Good Day Sunshine

Good morning, my friends. Things are heating up here at the Three Cats Ranch. It was such a lovely morning yesterday. The kitties and I headed out for another field trip. Smitty wasted no time getting in a lovely dust bath.

Sadie was to my right when I took that picture. She took one look at Smitty in his dust bath ecstasy and decided she should join in. Why should he have all the fun?

And let me just say that the family that dust bathes together stays together. Just think of them as "Roly" and "Poly."

We took a little walk around. The azaleas are finally showing some color. In a normal year, these would have been bloomed out by now.

The purple clematis is covered in flowers right now. I'll try to remember to get a picture of the whole thing. It's hidden behind another tree, and so it's a little hard to get the whole thing in a photograph.

 

 

The Daphne is covered in fragrant blossoms right now. It's one I worried about with our extreme cold temperatures this winter.

This dappled willow is all leafed out now. It's never really done the thing we planted it for. I believe it's been in the ground for at least five years now.

 

 

Below is a picture of one I found online. They put out a spray of whitish-pinkish foliage that make them look a little like a sparkler on the Fourth of July.

Ours always develops some of the foliage, but it doesn't extend out away from the rest of the greenery like the one above. Maybe this will be its year. Maybe it's just waiting for that Rosy Prospects peony to show itself.

 About that time Mike started up the tractor to mow the field. Sadie headed for the door. Smitty thought he'd just be stealth while the mower was running, but eventually the noise offended his ears too.

Back inside, I went to work quilting the final four blocks for the Dancing Chickens and Flying Pigs quilt.

That was all the quilting I'd assigned myself for the day. Nevertheless, I had in mind how I wanted to quilt the border. I'd decided to do a multi-faceted feathering design going back and forth across this rather wide outer border. It was all working the way I'd hoped. The quilting I did on the two Dream Big panels gave me the confidence I needed to try this. It was all looking good, and so I turned off the machine and had some lunch.

And then, while I was eating lunch, I wondered why I didn't just keep going. I was having fun. So I returned to the quilt and quilted about 2/3 of the way around the whole thing. I'm just going whatever direction my hands take me, trying to get in a good mix of loops, hooks, spirals, and other leafy leaf-type things.

I'm hoping to get it to binding stage by the end of the day. 

After a busy day yesterday, we decided margaritas were in order to celebrate our freshly mowed field. It's the first mowing of the season. Besides, it was Diez de Mayo, and we think Cinco de Mayo should be celebrated every day in May. So...cheers!

So, I'm hopeful about finishing off the quilting today. There's a lot on the day's to-do list, however. We'll start with grocery shopping. (Boo! Hiss!) And then I'll need to give the flower pots some water. The kitties will want to get out for a walk, and I have some indoor chores to do too. It's okay. We'll get an early start and hopefully, the quilting will get finished.

What's on your to-do list today? "To do today." I like how that sounds.