It seems the cats aren’t the only ones happy with the catio conversion. Burton and I had our first toad visitor already (you will recall the toads came frequently to hang out last summer)

I imagine we’ll only see more of them as the plants grow and give them more cover.

I know I’ve probably said it before, but assembling a quilt top is my least favourite part of the quilting process. It’s when things start to get bulky, and unwieldy, and just hard to manage. It’s not so bad with a baby-size top, but anything bigger than that and… it’s just no fun.

And my Leader/Ender project is at the stage where it needs to be assembled. And with 100 blocks… it has the potential to be a nightmare.

However, I have a trick or two for just such situations. Whenever possible, I try to break a quilt top into quadrants, and basically assemble them one quadrant at a time. It’s kind of like making four individual baby tops. Then I just have to sew the four together, and that’s not nearly as painful as doing several long rows. At least for me, anyway.

This is all a really long way of saying… I’ve completed 1/4 of the top for the Leader Ender quilt!

I need to make three more just like it, and I’ll have a decent sized quilt top. I’m really pleased with how all those black corner stars look now they are sewn up. They aren’t all perfect, but I think they pop nicely amidsts all those scraps.

I’m going to do one quadrant each week and by the end of the month, I should have a completed top!

The temps have soared into hot and humid territory and it’s definitely a challenge to make myself get out there and walk. I walk at lunch in an effort to get myself up and away from my desk but the sun at that time, can just really bake you.

I may move my walks to after dinner, but for now, I had to get out to get you pics of this cool place up the street.

It’s a semi-industrial building on the corner of our street. I think it used to be the township garage, but now it houses a young-ish man and his welding business. A couple weeks ago, these cars appeared outside the shop

But when Dave and I were coming back from the mechanic the other day, I noticed something new.

This crazy little dude with revolvers!!! Can you see the cigar in his mouth?? He just makes me smile so much!

The Good, The Bad and The Ugly music keeps playing through my head every time I look at the pictures!

Another weekend come and gone and another TNT is here!

Stitching on this one is defintiely slooooow, but when you compare it to the chart, you can see, I’m almost through the decorative bits on the desk part of the machine.

I do like the chart on this is nice, big and easy to read. The Bee chart I just finished was monochrome, and it was a challenge at times.

Okay… I know last week was a bit of a whirlwind… but can anyone tell me where the heck May has gone. I swear it was only May 1st a week ago. Now tomorrow is the last day.

I really needed to get my May block done for the rainbow scrap challenge. This month was green, and as it’s one of my favourite colours, it was too hard to come up with the scraps for it.

Despite their size (16 inches) they don’t take terribly long to put together. Especially when you’ve already got a few under your belt.

Well that’s the first five months of the year done Burton… we better get ready for June!

I know… this is the post you’ve all been waiting on…. what did I do with the catio yard???

Well first… let me tell you, like the front garden, I thought I could get it done in a day. It would be a long day, but I was sure that is all it would take.

I was wrong…. so.very.wrong.

This is what it looked like when I got started:

Around the edges were several of the perrenials I brought from the town house. But the rest of it… it was a disaster of grass, weeds and Star of Bethlehem flowers.

Since the flowers had to be dug up and disposed of, I decided it was best to start there.

It’s a shame they are so invasive, because they are very pretty. But also totally out of hand. In fact, they were so out of hand that it took me a full day to dig them all up.

This is what the yard looked like at the end of that day:

I was pretty pleased with the results. Since the flowers had taken up so much of the yard, I figured I’d have the rest of the turf and weeds up in an hour or so the next day.

Nope.

That took another full day.

But finally, I had the yard clear and could start laying out paths and garden spaces. But I had to wait for a new day to do that.

Finally, I managed to get all my garden edging staked down, marking out my garden areas. And all the mulch down to mark out my pathways.

I started laying out my plants, and getting them all in the ground, but I ran out of mulch and soil to finish the job that day, so I waited to take final pictures.

Finally… the next day I was able to top up the soil and mulch all the garden areas and I could finally say it was finished.

Now technically it’s not because a garden is never truly finished. Like the front garden, the plants need to fill in and several of those empty spaces actually have bare root plants just waiting to burst forth.

So far, the only things in bloom are a pretty purple sage, and this neat little bleeding heart I found. It’s a different variety than the one I have in the front garden. This one will only get about 8 inches tall.

I also have to bring out some of my garden ornaments… AND I have the coolest outdoor pet bed coming for my spoiled little furballs.

I did string up some fun solar lights though.

They aren’t the best pictures, but you get the idea.

All in all, I’m thrilled with the transformation of the space. And I look forward to sharing with the you and the cats as it grows.

My vacation is wrapping up. It went by fast, but I’m thrilled with how productive I was. In fact, I probably worked harder than I do when not on vacation. You saw my little driveway island out front, but now it’s time to show you the rest of the front.

You will recall, in an effort to save some time/labour, I covered the area I wanted to turn into garden with black plastic a few weeks back. This is how it looked just before I took it off.

As you can see, there were a few downsides to my little plan. The problem was, I didn’t have enough stakes to really hold the plastic down. I was only able to hold the corners down. Which meant to wind blew gaps open. and in those gaps, the weeds had a hay day! And I couldn’t weed whack them without wrecking the plastic.

So this is how things looked when I got all that plastic off.

Not bad, but not quite the free and clear space I thought it would be! So I got down on my knees and got to work!

It apparently also made the perfect home for toads. It took almost all day to get the space clear enough to plant, and in that time, I relocated SEVEN different toads

But all the effort was worth it. After weed removal, toad relocation, soil ammending, plant adding and mulching, I had a shiny new front garden!

Obviously, it’s got a lot of filling in to do, but I’m absolutely thrilled with it. And there’s so much in there… a rose (called Chrysler Imperial, which I bought for my Car Guy), bleeding hearts (pink and white, day lilies, a burning bush, irises, helenium, a peony, and so much more. Quite a bit of was bare root specimens, so it will take a little longer for them to make an appearance.

To dress things up a bit, I popped in some annuals (snap dragons and dianthans.

Ans before I go… here’s a little before and after, with the first pic from the listing when we bought the house.

It’s finally starting to look like MINE!

“How come we don’t have a catio on THIS side of the house too????”

Incidentally, today is also Baron Rupert von Scrufflebutt’s Gotcha Day!!! Can you believe it’s been SIX years since I brought this little Ginger Nut home??? I certainly can’t.

Although almost all my time this week has been spent in the garden, there has been a little knitting in the evenings when it’s too dark to play in the dirt.

After casting off my mother-in-law’s socks, I grabbed one of the skeins of Knit Pick’s Static that I have in my stash. This colourway is Seascape. It’s a man sock… though I haven’t decided which man it will end up with. I’m just knitting and I’ll decide closer to gifting time.

I’m already at the start of the heel, and what I find interesting is that even though this sock is WAY bigger than the ones I made my MIL, it feels like it’s going so much faster. My only idea for why is because the yarn is much nicer to knit with than the Kroy.

Kroy is a great wearing yarn, but it’s definitely not the softest. The Static is right on par with Knit Picks’ Stroll and Felici. It makes the process so much more enjoyable. That said… it could still take me months to finish these… they are man socks after all.

This week, it’s time to discover some hidden gems….

One day, my walk took me up the north side of River Street. River Street one of the main roads through town, but I’d never traveled the north side of it. It has a lot of newer homes compared to the rest of the town (and by new, I mean built in the ’80s), and it gradually gives way to countryside.

The first hidden gem is a little park space:

There are no flowers, it’s a garden of trees, each one with a little plaque dedicated to someone’s loved ones. I’m looking forward to checking it out again when the trees are leafed out more. It’s a very pretty, peaceful space

Not far from there was this magnificent house…

There are quite a few Victorian manors in Alvinston, but by my account, this one is definitely the biggest.

It’s certainly the only one with it’s own carriage/guest house. (Which looks to be about as big as our house!) There was a sign out front that said “Hayter”, which is the name of the family that runs a local HVAC business. From the looks of the house, business is VERY good.

Just up the road, I found this neat place…

I can’t tell if it’s some sort of museum or what. I don’t think it’s a working concern. I can’t find anything online about it either, but I’m going to keep digging.

You can’t see it well in the pictures, but there’s a small lake in behind those buildings, and the frogs were singing away… It was a wonderful soundtrack for my walk..