Orange Sewing, Green Gardening

The days flew by this week! At this rate, I’ll be old before you know it. Oh wait….. I’m already old. Never mind.

After I share my sewing for the week, I’ve got some new garden pictures to show you. It’s always fun to take pictures in the spring and then watch how everything just explodes with growth over the summer. 

But let’s start with these orange string blocks. I literally had a basketful of orange strings at the beginning of the week. By Thursday, there were 83 string blocks at 6.5” each. See the stacked piles in the picture below? There are 15 blocks in each stack. The fanned out blocks at the bottom left - 8 of them - bring the total to 83. 

The five sets of 15 will go to Quilts for Kids for quilt kits. That is, after I remove all the papers from the back. But at least they’ll be for someone else to assemble into a top and quilt! The mindless sewing helped me to work through a lot of things - stressors, garden plans and more. It even gave me time to begin the rough outline in my head of a hopeful trip to Italy in the fall of 2024. Several of my Weight Watchers friends and I are beginning to make plans. First step: getting or renewing (me) passports! But I digress…

My second batch of blocks were these six Chaser blocks. They are so fun!

On Monday, Bruce had a doctor appointment in Bountiful, about a half hour north of us. While he was at his appointment, my dear friend Terri and I talked. Love you, girl!! Bruce joined us after his appointment and we all went out to lunch.

Terri is the widow of Bruce’s lifelong best friend Mike. We all miss him terribly. 

The rest of my week was spent sewing, shopping (housewares stuff mostly) and doing mountains of laundry. Bruce and I will be spending about 4 days in Colorado toward the end of the month for a Cousins Reunion. We’re going to travel about 4.5 hours east to Montrose County, Colorado, where my brother lives. Our cousins Julia (and husband David) and Cousin Danny will be coming in from Colorado Springs. Dan actually still lives in Southern California where we all grew up, but he’s flying out to Julia’s place where they’ll drive their motor home to Steve’s. We haven’t seen each other for over 20 years! We’re all getting excited, to say the least!

Early in the week, I snapped this picture of our back garden wall with tulips blooming and the garden beds being prepped for planting (not yet weeded in this picture, but they are now).

That trash can thing in the far right is actually a pollinator habitat we made a few years ago out of an actual trash can. I will plant the front part of it with something that will bloom and spill over the edge to soften the look. 

The east side yard along the driveway is beginning to take shape. The soil/mulch is spread and some decorations are out (prematurely). We’ll be visiting our favorite nursery to pick up a load of perennials and an ornamental cherry tree next week.  We’ve got a landscape company coming to grind an old tree stump up and remove two old root-stock roses. One will be replaced with a lovely white tea rose and the other - well, I can’t decide between a hydrangea or a lilac bush for its spot. Speaking of lilacs, here are some that I picked for myself from the neighbor’s bush that overhangs into our yard.

Our dwarf Japanese Maple is looking quite lovely… the white specks you see in the soil are the fallen buds from the flowering pear tree (shown last post).  Lots more space to fill up with fresh new plants and flowers!

In the front flower bed, the brunnera is striking! I’m going to get more of these because I love it so!

This little vignette is in the raised planter under the living room window. That miniature rose will be blooming soon.

And the bleeding heart is blooming too. I think it got a bit trampled from all the work on the irrigation and soil as it’s only half its usual size this year. 

That’s all I have for this week. I hope all you mothers have a wonderful Mothers Day on Sunday. Have a great week!

Linking up to Scrappy Saturday / Rainbow Scrap Challenge.