One would think that by now, I would have thought to take a photo of absolutely everything throughout the day. And one would be so wrong. For instance I picked beets and cooked them, will pickle them tomorrow. But I do not have a photo of those pretty beets. Nor do I have a photo of the work we did down in the sheep area.
So knowing July is “Christmas” month and it is nearly over, I thought I should put together a small easy wall hanging that you might also be interested in. You can find the patterns here, but only until August 14 and then they vanish It is “Little Joys Quilt Along” and is a fairly easy small wall hanging or table topper measuring about 34″ square.
The laundry is done, the fleece is soaking – actually rinsing, and it’s a bit late to dry today, but I’ll put it our and it will dry tomorrow. A quilt is on the long arm
and the embroidery machine is still at work. It’s just me that is wearing thin. I still have the hanging baskets to water and then I’ll just drop. I’m so glad tomorrow is a day of rest.
The chicken coop was first on the list this morning. I am grateful to have had help on that one. The coop is large, probably 16′ square and desperately needed shavings changed. Then the larger babies were taken out of the cage
and the wee bantams were moved into the house. After a week or so in there, they will also be released and the cage removed.
The greenhouse was also in desperate need, so I spent time out there.
Seems the potatoes were much smaller than they should have been and the ground was very dry, but I’ll take whatever help I can get. Now the tomatoes, beets, and celery are all weeded.
Walking by the artichokes, I see we have two of them ready, so brought them in
And we dug up the elephant garlic. I didn’t get another garlic planted last fall.
It is just as well, we didn’t get a lot of the garden planted this year. It is just so dry out there and even our pond, which dried up in August last year, is dry. In the past it has had some water in it all year. The pond is the bit in the background that has some green.
Early, I watered everything except the strawberries, garlic and potatoes (DH does those in the evening. Then we went to the farmer’s market, where we bought 2 more half flats of strawberries, some celery, yellow zucchini and tomatoes. I do enjoy the farmer’s market, but so far this year, I have only found one farmer that is not using treated seeds. I don’t need that insecticide in my body.
After lunch, I did some proof reading for my brother’s new book which will go to the printer this week.
Yes, I know I haven’t finished either the table runner or the quilt, but I was anxious to get started on this new quilt . Besides, my studio is cool, so afternoons are a wonderful time to be there. I now have 50 of these triangle squares done. I like doing parts of the quilt ahead, so when I come to that area, I can just sew them in place.
Today was slow. We finished cleaning the last 20# of strawberries. I took my daughter grocery shopping as she just moved into a new place. She wanted to go to several places, which took more time. I came home and we had a large salad for lunch and then rested for awhile. We don’t have air conditioning and I think the heat slows us down.
When it cooled off, we fertilized the tomatoes and what other plants are still alive in the hoop house. It hasn’t done well, which I think is partly because we have had temperature issues and partly because with my knee issue, it has been semi-neglected. I am just really happy we have a Sunday market that I can purchase products to fill in the gaps. The tomatoes, however, are happy and have lots of little green tomatoes on them. We should have a good crop. The potatoes have died back, so I should go looking underground and see what is there. We only planted about 20 feet for an early harvest. The rest we planted outside and I am hoping they are doing better.
When one can’t get it all done, it’s best to just be thankful for what one can do. There’s always next year, right?
20 peppers have been planted. I really wish more of the red and green mild peppers had grown. Most of these are hot.
Picture taking day – not their favorite.
This is what happens when you forget to follow mom. You stand there and bawl your head off until she comes back for you.
Often times the hens would rather choose their own place to lay eggs, even though they have several very good next boxes. They want to see if we are on our toes, or if they can be a mommy this time and we won’t catch them. There are few dull moments when you have animals.
l had to show you our delicious meal. This is stir fry over rice.
Our prayers are going up for those of you in these Texas rain squalls. Please do everything you can to stay safe.
This lap quilt is only 40 x 44 because that is the size of left over batting that I had. I just love it when something gets totally used.
This afternoon Mary came over and we worked on getting this ancient industrial Singer sewing machine in working order. We needed it to sew very heavy thread. After a couple of hours of us talking kindly and messing with knobs – even downloaded an instruction manual, it now works beautifully. We now have a dog collar finished of which I forgot to take a photo. I also learned that I need to buy special oil as it has an oil tray, needles and a zipper foot. So Monday I’ll drive up to Renton and acquire those items.
Remember the red fluff I showed awhile back? It is slowly becoming yarn.
And we finally found a few minutes to start removing the maple tree forest that finds our berry and grape area just the perfect place to grow.
Lisa, who is very thoughtful, brought these beautiful roses and lilies when she and Christian came to visit yesterday.
