As spring slowly rolls into nicer weather, I put the kitty cabana back out in the catio yard.

And despite it’s luxury, it looks like it’s not enough for his Lordship… I should make some pillows perhaps?

Happily, the rate of medical appointments between Dave and I has slowed to an acceptable level.

Unhappily, this means progress on the Seascape socks has also slowed to an unacceptable level.

But last night, under the snoopervision of his Lordship…

I put many more rows on it and I’m now about 1 inch past the gusset.

As this is the second sock, if I just put one inch on it every night, I’ll have a completed pair in no time! But only if Burton can keep me in line and on task!

There were two things I really wanted to accomplish on the weekend: Getting the raised bed area prepped and ready for mulch and soil, and siting my fire pit.

I bought the fire pit last year, but we never got around to siting it properly (digging out the sod, and filling the area around with rocks. As a result, we ended up taking a lot of brush and clippings to the transfer station that we could have burned. I have trimmed up all the Butterfly Bushes, and still have to do the Mulberry – I’ve got lots to burn!

After the ice pellet and lawn mower debacle, I ran out of time to do it all. But I did manage to do this:

I got all my landscape fabric laid out and stapled. And my raised boxes are all in place now. I still have one box to place – it’s the makeshift one I had the strawberries and spring bulbs in. It’s still pretty sturdy, so I’m going to paint it up and lay it in that open space at the end.

Then I’m going cut the landscape fabric away from the inside of each bed, line the bottom with cardboard, and fill each one to the brim with soil! The landscape fabric around the boxes will be covered in cedar mulch… much like the paths in the catio.

So, it’s by no means finished.. but it’s nice seeing it all start to come together!

One thing did go right this weekend at least.

With the help of the usual suspects, Ginger Spice…

And the Fluffernutter…

I barreled through the last of those letters and stitched the hen on her little nest.

It was only after I finished it, that I realized I seemed to have chose all the ’70s kitchen colours… Avocado, Harvest Gold, Coppertone… it’s all there! Lol. Eventually, my kitchen will be yellow, but it won’t be Harvest Gold – it will be a much softer shade.

Still, I think this is going to look right at home there. I just have to get a frame for it, which shouldn’t be too hard.

What’s hard is deciding what to stitch next. I have absolutely nothing picked out!

It was one of those weekends…. I had a tonne of stuff I wanted to do, but it poured all day. I decided I’d do our taxes, then maybe get in a little sewing.

Well… I did our taxes… and it took far longer than I thought it would. So there was no sewing. After dinner, I had to go out for milk, and Dave wanted to go into Sarnia to try to get a part for the Charger. All that went fine, until we got home and I realized somewhere along our route I’d lost my house keys.

Much drama ensued. Thankfully, keys were recovered the next morning after retracing the previous evening’s steps. The rest of the day was supposed to be sunny, if on the cool side. I decided to start on my outside list of chores. I got the fence garden weeded, and moved all the garden beds off the lawn, and was about to start mowing the lawn…. and the sky clouded up and started spitting out frozen pellets.

When that stopped, I went back to the lawnmower. Which wouldn’t start. And the rest of my to-do list required the lawn to be cut first.

Thankfully, I have a very mechanically inclined husband, and after a trip into Strathroy and back, and some tinkering, I had a working mower again.

So the lawn got mowed, but I was hours behind on my to-do list. I managed to get one big job done (which I’ll share on Wednesday), but I still have lots to do and won’t be able to get to it until next weekend (which is supposed to be rainy again!)

It’s weekends like these that I have to remind myself to take pleasure in the little things.

Like all my pretty dresses, blowing in the wind on the line! The ability to hang my laundry out just doesn’t get old for me! And despite the ice pellets, this load still managed to dry, and it all smelled so wonderful coming off the line.

And lawn violets! These little guys pop up all over the lawn right through to May.

And signs of life in my Rhododendron. I was sure this shrub was dead. It didn’t look good before winter, and when nothing happened in March and Early April (when my other shrubs were budding up) I figured it was a goner. But I went to pull it out and low and behold… two tiny little leaf buds.

And last… the smile on this cat! He just loves to be out amongst the flowers and fresh air!

What little things are making your day better?

I keep my fancy camera handy with the long lens on beside my work desk. You may recall that I have my computer facing the window. I can’t see much but the Norway Maple, and the neighbour’s roof, but I do get to see the birds that flit in an out of the tree.

In fact, I’ve hung the oriole feeder from the awning over the window in the hopes that I can get some good oriole pictures this year.

I’ve yet to see an oriole, but I did snap one of this fine fellow.

He’d obviously stopped by the backyard feeder for a snack.

I also love the Maple at this time of year. The buds are on the trees are so pretty. They aren’t showy blooms like a fruit tree. The flowers are very small, but they are a great chartreuse colour, and the buds right below them are a brilliant maroon. When the sun shines, they positively glow. They are a little more dull in this picture, because it was a grey day – but they still have a wonderful beauty.

The fall colour of the Norway Maple is pretty much non-existent. The leaves just go brown and fall off. This spring colour is a good trade off.

While last weekend gave us summer, the Monday dawned with winter with ice and snow and freezing rain. But by mid-week, Mother Nature had settled into something more spring-like.

Unfazed by all the weather chaos, the daffodils are just doing their thing. I don’t know how many daffodil bulbs I planted last year, but it was a lot!!!

And these are just the first of them… I have many different types to come.

When I planted them, I just mixed all the different bulbs together and planted them completely randomly.

That means some of the smaller ones ended up in less than ideal spots.

These ones are beautiful… but teeny! They need a spot much closer to the front. When they finish blooming I will move them.

There’s this slightly larger, but still small daffy that needs to be moved too.

If I could only have one spring flower in my garden, Daffodils would be my pick. But I don’t want to have to choose, so thankfully I can have lots!!!

The tulips are just getting started

So far it’s just these two different white ones. But there’s lots more coming. Like the daffies, I planted SCORES, and completely randomly. It will be fun seeing what comes up where.

And this year brings a couple newbies too.

This one is called Guinea Hen flower. It’s also known as the Chequered Lily (because of it’s chequered pattern), or Snake-Head Fritillary (because the flower bud is shaped somewhat like a snake head). It’s a very pretty, delicate flower. And I’m amazed any actually got the chance to bloom, because Lemmy has broken at least half of the ones I planted.

They also come in a creamy white. I think Lemmy must have targeted the white ones, because this is the only one in white I have blooming. The rest are all purple.

After they bloom, I’m going to move some of them out of the catio yard and into the other gardens so they have a better chance next year.

Another new one is the Crown Imperial

It’s a big tall plant with a crown of bold-coloured flowers at the top. I have it in orange here by the catio, and yellow in the driveway garden. It’s native to Iran and is definitely an unusual looking plant.

Both of these are part of the lily family, and as I’ve discovered, are also prey to the red asian lily beetle the utterly destroyed my lilies last year. Unfortunately, the most effective method of keeping them at bay is manual removal. So I’ve been checking these and the Guinea Hen flowers daily and picking off and destroying any beetles I find (which has been a lot for so few flowers.

Oh well – it’s a good excuse to be out in the garden!

It appears we have a thief in our midst…

For a while now, I’ve been finding random socks in the hallway. Now, I’m not the tidiest person, and yes, I have a tendency to leave my clothes where they fall when I take them off. But that’s the bedroom… not the hallway.

And I’ve also noticed a lot more odd socks coming out of the wash. I have a lot of clothes, so I tend to wait until I have three or four loads to do. And that ususally takes me a couple days, because I have a tendency to forget I’m doing laundry. So the socks get split up a lot. I have a little basket on my dresser to collect the odd ones when I’m putting clothes away. Every month or so, I go through the basket, and match up any pairs. But lately, there have been fewer pairs to match up…

And then, as I was cleaning off the futon to put the new quilt on it, I moved a big pillow the cats like to lay on and…

Eight single socks and a sparkle ball!! It seemed our thief was likely of the feline persuasion…

I told Dave the story I just related to you, and of the recent stash discovery. He told me to go look in the cat cube in the corner of the livingroom…

Another stash! This time with a knitted bear and a (thankfully clean!) pair of cotton underwear. He told me he’s been watching Lemmy take my socks in there for weeks. (Though he was surprised about the underwear.)

I cleaned up all the socks, but left him the bear. I made it ages ago with no real plan for it. I woke up yesterday and it was in the middle of the living room floor. He’s obviously one of those cats that likes to carry things around.

The last quilt I got quilted when I was at Mom’s was the large scrappy star quilt inspired by Pat Sloan’s Little Wishes pattern.

It was one of my Leader-Ender projects and I’m absolutely thrilled with it!

So much scrappy goodness! I love a good polkadot fabric and the fine white on black dots was perfect for the star points of this one.

I didn’t have enough of it left to do the binding, but this nice little star print was a good stand in. Sadly, this one is not going in the shop, as I intended.

I found a popped seam after I’d quilted it and I can’t repair it so that it’s not noticeable. So, it’s now on the futon, replacing an old, worn-out Walmart quilt that used to be there.

Burton, of course, thinks that just fabulous!

One of the other things I quilted at Mom’s when I was there was the little runner for my pine bench. Normally, Mom sews the bindings on for me (and I tack them down when I get home) but for this one, I decided to do it myself, because I wanted to add ties, and I hadn’t decided quite how I was going to do it.

So this weekend I took some time to finally get it finished.

And I am beyond thrilled with it!

This mother hen and her wee chick are just so much fun.

And of course, Burton is thrilled. This is his favourite spot to sit and supervise while I’m in the kitchen. When he isn’t under my feet demanding a bit of whatever I’m cooking, that is.