Glorious Springtime!

Bruce and I have both been working hard out in the garden. All the vegetables are planted! YAY! We did forget one basil plant, which I discovered while watering a still-to-planted rose on the patio. But I feel we’re over the hump. I still have another couple hours of shoveling soil to finish off the big cubic yard we got, but that might possibly happen today or if not, then on Monday. All my flower pots are planted with their annuals and most of the perennial flowers and shrubs are as well. Another trip to the nursery is in order, but that won’t happen for at least 10 days because of other things, which I’ll explain momentarily. 

This little flower bed, with the beautiful blue brunnera I showed last week (must.get.more!) has some friends now. The wilted tulip greens along the bed curbing will be removed once they turn yellow - have to let their bulbs soak up the leaf nutrients first. The three grasses in pots in the rear of the bed (hakonechloa - Japanese forest grass) are shade lovers.  I hope to fill in that whole area in the shade along those windows with them. But they’re a bit pricey, and so I’m going to have to plant fewer and just wait for them to grow. 

In the meantime, I’m adding annuals and pots and picking up cheap flowers where I can find them. And I’m cheering on the hostas that have finally broken ground and are really pushing their new growth! 

A few little begonias and a single blooming iris make a cute little vignette in the bed under the living room window. That whole expanse under the window used to be filled with irises, but they had to be thinned out and the dead rhizomes discarded. Now I need to transplant some back - a project for July or August.

The drip lines still show all over the beds as we tweak where feeder lines need to be attached. But it’s all coming along. We hope to have that all done so we can clean up the patio of drip irrigation supplies and detritus and get the furniture set out for the upcoming Memorial Day long weekend. 

I did get some orange blocks sewn this week for Orange May in the Rainbow Scrap Challenge. I’m linking up to Scrappy Saturday at Angela’s blog.

Here we have ten Split Nines …

And then I made six Four-in-Nines. The first two are with a gray constant:

And the last four are with a dark navy constant: 

On tap for the next project is the assembly - FINALLY - of my International Sisters quilt. Here is an in-progress photo as I begin to sew rows together.

Tomorrow (Sunday) I’ll be able to sew on it a bit, hopefully. Cousin Kim is coming over to sew, but first she’ll be giving Bruce a haircut and next we have rhubarb to harvest for her. Then we have three quilts to baste, two of them being large ones that Kim has made which are ready for finishing. Ruby won’t be joining us this week because poor thing - she’s in Europe (Austria, Hungary, Germany, Poland and the Czech Republic). Yes, I’m properly jealous! 

On Wednesday, Bruce and I head out to Western Colorado for 4 days for my Cousins Reunion. We’re staying at my brother’s house. There will be Bruce and I, Steve, Cousin Dan, and Cousin Julia and her husband David; six total. We haven’t seen our cousins in 25 years, and they’ve never met Bruce. I hope to get lots of pictures and hugs!