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.

Quilting Row by Row

Good morning, my friends. I'm writing extra fast this morning because I have an early appointment with a new dermatologist. My dermatologist of some 35 years retired a couple of years ago. I've been seeing another doctor, but I haven't really felt comfortable with her. Now I'm switching. It's hard getting in with a specialist as a new patient, but I managed to score a July appointment, when his new patient appointments were booking out until December. I hope I like him. It's just a routine skin check...nothing to worry about. Hopefully, I'll come home with all my skin intact.

So, let's just get right to it, shall we? Yesterday morning I stitched most of the bottom of the Love Sampler.

Now, I’ve moved my hoop up to encompass the last of it. I won’t finish it this morning, but tomorrow isn’t out of the question.

After that, there was a garden to hoe and flower pots to water. After lunch, I was able to get back to my quilting. Smitty was there to make sure I didn’t move the quilt too quickly. He wants to see nice, even stitches.

One block was stitched the day before, but I was able to finish up the rest of the row yesterday.

Here’s a peek at the back. 

This quilt has five rows. With one row done, I’ll have four days to quilt the remaining rows. Then, I’ll spend a day on the horizontal sashings and another day on the vertical sashings. That means I could have it to binding stage in about a week. For now, I left it needle-down in the next row down from the one I’ve already quilted. There should be some time to work on it today.

From there, I finished the third block for Where the Cows Come Home. When I left off the day before, I’d created the barn on a pressing sheet. Yesterday, I fused it to the background and added in the details.

The tree had some scraggly branches extending from the applique trunk. I made a copy of the placement diagram, and then traced the branches onto the fabric, as I do for embroidery.

Then I used my machine’s triple stitch and also the regular straight stitch to machine stitch the branches on the tree. After that, just the top-stitching was left, and the block was finished.

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

Smitty helped me tidy up at the end of the day. He’s a stickler for organization and cleanliness.

If there’s time for sewing today, I’ll get to work on the next block for Across the Wide Missouri. These are the two blocks I have for this quilt so far.

Recall that these blocks honor women who traveled across the prairie with westward expansion of the United States. The next block will honor Kate Carmack. I haven’t read much about her yet, so I’ll say more as I get to work making the block.

All right. I have a doctor’s appointment this morning, and then we’ll meet up with Erik and Mae for an early dinner tonight. With the change in our phone service, we have new phones to hand off to them. (We have a family plan.) It’ll be good to see them. We’re seeing them again on Thursday when we’ll all get together for dinner. Matthew will be with us for that too. We haven’t all been together since April, and so it’ll be nice to see everyone.

Okay, my friends. With that, I must be on my way. Busy morning ahead. Have a good day, Everyone!

Lots of Sewing

Good morning, my friends. It ended up being kind of a slow day here. The weather never really cleared up, and so I was deterred from going for a walk. Instead, I decided to stay at home and work with the macro function of my new camera. First, I picked the day's blueberry harvest, and then I just walked around taking close-up shots of things. I have a lot of pictures to show you today.

So...remember all the flowers on the Stargazer lily? Here's a photo I took last week.

Despite all my protective fencing, the deer still managed to eat every single flower. Oh well. At least we got to enjoy it for a little while. I made it to easy for them to get their muzzles into the fencing. Next time, I’ll make it taller.

Walking on, I noticed another flower forming on the echinacea. This is the one known as Cheyenne Spirit.

Growing in among the foliage on the echinacea, I noticed a tall weed. It had this cute little flower. Nevertheless, it was a weed, and I pulled it up and tossed it aside. Usually, when I pull a weed as I walk by, I leave it visible so all the the other weeds can see it. It’s a form of warning off, like a head on a pike.

The Dr. Seussian thing below is the spent blossom of the Edda clematis.

Ooooh…now this has me checking every day. Maybe today I’ll find it open. This is the first flower on the Bumble Rumble dahlia. It’s my favorite of the dahlias.

The Fuzzy Wuzzy dahlia is blooming its guts out.

Lookie here! This is a surprise. It’s the purple poppy I mentioned a few days ago. I was surprised to notice it growing in among the red poppies that are making a comeback this year. And, honestly, I shouldn’t have been surprised because the seeds came from Mae’s garden, and she often gets purple poppies.

What surprised me about it is that the poppies are biannuals. I wouldn’t expect a flower from it this year, but that sure looks like a bud to me. I pressed lightly on it to see if it might be a bundle of leaves. Pretty sure it’s a bud. That will give me something else in the garden to obsess over.

Out in the vegetable garden, I noticed the zinnias are budding out. I grew zinnias in the vegetable garden some years back. They were so pretty, but I didn’t ever plant them again. No reason. This year, I planted fewer vegetables and more flowers. Zinnias made the cut.

The smallest of the zucchini plants has a flower on it. That means all three zucchini plants are producing. Whoa, Nellie. The “Z” wars will be starting up soon.

The green beans are putting out runners. I’m going to have to watch these closely because I want them to climb the poles, and not get all entangled in the protective fencing. Mike wondered if we should remove the fencing. If I can train them, then it makes sense to leave it. And, honestly, maybe it doesn’t even matter if they entangle themselves in the fencing. The green beans are getting a lot of experimentation this year after the disastrous garden of 2023 when the critters bit every single vine off at ground level. It both broke and hardened my heart.

Having checked all the vegetables, I gazed out across the bee garden in search of some new color. I spied a few of these Checker Mallow.

This is a new one…I believe it’s known as a corn poppy.

This next stem hanging its head looks like it could be a poppy too. I had a hard time getting the bud in focus even after taking about half a dozen shots of it. I think the background is simply too busy, and that’s a common problem with macro photography. The camera can’t tell what to focus on. My new camera has the ability to manually focus, although I haven’t tried it yet. I’m usually relying on auto focus.

Okay and the hydrangeas are still showing off.

So that was the extent of my outside time. Back inside, it was time to get started quilting the Shop Hop 3.0 quilt. 

Choosing threads was pretty easy. I wanted something neutral both top and bottom. In the bobbin, I’ll use this OMNI tan. It’s a 40 weight thread.

It’s a close match to the backing fabric.

I had a nearly-empty bobbin already wound. I used most of that checking the tension, and then rewound the bobbin. It’s good to start with a full bobbin

On top, I’ll use this So Fine thread. 

.It’s a 50 weight thread and a good match to the background fabric on top. I believe the 40-50 weight combination was what I was using when I finished off Ruth’s Legacy. My tension was already good.

So, I’ve struggled deciding how to quilt this. I’m stuck on what to do with the front and back covers of the books. I’ve been perusing Pinterest for several days, looking at motifs that could be fillers. I kept stopping at this one:

My sections aren’t square. They are more like diamonds, but I still had ideas about how I could make it work. I spent a while trying to mark the section, but it was hard to see anything I used to mark it. Finally, I marked it with a blue chalk, and then started stitching. And this just didn’t work at all. I didn’t stitch very far, and I took it all out. Back to the drawing board.

Checking my book shelf, I was pretty sure I had the book below…and yes, I did. 

So I looked at her section on diamond shapes. And mine isn’t exactly a diamond either, but I still thought I could make the motif below work.

Mine blossoms out from the bottom of book spine in both directions. (I hope that makes sense.) Also, the “petals” overlap more than in her design. No matter. I like how this looks.

I’s always planned to do a little swirl where the pages of the book are.

It’s a little easier to see what I’ve done from the back. It kind of makes me think of a waterlily. Or maybe a winged insect with his antennae at the wrong end of his body. Or maybe he flies in reverse. Could happen.

Looking at the image above, I’m realizing I could make the petals face the other direction, starting at the top of the spine and going in the opposite direction. Then, it really would look like a winged insect. Nah.

Okay, and I’d only done one block, but I’d run out of patience for this project, and so I called it quits. I left it needle down at the second block, and I’ll make more progress today.

In the downstairs sewing room, I found Sadie ready to get to work.

My first task was to trace the last twelve of the Tiny Treasures. When these are finished, I’ll be ready to sew all 72 into a quilt.

And it’s almost impossible to see anything in that image above, so here’s the page from the book, showing what I’ll be stitching. My goal is always to do one per day.

With that finished, I was ready to get to work on the third block for Where the Cows Come Home. This block is called “Home for the Holidays.”

Sadie helped me choose my fabrics, although she’s pretty possessive about that one she’s holding.

She let me have enough of it to make the block background.

It was the change of shift, and so Smitty helped me with the applique. I think he just woke up.

The applique for these is best done on a pressing sheet. By day’s end, I’d created the structure of the barn. And that took of the rest of the time I had for sewing. I still need to add a door and windows and some other details and then I’ll fuse it all to the background. It should be ready for top-stitching today.

For dinner I tried this recipe for Miso Corn Dumpling Stir-Fry. It was pretty good! I used veggie potstickers (dumplings) because that was all that was available. I substituted broccoli for the zucchini in the original recipe, and I added a one-pound bag of medium shrimp for some protein. It was a stir-fry dish, and so it meant standing at the stove for a while, but it wasn’t hard to make. I’d do it again.

The garden needs hoeing today and I should probably water the flower pots. When those things are done, I can get back to my sewing. I’d say I’m going to take that walk today, but I know hoeing will be enough physical activity for one day. It’s important to pace oneself. A good rule of thumb is to keep a 1:10 ratio of physical activity to laziness. That’s how cats do it, and cats know everything.