doesn't offer much protection when it rains for days on end.) We have two seed feeders and I found squirrels under both, cleaning up the mess left behind by the birds. The one below looks a little like the squirrel who got caught with his hand in the cookie jar. 

In the garden, the corn is finally tall enough I can get a picture of it. So far, all I've been able to get is a blurry green shoot. We keep the corn rows covered with gutter guards since the birds (and squirrels) like to pull up the tender green shoots, seed and all. These were poking through the gutter guards, and so I took them off.

Everything else was looking good too, and the weeds aren't bad...yet.

For dinner, I tried a new recipe from our diet. This is Spicy Scallops with Watermelon Salsa. This was really good, and despite a long list of ingredients, it's pretty easy to make. You first start your quinoa cooking while you make up all the rest. When the quinoa is finished cooking, it's mixed with scallions, mint, lime juice, pine nuts, and a little olive oil. The scallops are given a little sprinkle of a mixture of flavorful spices, and then quickly fried in a skillet. The salsa is just some diced up watermelon, onion, mint, and lime juice. Altogether, it was a delicious dish with a nice combination of flavors and textures.

It left me with a lot of watermelon again, and so I'll probably puree the rest for sorbet. Also, it was National Rosé Day, and so we opened a bottle. It went well with the dinner. By the way, who comes up with these "national" days anyway? From what I understand, it was also National Sewing Machine Day. Certainly, I did my part to celebrate. 

And today is Flag Day, so happy Flag Day, everybody! Flag Day is also my grandfather's birthday. I'm not sure what year he was born, but it was sometime in the 1890's. Which would make him approximately 130 years old if he were still alive. 

In the picture above, he's wearing a shirt my mother made for him. He always told me the flags on Flag Day were for him, and I believed him. He was a WWI veteran, and he was a wonderful grandpa to my brother and me. Flying the flag for his birthday made perfect sense, and I always think of him on this day.

Okay, so we're expecting more rain today, which also means more sewing. We're looking forward to some warmer and drier weather.