A Good Day

Good morning, my friends! How did the first day of summer treat you? Aside from grocery shopping, our day went pretty well. Not to be a merry sunshine or anything, but you do realize the days will get shorter from here. Shorter, and shorter, and shorter until we reach the shortest day of the year. In other words, it's all downhill from here. The days won't get longer again until the dead of winter. Except for you southern hemisphere people. Things are looking up for you. 

The kitties took advantage of the first-day-of-summer sun. When I went downstairs yesterday, Smitty was enjoying his morning sunbath.

Sadie followed the sun spot from room to room.

When we got home from the grocery store, we took them out for a walk around. There, we spied the last peony of the season. This is Garden Treasures.

Sadie thought she would test out the purroperties of shade rolling vs. sun rolling.

Smitty is strictly a shade roller. Too much sun will give you wrinkly furs.

My sewing day was spent top-stitching the latest two Whimsical Garden quilt blocks. The first one still needed borders, and then I top-stitched all the applique.

I was just finishing up the reds on the second block when I needed to stop for the day. I left it needle-down when I turned off the lights.

A Facebook friend from high school contacted me a week or so ago and told me a quilter friend of his had passed away. He wondered if I wanted some of her stash. Well, yeah! Count me in! Then I didn't hear any more about it until a big box arrived yesterday. Inside, I found 20 lbs. of fabric. There's some pretty stuff in this collection. It was mostly purples. I have an idea she sorted by color, and my friend chose from the purple section. My stash is light on purples, and so I was happy to get it.

At least a part of today's sewing time will be spent folding this for storage in my three-drawer bins. Already I have an idea for a quilt I'd like to make for my friend as a thank you for thinking of me.

I'm writing fast this morning because I'm meeting up with Sue for a walk. Recently, I learned of another trail one town over...the Tualatin Hills Nature Park. We're going to meet up there, and it should be a nice day for it. When I get home, I need to do some gardening things. The rain kept me indoors earlier in the week. Now it's time to water the annuals and get back to my weeding. The weeding will probably need to wait until tomorrow, but the watering must happen. Also, I'm going to plant some poppy seeds.

When our attempt to transplant the poppy plant failed, I asked Mae if she had some seeds. Did she!?! When they were here for Father's Day, she brought me two huge bags of seeds. The ones on the left are purple, and the ones on the right are red.

There should be no problem at all re-establishing poppies in the new barrel-sized pot. You might remember the purple one from a couple of seasons ago.

Just now, I was trying to retrace my Google steps to find the information I once found about these. There's something about how they are pollinated that makes the purple ones more rare. Mine bloomed just one season, and then didn't come back the following year. The whole business escapes me now, but in my searching, I learned about the Purple Poppy Campaign. As you probably know, red poppies are worn as a remembrance of those who've lost their lives in military conflicts. The Purple Poppy Campaign seeks to establish purple poppies as a way to remember military service animals who have died in conflict. You can read more about it at that link I've given you.

Okay, so all of that to say I'm hoping I can get them going, and maybe I can even get them to rebloom. Time will tell. But as I said earlier, I'm writing fast this morning. It's time to get some breakfast and get ready to go. Possibly, I can still carve out some time for slow-stitching.