Time Flies

The day kind of got away from me yesterday. I had big plans to finish sewing together the blocks for Ella's Flower Garden, but then it was after 4:00 p.m., and where did the time go? Well, it's not as if I wasn't doing anything, but I was still surprised at how fast the day flew by.

My first stop yesterday was to check on the zucchini and cucumbers. I've realized that cucumbers are every bit as sneaky as zucchini in that they hide in plain sight, and you can't see them until they've grown to the size of baseball bats. The cucumbers are actually worse about this than the zucchini. At least the zucchini grow on a compact plant, and it's fairly easy to move aside their elephant-ear-sized leaves to find the zucchini underneath. The cucumbers are growing on a vine, with smaller (and prickly) leaves. I've been walking around and around them checking from all angles, and still I find cucumbers I missed the day before. This is yesterday's haul, which is similar to the day before, and the day before that:

In case it isn't obvious, the zucchini are on top, the cucumbers below. I believe I have enough cucumbers to can some pickles today, and so I'll take a closer look in a little while. I've realized from making the quick refrigerator pickles that it doesn't take a lot to fill a pint jar.

While I was there, I took a better picture of the bean blossoms, in case anyone thought I was kidding about that yesterday. 

And then I just gazed out across the color in the bee garden. It's turning out better than expected this year. Every time I look, I see more color.

Here's another one of these red guys. I've seen one other in the same spot. I'd like to see more of these.

When I had all the produce put away, I went to work on the Dream Big panel. Yesterday, I was following some of the motifs on the diagram I've been working from. None of them turned out as expected, but I still like them.

This one didn't work out as I'd envisioned it at all. It was supposed to be five loops per flower with a larger one in the center, but I couldn't get that to cover unless I cheated in a few places.

Now I've stitched to the outer edges of the panel. The petals that remain will touch the edges. It seemed like a good time to take it off the machine and have a look.

Here's how it looks from the back.

I'll just keep plugging away, a little at a time, and I'm hoping to have it to binding stage sometime next week.

Here's something I hadn't planned for my day, but the urge hit me. I had plums left over from the ones Erik and Mae gave me, and I knew I had a couple of apples beyond crispy stage in the vegetable crisper. I decided to make this Magic Apple Plum Cobbler. This is the easiest thing to make. You dump everything into the baking dish, and you'd swear it isn't going to work, but then it does.

We had it with vanilla ice cream last night. So yummy. At some point I'd like to turn this into a dessert for two.

By then I realized it was getting late. We were supposed to have a shrimp stir-fry for dinner, but I still hadn't shelled the shrimp. Mike has been helping me with that lately because it makes my broken thumb hurt to shell a full pound of shrimp. Neither of us felt like shelling shrimp at that point, and so we went out for dinner. As we were leaving, I noticed Sadie had usurped Smitty's position at the top of the kitty pole. She's a brave girl.

He was a perfect gentleman for a change, and let her stay there beyond when we got home after dinner. She was still there, and he was sleeping on his chair. Wonders never cease.

The only other thing I did yesterday was to make some progress on my slow stitching. I've finished this first hoopful.

I wasn't finished for the morning, and so I stitched a little more in the section below.

Today I'll be checking in on the zucchini and cucumbers again. After I see today's haul, I'll decide whether to can pickles or wait another day. I think my sewing priority for today will be to get those quilt blocks sewn together. If there's time left, I'll get back to my quilting.