Garden scraps

The tomato plants are out and needed a bit of help standing up straight so Al cut me some stakes and I whipped out the pretty fabric strips scraps I've been saving. Nothing like a quilter's garden, you know?... Amy Butler ties, Kaffe Fasset scrappy strings, Moda bits... so pretty :) I also left a small pile of tiny pieces out in the early spring for the birds... I figure they might like a little color as they decorate their nests...

Working in the yard...

I've been trying to get a little gardening done lately but with so much going on with family and health concerns, it's been hard. I've scheduled myself to do a little gardening EVERY day so that it doesn't get out of hand... It's also wonderful exercise and I need that.

The strawberries are coming in like crazy. But then again so are the weeds. We've had quite a bit of rain, which we needed since we were on high danger for fires in our area. Seems like it's feast or famine with the weather.... no rain for weeks... then no sun for weeks... what can you do? Today is beautiful... it rained a bit this morning but now the sun is out. We're supposed to get more storms later in the day.

Al built me this strawberry bed and last year he put the chicken wire cage over it to keep the robins from getting a bite out of each of our beautiful berries. While I was collecting a quart yesterday, I had a robin on the post watching me.... I just laughed!! They're all mine this year! MMMMM

a bad few weeks....

This last week has been very busy and also very sad... one of my cousins passed away. He was only 56, a year younger than Al. It came as a shock... We last saw him at Grandma's 100th birthday party/family reunion. He was a wonderful man, intelligent, cheerful and very understanding... he listened. When we visited San Francisco for the first time in 2000, he came with his family to show us around, took us to a wonderful Hunan resturant, took the girls on a trolley car, and to Giradellis for ice cream. He was full of interesting facts about the area... what a tour that was! But the best thing was just sitting and talking to him... he would let you ramble on...without interupting and then offer his advice. He was always willing to give us a hand with arrangements for grandma... help with her paperwork (even though he's half a continent away). He was my uncle's oldest son, my oldest cousin. I'm going to miss him.....

Luck of the non Irish?

Well, I'm not Irish... I have LOTS of nationalities (7) but that's not one of them. BUT boy have I been lucky lately! First getting all those wonderful old fabrics from my daughter, then heading to the resale shop and finding a HUGE bag of silk threads in the 1/2 off bin (45 spools of silk thread on wooden spools for $3!) and then heading to the library and finding a tall stack of free quilt magazines. And they wanted me to take all I could because they needed to make some room! WELL, of course, I just had to help them out with that request! This pile above is just a SMIDGEN of what I took home. I thumbed through about 10 of them last night... think I'll fill the tub with bubble tonight and put another pile next to it.... Take of my record setting baths!