Say Say, Samkin and Lilypop

Grave Of A Civil War Soldier and Wife--Florena Budwin

The Treacherously, Tediously Slow Japanese Indigo Hexagon Quilt

Mostly made from Goodwill men's dress shirts, it is a wannabe bed quilt. IF (and that's a big if) I can carry on. I figure it will take about a thousand of them to make a bed quilt. Each hexagon has to be cut out of paper, pinned to a 3" (approximately) piece of fabric, basted on all six sides, then sewn one side at a time to another one. So each hexagon has 6 sides which must be sewn to another hexagon's edge. That's a lot of damn handsewing!!!! It's meditative and relaxing, but slow as hell. I do it when I don't need to think. The Millefiore needs lots of concentration and designing and planning. This one is just random. It reminds me of a Scandinavian starry, cold winter night and Japanese boro (old field clothes that are worn and patched). And that makes me happy!

Cut the templates (very carefully). Hundreds and hundreds of templates! Some people can reuse them, but I always end up messing them up so that they can't be used again. It's a talent I seem to have perfected.

Then you pin them atop a square a bit bigger than the template.

You fold the fabric down over the template and sew each side, sticking your needle through the paper and I always take a double stitch on the corner/points.

Then you take two pieces and sew the side together. I sew them into lines/rows of 14 and then sew the lines/rows together

Once all sides have another edge sewn to it, I cut the basting thread and pull out the papers.

I like the random look of it. I'm only using blues and taupes/creams.

So I always have to have several things going at once or I get bored.

The Little Rectangular Pond

We (meaning my son) dug it and lined it and this spring we put in some plants on the shelf. We added two water lilies and then the local frogs laid about a zillion eggs in it.

It is filled by rain running off the metal roof. We don't have any fish so I hope that doesn't hurt anything. We went to some of the local ditches and dug out some hornwart and it seems to be thriving. (8 month update--everything is growing like gangbusters so I guess whatever the roof sheds isn't too toxic.) during heavy downpours, it can put a whipping on the plants, sometimes even knocking the pots off the shelf and into the water. It's two feet deep, 3 feet wide and 11 feet long. I didn't have to add water even once this summer in spite of the fact that it was a very dry summer. It's sort of like standing under a waterfall when it rains and it pours off the roof into the pond.

The Millefiore Quilt. Sort of. So far.

The Pitcher Plant

My sister gave me some pitcher plants, Siberian iris and arrow plant from her pond.

Here's the pitcher plant looking very immature in its new seafoam greeny-blue pot.

They started growing and getting this elongated pod shape on their tips that popped open into this trumpet shape.

The pot started filling up with pitcher plants! And the neighboring horsetail reed and arrow plant and the monarda (growing in a pot with creeping jenny) also started going crazy and busting out with new sprouts and buds and shoots!

It has this beautiful red veining on the leaves!

Frog Eggs and Water Lilies and Visitors to the Pond

One day we looked in the pond and, lo and behold, frog eggs!!!!! Although I have not seen many frog eggs in my time, I just knew that's what they were. And I was right because shortly after----tadpoles!

I planted the waterlilies around April 14, 2015. The Yellow one is a Charlotte Strawn and the little pink one is a Pink Beauty. I got them about 1/2 price from a dealer online who was stopping their mailorder business.

And these are the tadpoles--hundreds upon hundreds!

A Carolina Green Anole, I think.

A zipper spider slaughtering a dragonfly.

A dragonfly that escaped the Zipper spider.

Hanging out on the horsetail reed. All summer they swarmed around the pond doing elaborate zipping and diving and bending this way and that. I don't know if it was a territorial display or a courtship dance. Whatever it was, it was pretty acrobatic and amazing.