Nature's Bounty

Our garden has been very successful: zuchini thicker than baseball bats, lots of green beans, regular slicing cucumbers, emerald green tomatoes, and lemon cucumbers.

The red tomatoes didn't do very well this year. Kev and I plan on looking through the seed catalogs of heirloom seeds and see if we can find some good red tomatoes to plant for next summer. We're still waiting on the yellow strawberries. There are plenty of flowers, but no fruit just yet.

Hurricane Irene is on her way up the Eastern coastline and I'm hoping the rest of our harvest will be alright. I have quite a few lemon cucumbers not quite ready, but will be in the next few days if they're not ripped out of the ground by the wind and rain.

How to Make an American Quilt...or just one that looks like a pirate sleeps under it...

I'm getting very domesticated these days. Besides the gardening and raising of chickens, I've decided to indulge one of my old passions - quilting. Well, the old passion was more of a passing interest in Amish quilts.

My friend, Gayle, who for the longest time was trying to get me involved in crocheting and knitting by introducing me to books such as The Friday Night Knitting Club, hooked me on the Elm Creek Quilt series. I fell in love with Sylvia and all her friends as well as my interest in quilts and quilting was renewed. Gayle was excited and took great pleasure in pulling me through Joann's fabric section and helped me choose tools to begin.

A few weeks ago we attended a "quilter's circle" at Sachem Library in Holbrook. The "circle" was small which was good since Gayle (although has made a quilt before but wanted to really learn the right way of going about it) and I (who can barely sew a button) were not too intimated by the first block - the woven star block in red, white, and blue fabric.

I decided to repeat the pattern using some fabric in purples and pinks, but messed up sewing one area together and had to be redone. This week I started to look up some interesting patterns and decided on a pine tree pattern that went in a "home sweet home" quilt. It was a dismal failure. It was way too difficult, so I have my first UFO (unidentified fabric object). Instead I decided to stick to patterns with squares and triangles for awhile. So, I cut out a flying geese block, ohio star, and a friendship star block. I have to measure out my 1/4 inch sewing mark and then I'll be ready to sew them all together. I'm hoping to make a sampler quilt for myself...or at least a quilt top to be turned into one.

Kevin wants me to make us a pirate quilt for the bed, but I don't think I'm ready for that just yet. But, I am collecting fabrics in my new stash for when I get around to it.

Chicks, Chicks Everywhere

July 7, 2011

July 16, 2011

July 25, 2011

Kev said that raising chickens would help with our tick problem...and we'd get some egss out of it. For about a month, every time I'd go out to garden I'd have at least 3 ticks crawling up my legs. So, we placed an order from Murray McMurray mail order catalog for 25 white female leghorn chicks with one free mystery chick which could be any type or sex. They came the week of July 4th. Adorable!