From the back porch - April 4, 2025

I need two things:

(1) somebody with some sense to make decisions; and

(2) a talented, eager apprentice with no agenda but mine (an elf, more or less).

There are so many irons in my fire that I'm in kind of a stupor.  

Yesterday was a yucky, stormy day.  I spent a large part of it in my chair, stitching quilt blocks together.  By bedtime, I'd finished Strip 4 and joined the backs of Strip 5. Strip5 is laid out on the sewing room table now, its seam pressed, ready to have its innards joined and its skin sewn neatly shut.  ;)  The plan is to finish Strip 5 today and/or tomorrow.

Innards showing.

My morning routine - coffee, news, email, word puzzle - has distracted me.  One click leads to another, and off we go on a tangent.  

I clicked on a video about painting chickens.  I did not watch it for long because it reminded me that I did some chickens a long time ago - a series of 4 colored pencil drawings portraying scenes in a chicken yard, the last of which needs re-doing because its colors clashed with the other 3 drawings. I think those drawings would make terrific greeting cards.  Off I go, looking for the chicken yard drawings.

I thought I knew right where they were, in the make-shift portfolio under the sewing table, where I keep my better artwork.  I dumped the portfolio contents atop the quilt.  The chickens weren't there.  I did not look for them in the other likely places because I got distracted, admiring my former work.  ;)

Once upon a time, I set a goal of producing greeting cards with these drawings.  The intention was to donate the cards to an animal rescue group fundraiser, and maybe even offer them for sale in a booth or something.  I even bought a card rack to display them. 

(These are not finished cards.)

Most of the drawings have been scanned, and I've created a card template.  I've got enough blank cards and envelopes to fill up that rack.  All I need to do is decide which drawings to use and then print them.  But my printer isn't "all that," and the printed colors are muted.  There's probably a setting, somewhere, that would make the printing better, but I haven't found it.

I should check into how much it would cost to just have the blasted things printed . . . . 

. . . while I work on the quilt.

Rant - April 3, 2025

I feel a rant coming on.

Let me get this out of the way:

Politics.  I am sick of it.  I can't even stand to watch the news anymore.  I recently heard someone describe what is happening as being orchestrated by people acting like drunk monkeys with chainsaws.  Perfect description.  Absolutely perfect.

The worst part is that I feel constrained to even publicly state my disapproval.  

WTF?  This is America.

This is America?

* * * * * * * *

We got a whale of a storm last night.  Arkansas, Mississippi and Tennessee all took a beating.  The last time a tornado hit our county, FEMA was here immediately to address urgent needs and help us begin the recovery process.  I hope the places that took tornado damage in this storm will have good assistance.

The storm filled our septic tank with water.  The toilets will overflow if we flush them.  We had the tank pumped about a month ago.  If we have it pumped today, we'll have to have it pumped again after the storms predicted for the next couple of days.  Doing our "business" is going to be challenging until the storms pass and we can do something about the problem.

I expect that my garden is drowning.  A squirrel would mar up in that sludge.  If the Anasazi beans don't sprout, it sure won't be for a lack of moisture.  

Our yard is a shaggy jungle, surrounded by trees.  Winter ice broke limbs all around the property.  I've been picking them up for a month, but the storms keep dropping more.  I'll have to clean up yet again before we can mow.

I'm sitting here on the back porch, watching the birds come for breakfast.  Brown-headed cowbirds make a ridiculous "plop-PLOP" call when they're feeding.  I just watched one chasing - on foot - a little brown sparrow who wanted to join the buffet.  The sparrow wasn't giving up and could run faster, so finally the cowbird flew at the sparrow with puffed-out wings, like it meant business.  And still the sparrow didn't give in, and it looked like an all-out brawl was about to happen.  I hollered, "HEY!  Y'all cut that out!"  And everybody flew away.

But the sparrow came back first, with reinforcements.  They managed to snag a few bites before the cowbirds came back en masse and startled them away.

I made pretty good progress on the quilt yesterday.  After trying different methods of stitching the blocks together, I finally came up with a method that seems to work.  I press one seam allowance  under, overlap it with the other seam allowance, and machine baste it in place.  

Basted seam

To stitch the seams together, I pinch both seams up (so I can access them more comfortably) and join them with ladder stitches.  

Pinched seams

Once the hand-stitching is done, I remove the basting stitches.  I'm satisfied with the strength and the invisibility of the ladder stitches.

Stitched seam

(Hopefully, those blue stamped seamline markings will wash out completely!)

This quilt will be 4 blocks wide by five blocks long, a full-size quilt.  So far, I have assembled three strips of four blocks and will finish ladder-stitching the fourth strip tonight.  Strips 1 and 2 have been sewn together.  Strips 3 and 4 will be sewn together, then joined with Strip 5 (which is not yet assembled), and then I'll sew strips 2 and 3 together.  

There's some hand-quilting left to do before I can assemble the strips.  The four corners where the blocks join make a large un-quilted area.  I am quilting four heart shapes, arranged like a clover leaf, in these bare corners.  This quilting needs to be done before the quilt is fully assembled so that I won't have to handle the entire quilt the whole time.  I joined strips 1 and 2 before I quilted their hearts.  It was a pretty good lap-full, so before I assembled strip 3, I quilted the hearts on each block before I sewed the blocks together.  It must have been luck that kept my stitching from encroaching the seam allowances too much to then sew the backing on the sewing machine when it came time to assemble the strip.  (That sentence will probably make sense only if you've tried a quilt-as-you-go method and encountered the problem, yourself.)

I should run my errand before the next storm hits. 

Round 2 - April 2, 2025

Another round of storms is on the way.  It's supposed to arrive here this afternoon. It's already windy and overcast outside.  The Grandson was scheduled to be on his way home today (on a yellow school bus with the other kids), but he said they might wait until tomorrow, depending on the storm.  He's supposed to text me when he has an ETA, but I haven't seen anything from him yet.

Pennies from heaven fell on me yesterday.  A week ago, I emailed the company that manufactured our leaf shredder to see if I could buy a power switch for it. The person who answered the email assumed that the shredder was under warranty and asked for copies of invoices, pictures, and video of the shredder not cranking.  After a few back-and-forth emails, he called. It's a miracle I answered the phone, for I usually block unfamiliar numbers without answering the call.  Thank goodness I did.  The company is replacing the whole motor, switch and all, for FREE.  How about that?  The Husband thinks he might be able to do the mechanic work.  If not, we've got two sons and a brother-in-law who can fix nearly anything, if one of them can find the time to get to it.

I wanted to carve today but can't find my carving glove.  Here's a bear that I carved earlier in the week.  He might be the best thing I've carved so far.  

  

Storm - April 1, 2025

It stormed here Sunday night.  We were under a tornado watch for most of the night.  About 9 p.m., pea-sized hail started falling.  

Yesterday at lunch time, The Husband texted me, "Have you checked the tomato plants?"  

It was odd that he would ask me a question about the garden, for that usually results in my enlisting his help with some chore, so he rarely brings up the subject unprovoked.  I figured that he'd heard a bad report from Nanny.  It turned out that a co-worker had said that the hail had beaten down their squash plants.  I said I'd walk down to the garden to check on our stuff.  

I put on some shoes and stepped out the door.  When I rounded the corner of the house, the cold wind sent me back in the house until later in the day.  Our tomatoes mostly looked okay.  I'd planted them deep, with just their tops sticking out of the ground, so there wasn't much danger of being broken by the hail. A couple of the plants had a leaf stuck to the soil.  When I stepped into the row to un-stick them, my foot sank up to the ankle in mud.  It's a good thing my crocs were "locked and loaded" or I'd have lost one in the mud.  We're supposed to get more storms in the next couple of days, so whatever I might have done for the plants yesterday would probably get un-done tomorrow.

The weather app on my phone is predicting temperatures in the high 30s and low 40s for early next week.  When I planted the tomatoes, I imagined that I would cover them with plastic shopping bags if we were to get a frost.  But the weather man says we may get 8"-10" of rain with the new round of storms, and the garden soil will be like quicksand for days afterward.  I might rather re-plant than try to salvage those that are already in the ground.

It was heartening to see that the onion sets are sprouting.  The broccoli looks happy.  Didn't see a sign of the kohlrabi I planted from seeds. I'm not sure I'll recognize it when/if it comes up.

Yesterday I planted some sweet peas (the ornamental kind).  The planting instructions said to scarify the seeds, then soak them in water overnight.  I scrubbed them on sandpaper and soaked them and planted them in pots.  The blasted things had better sprout; I paid a ridiculous amount for 10 seeds.  

Our hiller/hipper/row-maker is supposed to arrive today.  I hope to catch the delivery truck before the driver unloads it to ask him/her to unload it at Nanny's, where the tractor and garden are.  It'll probably be more than a week before the ground dries up enough to use it.

Granddaughter #3's quilt is progressing slowly.  I work on it every day for a few minutes at a time, until my hand goes numb from pinching the needle.  It's a learn-as-I-go situation.  If I were making this quilt for myself, I'd probably have given up before the embroidery was done.  But, you know . . . grandchildren.

Babysitting - March 30, 2025

We babysat our 17-year-old grandson this weekend.  ;)

He called me Friday afternoon to ask if we had plans for the weekend.  We did not.  I told him to come on over.  Last night, he brought his girlfriend over.  (I liked her!)  He just left our house to go to his school and board a yellow school bus for a trip across the state, a HOSA competition.  It was a joy to have him here.

Friday, I planted 27 tomato plants, a row of Anasazi beans, and four seed display packages of sweet pea seeds that my sister gave me.  I planted the sweet peas between the tomatoes, thinking they might share the fence amiably.  They should put nitrogen in the soil (if the rabbit doesn't eat them), which should suit the tomatoes.  If the peas get too vigorous and start to wrap up the tomato plants, I'll just yank out the peas.  

I did not water the tomatoes since the weatherman predicted rain this weekend.  We got a good, slow, soaking rain yesterday.  Thanks, Mother Nature.  :)  Maybe now the onions and kohlrabi will come up.

Last weekend we ordered a hiller/hipper/row-maker.  It's supposed to be here Tuesday.  Hopefully, by the weekend, we'll have made rows in the rest of the garden and I will have planted purple hull peas and squash.  It might be too early.  I'll replant, if necessary.

Yesterday afternoon, between rain showers, I was sitting on the back porch and caught out of the corner of my eye a little flutter on the stepping-stones outside the porch.  At first I thought it was a wet leaf fluttering against a clump of grass that has grown up between the stones.  When it didn't blow away, I got up for a better look.

It was not a leaf; it was furry and gray - I couldn't tell what it was - and it was trying to burrow between two stepping-stones.  I went in the house and said to The Husband, "I need you to come kill something."  He gave me a strange look, but he came out and grabbed an old rake handle from the corner of the porch.  The gray burrowing thing turned out to be a baby mole.  How/why it was on the stepping-stones is a mystery.

 

Tomatoes, Sweet Peas, and Anasazi Beans - March 28, 2025

All of the above went in the ground this morning.

Come on, rain!

Talking - March 28, 2025

I talked all day yesterday.

My sister texted me before 8 a.m.:  "Are you up?  And talking?"  I replied that I was up and had told The Husband "bye."  She gave it another hour before she called.

She's worried and sad.  Her little dog, Sparky, a Yorkie, had a tumor removed from his neck earlier in the week, and she is worried about what the biopsy will show, dreading the worst.  He's been her companion for maybe 10 years.  She treasures him.

Before you entertain visions of a sweet little ball of fur, be advised that he is a 4-pound ball of FURY.  When my sister rescued him, he was doing his third stint at the shelter, having been labeled as a special needs dog because of his foul temperament.  My sister and her children managed to gain his trust, but he will try to eat anybody else.  If he were a big dog, he'd have killed somebody by now.  Fortunately, his tiny little mouth prevents him from seriously injuring a grown-up.

We talked about Sparky, and gardening, and other stuff.  We made plans to get together next week.

Not long after we hung up, my BFF called.  Her daughter just got engaged, and the two of them have been pondering wedding plans.  My BFF has mobility issues and gets depressed about being unable to do all she wants to do.  And the depression spills over to prevent her from doing a lot of things she CAN do, such as picking up the phone to call someone to do the yard work.  I chastised her for this - "Just pick up the phone!"- then I chastised myself for the same thing.  I've been needing to order replacement parts for some of our lawn equipment but haven't done it because I needed model numbers.  While I was on the phone with my BFF, I went outside and took pictures of the model numbers, and as soon as the conversation ended, I sat down and ordered the parts.

Not long after that, my other BFF called.  We spent our time commiserating about our arthritis and other ailments.  

Three marathon phone calls in one day might be a record for me.  By the time I hung up from BFF #2, it was time to start supper. After we ate, The Husband and I walked down to the garden and attached the wire fencing to the t-posts in what will become the tomato rows.  It got dark on us before we got to the bean fence.  

In a little bit, I'm going back to the garden to plant tomatoes and beans.  If it turns out to be too early for planting, so be it.