Gardening and Sewing

Good morning, my friends. It was such a pretty day yesterday, and unexpectedly warm. My usual morning routine was still intact, though. I took the first stitches on the ninth block for the Snowmen and Reindeer. I stitched their faces first so that we could chat while I stitched the rest of their bodies. (Doesn’t everyone do that?)

When I finished with my stitching, I could see Mike outside doing something in the greenhouse. I’d asked him to help me fill these large pots with dirt so that I could repot the tomatoes. When I saw him there, I decided it was going to be a gardening day. Now, the tomatoes are happily ensconsed in their largest pots of the season. Make lots of tomatoes, you guys.

Also, I planted two kinds of lettuce in these window box planters. 

And I can’t remember if I blogged about this when it happened.

The pot you see above used to have poppies. It was a happy place for them, and they bloomed huge flowers as big as my hand.

Toward the end of last summer, I noticed the pot was filled with water and the poppies were dead. Drowned. It broke my heart. Yesterday, he dumped the dirt out of the pot, and we found the drainage holes at the bottom were plugged with mud. Apparently it sank into a wet impression and the drainage was clogged. So, he drilled more holes on the sides toward the bottom of the pot. We put a few inches of rock in the bottom of the pot and added rock to the impression below the pot, and then filled it with soil. So, it’s ready to receive poppies again.

Since I never have any luck sowing seeds directly into the ground, I’m starting some new ones in these little pots. (I have a feeling the birds eat seeds sown directly into the ground.) When they’ve sprouted and grown a little, I’ll move them to the larger pot outside, and all will be well with the poppies. They’re biannual, and so I won’t see any flowers from these until next year.

There are still more seeds to plant, but I’m going to wait just a bit longer to start them. It’s generally not safe to plant vegetables until closer to Memorial Day where we are, and so I’ll wait until May 1st to start any seeds for the garden.

From there, I filled the bird feeders. The Bleeding Heart is the star of the garden right now. I expect the azaleas to pick up the slack soon.

For now, I was excited to see buds on another one of the peonies. This one is called Fairy Princess.

We missed it’s flowers last year while we were in Alaska, but our neighbor sent us this picture:

Also, there is more color showing on this peony. (I think this is the one called “Joker.”)

Okay, and so I have to show you Mike’s newest 3-D printer creation. He’s been making a lot of tools and organizers and little gadgets he can use. Recently, he told me he asked himself, “What can I make now?” Apparently 3-D printing is a lot like quilting. Once you start, it becomes a habit. So, he saw this little whirlygig, and he decided he needed it.

We used to have a sort of sunflower-like spinner in this area, but it rusted and fell apart. This one, made of plastic, won’t do that. It tells us which way the wind is blowing, and it gave Mike something to do. As if.

Okay, and so gardening done, there was still time in the day to sew. These are the Land & Sea blocks. With no sashings and no borders, these went together fast. I sewed together the top three rows.

And then, the bottom three rows.

And then I sewed the bottom and the top together, and my quilt was finished. It ends up at 50 x 61 inches.

I’d pulled some fabrics for the back, but I was kind of “meh” about them. Also, I didn’t have enough of any of them. So, I’ll reward this week’s PT session with a trip to the nearby Boersma’s quilt shop to find something I like better.

It’s cloudy and cooler today. There are a few things on today’s agenda. I want to get in a walk on the treadmill, and I have a housekeeping chore to do. Also, I’ll need to make our dinner of crab cakes and cucumber salad early in the day since the crab cakes work best if they’re made ahead and given time to chill. (Don’t we all do better when we have time to chill?) 

When I can make my way into the sewing room, I’ll get started making two more blocks for the Northern Wilderness project. It’s been quite some time since I worked on this. These are the blocks I have so far:

These generally take a few days to make, and so that will keep me busy for the next couple of days.

Right now…it’s time for our Sunday morning pancakes, and then I’ll get back to my slow-stitching.