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

September is my favourite time in the garden. The mornings and evenings are cool, but the days are generally sunny and warm.

The garden just thrives in September.

The Sneezeweed, also known as Heleniums, have started to bloom. They are one of my favourite fall flowers. On the left is the native version, on the right is a hybrid I bought this year. I thought flower had more red, but it turns out, it’s just the centres that are reddish. Still, it has those cute button flowers.

The fall asters are set to explode into colour – probably another day or two.

Meanwhile, the mums are already doing that!

The sedums are also exploding. I have two HUGE clumps in the catio.

This year they flopped quite a bit, so I think I’ll have to split them up come spring.

Other fall favourites include the purple coneflowers, black-eyed susans, and Obedient plant. Sadly, the Obedient plant isn’t as lush as it has been in past years – Lemmy has been pretty hard on that corner of the catio. I think in the spring I’ll dig some up and move it to safer spots.

Several of my large houseplants have been enoying a nice vaction in the back (shady ) corner of the Woodland garden – and they seem quite happy about it. I’ll have to bring them in in the next few weeks.

The sunflowers continue to shine! They’ve been a testament to starting seeds in seed snails. Though I lost over half of the seedlings to squirrels after I planted them out, the ones that survived have done amazing!

The cosmos will be started that way next year – it’s seeds snails from here on out!

I hope everything is beautiful and lush in your life!

We’re a week into our visit with Miss Freya

She pretty much took over the house the first night.

But the thing she’s loving the most is the Catio yard.

She’s the first one out in the morning. And the last one in at night.

I think Bronson is going to have to build her one when he comes home. If not, there may be hell to pay!

She did give me quite the fright yesterday though. It had been raining in the morning (that didn’t stop her from going out and getting soaked though). It had stopped by noon – but I guess she decided that the wet garden was no place for her afternoon nap. She came in, got a little attention (and a good drying off by me) and then dissapeared!

I mean, I couldn’t find her ANYWHERE! Thankfully, we have cameras on the cat doors, so I was able to determine she hadn’t returned to the catio (and thus somehow escaped from there). And we hadn’t gone out any doors – so she was SOMEWHERE in the house.

I searched for a solid hour. I shook the treat bag several times but all I got were my greedy boys! I was frantic, having visions of having to tell Bronson we somehow lost his cat, but I had no idea how!

I was poking around in the laundry room for a third time, when I spotted some movement on top of the dryer.

Dave keeps this bin on top of the dryer to collect rags for washing. And there’s a random bit of foam in there for some reason. Well for Miss Freya, it was the perfect spot for a nap – she crawled under the foam and curled up on top of the rags! Practically invisible!

One more week to go!

I’ve got one more quilt on my Christmas to make list. I plan to head to Mom’s for a quilting weekend in late September, so that means I’ve got to get the top together by then. With that in mind, on the weekend, Burton and I sat down and started playing with fabric.

We have this lovely layer cake in a line called Chantrell. I needed something quick and dirty like the last top… and there’s just one such block I’ve been wanting to make for a while. It starts with a simple four patch.

Then you slice it up a bit…

Then you swap the sides out and turn the centre one turn

And sew it all back together!

And you have a disappearing four-patch!

Now… I love it, but it isn’t as quick and dirty as I hoped. Those four patches go quick, but slicing, dicing, and sewing the blocks back together is a fair bit slower. That said, I should be able to get them done in time. I have all the four patches together, so I’m going to try to do a block or two each night.

The other day, Dave remarked to a neighbour that he’s never seen so many hummingbirds in the yard as he has this year. And he’s right, they have been super plentiful. But it helps that I have so many plants they love to visit.

That said, I haven’t been able to get a decent shot of them.

I got lucky the other day when I was out front taking pics of the monarchs (which have also been plentiful this year).

They aren’t the best shots, but I think they are the best I’m going to get this year.

Now that it’s September, these little beauties will start heading south soon.

Now as for these little hummers….

…it’s been a banner year.

I see them at least a couple times a week, and sometimes multiple at a time.

They are certainly welcome visitors any day of the week!

When I started this project, I was lamenting to Mom that none of my needle minders were jiving with the spooky them. So of course, when she showed up, she had a new one for me!

That’s much more on theme!

We both did a fair amount of stitching while she was here. (She’s working on the cross stitch version of the quilt she made me.) Because of that, I was able to finish up the first section – with the exception of the few orange bits. I may just finish them up during the week so I can start the weekend with a fresh section!

Just because I can make my own quilts, doesn’t mean I don’t love receiving one as a gift. Especially when it looks like this.

This pattern is called Flea Market Flowers. I saw a picture of a heavily quilted version on Facebook a while back and just fell in love with it. I showed to to Mom… and she took it as a challenge, lol!

She came for a visit this weekend and brought the finish quilt along with her! I told her she should have saved it as my Christmas gift, but she didn’t want to wait!

And it is amazing! Just look at those blocks! And that quilting!

She even hid a little butterfly in the quilting!

I just love the whole thing!

And naturally, it’s been Bearbottom approved!