A Walk on the Wild Side

My first task of the day yesterday was to finish hand-stitching the binding for my challenge quilt. Here's how it looks from the back. I just bought that fabric when we were last down in Southern California. How did I know I would need it for this quilt? I must be clairvoyant!

And here's the last tease I'll give you before the reveal on August 1st. Feel free to put it out of your mind until then.

It was much too nice a day to spend inside doing my workout routine on a treadmill. I decided yesterday's workout would be to go for a walk and check in on all the wildflowers. First, though, I took a little walk around the yard. The stargazer lily is developing a stalk. 

Seemingly overnight, the daylilies have put up stalks too. They're a little hard to see so I've pointed them out for you.

This peony is the most watched thing in the garden right now. I checked on it at least three times yesterday. Still nothing.

This is the cruel peony. Somehow its buds seem more mature this year, but I'm not going to have my heart broken again.

Yesterday, I sort of pried open its petals. Inside, it looks as it has every year. I threatened it again in the most forceful of terms. If it doesn't bloom this year, it can kiss its comfy spot in the flower bed good-bye.

Also, I stood back so you could see the bed. See how big they've grown? The second one from the right is the cruel peony. It's the largest one of the bunch, although one on the left is taller. They are all covered in buds. I'm excited for some blooming action.

And I was surprised and happy to see that one of the calla lilies has made an appearance. They didn't come up last year, and I thought they were dead...or eaten, as happens around here.

I'm happy to see the blueberries are doing well. These were just planted last year. All four plants have little flowers on them now, but I don't expect we'll see many blueberries for at least a couple of years.

The golden chain tree is still blooming away, although I notice its flowers are fading now.

Okay, but enough of these flowers in our own garden. It was time to set off and see what was growing wild. This one is blooming in our neighbor's yard, but I believe the plant itself is wild. Not sure what it is.

I discovered something very cool about my new iPhone yesterday. It now has incorporated the Like That Garden app that I used to use as a part of its operating system. If I take a picture of a flower (or something else, apparently), I can then get more information about the flower by pressing a little icon. So, I took a picture of this wild iris:

Pretty, huh? And then, I press a little icon below the image on my phone, and it brings up this screen:

Cool, huh?

And then I was doing it with all the flowers. These ones below grow in abundance, virtually everywhere. My phone tells me this is the flower for the lowly thimbleberry. Thimbleberries are edible, but not particularly desirable. Too many seeds.

The phone tells me this next one is "Claytonia."

This next one is "Geum."

These are the ones that produce our wild Oregon blackberries.

Oh yes, and the lowly dandelion. We don't discriminate when we get into flower-picture-taking mode.

These are wild roses. I saw a lot of these on my walk.

This is vetch. I like its little purple flowers, but it gets into our landscaping and grows up through the ground covers. It's hard to eradicate, and so I like its flowers, but I hate it as a weed.

My phone tells me this one is Vicia, which is just another kind of vetch.

This one is "Hesperis," although its common name is "Dame's Rocket," which I like better.

This one is "Rapeseed." This is where canola oil comes from.

Who knew there were so many colors of corn flowers? I saw the usual blue ones.

Also, darker purple.

And very pale purple. So pretty. Corn flowers are among my favorites.

I was walking at the top of our hill. Ordinarily, I'm showing you pictures looking north from the top of our mountain. This is how it looks to the south.

Turning around, I walked back home. Along the way, I noticed this wild foxglove growing off the road a distance. I've tried and tried to get foxglove going in our yard, but it never lasts. One year, I had a pretty good crop growing, but then Mike came through and sprayed it with weed killer. He recognized what he'd done almost immediately, and tried to wash it off. Too late. Oh well. I might try again sometime. And I'm not above coming back to this spot and shaking the seeds off this one.

A little farther on, I noticed this little tree developing some kind of fruit. It was hard to tell without being able to see the bark on the tree, but these might be wild cherries. We have a lot of them growing around the edge of our property, and they grow in abundance all over our hill. They can make quite a mess when they start dropping their fruit.

These are buttercups.

Now here's something. There's a worn out Christmas tree farm at the top of our hill. There's a property tax deferral for "farming," and so a lot of people in our area start up Christmas tree farms. They'll sell them as u-cut trees at Christmas time, but invariably, the trees get overgrown and the "farms" are eventually abandoned. (This sort of thing is more work than most folks want to undertake, deferral, or no deferral.) So this is one of those. A few years ago, they topped all the trees, and harvested only the boughs for a while. Now, it seems they've abandoned it altogether. And you can see in this image, there are a lot of dead and dying trees on this lot, which makes it a significant wildfire hazard.

Mike notified the fire department last summer. They said they were aware of the property, but had no jurisdiction to do anything about it. Apparently, Oregon has a "right to farm" legislation that protects even abandoned farms that are privately owned. In any case...and this is the point of the story...closer to our side of the hill, a large section of this property was sold off and cleared of trees. One guy has been out working for months clearing away all the Christmas trees, and piling them into dozens of huge burn piles. We're told two houses are planned for this spot. (And we're on wells here, so one must have at least five acres to dig a well.)

Having cleared away all the trees, he's now burning the piles. When the wind blows our direction, we're inundated with smoke. This will stop soon enough because a burn ban will go into effect. He's trying to get his burning done now. The wood is green and wet, and so it makes a lot of smoke.

Okay, and that was my walk. 

I don't know about you, but when I finish a quilt I've been working on for a while, I don't know what to do with myself. I move from chair to chair in the living room flopping around, trying to decide what to do with the rest of my life. As it turns out, I'm giving my challenge quilt to a friend who took the picture I used when I made it. (She has seen the quilt, and seems thrilled with it.) I told her I could sew a hanging sleeve on it if she wanted, and she did. And is there anything more boring than sewing on a hanging sleeve? I knew I'd drag my feet about it, and so I decided to just do it and get it done. It's a small quilt at 22 x 24 inches, and so it didn't take long. Now it's done, and the label is sewn on, and it's ready for mailing to her. I'll hold onto it until I get my "reveal" post written.

We sat outside for dinner last night and watched the crows strafe this hawk. I'm sure they are nesting in the area (the hawk and the crows), but he is still considered an unwelcome intruder.

Okay, so it's a grocery shopping day. I'll probably get started on the quilting for the Garden Sunshine quilt today. Also, I'm readying my project to take along when we travel to the Great Lakes this summer. I've decided to take along this redwork pattern from Bird Brain Designs called "Stitching Wisdom." Here's the picture from the website:

I'm just taking this one project, and I'll print out all the embroidery motifs on Sticky Fabri-Solvy before we go. This is the background fabric I'll be using:

And all of that to say that I need to cut the background fabric to the size of the blocks, and then print off the motifs. I've learned that taking just one project on these sight-seeing adventures is the best way to go.

And speaking of going, that's what I'm going to do. Go grocery shopping. Sounds like fun, huh? No? Yeah...well just be glad you aren't me this morning.