Stitching hit a few hiccups this weekend.

Hiccup #1

Hiccup #2

Despite their dubious assistance…

I feel like I made decent progress. I was able to finish up the spider webs on the numbers, add in the orange bits, and finish up the section frame. And on top of that, I got a crow, a mouse and one witch foot done in the next section. This next section is the biggest/most complicated, so progress is probably going to slow a bit. That’s okay – I’m still loving it!

On the weekend, I was stitching on the porch, when I noticed there seemed to be heck of a lot of hummingbird activity in the yard. So I set down the needle and picked up the camera.

In actuality, it was only two hummingbirds. Both females. But they did NOT like each other. Hummingbirds are very territorial. I don’t know which one claims my yard, but there was a lot of scrapping going on. It was like a miniature warplane dogfight, occasionally punctuated by sword fights (they sure do put those long beaks to good use!)

Throughout it all, I was able to get some of the best pics of the year.

They are such fascinating little creatures.

I don’t think I will ever tire of taking picture of them.

I did manage to get a shot of the two combatants together, though it’s not quite in focus.

They just move too darn fast!

Our temps have shot up, so they might stick around for another week or two. But soon enough, the yard will be void of their antics. As least until next summer.

It’s the middle of September, but we’re still eating well from the garden.

We definitely have not got as many cucumbers as last year. But that’s ok – we had to give many of them away last year, so it’s not like we are going without this year.

Last year we were overrun with cucamelons, but this year I wonder if we’ll get many. There’s lots of flowers, but this is the biggest fruit so far.

Last year we were overrun with tomatoes. This year, I’d say it’s just about right. And those red ones on the right… that was a plant that seeded from last years. I dug it up and put it in a pot in late July. So it’s really just bonus fruit!

Thank you to Delighted Hands for the tip on when to pick peppers! These will be coming in soon! I think at least one may end up on a homemade pizza!

We’ve got all kinds of neat gourds and just two small white baby pumpkins. They will be nice for a fall display next month.

And… here’s a fun story. I planted two types of parsley – a plain parsley, and a fancy curly parsley. I planted them solely for the swallowtails, though I have snitched some of the plain parsley for cooking a couple times. Anyway, I explaining this to a neighbour the other day, noting that while I had caterpillars in the carrots, I didn’t see ANY in the parsley. She breeds guinea pigs, and said if I was looking for a home for the parsley (which had gone crazy) the pigs would be quite happy to take it off my hands!

A day or two later, she stopped by and we started cutting and bagging the curly parsley! And would you believe… we found no less than TWENTY black swallowtail caterpillars hiding in there!

We transferred them over to the carrots. There’s still half a bed full, so there’s more than enough there for them to eat (and plenty of carrots for us to harvest too!)

And last…

We’re still enjoying berries, and there’s still three melons left on the vine! There’s still plenty of summer to enjoy in mid-September!

Last Saturday, the weather was perfect. I spent the WHOLE day in the front yard; weeding, deadheading, and doing some long overdue tidying up. Dave was busy working on other things (as he usually as when I’m gardening) but that doesn’t mean I was alone.

Furby, my faithful gardening companion hung out with me for most of the day.

He dissapeared several times, but always came back to check on what I was up to.

And of course, inspect my work!

I don’t know how I ever got anything done in the garden without him!

By the time you read this, this little Marshmallow may already be home.

Two weeks have just flown by! I think she had a good time. As I noted before, she spent the majority of it in the catio.

And a good chunk of that time was spent trying to convince us to let her OUT of the catio.

I hope Bronson doesn’t have too much trouble keeping her inside after this.

And as for Lemmy…

It’s hard to say how much he will miss her.

I know I certainly will.

It’s been a while since I updated you on my Leader/Ender postage stamp quilt. It’s been over a year since I started sewing 2″ squares together. While working on my four patches on Sunday, I finally ran out of what I had cut up.

The giant ziploc bag I’ve been storing the two-patches is a little less than half full. It seemed like a good time to start sewing them into four patches.

We got a nice little stack completed while working on our blocks. Of course, we’re these are small, so we are going to need a lot more than that to make a decent sized quilt. I suspect it will be at least another six months or so before we have anywhere near enough!

While I was working away in the studio on Sunday, Dave was working outside on a little project for me.

Longtime readers will remember Squirrelington’s – my little squirrel restaurant we had set up at the townhouse. We moved here, and it’s sat in the shed since. We just never got around to putting it up. Last week, Dave took out all the pieces, gave them a refresh (sand, new stain and varnish)…

And now Squirrelington’s is back! Bigger and Better than ever! and You may notice a new addition…

Every fine establishment needs a little musical ambience! I picked it up at Giant Tiger this spring. Dave gave it a nice stain and top coat to keep it looking good.

I think it’s the perfect addition to our original pieces.

Now I just wait for the patrons to discover it…

In the meantime, friends have been bugging me to start an instagram of all my nature/garden pics, so I finally did. If you’re so inclined, feel free to give me a follow….:https://www.instagram.com/naturebreakr/

I’m super pleased with the progress I made on the witchy sampler this weekend.

Lemmy was weekend night shift supervisor, and with his help, I almost completed the whole number section.

I still have to fill in the orange on the pumpkins (eyes) and candles (flames) in the numbers, as well as the back stitching to create spiders and webs.

I got number one done, but that was it before I had to head to bed Sunday night. But isn’t that the cutest itsy bitsy spider?

Over last week, I did not get one chance to sew a single disappearing four patch in the evenings. So… by the time the weekend came, I decided I just better get down to it!

It took all of Sunday, but I got them all done. Now I just have to decide how I wanted to lay them out. There are two options.

The first, with darks and lights opposite to each other as the blocks line up…

Or… lights to lights and darks to darks

As I was sewing them, I was leaning heavily toward the first option. But now that I see them laid out, I think I’m leaning toward option two.

Burton and Lemmy definitely prefer the second. But, I have a week to decide. I’ll sew these all together and add border this coming weekend.

No words…

… just beauty