The Garden Is Producing.

It is hot, hot, hot here! But I think it is about like that everywhere in the USA right now. We are in a major heat wave. I am ready for fall, but I am enjoying our garden. We have been getting some produce. I went down early this morning and picked 2 chore buckets of green beans and our first tomato! That first tomato is kind of puny, but it is always a big deal around here when we pick the first one. (grin) I have the beans all snapped and in the fridge. I will probably cook them this evening after it cools down a bit. Kevin suggested I wait, since it is so hot. No point in making the a/c work any harder than the poor thing already is. I snapped a picture of the produce from the garden.

The peppers aren't huge yet, but peppers are still $1 a piece at the store, so I decided we might as well be eating our own. I planted 9 and they are loaded. The hail we had a few weeks ago, made some bad spots on some of them, so they need to be eaten anyway. Our onions did not do well this year, but I will pull them this week. We'll use what we have. The deer have enjoyed my sweet potatoes. I planted 16, and now have 6. I hope they decide to leave those for us. (grin) The muskmelon and watermelon, that I had given up on, are finally up. Not sure if they will have time to finish, but we will see. Our pumpkin is starting to bloom and my lonely little cucumber vine is blooming as well. The corn is a tasseling and the potatoes are dying back. So things are going pretty good in the garden area.

I know of a couple of babies that are due towards the end of the year. I have a thought running around inside my head. I have been playing on EQ7 to come up with a design. I picked up a couple of fat quarter packs at Walmart. I think these will make great baby quilts. The first one is kind of neutral, so I am thinking it could be used for a girl or a boy, but preferably a boy. 

Now this one is more girly. I love these colors together.

I am spreading my wings. I used to only choose Thimbleberrie like colors to work with, but I am trying to stretch out of my comfort zone. I have become quite fond of some of the brighter colors. Can't imagine a quilt on my bed made from these colors, but for babies and children, I love 'em. Now to decide on a pattern in my EQ7. I worked on it a bit yesterday, but have not come up with a definite plan. I'll add borders and sashing from my stash.

Last week I decided to make a bag for a young woman who lives in my mom's apartment complex. She is very good to mom and always doing favors for her. I decided to make a bag for her to thank her. I chose the Phoebe Bag. This is a pattern by Rebeka Lambert and was really easy to make. I used some of the fabric that my friend, Cyndi sent to me. The young woman who this is intended for loves cats. (grin) 

Isn't this cute? I did not have a magnetic fastener, so resorted to the old standby...velcro. It works. LOL Here is the inside. I still need to hand stitch the lining together at the bottom, but otherwise, it is done.

Here is a picture that shows the gorgeous outer fabric a little better, but the first picture is truer to the real color.

Don't you think she will like it?

Well, Kevin just stuck his head in to say he might need my help in a bit. He is getting ready to build a small deck onto the front of the house. So I am going to help whenever I can. (grin) Everyone have a wonderful day. Thank you for visiting and please come again. Stay cool and hydrated. Fall is coming. LOL


Winona

Henrietta Whiskers 6 and 7

This has been a busy weekend. Remember, I told you about our tick infestation? Well we declared war on them this weekend. LOL I bought a good pair of clippers and gave Buddy a close hair cut. Poor guy doesn't look as cute, but he is cooler and I can find ticks much easier on him. Then on Saturday, I mowed and Kevin weedeated. Everything around  us is now cropped close to the ground. Then we kept the furbabies in so Kevin could spray the yard. So far, so good. No ticks on either of us today.  Kevin  also used the chainsaw to trim up some volunteer elm trees.  Did I say how hot and humid it was this weekend? Oh my goodness, I about got too hot Saturday, so had to sit and cool down.(Honey's orders) Today I got the laundry done while Kevin was piddling on some stuff. Then I cooked him the first zucchini of the year. I forgot to take a picture of it, but you all know what zucchini looks like.

I am caught up on Henrietta Whiskers. I am loving this BOM. Here is block #7. Isn't it cute?

It isn't really this yellow color. I took it last night with my light on. I don't think I ever shared block #6, so here it is.

The purple  you see across the pumpkin is just a stray thread that I neglected to get off before taking the picture. Sorry.

I decided to add the red borders to my Raggedy and Friends quilt. I have them ready. Just need to sew them on. Hope to get that done tomorrow. I picked our first green beans a few days a go. Oh my goodness, they were so good. It only took us a couple of days to eat a whole gallon. Of course I cooked them with a hambone, some onion, and sea salt. Eating just doesn't get any better. Look how green and pretty they were before I cooked them.

While I was down at the garden picking beans, I took this picture of our tomatoes and corn. I wish they would hurry up and get ready. I love tomatoes and corn. LOL

Well, that is it for me tonight. Kevin has already gone to bed, so I guess I might as well go too. I have to get up early for a walk, or it will be too hot. We are under a heat advisory for the next few days. I believe it. LOL Thank  you for visiting and please come again. Have a wonderful week.


Winona

A Walk Around the Garden!

We ended up getting quite a bit of rain during the night, so the plan to work in the garden today is put on hold. That is ok, though, we still have plenty of time to get the sweet potatoes, cucumbers, watermelon, and muskmelon planted. Of course, with all this rain we have had, the yard needs mowed again. All in good time. (grin) Anyway, I walked down to the garden this morning and got some pictures. This is probably boring to some of you, but I kind of want to keep a record of it, so I'm posting pictures of our garden.
This is the whole garden from the top of the hill. Our garden is located in a field, so it is surrounded by tall grass and weeds. We have a push mower, self-propelled mower, and weed eater. No rider, so we have to pick the areas to keep mowed. No way can we keep up with the whole 5 acres. It is times like this that I miss my goats. They did a great job of keeping weeds under control.

That is where the old rider gave up the ghost. I guess Kevin leaves it there as a landmark. LOL We planted 18 tomato plants this year. I hope to be able to make some salsa, sauce, etc.

I planted little short rows of sweet corn so it would pollinate better. The rows run north and south. We usually have a south wind during the summer.

This is the first year I have planted okra. I don't even know how to fix it. I guess I need to do some research.

I planted 3 rows of green beans back in the last week of April. It was so cold that they never came up, or so I thought. I almost tilled them out, but look at them now.

These are the sweet peppers, eggplants, and the onions and potatoes behind them.

These are the best looking potatoes we have had in years. I planted 4 rows of Pontiac and one row of Yukon Gold.

Isn't this potato bloom pretty? As you can see, I already have them hilled.

This year we decided to plant some pole beans. Now Kevin needs to get a fence up beside them so they can grow up it.

I planted cabbage as an afterthought. Kevin thought it was too late for them, but they are looking good.

The last two pictures are of our spaghetti squash....

...and zucchini. I just planted 2 hills each of these. That should give us gobs.

Kevin broke some new ground for us this year, so we could increase the garden. With groceries going up each week, I look forward to when we can eat out of the garden. I hope you all enjoyed a tour of our garden. I will be posting some updates of it as it grows. Thanks for visiting and please come again. Everyone have a wonderful day.


Winona

Picking green beans.

I picked a bucket of green beans this afternoon. I also got some much needed mowing done. Oh boy! I was so hot when I came in that I thought I was going to melt. Hmmm. They said our high was supposed to be 85* today. We already have 94* and mom has 96*. Who determines the predicted high temps? I think they need to do some more research. LOL  Anyway, I decided to do a blog post while I try to cool down. Then I will be snapping these.

  This is my chore bucket. It holds about 1 1/2 gallons. I will probably have this many more to pick in a day or two. This is just one row. I have another row that is just a little later. It is about ready. Our tomatoes are not doing good. We have huge plants, but not very good tomatoes on them. I think we have just had too much rain. Kevin picked 3 zucchini this weekend, but I didn't see any today. The sweet potatoes are taking over the garden. LOL The peppers are not doing good. I have a few little peppers on them. They are usually loaded. I have 2 eggplants growing, but not any more blooms. Oh well. I will take what we get and be grateful for it.

I started putting Jeremy's quilt together last night. I thought this would be the easy one. Huh! I have had a terrible time getting the seams to line up right in the nine patches. I was ironing everything towards the brown. Iron to the darkest color, right? Well that just didn't work for this quilt. I switched and started ironing away from the brown and everything lined right up. Oh well, glad I finally figured this out. I have 5 blocks done. Most of these had every seam sewed and ripped out and resewed at least once or twice. I was ready to pull my hair out.

I also have the cornerstones ready to go.

I don't think I shared a picture of the charm square quilt along blocks since I got the lights cut out. I still need to turn these into half square triangles.

I pin them together in groups of 10. I got tired of constantly counting to see how many I had. LOL

Thank you so much to everyone who wished us a happy anniversary yesterday. We had a nice day. Kind of laid back, but nice. We both piddled on our computers. Then Kevin watched a movie while I sewed. (grin) We were in the same area, though. I made a run to the deli, but they were out of chicken tenders. Whoever heard of a deli being out of chicken?  So we ended up having pizza instead. Not bad, but probably not great for us. We decided we won't celebrate anything else till Thanksgiving. Anyone want to take bets on this? Nah, me neither. LOL 

On a serious note, please say a little prayer for my sweetie. He has come down with shingles. They look pretty nasty to me, but he says they aren't bad. I'm not sure he is telling me the truth about this, though. He doesn't like to worry me. So if you could just say a prayer that he can heal quickly, I would be very grateful.

Thanks for visiting. I see my blog is still behaving. We had a serious talk and I threatened  to delete it, if it did not straighten up. I guess it got the message. LOL Everyone have a great day. Please come again.

I Had a Busy Day.

I got a lot accomplished today. I have been feeling a lot better since I started eating healthy and exercising. I have also lost 6 pounds. I know that is a long way from my goal this summer of 30 lbs, but it is a start. I'll take it. LOL  I started my day out like always: check my BG, make my green tea, get dressed, make the bed, then settle down for my Bible reading. My day just goes better when I begin it in the Word.  I decided to do my exercises right after my study.

I remembered yesterday how much I always enjoyed working out to Sweatin' to the Oldies, so I drug them out. It actually makes exercise fun, yet I got a good workout. Boy, I was sweating. LOL  After an hour of that, I decided to get the housework done. Then after seeing that the weather was supposed to be rainy most of next week, I decided to weed the garden. I had the whole garden weeded, tilled between the rows, bean seeds planted in bare spots in the rows, a hill of zucchini planted, and everything that bugs like dusted in less than 2 hours. (More like 1 1/2 hours.)  I only had to swat one mosquito. I hate those things. Here is our garden, but don't mind the weeds in the back ground. The garden is planted in a field and our rider is broke down, so until we can push mow around it, we live with the weeds. LOL

Those are sweet potatoes on the right, with 2 bell peppers , 2 eggplants, and a hill of zucchini at the end of the row. Next are our 8 tomatoes. Then we have 2 rows of green beans. This is the smallest garden we have had in almost 33 years of marriage. Our garden is normally 10 times bigger than this. We decided not to plant more than we can comfortably take care. We would still like to plant some watermelon, muskmelon, and spaghetti squash, but that may not happen. I am happy with this.

I  sat down on some blocks to cool down after coming from the garden. Look who showed up. No, not because she loves me, but because she wanted me to feed her. LOL This is Red Sweetie. (See I told you nothing around here gets very original names. LOL

Red Sweetie is very tame and gentle. She will let me pick her up and pet her. Not so with Black Girl. I can't get near her.

This was taken with the zoom. See, she is about ready to take off. She also looks mean. I only have two chickens left. Our winter was rough on them and something caught the rest of them. These two seemed to be smart enough to hide.
After a bit, our Norwegian Elkhound, Midget, decided to come for a petting. His mama was a NE, but we have no idea what his daddy was. He is about 11 years old and is the best dog.

After our lunch, Kevin and I sat down and decided what we wanted to eat for the next couple of weeks. I don't do well without a list. I think he is going to try joining me with the healthy eating. I'm not pushing him, but he did list mostly veggies that he wanted me to get. (grin) Also, first he asked  me to get ham, then changed it to chicken breasts. I am rubbing off on him. LOL

On the quilting front...I have the Carpenter Star all cut out. I usually make a block before cutting everything out, but this one didn't work that way. I am changing some things in the pattern, so wish me luck. I even have the lines drawn on the HST's. It is ready to sew, but probably not tonight. My shoulders hurt too much.(All that hoeing.)

Instead of using 8 fat quarters, I am using 4 half-yard pieces. So I had to label all the fabric, because when I get the HST's done the lay out has to be a certain way to make the design. I hope my fabrics have enough contrast. I guess I'll see.

I think I will go watch some tv now. Everyone have a great evening. Thanks for visiting.

A productive weekend!

Good morning everyone,

It is raining here, but it is a nice gentle rain that the garden will love. We had a lovely holiday weekend, but more about that in a bit. First off, today is mom's birthday. Happy birthday MOM! Also, I received a blog award from Lisa. Thank you Lisa. Sorry, I don't know how to get a picture of it on here. I tried. Some things I understand, and others, I just don't. LOL

As I said, we had a great weekend and got lots done. Kevin decided to buy me an MP3 player or iPod. I did lots of research. I decided not to get the iPod. It did not have a feature that was important to me and I thought it was too expensive. I'm not saying iPods aren't good, just that it wasn't for me. So we went down to Best Buy, Friday evening. I came back with a Sony Walkman 8 GB. I have already figured out how to use it and love this thing. Sorry about the blurry picture. I took several and this is the best of the bunch. LOL The only thing I do not like about it, is the earphones, on the right. Those things hurt and will not stay in my ears. So I bought another pair, on the left, that work great.

My dh offered to put all of my CD's on it, so I took him up on the offer. He has put over 300 songs on it, some of my pictures, a movie, and the complete King James Bible and I still have lots of space left. He asked me why I had so many CD's of Reba and Travis Tritt. Well, duh! Because they are great singers. LOL I have at least 5 of each of these wonderful artists. I told him I thought 8 GB was overkill, but he insisted I get that instead of the 4 GB. I have had Sony products in the past and always had good luck. I really wanted an MP3 player with an FM radio. This has it. It sounds fabulous. I had narrowed it down to this or a Sandisk Sansa Fuse. I went with this one because of the Sony name and I just liked the looks of this cute little red thing. LOL I can not believe how this tiny little device can hold so much stuff. Isn't technology great? (grin) So I know how to run everything on it, but never learned how to put stuff on it from the computer. If I need something added, I will just ask dh. (grin) My next project is to make a carrying case for it. I hope to do that today.

We worked outside most of the weekend. We mowed, weedeated, tilled, planted, weeded, watered, grilled and ate. LOL Kevin used the Troybilt to make a long hill for me to plant my vining crops in. I planted the sweet potato plants, then the rest in seeds. In this long hill, we have sweet potatoes, muskmelon, watermelon, cucumber, and zucchini. I ended up with about 18 sweet potatoes, 5 hills each of watermelon and muskmelon, 3 of cucumbers and about 10 feet of zucchini. (I plant them in this long hill, but with about 6 seeds grouped together spaced out about 8 feet apart. The zuchinni seed is about 8 inches apart along the row. The sweet potatoes are 1 foot apart in the hill. So they are all technically in the same hill, just spaced out along it.) So far the sweet potatoes are looking good. This gentle rain should bring everything right on up.

I also got my potatoes weeded and hilled up. I am so glad I got that done before this rain moved in. They will probably be blooming soon. You can't work close to the plant when or after they bloom or you risk tearing off the newly developing potatoes. I am keeping a close eye on them for those nasty potato bugs. So far, no signs of them. We didn't plant any potatoes last year, so I am hoping they all moved to another area.

I also got the onions weeded. I decided to work on the weeding an hour or 2 every morning. Otherwise the weeds get out of control. My back was actually thankful for the rain today. It can use a little break. LOL We used to plant 5-8 lbs of onion sets back when all the kids were home. Now we plant about a lb. It is too much work for me to keep up with the weeding for that much. The kids helped out alot. So we only have 2 rows plus the ends of the two rows of potatoes of onions. I hope weeding them will perk them up a little.

I also got the sweet corn, green beans and some flowers planted. I went back last night and hoed around my tomatoes, but didn't get any pictures of them. We lost about 10 of them, but still have 16, so should have enough for us. It hailed, rained hard, and the wind blew hard the whole week after we planted the tomatoes, so I am surprised we didn't lose more of them.

I noticed while I was out and about that my iris and peonies are blooming. I always considered the peony red, but I guess it is just a very dark pink. I have tried to get other colors to live, but so far, this is the only one to survive.

I have at least a 10 feet long patch of iris, but so far have only had 3 bloom. I think they are getting too crowded and the weeds are a pain to get out of them. So this fall, I think I will till another area up and move a bunch of them. Hopefully, then I will once again get those beautiful iris blooms. I have finished the quilting on the teapot quilt. I hope to get the binding done today. I am still working on the disappearing nine patch. I'm about 3/4 done with it.

We grilled out for the first time this season yesterday. We grilled hamburgers, hotdogs, brats, and ring bologna. So I have enough meat cooked for all this week and probably some of next. I also have some chili fixed for the hotdogs. I think I am going to need to freeze some of this. I had to turn the ac on Saturday. It got up to 92*. We can live with that temp, but why be uncomfortable when we have the ac? (grin)

Well, I need to get some things done around here. Tomorrow I hope to be able to show you the finished teapot quilt and some pictures I took of our baby chicks. Goodness, they have grown. Won't be long till they can mingle with the big chickens. Everyone have a good day. Thank you for visiting.

What Happened?

Good day everyone,
Well, winter just wasn't ready to let go. I woke up to pouring down rain, then looked at the thermometer to see it was only 29*. Ohoh, that spells trouble. I was supposed to go get all my mom's bills figured out today and visit a bit with her. My dh didn't want me on the roads. It wasn't slick, but we didn't know which direction the temps were going and he didn't want me taking a chance. So I called mom and postponed till tomorrow. Then, once it got daylight, I went out and took this picture.

This was about 3 hours ago and it is still coming down. I think we have 2 or 3 inches on the ground so far. It won't last long, though, because it is supposed to be in the 40's this afternoon. Spring weather in Missouri is always so interesting. (sigh)

I heard someone knocking on my door a little bit ago. It was my mail carrier. He brought the package I have been waiting for. It is my yellow onion sets and Yukon Gold and Pontiac potatoes. We decided to order these from Jung's this year. We usually purchase these around here, but haven't had good luck the past few years, so decided to give Jung's a chance. Of course, it will be a while before we can get them planted. I am sure it will be at least another week if not longer before we can get in the garden. Especially since they are calling for more rain in the next week. Spring will get here some day. LOL

I finished the embroidery on the center beagle last night. Now all I need to do is blanket stitch around each of the running dogs. Then I can draw the quilting lines on and get it sandwiched to quilt. I was straightening up the pile of projects that stay beside my rocker last night. I found this table runner. It only needed a little bit of primitive embroidery around some cherries to be ready to quilt, so I finished that up.

This morning, I got it all marked for quilting and have the backing ready so I can sandwich it. I really should be working on some other projects, but this is mighty tempting. LOL Please excuse the messiness on my cutting table. I just can't work on things without leaving a mess. LOL Normally, tomorrow I would be taking Kevin's check to the bank and probably getting a few groceries, but since I have to go to mom's, I guess that will be put off till Saturday. It's just as well. Kevin's new glasses finally came in. We both ordered them the same day, but he has to have safety approved glasses where he works. So it took about 10 days longer for him to get his. We will pick them up Saturday. I know it is grocery shopping time since the fridge is getting bare. (grin) I will work on a list in a bit. Now, I guess I had better get back to the beagle quilt. I think I will sandwich this little runner and put it away for a while, or I won't get done what I need to get done. LOL Anyone else have that problem? Doesn't is look like it will be fun to quilt? This just may make me work harder on the projects I need done before May.

Everyone have a great day. If you have green grass where you are, enjoy it for me, would you? It is still snowing here, even though it is now 35*. LOL Thanks for visiting and please come again.