A Pause in Activity

Mike and I left fairly early yesterday to drive to the east side of town where Mike helped Matthew repair his garage door. It was our first time seeing his new digs. He's in a rental home that was built around 1906. It has all the charm and many of the problems one would expect in a home of that age, and it is perfect for him. He's in a charming old neighborhood and in easy walking distance to a nice park, walking/running trail, and lots of good restaurants. The garage door was fixed in about an hour. I sat inside and worked on my stitching while they did the heavy lifting. 

There were some things I wanted to do in the yard before we left. It was another hot day, and so I wanted to water the flower pots before we left. Also, I checked in on the vegetables to be sure there wasn't some zucchini poised to launch a bid for world domination. While I was there, I took some pictures, as you might guess. Take a look at these sunflowers! There must be hundreds of flowers. I'm happy about this because the birds will be eating the seeds while we're gone on our September trip.

This next sunflower is so red it's almost black.

The bee garden continues to surprise and delight me with its many colors.

It's kind of a weedy tangle, but the bees don't seem to mind.

You might recall my angst about the cantaloupe, which was all for naught. There are dozens of melons coming, and several appear close to ripening. They are a little larger than softballs at this point, and they've developed the spiderweb skin. Now I'm just waiting for them to change color. This is one of the larger ones.

Here's another over here.

These are the conjoined twin melons.

I've started harvesting a few of the green beans, but most are still too small for that. They'll be ready in a few days, and then I'll be setting my canning sites on them.

We have a squirrel nearly as big as a house cat, and we're having to compete with him to see who can get to the cherry tomatoes first.

There's that thief now!

Around the front side of the house, the wisteria is making its way across the front porch fascia.

The black-eyed Susans are filling in their whiskey barrel, which makes me very happy.

Interestingly, some of them have red centers, even though the seeds came from the same packet.

The kitties had to wait until we came home mid-afternoon before they could go out. When we opened the door, they collapsed in the shade just outside. Cats with dark furs do not like being in the sun when the weather is warm.

There was still a little time left in the day, and so I pieced together a back for the new Dream Big Leaf panel. Now it's on the top of the quilts-to-be-sandwiched pile. There are a dozen quilt tops in this pile.

You might recall that sandwiching these quilts was my goal for August's OMG, but I've abandoned that idea. There simply isn't enough time right now to give up several days for making quilt sandwiches. There is still one large quilt from the last sandwiching go-round that needs quilting, and there are several small quilts to be quilted. Those will probably still be waiting for me when we get home from our fall trip, and so there's really no need to stress over getting these sandwiched before then. I decided to cut myself some slack and focus on gardening and vegetables as we approach the end of summer. I can re-evaluate as time passes, but I'm doubtful I'll meet my goal.

When that was finished, I went back to work on my challenge piece. Smitty would like you to admire his manly phurrsique. He pretty well covers my whole cutting mat. Good thing I didn't need to do any more cutting. He's going to have a bad day tomorrow. He has to have his teeth cleaned. I keep telling him it's all necessary if he wants to continue being a cover cat for Cosmeowpolitan magazine.

I was in the process of sandwiching the challenge quilt for top-stitching and quilting. Sadie helped by holding the whole thing down. I had to cut off her bottom half to avoid showing my quilt.

But here's a little peek of it after it was sandwiched. 

Now I've top-stitched the hardest part, and I left it at the second hardest part when I stopped for the day.

We had leftovers for dinner and then sat outside to watch this interesting sunset. We don't usually get these little cotton balls of clouds. As we sat, they changed colors from white to gray to orange to red. I posted this picture on Facebook, and a friend from Olympia (about 3 hours to the north) said his sky looked the same way.

When I came upstairs to write this post, I left Sadie buried in her favorite quilt.

There are several things on today's agenda...laundry, for one. Also, I need to hoe weeds in the vegetable garden and then harvest anything I find plotting terrorist activity. When that's done, I'll get busy making some salsa from peaches and tomatoes. I'll say more about that in tomorrow's post.

With so much stitching time while I waited for Mike and Matthew yesterday, I'm very close to finishing the latest Heartland Barn block. That's where I'll be heading right after breakfast. It's going to be a busy day. What's on your agenda for this Monday?