Normalizing

Good morning, my friends. Things are starting to settle down here at the stationary Three Cats Ranch. And...welcome to August! Good grief! The summer is flying by! Being on the road for the past two months has us feeling as if we're in some kind of time warp. As we get organized, we're falling back into our routines. So let's just see what greeted us in the garden when we got home.

The echinacea is in full bloom, and the bees are all over it.

Two of the four dahlias have bloomed. It seems early for them. The remaining two have buds on them, but I don't expect them to open for a couple of weeks. This one is called Fuzzy Wuzzy.

This one is called Checkers.

The hydrangeas are in bloom. This variegated one has flowers of different colors. It gets a little too much sunshine in the afternoon, and so some of the petals are slightly burned. Also, the sprinkler that was to water these wasn't working completely right, and so they probably didn't get enough water.

This one, however, is doing better than its neighbor.

This one is planted in an ideal spot, and it is the star of the garden right now.

Also, the plum tree is loaded with plums. I don't expect these to be ready for another six weeks or so. We often miss them, and so I'm happy to be here to enjoy some good plum desserts.

We've been surprised at the lack of squirrels since we came home. At first, we chalked it up to us not filling the bird feeders since the end of May. However, they did help themselves to the cherries. I noticed they had cracked open and eaten the insides of the pits, as well as as the fruit. Yesterday, I googled to see if cherry pits are toxic to squirrels. Yes, indeed. According to America's Test Kitchens, the pit should be removed before offering cherries to squirrels. A few pits probably won't hurt them, but if they eat more than one, and also if they crack them open, they can be toxic. Now I'm wondering if they all succumbed to cyanide poisoning. The image below is just a small sampling of the gazillions of pits scattered all around.

Just after I took that picture, a big fat squirrel ran across the deck toward me. Still...their numbers are definitely down. We ran out of bird seed just before we left at the end of May, and we haven't replenished it yet. (We'll do that tomorrow.) It will be interesting to see if they return when we start filling the bird feeders again.

The grass is tall and the kitties are being stealth tigers in the weeds.

There was plenty of hunting activity yesterday, but I don't think they caught anything.

Smitty is happy for a ready supply of grass.

I managed to fit all of the newest batch of refrigerator magnets onto the refrigerator. I might be able to fit one or two more here, but I'll have to start working on the sides of the refrigerator if I'm going to add many more. 

Just FYI, this refrigerator is in our laundry room. I use it as a refrigerated pantry. The refrigerator in the kitchen is stainless steel. I doubt magnets will stick to the stainless steel, and in any case, I wouldn't want to risk scratching the surface.

So the camper is unpacked and everything is put away. I sorted through the thousands (literally) of pictures I took on our trip and moved them to my desktop computer. Now the laptop can get a rest until the next trip. Also, I washed six loads of laundry yesterday. A grocery list is made up, but we'll hold off on grocery shopping until tomorrow. We had dinner out last night since there wasn't even a single slice of bread left in the house. We bought just enough to get us through until a bigger shopping trip tomorrow.

And with all of that done, I could spend some time in the sewing room yesterday. The kitties were gung-ho about helping. They've missed sewing as much as I have. We had to negotiate who would be my helper for the day. Sadie said she should go first because Smitty needs to clean up his dirty feet.

And, yes. That is true. Sorry, Buddy. No dirty feet on my fabric.

With that settled, Sadie took up her favorite helper cat position.

My first task was to press all the embroidered blocks I have for the Raggedy & Friends project. These blocks are embroidered and pieced. I haven't done any of the piecing yet, although I've finished the embroidery for the first four blocks. I expect to get some sewing time in today, and I'll start with the piecing for the first block. These are the embroidered sections for the first block.

These are all the embroidered blocks I have so far...up through the fourth block.

And I'm just in time to set a goal for August's

My goal will be to finished the pieced portions of the first four blocks for the Raggedy & Friends quilt. I'm currently working on the embroidery for the fifth block, but I'll put that into my regular WIPs rotation when the embroidery is finished.

As for the day's catching-up business, I'll get to work pulling weeds outside. After wandering around a little more, I decided to stick with my bucket o' weeds approach. I have a big bucket that I'll fill up, and then call it a day. Working on it a little each day, I'm hoping to have it finished by week's end.

So with that...it's time to get going. Have a good day, Everybody! It's good to be home, isn't it?