The other day I realized I never reported on the outcome of my Austere August.

It went really well and, other than a small slip up at the start of the month, I managed to not spend money on anything not needed (and truly not needed… because face it, I can justify needing just about anything) and it felt really good. In fact, it felt so go that I’ve pretty much celebrated by spending money on anything and everything in September and October, completely destroying all the financial gains I made in August…

I bought fabric and clothes, plants for the garden… but the biggest expense wasn’t actually my fault.

You may remember that Dave’s Charger went in the shop at the end of July for what as supposed to just be a brake conversion….

But I know a little about cars, and when you let them sit and don’t drive them…. let’s just say I knew it wasn’t going to be JUST a brake conversion…

She came back mid-week this past week… and that brake conversion turned into new suspension, new exhaust, frame work, gas tank work, this work, that work…. and the price ended up being six times what we budgeted.

(SO nice to have the girls reunited under one roof)

Now I’m not complaining… every time he and the mechanic talked about doing something else “while they were in there” I said to do it. Because there’s no point having a classic car if you’re not going to drive it. They sit, and they rot… which is why the car is in the shape it’s in! I told him his options were to suck it up and get it done, or sell the car. We all know he wasn’t going to do the latter.

Also… he has a small amount of money coming from his grandmother’s estate that will more than cover it. I don’t expect to see it until next year, but it is coming. In the mean time, most of the cost is sitting on my credit cards, collecting interest.

So it’s the perfect time for another month of fiscal dieting.

Other than one project for the house (reinforcing a beam in the basement), nothing is pressing there. And though we’re getting into the holiday season, almost everything on my list is either bought already, being made, and I already have the supplies, or can wait until December. The present I have left to buy are just gift cards anyway.

So… I’m heading into NO SPENDER NOVEMBER! Lets hope I can stick to it!

I mentioned that last weekend was nice and warm. How warm you ask…?

How about “Need to wear shorts” warm.

It got up to about 20C/68F… but when I was out working in the sun, it felt much warmer. Perfect weather to get those clearance perennials, as well as the second box of bulbs I ordered (another 120 bulbs or so…) in the ground.

I know you’re just dying to see what I got. Of course, there’s no actually flowers, but here’s a look at what we have to look forward to next year.

For the clearance perennials…

These three went inside the catio. Potentilla is something I’ve been considering for a few years. I’ve never actually seen it in a garden centre – just my mail order catalogues. The Iceland poppies and Pasque flower I had at the townhouse, but neither made the move. It will be nice to have them again.

The pussytoes I had to get just because of the name. But it’s a nice little ground cover plant so it went in the driveway garden. I also added two ice plants. They are also supposed to be great for groundcover too. I tried tog grow them at the townhouse a couple of times with no luck. I planted one here in mid summer. It didn’t bloom, but it’s nice and healthy so I figured why not get a couple more.

Spiderwort has foliage like a dayliliy, but smaller simpler flowers. I planted a bareroot one back in spring, with no luck, so I figured I’d try these two. I might have better chances with an already established plant.

I already have some Beard Tongue (also known as Penstamon) and Globe Thistle, but I love them both so I got more!

These four are going to get pretty big, and I need to dig a new garden for them. For now they are planted on the edge of Willow Grove. Come spring, I’ll build a new garden and give them the space they need to shine.

Now onto the bulbs…

I’m trying out some Winter Aconite for a nice pop of early colour.

I’ve also added a mix of muscari (grape hyacinths) since many of the ones from the townhouse didn’t make it. None of my Allium did either, so I got these nice Drumstick Allium. Dad has a tonne of Glory of the Snow in his garden and I always forget to did some up… so I just gave up and bought some. It won’t come up quite as early as the Aconite, but it’s still one of the first pops of colour.

I got a pile more tulips – including a Wine Lovers’ Blend, a Pretty in Pink collection, and a mix of Turkistan Tulips (also known as ground cover tulips).

And of course, we can’t leave out the Daffodils. I got a gorgeous mix of whites, as well as a traditional ‘Poet’s Daffodil’

And last, but definitely not least…

Lilies!!! You didn’t see much of my Oriental/Asian lilies this year because they got absolutely ravaged by orange lily beetles. But I’ve got a plan to stay on top of it for next year, and I always want more lilies! I got a “Red” mix, Muscadet, and Hotel California.

And now… there’s nothing left to do but wait. All the planting and tending is done for the year.

So I leave you with one last visitor to the garden…. a Common Checkerspot butterfly who stopped in last weekend when the sun was shining bright and warm.

“Trick or Treat, smell my feet, give me something good to eat!!!”

I mentioned earlier this week that Dave had me running around to pick up some new kijiji finds. Well the whole thing actually started a few weeks before my vacation.

We were in our favourite used store, and he found another antique radio. It was in decent shape, but this one he wanted to modernize a little more.

Ever since then, he’s been on the hunt for parts. And that means finding other broken radios and electronics.

We spent a good chunk of my vacation driving around and hunting down thrift stores, flea markets, and kijiji finds.

It wasn’t until after my vacation that we came across something really promising.

It is a Lowe Opta radio/record player console from the ’50s. I found it on Facebook Marketplace for just $10. The radio didn’t work, and the record player was no longer in it. But it had the parts he needed (speakers and tubes or some such).

Of course, once we got it home, and he took it apart, he decided the parts would be put to better use elsewhere, so he was STILL on the hunt for what he needed.

So it was Sunday morning that Dave had come across someone who might have what he was looking for., possibly multiple things.

Now, as I said, I would have been more than happy to let Dave take my truck. But he refuses. Ages and ages ago, he borrowed his uncles SUV, and it blew the rad, and overheated on the highway. Since then he refuses drive any vehicle but his own. So… off we went.

And we came home with not one, but two vintage record players, an ancient reel-to-reel projector, and a homemade PA system.

I lost half a day to work on my stuff, but he’s a really happy guy now. And he did buy me chip wagon fries for lunch

Oh… and I guess I can’t complain too much… the day we picked up the big console, we also stopped at the Restore.

I got this wonderful little antique medicine cabinet. Now I just need to tear Dave away from his new projects so he can mount it on the wall in the studio. I think it’s going to be just perfect for threads and other sewing things.

We are quickly approaching the time of year where there is more colour on the ground, than there is on the trees.

It makes walking about the neighbourhood absolutely wonderful.

Especially when the sun is shining.

It’s hard to capture with a phone camera, but it makes the leaves that are left on the trees just glow.

And of course, it smells amazing. This time of year never lasts long enough…

But there’s still time to get a pumkin or two.

And enjoy all the shades of the season!

While I wasn’t able to finish all the sewing I wanted to this weekend…

Burton and I were able to dedicate our evening hours to finishing up our little sewing kitty.

It still needs to be framed of course. I have a frame that should work, I just have to dig it out of some boxes we haven’t unpacked yet. (Not much rush to unpack boxes of pictures and frames when you plan on ripping down and redoing the walls they will hang on.)

But all in all, I’m very pleased with it.

And I think Burton is too!

I was hoping that I’d have a finished top to show you today. I told Dave that I was spending at least one of the weekend days sewing. I was out in the garden all of Saturday, so that left Sunday for sewing. But as soon as I got out of bed, Dave was practically bouncing up and down… he’d found a few good scores a couple towns over on Kijiji and he needed Dory’s cargo space.

Now I’m more than happy to let him take my truck, but he refuses to drive her. I’ll detail it all in another post, but suffice it to say, I lost half of my day.

I managed to get my grey block done. It’s the final block for my Rainbow Scrap Challenge quilt. But with half my day already eaten up, there was no time to put the top together.

Still… I decided to lay it out and get an idea of how it would all look.

Apparently word has gotten out that I give treats for posing with quilt blocks… It was impossible to get a picture with out at least one of these three jokers in it.

As you can kind of see, it’s going to be a pretty big quilt. It’s already too long to show completely along the bed. I’ll probably build it out wider, and make it close to a queen size. But that’s for another weekend…

Is it Friday yet?

This past week has been mostly cold, and very, very rainy. I’m not going to complain – it was a dry summer, so the rain is not a bad thing. As for the cold given the time of year, it’s to be expected. But when Friday dawned warm, and sunny, I just had to get outside and enjoy it.

Though the gardens are definitely on the decline, there’s still lots to be done. The Sneezeweed and Blanketflower had almost finished blooming, so I decided to take advantage of the nice weather, and get out there and clear them out, so we could move around the catio easier again.

And what a difference it makes. I didn’t pull the plants out though – just cut them back. They can winter in the catio, and I’ll move them to a better spot in the yard come spring.

And of course, that opens up some space for NEW plants! Which is a good thing because…. umm….

I might have hit the nursery on the way home from Sarnia one day last week… and stumbled across a pile of perenials on clearance. Fall is a great time to plant perennials, as they focus on putting in good roots, rather than making flowers. Hopefully as you’re reading this, I’m outside getting them planted. The nice weather is at supposed to hold until mid-week.

But all that cold and rain did put a damper on the blooms left in the garden. But there are still some brave petals.

That gorgeous clematis continues to be gorgeous with two more blooms opening. Two more are buds, and might just make it to full flower if the weather holds.

They only thing that stops the marigolds is a good hard frost. I’ve got several clumps out front and I expect they will keep going for a while more.

The snap dragons are surprisingly tough too. I have several colours, but these pink and yellow ones are probably my favourite.

This Foxglove is called Arctic Fox Rose, and it seems to be living up to it’s name, because the cold snap idn’t slow it at all.

The rest of the mums are pretty much done, but this beautiful pink one in the centre of the catio is still going strong.

Of course, those Toad Lilies just keep hopping along. Like the marigold, it takes Jack Frost a lot of work to take these down.

And the blooms aren’t the only treasures to be found in this autumn garden…

I found ANOTHER praying mantis egg case – this time in the front garden! With any luck it’s going to be mantis city here next year!

It’s been a while since I’ve done a Quilts-on-the-Go (QotG) check in, so I suppose now is as good a time as any. At the moment, I only have three quilts in the works, and one of those is my Leader/Ender project, so it doesn’t really count.

Let’s check them out.

1 LITTLE WISHES

No pictures for this one, since it hasn’t changed since the last time I talked about it. It was my previous L/E project – I made a pile of scrappy nine patches which will now be turned into the centre of star blocks. I have to make a pile of geese for those star points. Everything is cut and ready to go, I just have to find some time to devote to working on it

2 RAINBOW SCRAP CHALLENGE

You may have noticed that I didn’t post a block for September, and I haven’t said anything about October. Well it turns out that both months were repeats of previous colours – just lighter versions. Since I didn’t get picky about light vs dark in my previous blocks, that wasn’t going to work with my vision. The months of November and December were pre-determined, as follows:

• November – brown and black or block assembly
• December – multicolor or quilting

So… I decided to lay out the blocks I had, and figure out what to do. As you may recall, I was laying them out on point. And I figured if I added just two more blocks, I could get a nice design. But what colours?

In the end, I decided to go with brown and grey.

I got the brown one done in an evening earlier this week. Hopefully as you’re reading this, I’m working on the grey one, and maybe even assembling the top!

3 LEADER ENDER

I snowballed little rectangles like mad and managed to pair them all up.

And now I’m in the process of pairing all those pairs.

And once that’s done, I’ll pair again, giving me the full block. I have no idea how many I’ll end up with, because I have not been counting my rectangles at all. I’ll see how many blocks I get, and then decide if I need to make more.

And, with only three projects on the go, I technically have three project boxes open. But I’m going to see if I can get just one more top complete before I start anything new.

In the jungle, the mighty jungle, the lion sleeps tonight…

Can you see him???

Okay… he’s not really sleeping, and he’s more of a tiger than a lion…. (And lions don’t live in jungles, tigers do…)

But he’s very happy in his little indoor jungle.