More Blooming Things

Good morning, my friends. It was a busy day here, as usual. Not everything got finished, but most everything did. My first trip outside was to take a look at the garden to see if I could put off the hoeing for another day. It looked pretty good to me, and so I'd planned to do that first thing this morning. Then, I awakened to the sound of thunder and flashes of lightning. It rained for a bit, and then the sky turned this weird shade of pinkish red.

It’s hard to know how much rain fell, and the forecast shows this “storm” short-lived. So, maybe I’ll hoe. At this point, who’s to know?

As for the garden, everything is looking pretty good, although I'm pretty sure something has been munching on some of the leaves of the zucchini. I blame rabbits for this newest outrage.

As I’ve mentioned, I’ve been trying to get the green beans to climb the bean poles, rather than their protective fencing. Each morning I direct them where I want them to go. Within a few hours, they’ll be back where they started. Finally, when I went out yesterday morning, one of them had succumbed to my wishes. Hopefully, this one is their leader, and they’ll all fall in line. What are the chances?

A little more of the sunflower is showing itself.

And yay! The Bumble Rumble dahlia has bloomed. It looks a little beaten up…not sure why.

Also, the echinacea is blooming. 

Soon it will be covered in flowers and bees. It’s a good thing because the bees’ favorite, lavender, is nearly bloomed out for the season. They’ll be happy to have a different flower where they can take care of their bee business.

In the greenhouse, I’m seeing two sprouts of the second round of red leaf lettuce. These little window boxes can accommodate five seeds, and so I’m hoping the other three will show themselves soon.

Now, maybe it’s just me, but does that tomato I’ve indicated below appear to be changing colors? Does it have just the faintest pink blush? Maybe it’s just wishful thinking. Maybe it’s Maybelline. Who can say?

Whining about the lack of ripe cherry tomatoes in yesterday’s post seems to have worked out for me again. When I looked yesterday morning, I saw several ripening cherry tomatoes. These are the Sungold cherry tomatoes. They turn orange when they’re ripe.

Okay, but let’s just back up a bit, shall we? Before heading outside, I stitched Tiny Treasure #61. I’m hoping I’ll have pickles to can soon, and so this seemed a good place to start. This one has straight stitch, satin stitch, stem stitch, and French knots.

After lunch, I quilted another row of the Shop Hop quilt. There’s just one more row, and then I’ll start on the sashings. 

It’s always hard to see the quilting from the back, but here’s a peek anyway.

It was left needle down on the final row of blocks, and I’ll start there today.

In the sewing room, Sadie agreed to help me top-stitch the applique on Kate Carmack’s block.

It took most of the rest of my day, but it’s finished.

These are the three blocks I have for this quilt so far.

Next, I’ll get back to work on the Northern Wilderness project. These are the blocks I have for this quilt so far. There are 20 blocks in all. I’ll be working on blocks 13 and 14 this time around.

We’re meeting up with the family for a dinner out tonight. I’m looking forward to that. There is at least one housekeeping chore on the day’s calendar, and I’m still hoping I’ll be able to hoe the garden. Aside from that, it’ll be a mostly sewing day. 

As I’ve been writing, the storm has been waning. One wonders what got into the weather gods this morning. It’s been lovely, if a little warm, but we’ve been able to open the windows at night. The pink color has faded now, and it’s just looking a little gloomy. The forecast doesn’t show the sun making an appearance until later this afternoon. 

Okay, so that’s all I have for you today. I’ll just carry on with my hoeing and sewing. (Did you see what I did there?) Please feel free to carry on at your end too. 

The First Vegetable Harvest

Good morning, my friends. It was a momentous day yesterday. I was able to harvest the first zucchini from the vegetable garden. We’re starting with the small ones while they’re still defenseless.

Those were shredded, and then I added a cup of blueberries to make this Blueberry Zucchini Cake with Lemon Buttercream. This is how it looked when it came from the oven. And let me just point out that this is a cake made with fruit and vegetables. It’s gotta be healthy, right? I’ve linked to the recipe, but know that I halved the recipe and baked it in an 8 x 8 pan.

After it cooled, I frosted it with a lemon buttercream frosting. This frosting is to die for. The cake isn’t much of a looker.

But when we cut into it, it was pretty inside. You can see some flecks of zucchini.

Also on the baking schedule yesterday was another round of these Granola Cups. As it turns out, we really like these. I had some problems with them last time around, and so I made some adjustments this time. For one thing, I used this muffin pan that once belonged to my grandmother. It only makes nine muffins, but they are larger than the standard 12-muffin pan. They looked like this when they came from the oven. While they were hot, I used a small ladle to press on the centers, molding them into a bowl shape.

Then, I gave them some time to cool. When they were reasonably cool, I popped them into the refrigerator and waited another 20 minutes. About half of them came out in one piece after that.

The rest fell apart as I took them from the pan. I want to try it again, only this time, I think I’ll try putting them into the freezer for 15 minutes before I try taking them out of the pan. As Mike would say, it needs more practice.

During one of my wait times, I snuck out to the garden to see if the Bumble Rumble had bloomed. Ooooh…it is so close, but not quite there yet. Maybe today.

But the other dahlias are dazzling me. I’ve never seen so many flowers on these plants.

Just to their right, I noticed the purple poppy is hanging its head, as poppies do before they bloom. I thought I might be fooling myself with this, and maybe it’s really just a weed. Seeing it like this, I’m almost 100% certain it’s going to be a purple poppy.

Around the front of the house, I noticed some blooms on the “hens and chicks.” These used to be more visible until the wild strawberries we planted for ground cover inundated them. They’re still putting up flowers, though.

Here’s another one over here. 

Here are some of the “hens” peeking out from under the strawberries.

They have a Dr. Seuss-type flower. Here’s how it looks from the top.

These were given to us by some dear friends as a house-warming gift. They were a married couple, Larry and Tracy, and they’ve both passed away at this point, and much too young. I’d like to get up enough energy to pull some of the strawberries out and give the hens and chicks some breathing room. I can’t see them without thinking of Larry and Tracy, and so I’d like to maintain them as a memorial to our friends.

Okay with my kitchen and garden duties complete, I quilted another row on the Shop Hop quilt. That’s three rows down, two to go.

Now I’m at the top of the quilt, and I’ve turned it around to keep the bulk on the table. From here, I’ll have to do the quilting upside down and backwards. It shouldn’t be hard.

Next I was ready to work on the third block for Across the Wide Missouri. The third block is dedicated to this woman, who went by the name of Kate Carmack. Here's a picture of her.

Born in the Klondike she was a member of the Tagish tribe, and known as Shaaw Tláa. She spent her childhood in south-central Yukon. Native Tagish, Shaaw Tláa was one of eight children born into an arranged marriage between the coastal Tlingit people and the Tagish to formalize trading partnerships.

During our trip to Alaska last year, we passed through the area that was inhabited by the Tlingit.  You can read my blog post about our travels right here. Shaaw Tláa’s first husband, a Tlingit man, and their infant daughter died during an influenza epidemic. Her sister also died during the epidemic. After that, her mother encouraged her to marry her deceased sister’s husband, as was tradition in their culture. He was a white man named George Carmack. After marrying him, she took the name of Kate Carmack.

In 1896, while traveling in remote Canada with her husband, her brother Keish (Skookum Jim), and Ka'a Goox (Dawson Charlie), the group discovered a significant amount of gold as they stopped to fish along Rabbit Creek, a small tributary of the Klondike River. While debate remains about who first made the discovery of the claim, it was staked by George Carmack, the only white member of the group. There is some controversy about who actually spotted the gold first. It is believed that she was the first to discover the nugget, but she had two strikes against her: (1) she was a native, and (2) she was a woman. On the other hand, her own biographer gives credit to Kate’s brother, Skookum Jim. News of this gold quickly spread and ignited the Klondike Gold Rush of 1897-98. 

For the first year after the big discovery of gold, little changed in their lives. She and George worked their rich mining claim for two seasons. In their cabin, she kept house, cared for their daughter and took in laundry. She sewed moccasins and warm winter clothing to sell to other miners and helped provide meals for her family by picking berries and trapping rabbits and ptarmigan. The uncaptioned image below was in my book, and I'm assuming this is where they lived.

The block in the book includes fish because fishing was their primary source of income prior to the discovery of gold. Sadie helped me choose a background. She doesn't care much for fish...they're too slimy and wet. She purrfers mice, if you please.

The book pictures a tan background. This one made me think of water.

I spent the rest of my sewing day constructing the fish and fusing them to the background.

They still need top-stitching, and I'm hoping to finish that today.

The only other sewing I did yesterday was to finish off the Love Sampler. 

Eventually, I'll add some borders and turn it into a little wall hanging.

Okay, on today’s agenda, I need to hoe the garden again and I need to water the flower pots. It’s been warm here, and I’m sure the flowers would appreciate a drink. No doubt the bird feeders are empty as well. I’ll be taking the first stitches on the final twelve Tiny Treasures blocks, and I’ll get back to my quilting and top-stitching. It’s going to be a heavy gardening and sewing day.

That’s all I have for you today. I hope you’re avoiding the heat where you are. We ran the A/C for only the third time so far this summer, but we’re expecting more warm weather. It’s a good time to hang out in the meat locker that doubles as my sewing room. The A/C keeps it nicely cool in the basement. Despite it’s being July and hot, I’ll be wearing my sweatshirt to keep warm.

Color in the Bee Garden

Good morning, my friends. It was a short day for sewing yesterday. My morning started with a doctor's appointment. I’ll say more about that in a minute. After my appointment, I stopped off at our local Safeway store and picked up the things currently on our list. We get our vaccines at Safeway, and they always give us a 15% off coupon for our next shopping trip. We don't often shop at Safeway, but there are a few things they carry that I can't get at our regular store. As long as I was driving by, I figured it was a good time to use that coupon. (Also, Bonus! I'm thinking we can get through the week without another grocery shopping trip.)

Back at home, it was lunch time. I had some lunch, and then a nap, and then I filled the bird feeders. While I was out, I took a look at the garden. I'm checking on the green beans every day, encouraging them to climb the poles rather than tangle themselves up in the fencing. As the runners get longer, I think they'll get the idea.

Some of the zinnias are starting to show their color. I'm excited for these to bloom. It's been a long time since I've grown zinnias.

Here's our GOAT insect. I spotted several of her clan in the garden today.

If you look very carefully at the center of the sunflower below, you can see some of its yellow petals showing. Most all of the sunflowers look like this now. I expect we'll see some flowers from them by next week.

It's hard to see in this image, but there are already four zucchini close to being ready for harvest. I have in mind to do something with the blueberries today. There are a couple of recipes that also include shredded zucchini. I'll check on them again this morning, and then decide what to bake with the blueberries.

The largest of the pickling cucumbers has two eensy weensy cucumbers and flowers. I'm hoping for a good pickling cucumber harvest this year. We need pickles. We need them badly.

Gazing out at the bee garden, I was thrilled to see about half a dozen of these cornflowers in bloom. They're also known as “bachelor's buttons.” I've been hopeful we'd see some this time around.

While I was looking at the cornflower, I spotted this flax. It's another newbie. I'm hoping we'll see more of this.

Back closer to the house, there are lots of cherry tomatoes now...but no ripe ones. Hopefully, we'll see some soon.

The deer have been eating the apples from our tree. There were fewer apples than I've seen previously, and I had to look up high for the ones still on the tree. It's really no loss with these. They never produce anything larger than a tennis ball, and they aren't particularly good eating. Still, I'd like to get enough to bake something with them. 

The Bumble Rumble dahlia continues to tease me. It's a little more open, but still a ways to go.

Okay, so back inside, I headed to the quilting machine. Smitty kept an eye out for invading forces from the far side of the room.

A second row is quilted now. 

There's enough contrast on the block below that I think you can get a better look at the quilting.

Here's a peek at the back.

And now I've left it needle down at the bottom row. I'll start there today.

Not as much was accomplished sewing-wise as I’d hoped. The doctor’s appointment in the morning kind of wore me out. Although I was pretty sure I knew where it was located, I still needed to rely on GPS to find it. Then…a new doctor. I don’t know about you, but I find it stressful meeting a doctor for the first time. He took three little swipes at my skin. I can't say I was surprised because it’s been more than a year since my last skin check. Despite my whining, I’m happy to say that I liked him very much. The best part is that he's young, and so I'm confident his practice will outlive what's left of my life. Having all my doctors retire is one of the most annoying things about getting older. I have faith this new guy will be around for a while.

We finished off our day meeting up with Erik and Mae for an early dinner. We handed off their new phones, and it was just plain good to see them. They were camping over at the Oregon Coast this past weekend. Mike and I were married around 7 years before we went on a tent camping trip for the first time. Erik was only around 2 at the time. Our “camping equipment” consisted only of sleeping bags, and we were using a borrowed tent. It was so much fun that we went out immediately and purchased our own tent, a Coleman stove, and some other equipment we’d need to be tent campers. And we were die-hard tent campers for around 25 years. We have fond memories of that time, and so it tickles me to see the kids outfitting themselves to do more of it. They’re doing it in the van they’ve modified for camping. It has a real bed, and so it seems luxurious compared to our experience of sleeping on the ground in our first leaky tent.

As I mentioned earlier, I want to do some baking with the blueberries today. I'm still making up my mind what to bake.  For sure I'm going to make some more of the Granola Cups. We've really enjoyed those, but they're all gone now. This time around, I'll try refrigerating them after they've cooled to see if I can get them out of the pan in one piece. Either way, I'll be putting them in ramekins this time around. The custard cups worked, but a larger dish would have made them easier to eat. The blueberries have been a good accompaniment for those.

If I can get all that done, I'll get back to my quilting and sewing. It would be good to quilt another row of blocks on the Shop Hop quilt, and then I'd like to get a start on the block for Across the Wide Missouri. In the meantime, I'll read up on Kate Carmack, for whom the next block is dedicated.

So, there's plenty on my to-do list today. With that, I'll leave you to your day. I hope it's a good one.