Top Down Day

It was such a beautiful day for our first day of summer, and we're expecting nice weather for at least the next week. I have salads and sandwiches planned for our dinners over the next several days. We have eating-out-on-the-patio days to make up for after such a wet, cold, and dark spring...or what purported to be spring. We're still thinking spring passed us by this year.

I was settling in for a day of quilting when Mike suggested we have lunch in town. Really, he just wanted to drive his Corvette with the top down...something he hasn't been able to do yet this year. I was in the middle of sandwiching Grandma's Thimbles for quilting when he brought it up. And, hey...I'm always up for some adventure.

He didn't want to leave until after noon so that we could miss the lunch crowd. I used the time to finish setting up my domestic machine for quilting. It has a Bernina stitch regulator, which makes free motion quilting so much easier. When I'm quilting a small quilt, I stick with my domestic machine.

It's all set up and ready to go, but that was the extent of yesterday's sewing. There was a little time to kill, and so I walked around outside to check on the blooming things. There was really nothing new, but I did catch this violet-green swallow poking her head out of one of the bird houses. We believe we have two tenants living in our four-house complex this year. To her left is our bat house, and yes, there are bats living in there.

And when the time came, we were off! So nice. 

We had lunch at one of our favorite brew pubs, the Golden Valley Brewery in McMinnville. They have a really nice outdoor seating area to the right and outside the frame of the image below. This was our mainstay restaurant during the worst of the pandemic. 

We were only about half a mile from my favorite quilt shop, Boersma's, and so we walked the main street of McMinnville to the quilt shop and back.

Of course, I took pictures of every blooming thing along the way. There were pretty dianthus in all colors.

These roses were blooming at a different restaurant.

Farther along, there was a whole "hedge" of these Shasta daisies.

This next one was hanging overhead in a basket.

Now here's something interesting. These "Smoke Free Zone" signs were lining the street. There are a lot of restaurants along this street with outdoor seating along the sidewalk. Apparently, the City of McMinnville no longer allows smoking even in outdoor sections of restaurants. Neither Mike nor I are smokers, and so it doesn't matter to us, but we wondered how the smokers in the town felt about this apparently new law.

I was curious about this and so I looked it up. Sure enough. In 2018 the city council passed an ordinance prohibiting smoking in the "downtown core." 

So that was interesting. I don't think I've ever seen an outdoor smoking ban encompassing such a large area.

Moving on, we passed by Benjamin Franklin enjoying the sunny day. Judging by this tanned bronze skin, I'd say he's been sitting there for a while. Actually, we used to have a bank in Oregon known as The Benj. Franklin. (That abbreviation of the name always drove us crazy.) This one is sitting outside a US Bank branch, and so we figure US Bank must have taken over when The Benj. Franklin ceased to exist.

Now here's something. Did you know that Oregon produces 99% of all hazelnuts sold in the United States? And so it makes sense we would used the shells as a ground cover, just like bark dust. This was a parking strip we passed by, and that's a tree growing there.

When we reached the quilt shop, I was on the hunt for a dark green flannel to use as a binding for the French Roses quilt. (Have you ever noticed how when you're trying to use up scraps in a scrap quilt, you almost invariably have to buy more fabric? And then, you generate yet more scraps?) So, I found what I was looking for, and then took a walk through the store. It seemed a shame to waste a perfectly good visit to a quilt shop and not buy out the place.

Of course, I saw lots that I liked, but I ended up purchasing a yard of the one on top in the image above. I keep buying fabrics for a quilt I've wanted to make for several years. Thus far, I think I've purchased about five different fabrics. I still have no planned start date, but I'm circling around the idea. It's this building we saw in the Tin Cup ghost town (inhabited by living people, by the way) in Colorado.

We arrived back home in the late afternoon, and we were ready to imbibe in our Bees Knees cocktails by then. 

It was a nice way to end the day. We sat outside with the kitties.

There were birds all around, singing, and feasting at the bird feeders.

The kitties had a bead on something...probably a gopher.

Mr. Hawk saw it too.

But then, they thought better of it. Sadie was distracted by something else. Smitty just walked on by.

I checked again on the peonies. The warm sunshine caused all the buds on the Fairy Princess to open. 

And I noticed this one...Garden Treasures...is very close to opening too. I checked it this morning, but it wasn't open yet. I expect it will be by the end of the day.

It's another pretty day outside. Smitty spent his morning baking in the sunshine.

Being a black cat, Sadie can't tolerate that direct sunshine for very long. She prefers spending time in her catio apartment on these warm days.

Smitty is almost too big for this little cat house, and so it has become Sadie's purrivate domain.

We're expecting some guys to come by and reconstruct the wall in our guest bedroom today. Hopefully, they'll stay longer than the ten minutes, which seems to be their routine. Honestly, I really want the downstairs put back together. A guy called yesterday requesting a date to come and rip up the carpet. Since we haven't even selected any new carpet, I discouraged him from getting too far ahead of the game. I don't want them moving all the furniture (including my sewing room) out of the house and taking us down to bare concrete until they're ready to install the new stuff. And since we haven't picked out any new stuff yet...well, you can see where I'm going with this. So, today, they'll focus on the wall. Which will have to be repainted. And again...we haven't told them what color yet, so I don't know how you finish that job. Sigh.

I'll just get back to my slow-stitching, and my quilting, and my sunny day, and try to keep my mind off this reconstruction frustration. But geez...time's a-wasting. I'm really hoping I'll live long enough to see the end of this project.