Mother Nature played her games again and at the start of the week, dropped the temps and gave us snow. It was nothing that stuck around, but it was certainly a dismal contrast to the beautiful week we had before.

It’s still pretty cold, but the temps are set to slowly rise this coming week. In the meantime, the Pussy Willows are puffed up with pollen, just waiting for it to be warm enough for the bees to fly.

It’s such a neat little alien plant! And a super good source of early pollen for the bees. (I know I’ve said that before, but it’s so true!)

Not much new is blooming, thanks to the cold. I have some daffodils getting ready to pop, but not just yet.

My garlic has some very healthy sprouts and it looks like most of it made it through the squirrels winter digging antics. I’m looking forward to a good harvest. I love cooking with fresh garlic!

I was surprised to see the peonies poking through so early. And even more surprised to see a lily so far along. Hopefully the cold snap doesn’t damage the lily too much. The Peony will be find, but if the lily gets frost-bitten, those blooms will be done for the year.

All of my shrubs seem to be budding up nicely.

And with a couple weeks of warm weather they will be leafing up and blooming beautifully.

Of course…. all those buds are under snow once again. Mother Nature dumped this on us yesterday…

Lemmy thought it was wonderful…

Relic… not so much. Don’t worry Relly-belly. It’s going to be +10 by Monday!

As many of you know, I do my day job from my home office – far away from anyone I actually work with in my company. But that doesn’t mean I work alone…

I have to keep a spare office chair beside my desk because Relic frequently shows up to work beside me.

And he works pretty hard – he’ll spend hours there while I’m writing away.

I mean… his “work” eventually ends up looking something like this…

Now that’s the way to get things done!

Work continues on Wren’s birthday shrug

I’ve cast off for the sleeves and I’m working back and forth on the body. Being a shrug, it’s a short little body so I’m hoping to have this one off the needles by early next week and in the mail to the birthday girl before the end of the month.

By the weekend, I was finally feeling well enough to put my energy into catching up on the Stay at Home Round Robin. (I still have a wicked cough, and on-and-off runny nose but otherwise feeling fine).

I was three prompts behind, and the SAHRR was technically over (i.e. no more prompts coming.)

When last you saw the quilt, it looked like this:

The three remaining prompts were:

• Square in a Square
• Four
• Letters & Numbers

Now the thing I love about the SAHRR is that you can intrepret these prompts however you see fit. And as my quilt was already 50″ square, and I was starting to run low on available fat quarters, I decided to wrap all three prompts into one round.

Making some square-in-a-square blocks was simple enough.

I made two separate versions, and it gave me a chance to use some of the black fat quarters I couldn’t use in the other rounds because of the black background.

Four “Four” and “Letters” I decided to combine them into one block… a four patch, with fabric featuring words (i.e. letters!)

And then I got to sewing them all together into a big round around the outside of the quilt.

Then it was just a matter of throwing a couple more plain borders (thin black, and a wide light green floral) to build it out to a nice 73″ square. Which I think is a nice size for snuggling with your loved one in front of the TV.

I’ve got a pretty cream floral for the back, and I’ll bind it with more solid black to tie it all together with a nice tidy frame.

The wedding isn’t until September, so I’ll get up to Mom’s in the next couple of months to get it quilted and tucked away safely before gifting on the big day.

It’s nice to have this one done, and ready to quilt – and it’s always fun to participate in the SAHRR!

There were lots of tiny stitches added to my butterfly project this weekend…

I was hoping to have finished all the red veining, but as you can see didn’t quite make it. However, I am pleased, because those stitches are SUPER tiny, the fabric is VERY dark, and I didn’t have to rip anything back at all!

I am looking forward to moving onto another colour soon – but that’s for next weekend.

I can finally share the surprise quilt mentioned last week.

As you know, bestie Samantha recently underwent surgery for breast cancer. It went very well and she’s set to start radiation therapy soon to really kick the cancer in the ass. When she first told me of her diagnosis, I knew I would make her a quilt.

I have tonnes of fabric in my stash and no doubt could have found something suitable. But I wanted to do something extra special, and you all know how much she loves her Beagle, Calibre.

So I went looking for Beagle fabric. And that’s when I came across this on Spoonflower. Now I have mixed feelings about Spoonflower. The fabric is expensive (like $35 a yard for basic cotton expensive). And I wasn’t thrilled with the quality of the printing on the last fabric I bought from them.

But….

This fabric was just TOO perfect. I took the plunge and bought it (Sam is worth it). It’s actually a cheater fabric… which means all those blocks are printed as is… I didn’t have to cut and piece all the different prints. All I did was add some borders to the side to make it wide enough for a lap quilt. It saved me a lot of time (which I was great because I don’t have a lot of that these days) and I knew Sam wouldn’t mind that it wasn’t pieced.

I mean… how could you not love all those beagles??

The warm weather has meant a little more bird watching here for me and the cats.

I keep the feeders full the best I can all winter, but the finches come to the yard mainly for the seeds from the coneflower heads. Last years stock is almost all depleted, so they’ve turned their focus to the kettle feeder I have in the willows. I keep it full of straight black-oil sunflower seeds, which is another favourite of the finches.

It’s now not a surprise to come out and see a finch or two on it. Like Mr. and Mrs. Goldfinch here. I’m not sure what was going on with Mr. Finch’s head…

He had some sort of wild and crazy feather do going on.

And while the finches are feasting… the crocuses keep crocusing…

Last weekend’s snow didn’t seem to hurt them a bit and there are new blooms popping up every day. The mix I planted is supposed to last two months with early-late flowering bulbs, so it will be fun to see if it actually does.

More bunches of Winter Aconite are popping up too. I’m very glad about this because I was really worried most of them had died off, even though they are supposed to be pretty robust.

And the Squill (also known as Glory of the Snow) is also starting to bloom. I have this in four colors – pink, white, purple, and blue. And it’s all throughout the front gardens so there will be much more coming.

Friends back in my old city already have daffodils blooming. I’m jealous, but it looks like mine won’t be too far off.

In the mean time, the bees are making do with what’s blooming already. Mid week, the pussywillow was absolutely alive with honey bees (temps reached almost 20C again)

You can see the pussy willow is covered in pollen. It’s one of the best early pollen sources for pollinators, so I always recommend planting some if you can. It even gets some unexpected visitors.

The ladybugs are always welcome in this garden! And it’s nice to see they made it through the winter!

Walmart did it again. We went into pick Dave up another case of the fancy Coca Cola Spiced…. and they had the plants RIGHT by the front door. And then I saw it…

The most heavy metal, rock and roll cactus I’ve ever seen in my life. The picture does not show how lethal it really looks. It’s has CRAZY long spikes and it’s absolutely COVERED. I just had to bring it home with me.

Just look at the size of some of these spikes!!!! The whole cactus is no taller than the length of my hand (which is fairly small as far as adult hands go!) It’s just wild.

I’ve named him Bruce Prickinson after the lead singer of the band Iron Maiden, and Dave is going to help me design an Iron Maiden themed pot for him.

On the softer side of my indoor plants…

One of my orchids has rebloomed. This is one of my newer orchids (I bought her late last year after a trip to Mom’s), and her first bloom spike died off just before Christmas. It was a surprise to see her blooming so soon, but a welcome one!

I’m thinking my orchids will go out in the woodland garden for the summer. Our summers are fairly humid and I think they will like that – and the maple will give them plenty of cover from the sun so they don’t get burnt. It will be an interesting experiment.

I’m itching to get outside in the gardens to do anything… anything at all!

One of the best things about bringing Lemmy into the house, has been seeing the relationship between him and Rupert.

Relic is not a big fan of Lemmy. And while Burton gets along with him just fine, when they play, there’s no way Burton will let Lemmy come out on top. Burton is just too dominant.

But Rupert… Rupert will play just the way Lemmy likes. He’s just as rough and loves to be chased. And when they are all played out..

Rupert is always up for a snuggle.

All the quilts from the weekend at Mom’s are off to their owners. Hopefully they will land soon and I can show you the one I’ve been keeping secret.

One I can show you is just a wee one.

You may remember that when I made the quilt for Samantha’s anniversary. I had a lot of corners cut off from snowballing. And I used those corners to make little HSTs and put them into a quilt for her beagle, Calibre.

I normally quilt the pet quilts on my own machine, but I knew I’d be headed up to Mom’s at some point so I set this one aside to quilt it there. It literally too minutes on the long arm

Binding didn’t take terribly long either. It’s only24″ x 28″. Perfect size for a wee beagle…

Or a wee Lemmy!