While finishing the Sewcialites top, I was also able to finish all the Leader/Ender blocks for my latest L&E project
That’s 56 eight-inch blocks. That means there are 448 chevrons. But that’s the fun of an L/E project. It doesn’t really feel like you’re making that many.
Now I just have to sew them all together into a top. I’d like to do that this weekend, but it’s hard to say if I’ll have the time. I haven’t make much progress on my porch painting job… and it’s nagging at me. Maybe if it gets too hot out to paint… or it rains…
It may look like Lemmy is taking a moment to stop and smell the flowers… but really..
He was on a bee hunt. It might be hard to see, but that black mass inside the flower is a bumblebee butt!
Lemmy chases anything that moves in the catio, but he absolutely LOVES chasing the bees! Or at least he does for now… one of these days, he’s going to catch one. I don’t think he’ll like it quite so much then.
Despite the fact I still have a million and one things on my yard/porch to-do list, on Sunday, I said screw it all and took a sewing day.
I really wanted to get my Sewcialites top finished!!!
And I’m happy to say I did!
When I finished all the blocks… I wasn’t really in love with the quilt. Despite the fact that I keep doing them, samplter quilts are not my favourite. And I just wasn’t loving the colours. It all just looked like a messy chaos.
But the thin black sashing not only makes the blocks pop, it also brings a sense of order to it all. I like it much better now.
Part of me does wish I’d sewn a band of white around all the blocks so they were floating… but it’s too late now an I can live with it like this.
It’s about 60″ square, and of course, it’s full of fun cat prints.
I’ve got a fun paw print for the back…
… and it couldn’t be more perfect. I have some of the red swirl fabric used in the blocks for binding. And I’ll cut it just as soon as I remember where I put it!!!
This one is tucked away for now. I probably won’t get to quilting it for a while. But that’s fine, I’m happy to have it out of the project box and in the to-quilt pile!
There’s a couple garden things I haven’t shown you yet.
In addition to creating Edible Alley and the perennial beds around it, as well as the new walkway garden out front and the expanded fence garden in the back, I added two other gardens.
The first was up the driveway side of the house.
Between the house and the walkway/driveway, there was a narrow strip of bare dirt. Why they didn’t pour the concrete all the way to the house, I have no idea. I add it with the many other WTF decisions they made with this house. I don’t think they used it as a garden, it doesn’t get much sun. If they did… whatever they planted there was long gone and all it did was grow weeds. Which I had to keep under control.
I don’t mind mowing the lawn, but I HATE weed whacking. I do it as little as possible, so anything I can do to lessen the amount I have to weedwhack, the better. So I planted it up!
As I said, it doesn’t get much sun. Maybe an hour or two in the morning. So I’ve got to focus on shade-loving plants.
I love Heuchera, and they come in a great range of colours. They will also get tall spires of little bell-shaped flowers.
To compliment them, I added some Coleus, which also had beautiful coloured leaves.
Some begonias and some violas. There’s a few colours of violas, but those are the only ones blooming at the moment. I also planted a few impatiens, but they aren’t blooming yet either.
Only the Heuchera and Violas will come back next year… and I hope to find some other shade-loving perennials to throw into the mix. And eventually it will become self-sustaining like the other gardens.
The other garden required more dreaded sod removal… made harder by the lack of rain! So it’s a small garden for now.
It’s on the opposite side of the front yard, almost at the property line. Last year, I planted a butterfly bush there. I thought it would be a great place for the new lilac (Tinkerbelle) and the blue Rose of sharon I bought. I filled the areas in between the shrubs with some sage, coneflower, penstamon, and blanket flower (all split from plants in the other gardens.). And on the end, I added a beautiful new rose called Caroline de Monaco. It’s almost ready to bloom and when it does it will be a creamy white.
And I think that’s it for the gardens I’m going to add… this year!
I went through the floss stash and got all the colours picked out for the butterfly…
And that’s as far as I got this weekend. That’s 16 bloody different colours in that wee thing!!!! My brain just wasn’t up to tackling it this weekend. I’m hoping next weekend has a little bit slower pace, and I can settle down and focus on it.
I am very happy to announce that we FINALLY got some rain! It started late yesterday afternoon and went all through the night! It was wonderful to listen to it plink off the awnings!
They say we are supposed to get more tomorrow, and maybe again later in the week. I really hope so!
The other thing that’s making me happy are these!
The Gumball socks are complete! It’s hard not to be happy with socks like these! Just look at all those happy colours!
The yarn is Knit Picks Stroll in “Gumball”. This is the third pair of socks I’ve made in Stroll (fourth if you count the pair I made with Stroll Tweed), and the second I’ve made for myself (the others were made for Mom and Dave). So far, it seems to wear pretty well. And it’s nice and soft. I’m pretty sure it’s the same base as their Felici.
The pattern is nothing fancy – you don’t need it with yarn like this. It’s just a 2-2 rib on the cuff and a plain foot. Lately, it seems to be my favourite kind of sock. As much as I love my lacy pairs, I seem to reach for the plain ones first when it’s time to actually wear them lately.
And now, I’m faced with a decision… cast on something new… or work on Dad’s sweater. If I want it done by his birthday (December), I really should give it some attention.
I haven’t had a chance to get all my garden oraments out yet, but some of the new ones are out among the plants.
I got some large bricks from Home Depot and set my solar fairies up on them.
I put two at each entrance of Edible Alley. And the fifth one.
Is tucked over by Willow Grove. I just love these ladies. They come on at about dusk…
And they stay lit up for the majority of the night.
The giant ants I got at Lens are hanging out on top of the squash ladder.
I don’t know if it’s going to be their permanent place… I come out frequently and they are on the ground. The birds think that ladder is theirs.
And last… Dad came by when I was on vacation so we could go to my shooting range. And he bought me a present!
A windmill for my garden!!! He bought one for his a couple years ago, and I’ve always loved it. The store he got it at got them in stock again, so he picked one up for me.
It’s just over four feet tall and it’s so cute! I put it on the corner of Edible Alley. There’s a Physostegia planted underneath it, and it should grow up nicely around the legs!
And last, I got a little something for the catio…
Dave and I came across this cute wash-stand fountain on our travels a few weeks ago.
And naturally the cats were very intrigued…. but none so much as Lemmy!
I still have to get my mushrooms and other decor out… maybe next weekend!
Now is the time in the garden when things really start to happen. It seems like every day I come out, there’s something new.
June is the month for roses and Chrysler Imperial has taken the honour of being the first to bloom. This surprises me for two reasons… of all the roses, this one gets the least amount of light. By about 2 pm, it’s in the shade of the house. The others are all in full sun pretty much all day.
The second reason is that it’s been hit by Sawfly larvae pretty hard – you can see some of the foliage is pretty damaged, as are some of the blooms. I’m really struggling with it and may have to admit defeat and get some pesticide.
The other roses (Chicago Peace, Good as Gold, New Dawn, Quicksilver, Eden and Caroline de Monaco) are all budding up and we should have a good show soon.
I did lose two roses over winter – Queen Elizabeth and Double Delight. They weren’t great specimens when I bought them, so I wasn’t terribly surprise they didn’t make it through.
The delphinium are starting to show off. I have this pretty mauvey pink, and dark purple. And I have a third not quite blooming, which if I’m remembering correctly is blue… but I might not be, so we have to wait and see.
The foxglove ate just blooming up a storm. There’s something just so magical about those flower spires! So pretty!
And it turns out I have three shades of spiderwort, not two, like I thought! That was a nice surprise!
These are some Sweet William I started from see last year. They didn’t bloom then (they are biennial), but they are making up for it this year. If they look somewhat familiar, they are in the same family as my Dianthans, but instead of flowing a single flower on dozens of stems, they have multiple flowers on each stem. They have other magical properties too.
All those different flowers are on ONE plant! How wild is that??!?!?
A new bloom this year is Geum. I planted it last year, but it took until this year to bloom. I have two plants, and unfortunately, they are both the same colour (Geums come in a whole range). I’d love to get some different colours next year.
This pink show stopper is Alpine Aster. The smaller one is in the catio, and I planted it late last year. The bigger one is in the driveway garden, and it’s a great contrast to the yellow of the sedums and creeping Jenny. It only blooms for a couple of weeks but it’s lovely while it does. It also comes in white, so I have to try to get some of that for my collection!
The last iris to bloom is my Shakers Prayer Siberian iris. I brought it from the townhouse and it’s really multiplied here. I might break it up when it’s done blooming.
I also bought a collection of bare root Siberian iris, though I don’t expect to see much from them until next year. They aren’t even sprouting yet – probably thanks to that darn heat wave at the end of May.
The Sage is starting to bloom. I love sage because it takes the heat so well, flowers all year long, and the bees love it. These two have also both reseeded so I got free extra plants for other spots in the garden!
And to wrap it up… a handful of others… Native Bellflower, Dragons’ blood Sedum, and Pink Pincushion.
And the lilies have buds, and so do the daisies… there’s so much more to come!
Relic would like to remind you, that though the other three cats are spotlight stealers, drama queens and just general attention hogs… he’s still here.
On an unrelated note, Relic now has a new, extended name. No longer just Relic… he’s got a fancy show name like the other cats. He’s now Relic von Hindenpurr…
Wandering Cat Studio 