For sure – it is getting down right warm every single day – still no rain in my little corner of Arkansas.  It has been missing us – other than a 5 minute thing here and there for about a month now.  I have been watering the yard and the plants for over two weeks now – just enough to keep them alive – I don’t want a huge water bill.  I dug up the potatoes last night and I guess I got about 5  to 8 pounds worth – I could tell it wasn’t going to be a good harvest, the plants just didn’t look good if you know what I mean.   As you see though I only garden for the heck of it, not with the intention of having something to eat for months on end this colander full will be enough for some good potato salad and other meals for several weeks only!

The yellow squash that I thought was going to produce well, hasn’t – the veggies are getting soft and not maturing and falling off – what causes that I wonder?  The zucchini has a lot of blossoms but no veggies.  The only thing that is doing well are the tomatoes & peppers  – I hope they stay alive long enough for me to get all the tomatoes off of them that are on them now without having to put them in the windowsill to ripen.  The woes of container gardening  – you have to water every single day when it gets hot.

Yesterday morning I had quilt group and I brought Joseph’s Coat to work on – I have three more segments to work  on and then the row can be attached!

I got started hand stitching the binding on Star Crazy yesterday – I sat down two different times with it and I am almost done with one side!   Here is one section of it – I don’t know if you noticed that I decided to have rounded corners on it when it was on the quilting frame way back at the beginning.

I fold the quilt up and lay it across my lap so the heaviness of the quilt doesn’t make me too hot while working on it.

And just for fun so I could say I got started on the quilting – I sat at the quilting frame for about 10 minutes or so last night and stitched along the vine and leaves on the beginning of the Pineapple Square wall hanging.

I got some questions on how and why do I keep track of time spent on my quilts.  It all started way back when – people would ask “how long did it take you to make that quilt” and I could say oh about a year and then would be asked “well did you work on it every day, every week, a day here and there” you get the picture? So when I started a new quilt – piecing about 12 years or so ago – I put a little notebook in the basket with the work and when I would sit down to start to hand piece or applique I would jot down the time started and stopped and write down the minutes when I was done.  I did this throughout the whole process and was amazed at how many hours had accumulated during the making of the quilt.  Then when I began to quilt that quilt I kept the same notebook right there by the quilt and continued to keep track of my time – this was just for my information – but also so that when someone asks that question “will you make me one” I can truthfully say – “do you realize how long it takes me to make this – and of course “how much does it cost to make it” – especially if they have said “I’ll pay you” – they quickly realize that maybe they can’t afford to have me make them a quilt after all.  Like for Star Crazy – 250 hours of work and cost was at around $170 and that was only because a lot of the fabric in it was on sale.  What kind of price would you put on that?  It is very hard to price hand quilted quilts because of the time involved – next to impossible to put a price per hour on something like this.  Anyway that was probably more of an answer than you all wanted but that is why I keep track of my time!

Ok, what have I been doing today – working my fingers to the bone trying to finish Star Crazy – I just plain want to get it done!  Almost there – another hour or two and it will be done – maybe more work later? Maybe tomorrow? This much left to do Right now I need to take a break!

This much done since yesterday morning –

I did take a long break earlier today and finished reading Stolen Prey started about 36 hours ago — I told you when I get into a good book, I can’t put it down.  Although I did put it down for a little bit this morning while I was out on the porch taking a break from quilting to take some photos of this little guy.

My ferns have a water reservoir in the bottom of the pot – it always attracts tree frogs.  They practically live in it the whole summer.  I love listening to them crooking noises.

  The porch is cleaned off, the cushions are on the chairs, the flowers planted, the ferns are hung – now all I need is a tall glass of lemonade and my kindle – let summer begin – but please no heat wave!

A partly sunny area but mostly in the morning – shade the rest of the day.

Nice deep shade all summer long – I must find cushions that fit these old chairs better!

The clematis that I planted some years ago are finally taking off this year and I have had more flowers on them then ever before.  It has never wrapped itself around the flower pole before.  The climbing roses are so tall already and have a lot of blooms.  I believe these are called Lincoln roses but I’m not sure – I have had one of the plants for about 28 years now and the other about 25 years.  Sometimes they get too many aphids on them and do poorly but none so far this year and none at all last year.

This one is doing well too, it has never had so many blossoms on it.  I guess they need to age – of course I bought these plants on sale about 3 years ago and they were on the shelve that was probably going to be tossed out if no one bought them – I brought them back to life! Cost $1 a plant and I have these 3 and another 3 over in the other part of the yard – the one in the corner though that is the biggest is the oldest and was a better plant bought about 2 years before this one and the others.

The roses right up on the deck this year.  What a wild spring we had – very good for the plants, extra warm and wet in March, cool April – good growing conditions.

And the little garden – see that gray bucket on the left – if you look closely you can see tomatoes growing.  I have 1 regular tomato plant the one you can see the tomatoes on, 2 Roma tomato plants and one of them has a dozen or so on already – 2 green pepper in one bucket, 2 red pepper in another, one bucket each of cucumber, yellow squash, and zucchini.  We are going to be moving the garden over a little bit though to another area near by that has more sun, this patch has more shade than wanted in the morning.  I forgot to take a photo of my potato plants – growing in the flower bed 2 short rows of about 20 plants – I’ll get those next time.

What have you been up to this pretty weekend?

Today I want to get the black circles done (made) for the purple row.  I don’t know if I will get them all sewed on but I’m going to try.  I had two leftover circles already made so I just need to make 15 more.  Head on over to Lee at Freshly Pieced and see what everyone else has for the WIP Wednesday and don’t’ forget to check out my  giveaway – time is running out – winner announced on late Friday.

I would have gotten to it yesterday – but yesterday was grass cutting day!  One area:

Another area:

And:

And there was more but I won’t bore you with all of it.  We have just under 4 acres and about 2 acres at least I keep mowed – thank heavens for our small John Deere riding lawnmower!  I had to get off the lawnmower when I was cutting the stretch right in front of the area at the bottom of the photo – I couldn’t believe what I was seeing!  I counted 13 red bud trees growing along the ditch – tiny – but there.  Today I need to get out some markers and get these trees marked so they won’t get cut down – how pretty they will be when they grow larger – I will have a row of pretty blossoms in the springs.

I actually had time to get a little quilting done late in the day and did an hour on Star Crazy – at this rate it will be well on six months before I finish it.

When I first took Box #1 of scraps of of the shelf with the big idea to organize and cut into useable pieces I was thinking maybe I could get a box a week done until I was done – I don’t know – it doesn’t look like I will be getting done with this quickly does it!  I’m going into  day #4 and the pile is like this – it doesn’t appear to be getting any smaller although I know it is!

The stacks of squares are growing – I swear!!

This much has been trimmed off – these are all the odd little bits that are getting tossed – I just keep throwing them back in the box to see how much accumulates I do not plan on doing anything with them.

My container garden – yes 3 green tomatoes on one of those plants!

The yucca’s getting taller – well be blooming soon

A lot of roses right now

pretty rosy red color too

And some pink ones.

A little work on Star Crazy last night – but I sure didn’t accomplish much – my daughter wanted me to play Word With Friends last night on Facebook with her – I’m afraid – I didn’t get much done.  There is a reason I don’t have a lot of people on my facebook – I spend too much time on the computer as it is – I only have family on there and it keeps me busy as it is – games? this is the first one I put on it – I’m afraid it will go off if I find I’m spending too much time on it.

I need to spend more time with Star Crazy today so I can make some progress – it is chilly and cloudy out today, I don’t think I will be doing much outside – it looks like it will rain also.

Today I plan on hopping from one project to another and continue doing that all week!  First of all this weekend I finished the purple row on Joseph’s Coat so I am ready to start cutting more fabric for the next long row – which will finally be one round shorter! The bottom corner in the right is the bottom corner – that is how wide it will be.  I got this laid out to take a photo and then noticed I forgot one black circle up there towards the top of the purple row – I will get that taken care of before I forget.  I had to stand on a chair and point down to get the whole thing in. (it is 102 inches wide I think)

These colors will be for the next several rows.

The scrap cutting grew late yesterday afternoon and I hope to get box #1 done by the end of the week.

The scrap pile to work on this week:

Star Crazy didn’t progress as much as I had wanted it to last week -

This week starting today I hope to finish this section-

The flowers are colorful, the evenings are cool right now – back in the high 40’s to 50’s daytimes in the 70’s for this upcoming week – maybe the flowers will be beautiful for awhile, when the heat sets in I have a hard time keeping blossoms on my flowers in baskets for some reason – I either keep them too wet or too dry I guess.  The trees have all leafed out and it is so green when I look outside it is hard to remember how brown it was just a few short weeks ago.

Head on over to Judy at Patchwork Times and see what everyone else is working on today and this week.  Before I forget I was able to make reservations at a motel about 50 miles away from Paducah so my older daughter and I will be heading over there to see the show for a whole day!  Looking forward to seeing the quilts, the vendors, and Hancocks of Paducah in a couple weeks!!

Do I have anything quilty to show today – no – I haven’t picked up a needle – I will this evening though.

Today it was working on house stuff, outside stuff and reading!  I am now finished with the 2nd in the Hunger Games series – on to the 3rd.

My rose open even more today – this is the one closest to the house that I showed yesterday -

these are from the same variety – actually part of the same bush but it got replanted about 5 years ago to another part of the yard unknowingly -

This one is a different variety – barely open

Do I like roses?  Yes   I use to have dozens of bushes but after awhile they didn’t so well, disease and not great planting conditions I guess.  I am now down to 5 or 6 plants.

The Yucca’s are going to bloom early this year too.  We have several varieties of these also, right now I think I have counted about 20 spikes coming up.

Same area, different plant

Now to get busy this evening with Star Crazy – I am going to put in at least a little time I hope, unless I get side tracked.  This is the section I will start on.

How much sewing/quilting do you do on an average per day/week?  I rarely do any sewing during the day for some reason – most of mine gets done in the evening – I would say I average 2 to 3 hours each evening – how about you?  If it is a rainy day or winter I might do another hour or two in the daytime.

I have a tomato already growing on my tomato plants! The first day of April – who would have thought see that little tomato growing in there by those blossoms!  that is a first for me – I  usually don’t  even plant tomatoes until late April.

Another first – I normally buy 2 to 4 Boston Ferns every spring to hang up on the porch.  Last year I did even though I knew we would be gone in September and October.  Around here my potted ferns normally last until December.  I get a good 7 to 8 months of decorating out of them – so to me they are worth the price.  In late August I planted my ferns in a flower bed to see if they would still be alive when we got home in late October – they were and they lasted until the end of December – I just left them in the flower bed.  Normally they die – the winter is just a little too cold for them here – well guess what two of the Boston Ferns are coming back to life! I couldn’t believe it when I was looking around the garden last night and saw little spires coming out of the dead plant – well guess the roots were still alive this year.  See that little bit of green?  Maybe I haven’t been planting them deep enough in the late fall so they will come back? We only had a very short extra cold spell and have been much warmer than normal.

The rose opening up a little bit more.

Purple clematis

Now on to quilting – this is where I begin quilting last night – (I am writing this last night and scheduled for morning).  Lets see how far I get.  I am going to go through the list of netflex suggestions you all gave me and see what I come up with to try.

ADDED: late last night – a photo of what I quilted on Star Crazy – moved on over a bit – another day or two and I will be able to crank her down again   I found an old movie that I used to like a lot –”Last of the Mohicans” can’t believe it is 20 years old already.  The music is so nice and I know the story so well I was very much more listening to it rather than watching it.  I think I have seen it 4 times over the years – if not more.

Well I managed to work on Joseph’s Coat last night.  I must admit I did no sewing during the day – I was too busy with  outside work.    Quite a bit more to do on this row, maybe a third done?  I will try to keep working on it this week.

I even got a couple leaves appliqued when I put purple melons aside for the evening.

My container garden grew today – now I have 3 tomato plants and a container of red peppers and one of green peppers.  I do wonder how they will do in these buckets – I hope they grow.

The hostas are coming up also.  I got the tick pellets spread out all over the yard – I hope it works.  Most times it seems to help keep the ticks at a minimum.

Today I am off to North Little Rock – lunch and shopping with my dear daughter Melanie – a girl day – neither of us are big at shopping though so I have a feeling we will be looking a bit and finish early!  Maybe I will get in some quilting/piecing this evening – I never stay all that late, I hate the traffic in rush hour and always try to leave by 3 to avoid it all – it is either that or stay until 6:30 or so and come home in the evening after it is done!  I am just not an all day shopper type of person!

Well I didn’t get done with much of any sewing today – so far!  Such good plans I made this morning – and then the sun is out and I’m outside – I appliqued a flower and that was it!!  I will try to quilt a little this evening.

Two sides of the applique are now done – two more borders to go.  The sides need the work still.

And from the applique flowers I went to look at the real ones in my yard Clematis

Azaleas in full bloom including the bees!

And butterflies on the red azalea – I managed to see two of them.

And I turned back to the pink ones and saw a butterfly there too.

Last spring I found a trillium in the yard right up by the azaleas and I have been looking for it again this year – I hadn’t seen it until today so I thought maybe it had died – only one but it came back.  How do they multiple?

And even though it is early – my plan this year seeing as I do believe we will be home all summer is to have some tomato plants and maybe some peppers and cucumbers – but I am going to plant them in containers.  My soil is poor, several of the tines on the tiller broke a couple years ago when we tried to till up some soil for a small garden – too many rock!  I stopped at Lowe’s this morning to get some tick killer (kills other annoying pests also) and I picked up a 5 gallon bucket and had Mike drill some draining holes in the bottom of it – and I planted a nice size tomato plant!!  I know– a little early – but it is in a container – I can move it to the house if I have to   A little jump on spring.

I made an appointment to get my hair cut – I intended to do it tomorrow but she was available today so I did that and that cut in on some of my plans – then I stopped at Sonic on the way home and enjoyed a Cherry Limeade on the porch while I appliqued my flower – you can see relaxing was about all I had on my mind today –

There is always tomorrow – maybe I will get some work done then?  I don’t know – the swing might be calling to me after I get those tick pellets spread all over the yard!!

Did your Monday go as planned!