A Good Day Ends Badly

Good morning, my friends. It's the last day of May. We're onto June tomorrow. Are you ready? On June 4, 1944, my mom and dad were married. They were married 52 years when she passed away in 1997. Also, my grandfather's birthday was June 14th...Flag Day. (Also the same day as...you know...he who shall not be named.) My grandfather always told me they put the flags out on Flag Day for him. He was a WWI veteran, and so it made complete sense to me.

As you're reading along this morning, you can feel purrfectly safe knowing Smitty is on the lookout for invading forces.

So, let's talk about yesterday. It was a a good day right up until I went out to take a look at the vegetable garden. I think we'll start there so that we can end on a high note. I was happy to see some of the corn sprouting. We'll leave these rows covered with gutter guards until they're strong enough to resist any crow activity.

Also, I was happy to see a bean sprouting.

But then I was chagrined to find every other visible bean sprout pulled from the ground and tossed aside, unceremoniously. This has to be the work of crows. I've never had them go after the beans like this before.

They also pulled up two of the zucchini. The stake is there to mark the plants so we don't go stepping on them.

Probably I have enough zucchini, but I pulled up the stakes and covered them with baskets to protect them for the time being. It's so exasperating when the critters destroy things like this. It's a lot of work to put in a garden, and to have it so easily destroyed is very discouraging.

You might notice all the little green sprouts surrounding things. Today I'll be getting outside to hoe down those invaders.

In other garden news, the Fairy Princess peony is putting on a good show.

So far, the blueberries have escaped the notice of the deer. I suppose they're waiting until the berries are ripe enough for harvest, and then they'll go after them the night before I plan to pick them...not that I'm a garden pessimist or anything. I'm just being realistic.

The replanted poppy container is making a good comeback. I had five little pots of many seeds (poppy seeds are tiny). Four of them are thriving, and they'll fill in this pot with no problem.

The Garden Treasures peony has put out another flower.

The Edda clematis is also putting on its best show of the season.

Here's a close-up of its pretty flowers.

Finally, the mint is filling in its whiskey barrel. It shares this barrel with several other things, some tulips and some iris. Mint is extremely invasive. When it started growing in this whiskey barrel, we decided that was a good way to keep it contained. Still, I'm pulling it up from other areas all the time. 

And it was put to good use yesterday morning when I made this Watermelon Salad with Rum and Mint. This is a summer favorite around here.

Also for last night's dinner, I made this Seafood Pasta Salad with Lemon-Saffron Herb Dressing. This is another once-per-year (at least) recipe. It originally appeared in Bon Appetit, and it became an instant family favorite. The original recipe calls for campanelle pasta. It's sometimes hard to find, and so I've substituted trottole. Any thick shape of pasta will do. Also, don't let that inclusion of saffron scare you off. You could leave it out and not miss it at all. Also, I use canned crab. Fresh crab is too expensive to use this way.

Okay, and so making last night's dinner ahead took up most of my morning. After lunch, I made some more progress on the quilting. I spent about 40 minutes on this before calling it a day. Here's a little peek at the quilting.

Here's a look at the back.

When I laid it out for its picture, I was surprised to see that it's more than halfway finished. I'll do something different in the border, but everything below the red line in the interior is done. 

I expect to spend another two days on the interior, and then a day on the border. So, I'm closing in on another finish with this quilt.

Okay, and finally, finally, finally I was able to get to my "Across the Wide Missouri" project. The pattern is published in this book:

As I mentioned when I started this project, I enjoy making quilts that teach us something. There is a story associated with each of the blocks. This second block honors an enslaved pioneer woman by the name of Bridget "Biddie" Mason. You can read more about her at the link I've given you. Wikipedia tells us this about her: 

Born into slavery in 1818, she successfully petitioned a California court for her freedom in 1856 and went on to become one of the first African American women to own land in Los Angeles. Mason was a central figure in the early Black community there and was a founding member of the First African Methodist Episcopal Church, the city's oldest African American church.

Born in the American South, Mason was enslaved by Robert Smith, a convert to Mormonism who forced her and her three daughters west during the exodus of the Mormon pioneers. After living in the Utah Territory, the household moved to San Bernardino, California, in 1851. Although California was admitted to the Union as a free state, Smith attempted to hold Mason and her family in captivity and later planned to traffic them to the slave state of Texas. With the aid of the local Black community and legal authorities, Mason petitioned for her liberty. In a landmark 1856 ruling, Judge Benjamin Ignatius Hayes granted freedom to Mason and her extended family, declaring that they could not be held in bondage in a free state.

Here's a picture of her included in the book:

Smitty was there to help me get started. He seems pretty excited about this block, doesn't he?

Well...not so much as it turns out. He really just wanted me to dole out some catnip, and then he told Sadie it was time for her shift.

Okay, so each block is dedicated to a pioneer woman, but they still have an associated story. This block notes that settlers beginning a new life on the frontier often brought along farm animals such as chickens, cows, sheep, geese, and turkeys. Not only were they needed for the new home, they were also a source of food for the journey.

I was able to fuse all the applique yesterday. The tree took a long time. Each leaf is cut individually. I'd reached the end of my sewing day when I had it this far.

Okay, and that brings us to the first gasp of the day. This is Tiny Treasure #53: Lazy daisy, blanket leaf, stitch, straight stitch, stem stitch, and French knots.

On today's agenda, I'll start by stitching Tiny Treasure #54. Quilting will continue, and I'll do the top-stitching for Biddie Mason's block. As I mentioned, I'm going to hoe the garden today, and we've decided it's a good day to mop the floor. So, there's plenty to keep me busy. 

If there's time left over at the end of the day, I'll get started on the next two blocks for Northern Wilderness. These are the blocks I have for that quilt so far.

There are six blocks to go on this, and I forget what I'll be doing next.

Okay...good grief. It's after 11:00 a.m. as I sit here, and I'm still in my pajamas. We've already had our pancakes this morning, but there's still much standing between me and my sewing. But nothing is standing between me and my slow-stitching. We do have our priorities. Mopping the floor will have to wait.