A Welcome Day Off

Good morning, my friends. It was good to give myself a day off yesterday. Trying to talk myself into hoeing the garden, I took a walk around. The garden could have used a good hoeing, but I decided it could wait until this morning too. It feels like ages since I've had nothing on my to-do list, and so I grabbed at the opportunity with gusto.

As long as I was out, I took a few pictures of what's going on outside right now. Cherries continue to ripen, but they’re not ready yet. I expect we’ll have some in another two weeks or so.

I captured this bumblebee enjoying the lavender.

The Checkers dahlia is putting on quite a show.

Also, I noticed flowers forming on the Bumble Rumble dahlia. I think it might be my favorite of the dahlias. For sure, it was the one that convinced me to plant some dahlias in the first place.

Checking the greenhouse, I found some tomatoes about the size of tennis balls. These have a long way to go, but the tomatoes and their plants are looking good. Also, we used some of the greenhouse lettuce yesterday. It’s so crispy and fresh.

Back outside, I noticed the apples are about the size of ping pong balls now. Probably nothing will come of these, but I keep hoping we’ll get something useful someday. If memory serves, I might have made apple crisps for two from some of these apples. On the other hand, I can’t be sure the apples didn’t come from one of our CSA shares.

The plums are a little larger than an olive now…like a prune, which makes sense since these are Italian prune plums. They’ll be a little larger by the time they ripen.

This is our cherry tomato. It’s quite a mystery to me. The plant is large and healthy. It has produced hundreds of flowers, and yet, not a single cherry tomato. I study it every time I’m out. I think critters are eating it, and you can see bitten off stems where I’ve circled in red. Still, this doesn’t seem like enough interference that the plant produces exactly zero tomatoes. It seems infertile for some reason.

It occurs to me that it isn’t getting pollinated, although we have plenty of bees around. Also, I’ve read that tomatoes are easy to pollinate, and that simply shaking the plant is enough. Since this plant is outside and it’s often breezy, that seems an improbable explanation. The tomatoes in the greenhouse get a boost in pollination when I use a soft make-up to touch all the flowers. It seems unlikely that would help this outdoor plant, but maybe I’ll give it a try and see.

Okay, so back inside, I had some lunch, and then went to work on the quilting. I’ve quilted all the “spacer” panels between the embroidered and the pieced blocks, and I’ve quilted the top border. I might have kept going, but that seemed like a good place to stop. It’s almost impossible to see the quilting, but I’m showing it to you anyway. You can sort of see the spiky sunflowers quilted over the ones lightest in color. I’m roughly following those petals, and then looping from flower to flower as I go.

Here’s a peek at the back, but it isn’t much easier to see there.

When I reached the corner, I turned the quilt, preparing to work my way across the left side border, and I left it needle down there. This is where I’ll start today, and I expect to finish the quilting by day’s end. Probably, I won’t do anything with the binding for at least another day. Finishing this quilt is my goal for June’s One Monthly Goal, however, and so I’m running out of time.

And then, I moved myself to the basement sewing room and went to work top-stitching The Yoder Sisters. I’ve only been doing the black sections so far. When I’d done all four sisters’ aprons, boots, and hats, I decided to call it a day on the top-stitching. It can get tedious after a while.

Now I’m going back to the blue dress girl, and I’ll start there today. My goal for today’s sewing is to finish top-stitching all the dresses. If I feel like doing more, I will, but I have a feeling the dresses will be all the tedium I can stand.

There were still a few minutes left for sewing, and so I traced Block 8 for Le Jardin, The Birdbath. Some of these blocks were supposed to have applique, but I’m letting the floss do all the work. My current piece still has at least a couple of days work left in it, and so I won’t start on this for a couple of days. Still, I can always breathe easier knowing where my next stitching project is coming from.

All right. So, I have another easy day ahead. I’ll get out early and hoe the garden before it gets too hot. The bird feeders need filling, and those are the only things on this morning’s list. The rest of the day will go a lot like yesterday…mostly sewing. It’s going to be a good day. I hope you have a good day too.