Summer Begins in Earnest

Good morning, my friends! Does everyone still have all their fingers? There were no fireworks at our house. Probably the most exciting thing that happened all day was getting into bed and seeing some flashes far off in the valley. There wasn't even much going on in our neighborhood, which was a good thing. We're on an extreme fire danger alert. So please, neighbors, don't do anything stupid. Our fire of a few years back began with an illegal campfire, and so I think folks on our hill take those warnings pretty seriously now.

But let's not talk about fire and the blowing off of fingers. We're past all that now. Mike and I have always said that summer doesn't really start here until July 5th. Long ago, I lost count of the number of Fourth of Julys that we've sat huddled under an umbrella to watch fireworks. Our weather has been very nice so far this summer. We might have to reset our official start of summer date if this keeps up.

So in yesterday's post, I told you we were going to erect a little border fence in the garden. My shadow self was out first thing to take the "before" picture.

The garden looks pretty good. I've been diligent about keeping the weeds hoed. Now that it has some size, it's very gratifying to stand at this viewpoint and gaze out upon what we have grown so far. But then, I look down at the far end at the bee garden, and it looks pretty messy. It's hard to keep a defined boundary between the bee garden and the rest of the vegetables. Also, the tall daisies are wanting to fall over and inundate the sunflowers planted at that end.

So, a few mornings ago, I had an idea to put up one of those small stick-it-in-the-ground picket fences. I found just what I wanted at Home Depot. Yesterday morning, Mike helped me erect my little fence. While I was waiting for him to come with the fence sections and rubber mallet, I walked around to see what's growing. To my delight, I discovered little baby cucumbers on some of the pickling cucumbers.

The plants seem small to be producing cucumbers already. 

The zucchini are doing what they do...making lots of zucchini. I might decide to harvest some of these babies. I have a salad I like to make with them. 

On the other hand, I'm really Jonesing for some zucchini relish, and I need bigger zucchinis for that. We have a camping trip planned in the next two weeks. Probably when we return home, there will be zucchinis the size of small tree trunks. That might be the best time to harvest zucchini for relish. (Don't mind me while I think out loud as I write.) 

Also, I noticed this one. It's just about the right size for harvesting. I decided to give it another couple of days. Hopefully, that wasn't a mistake. It might be baseball bat size by the time I check it this morning.

Okay, and by that time, I was at the far end of the garden. The bee garden was behind me as I took this shot of the rest of the vegetables. That's a waist-high sunflower in the foreground.

It took us about an hour, but we had a little fence in the end. Now, doesn't that look better?

We came up a few feet short on the right. I'll need to pick up one more section of fencing next time I go into town.

I still needed to feed the birds, and I needed to water the annuals. Also, I noticed I could see the apples on the tree from some distance away. And that was all the gardening I did yesterday. 

Back inside, I baked a Cast Iron Skillet Cherry Crisp. This was from cherries I bought at the grocery store. Ours still aren't ripe. (Our neighbors' pie cherries aren't ripe either.) This was a nice dessert with our dinner last night. We had it with a scoop of vanilla ice cream, and those fresh cherries were so nice.

In the sewing room, Smitty was waiting to get start on our sewing day.

So, remember the Painted Ladies quilt blocks? Each house has a little ribbon or lace embellishment just under the roof. 

I wanted to do each one differently, but I quickly ran out of ribbons and lace. The quilt blocks aren't even half done yet, so what to do? What to do? I didn't want to buy a bunch of spools of ribbon. I considered putting out a call to friends for any ribbon scraps they could part with. But then I went online and searched for a "ribbon grab bag." I found quite a few on Etsy. Between two sellers, I ended up with a very nice selection. And this is just a small part of it. I have plenty to finish off the rest of the quilt now. Most are in long enough lengths that I'll find other uses for them.

With those sorted and put away, I set a time for an hour of paper-piecing purgatory. Now I'm about 2/3 of the way finished with Tiny House #25.

I spent a little more than an hour on that before deciding to do something else. I need to get busy quilting Pieces of the Past, but I'm still circling that quilt. Instead, I decided to do July's block for the Homestead quilt. I'm doing these in the chosen color for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge. July's color is red, and my next block was the "eight-pointed star." The image in the pamphlet from the national park showed this LeMoyne Star. It's one of my favorite blocks, and so I went with their choice.

Here's what the pamphlet had to say about this block:

Stars are probably the most common motif used in quilts. Homesteaders traveling west used the stars for guidance. They viewed stars as religious symbols of their faith. There are hundreds of star patterns. Some quilts have just one large radiating star, often called the Star of Bethlehem or Blazing Star, while in other quilts, dozens of smaller stars are used. The simplest and most popular star pattern is an eight-pointed star. Precision is extremely important. Any inaccuracy in cutting or piecing is multiplied as pieces are added. If poorly pieced, the quilt will not lie flat when finished. An intricate star pattern was one way for a woman to show her needlework skills. Many times the quiltmaker deliberately sewed a mistake somewhere in the quilt. It is thought by some that this reflected the maker’s faith since only God can make a perfect thing.

I'll admit I have some doubts about that last part. I've also heard this about Navajo rug-making, and that appears to be true. As for the quiltmaker intentionally putting a mistake in a quilt, there is some controversy about this. What do you think? 

Here are all the blocks I have for the Homestead quilt so far.

It was getting close to quitting time by then, and so I didn't do any more sewing for the day. We had a nice dinner with our friend last night. It had been a long time since we'd seen him, and so it was good to catch up.

Today, there's not much on the agenda. I was in a hurry to get outside and do our gardening chores before it got too hot yesterday, and so my slow-stitching fell by the wayside. This morning, I'll give myself some extra time to work on it to make up for yesterday's neglect. I'll want to finish off the Tiny House, and then there will be nothing standing between me and my quilting. It begins today. I'd like to get it to binding stage before we leave on our camping trip. Hand-sewing the binding would be a good take-along project. Also today, I'll switch out my Fourth of July table runner decor for the summer stuff. It's a good day to stay inside and stay cool. I hope y'all are staying cool where you are.