Butterflies, Flowers, Toads, Dragonflies, and Quilts

I’ve been spending most of every day working away on my brother’s quilt.  It’s taking a whole lot longer than I expected.  I must hurry...  it’s less than two weeks until his birthday! 

Tuesday he mowed and used his weedeater on our entire yard, and brought us some corn on the cob that he got from the Daniels produce truck.  We had it for supper that evening, and it was sooo sweet and good. 

Did you ever see anyone cook fresh roasting ears 20 or 30 minutes, and wonder why in the world they had a penchant for cooked rubber?  Bleah.  What a way to ruin perfectly good food.  Boil the water... put in the ears... and cook it five minutes.  Six, tops, unless the ears are really cold; then you might add a minute.  But no more.

When I was little, we had a Siamese cat, Purr-Purr, who would hold a cob on either end with his paws and turn it as he nibbled, one row of kernels at a time.  We thought he liked the butter – but he’d eat the whole kernel.  Our cat Tad liked Halls Honey Lemon cough drops.  He’d work and work to get the paper off the drop, licking away at it until the thing was a sodden mess.  And we had a Black lab who liked apples and sweet green peppers.

We won’t talk about the big Siberian husky who pulled the drain pipe right off the side of the house and chewed it flat shut.

I didn’t have to water the little trees Wednesday – I heard water running outside, looked out the window, and there was that same brother, busily watering all those trees for me. 

So you see at least part of the reason I must get this quilt done for him – it’s a ‘thank-you’ for what he does for us.  I was almost done with the third row of cross-stitched blocks; there were six to go.  I keep my page printed from my Electric Quilt program nearby, and check off rows as I go. 

You know, I don’t intentionally set out to make a mountain of work for myself.  But, almost without fail, that’s what I do.  Been doing it all my livelong life, from schooldays ’til now... guess there’s not much chance of changing my Mode of Operation now.  I see something I like – usually something intricate and complex – and I think, Oooo, pretty, pretty.  I could do that.  Then I study it a bit, and think further, You know, it would be even better if ­I did this or that or the other thing, too.  And so the next project launches straight into the deep water. 

Therefore, I’m always busy, always have more to do than I can reasonably get done, and always have a looong list of things I want to do next.  I want to grab people by the collar and give them a teeth-rattling shake when they whine, “I’m boooorrrred!”  Ugh.  How can anyone be like that???!  There are so many, many things to do!  I mean, if you run out of your own things to do, there’s always someone nearby who could use a helping hand, right??  (And sometimes, you could jolly well do that the other way around:  help the other guy first, do your own stuff second.)  There are always new things to learn... a new book to read... a picture to take...  Busy people are happier, that’s a fact.  Healthier, too.

I’ll try to remember that, the next time I feel all worn to a frizzle-frazzle. 

I did something nasty to my bum shoulder – get this – turning a calendar page.  That’s not very noble.  One should hurt one’s self, oh, say, saving a duckling from a storm drain or something, in order to acquire laud and honor.  But no.  I gravely wound myself turning a calendar page. 

I smeared on some Pain-A-Trate, mixed it well with Absorbine, Jr., and got back to the quilting.  I had nature videos from National Geographic going – they have enough dialogue that they’re quite interesting without having to stare at the computer screen (though now and then a tiny mewing of a baby lynx or babyish growling of a grizzly youngster had me pausing the HQ16 and turning around to admire the wee fluffy kitten or cub).

That afternoon, I emptied all the downstairs trash cans – and managed to stick my head into a spider web somewhere.  Aarrgghh, my cute little wig was all nicely coiffed for church that night!  I peered into the mirror, hoping the builder of the web hadn’t taken up residence in me lovely locks.

“You have a wig?” asked an online quilting friend in surprise when I told her this fascinating bit of news.  “I never would’ve guessed.”

Hee hee...  No, I don’t have a wig.  It’s my very own hair, more white than gray.  A couple of years ago, the boy at the Menards outdoor checkout stand also thought I meant it when I said it was so windy, I had to chase my wig halfway across the parking lot.  Are we the only ones who teasingly say ‘wig’ for ‘hairdo’?? 

One time when Hester was two, Joseph came out of the shower in his usual rushing disarray, hair standing straight up on end.  Hester stared silently at the back of his head for a few moments, then informed him, “Doshef!  You has a turkey on the back of your head!” 

She meant, ‘rooster tail’.

From then on, we generally told the kids, should their hair happen to be misbehaving, “You have a turkey on the back of your head!”

Well, when Lydia was five and went to kindergarten, she heard one little boy tell another, “You have a rooster tail.”

She came home laughing, telling us what a funny thing that little boy had said.  “Rooster tail!” she laughed. 

She had no idea under the sun that that was the proper terminology; she’d never heard it said before.

A friend and I were discussing where one might move to get away from dust and the aforementioned cobwebs.  I suggested that if one moved to Siberia or Northern Alaska, there would be a huge cut-down on dust.  And cobwebs, too.

But then she made matters more difficult by requesting ‘green and lush’.  Well, alrighty then, maybe the Amazon jungle would be just the thing.  There’s enough rain to keep the dust down pretty well.  “However,” I told her, “you’d want to put up signs outside your thatched shanty:  ‘No trespassing for anacondas, under threat of loud screaming.’  And you’ll want to stay in after dark, for fear a jaguar might get you.  Oh!  And so much for getting away from spider webs – now you have to worry about Brazilian Wandering Spiders!  Aiiiiiiiiyiiiieeee.”

We decided we’d just have to cope with what we’ve got.

Of course, I would love to live in the mountains.  Not up on top, but in a valley, beside a waterfall and stream, with tall pines all around.  I love the mountains.  But... my roots are here.  So I visit the mountains.  Not often enough. 

And... reading today’s news... I see that some people’s beautiful dream homes are under threat of terrible wildfires, even as I write.  In fact... oh, my.  Just listen to this:  22 large wildfires are burning nearly 850,000 acres in four western states and Alaska.  Additionally, four firefighters were injured Sunday and a fire engine was damaged in a wildfire threatening as many as 200 homes in the Sierra Nevada foothills northeast of Sacramento, with some structures already damaged or destroyed.

I believe I’ll do more than ‘cope’ with what I’ve got:  I’ll be downright thankful for it!

And now for a quote from one Raymond Chandler, who was born in 1888 and died in 1959, probably from getting conked over the head by a teapot in an embroidered cozy:

“Technique alone is never enough.  You have to have passion.  Technique alone is just an embroidered potholder.”

And just what’s wrong with an embroidered potholder?! she demanded in a testy tone.  What did he want, Lord Dulverton’s embroidered Allied Invasion of Normandy, from London’s Royal School of Needlework??

Well, Raymond Chandler didn’t have Pinterest, or he would’ve known that embroidered potholders, in all shapes, sizes, and colors, can be (and are) made with reams of passion and enthusiasm.  Furthermore, they fetch a pretty penny on Etsy.

Actually, I don’t really have an argument with poor ol’ Raymond.  I heartily agree with having enthusiasm and passion (and making something ‘more than’ a potholder, though I enjoy making potholders, too).  But it was funny that the quote should mention ‘embroidered potholders’, when I’d just encountered a number of cute (and enthusiastic) ones on Pinterest. 

Someone was asking me about some of the things I’ve sewn in years gone by.  You know, a whole lot of my surprising successes were actually nothing more than redrawn calamities.  Back when I was 15 or 16, I made a skirt – and a good dozen and a half people asked me where I got such a nifty skirt pattern.  It started out as a simple four-gore skirt.  I decided to make it in some technicolor, knock-’em-dead, blow-your-eyes-out stripes.  (It was the fashion.  Really!)  I angled the stripes, and took special care to match them in V’s at the front and back seam.  The sides matched in an upside-down widened V shape.

Before putting on the waistband, I tried it on.  It was a bit too big, so I took deeper seams... trimmed them ------------ and sliced right through the front left side of the skirt.  A long diagonal slice, running at approximately a 30° angle from the center seam.

I stood there and looked at it in dismayed amazement for a long moment, scratched my head once or twice, and then folded the skirt carefully along the front center seam so that the two fronts matched up.  Then I cut a matching slice through the right front side of the skirt, taking it right down to the hem.

I refolded at the side seams so that the front of the skirt was lying flat against the back, and cut matching slices in both back pieces.  Then I sewed all those slices back together again with a quarter-inch seam (practicing for quilting later on, maybe).  This offset the stripes just a wee bit and made an upside-down V-shape front and back, in opposition to the right-side-up V-shape already created by the original seams.  Fortunately, I hadn’t taken the seams in so much that the skirt was too tight; in fact, it fit perfectly after that.

Believe me, not another person ever had a skirt like that.  Or if they did, they didn’t use the same process to acquire it.  :-D

Thursday morning, I got a call from the Copyright Department at the Thomas Kinkade Foundation in Morgan Hill, California.  The lady was calling in answer to my email asking for permission to show the mosaic quilt I made using the cross-stitch pattern for the Light of Peace Lighthouse.  She told me it was perfectly fine for me to show the quilt, and to have pictures of it on my website, too, and I don’t need anything written or signed from them.  “We love the quilt,” she told me, “and hope it does well at the quilt show!”

As I mentioned a couple of weeks ago, a woman I talked to at the Thomas Kinkade Company said pretty much the same thing after asking her manager about it.  But this is the permission I really needed, from the Copyright Department.

I had pretty well known that what I was doing with my cross-stitch pattern would be fine and dandy, or I wouldn’t have gone to all that work.  But it’s always nice to have verification.  Now all that’s left to do is to post this note on the quilting forum where that woman made such a fuss about ‘never, ever using things that are copyrighted, tsk, tsk, tsk!!!’, and finish with my most snobbish “So there, you ol’ self-appointed, misinformed, rude quilt-policeperson, you!” 

Maybe she’s planning to enter something in the same quilt show I’m planning to enter, and didn’t want my quilt there, for fear it would unfairly compete with hers.  ha!

As with the Graceful Garden quilt, I have no delusional expectations for the Mosaic Lighthouse quilt.  I know there are flaws in it, and I’m sure the judges will find them.  But I still want to enter it.  J

I took Loren supper that night – salmon burgers, scalloped potatoes with cheese and bacon chips, cauliflower, broccoli, and carrots, and apple/pineapple salad with a dressing of cream cheese and powdered sugar mixed with a little pineapple juice.  He seemed lonely, wanting to visit... so I wound up staying there for almost an hour and a half.  I guess visiting with my brother is even more important than getting his quilt done on time, isn’t it?

Late Friday morning when I turned the water on outside, it was already 90°, with a heat index of 98°.  The poor menfolk working out in the heat!  I hoped they all had plenty of water, and were remembering to drink it. 

It just isn’t fair that Rapid City, South Dakota, no more than 440 miles to our northwest, should get snow in July.  I love snow.  I always thought it High Excitement to get stranded in it (so long as nobody’s life was at stake).  Ever notice how our idea of ‘a lot of snow’ has so much more to do with whatever part of the country we happen to be in than in actual snowfall amounts?  Cities not too far to our south routinely cancel every activity known to man except breathing, on account of 3 or 4 inches of snow. 

But I remember traveling to North Dakota at Christmas time when I was very young.  My grandparents lived out in the country, and we’d drive down gravel roads that had one narrow lane plowed – and the packed snowdrifts at the sides of the road were anywhere from 10-15 feet high.  I was delighted when the wind had blown the snow until it closed over the top of the plowed lanes, creating a tunnel we drove through.  We had a 1963 Studebaker.  Daddy had put chains on the tires, and that thing would go through a whole lot of snow before it got stuck.  When and if we got stuck, Daddy would climb out and shovel for a ways, until he could rock that vehicle back and forth enough to get a run at the drift impeding our way.  If we met anyone, one or the other of us had to back, back, back, until we could retreat into a farmer’s drive and let the other person past.

When we were teenagers, I watched Larry, his brother Kenny, and a friend pedal their bikes headlong down a snowy street, plow into a tall drift, and somersault right over the handlebars.  I was fifteen, just learning to drive, and my mother was in the passenger’s seat.  Every time they did that, she made a small gasp, thinking they would most certainly break their necks.  The friend wasn’t quite as skilled at this stunt as Larry and Kenny; he kept getting his legs tangled up in the handlebars.  I’ll betcha that wasn’t too pleasant.  :-O

In more recent years, if the electricity ever went out during a snowstorm, we’d light candles, build up the fire in the fireplace, and use our little kerosene stove to make chili or potato soup.  A friend gave us a long-handled popcorn pan for use in the fireplace.  Nothing like being in a snug house, illuminated by candlelight and firelight, chili bubbling in the pot – with the pungent aroma of burnt popcorn wafting around everyone’s heads. 

We used to bundle the kids into snowsuits, get in Larry’s big four-wheel-drive, and go exploring around town after (or during) a big blizzard, and the kiddos would keep their eyes peeled for stranded vehicles that we could pull out of the snow.  One night we were out on just such an excursion, and the whole town was dark, without electricity.  As we roamed about, suddenly all the streetlights and houselights came flooding back on.  From the back seat of the crewcab came a chorus of disappointed “Ohhhhhhhhhhhh”s. 

Snow and cold might not be so nice on arthritic bones these days, but I still love it.

I headed downstairs to my nice, cool quilting room to work on Loren’s quilt.  This complicated quilting is taking a long time!  Once I start a certain design at the top of the quilt, I’m committed to it – can’t quit in the middle, because it all has to match.  Why did I make it so complicated?  Answer:  Because it’s pretty, that’s why.

In the middle of the afternoon, I went out to change the water... spotted a couple of tall weeds and volunteer trees that needed to be lopped down... and then I had to take pictures of the big fat toad (I named him PT – ‘Porch Toad’) that lives on our front porch.  He was all sprawled out in the top of one of the flowerpots, looking pretty funny with his knees and/or elbows akimbo.  I had to leave my camera on the porch in the sun for about ten minutes while I changed water elsewhere to allow the fog on the lens to clear – you know how your glasses get fogged up if you go from cool air into hot, humid air?  Same thing happens with camera lenses.  By the time I picked up the camera again, the toad had gotten leery of me traipsing around, and sat up, so I didn’t actually get him in that funny sprawl.  But he was still in the flowerpot. 

Remember the swordtail Victoria brought home last week?  Well, it had a spot of fungus on its back, the spot grew, and the fish soon succumbed to the infection.  But not before sharing it.  And guess which fish caught it?  Victoria’s prized royal blue-violet betta, that’s who.  The betta lived a few more days, and then, like the swordtail before it, went belly up despite the various treatments Victoria added to the water.

She was sad.  But before the tears had dried on her cheeks, she brought home a fancy goldfish, orange with black tips to all his fancy fins.  And she exchanged the large black-and-white tiger barb for a small black-and-white tiger barb.  And she got a wee little iridescent green tiger barb (to replace the green one that died last Saturday).  And a small cherry barb in a rich red with a couple of thin black stripes, which run horizontal instead of vertical.  And a teensy weensy albino Plecostomus.  And three tiny neon tetras.  Evidently she doesn’t realize that tiny little cutesy fishies grow.  I told you, she’s trying to see how many fish can fit in that tank, and actually have room for their gills to move in and out! 

She put them all into her little tank, bid them a happy adieu, and went to play softball with some friends.

A couple of hours later, I sent her a note:  “I think your goldfish is stressed.” 

He was hovering low at the bottom, wiggling strangely.

She asked me to squirt some Stress Coat in.  I did, and it seemed to help, quite quickly.  I watched him for a while – and sent Victoria another note:  “He keeps trying to swallow the tetras whole!”

She replied, “He got a whole one in his mouth and spit it back out.  lol” to which I responded, “You think cannibalism is funny?!”

By 11:30 p.m., I was getting close to the halfway mark in the Cross-Stitched-Block quilt.  But it was time to quit.  My feet/ankles/ knees/hips/back said so.  They were making quite a chorus, they were.  I turned up the youtube Travelogue I was listening to (it was probably beautiful, but I can’t quilt and watch at the same time; so I just listen) ... but my feet and their accompaniment drowned out the namby-pamby guideperson.  So I quit, headed for the recliner, and uploaded a few pictures to my blog.  You can see them here:  Porch Pet

Meanwhile, Victoria came home – and found the three neons reduced to two, and we know where the other one went, too, since Victoria had earlier witnessed the goldfish suck one right into its mouth, the whole, entire thing, and then blow it back out again.  It must’ve forgotten to pattoo, the next time it tried that stunt.  Maybe that was why it was wallowing about on the bottom, clutching its stomach and moaning, ‘Oooooooo, I can’t believe I ate the whole thing.’ ?

I quilted all day Saturday, and finally reached the halfway point.  Well, sort of.  Halfway, until I remembered that when I remove it from the frame, I must turn it and quilt the large half-squares along both outer edges.  All ten of them.  It is exactly two weeks until Loren’s birthday.  If I can’t go faster than I have for the last two weeks, this quilt is going to be late!

At 4:30, I scurried upstairs and made some supper for us and for Loren:  ancient-grain-encrusted cod (the seed used to grow the grain is ancient, not the cod), mixed vegetables, apples and concord grapes, and a rice blend of Knorr’s Creamy Chipotle and Rice Pilaf.  I needed to use both packages so there’d be enough to go around; but how does one know if a couple of never-before-tasted mixtures will go together?  I read the ingredients – and dumped the whole works into the skillet. 

Yep, they went together.  Mmmmm, mmm, they certainly did.

Loren had gotten some watermelon, and had some for us.  He gave us a carton of sweet dark cherries, too.  Our local grocery stores often purchase watermelon from one of the fruit-and-vegetable trucks that come to town every day during the summer.  Their watermelon is always picked ripe...  crisp and sweet.  Watermelon that is shipped in from some distant locale is often more on the order of drippy, grainy, Styrofoam.

I should be a food critic, I’m so good at describing it. 

The day before, Loren had traded his pickup for a new diesel High Country Chevy crewcab pickup.  He took me out to his garage to see it, and I duly admired it.  Quite a truck, it is!

I quilted until nearly midnight, and didn’t get very far past the middle.  If the quilt is late, it’s late.  I have a couple of SwissView videos in high definition, beautiful scenery from Switzerland taken from a helicopter, that I’d planned to give Loren for Christmas.  If I can’t get the quilt done within a day or two of his birthday, I’ll give the DVDs to him and tell them they’re his consolation prize, and he’ll get the ‘real’ gift shortly. 

Why in the world did I think I needed to do all this itty-bitty micro-quilting, anyway, I’d like to know???! 

Our peach tree produced like gangbusters the last three or four years – but this year there aren’t very many peaches on it at all, and many are way up high beyond my reach.  One of the main branches died because Larry used a heavy-duty strap to hold it up last year, fearing the branch would break – but the strap rubbed through the bark, and caused a wound from which the branch couldn’t recover.

But I think the main reason it isn’t producing well is because we had a hard freeze when the tree was covered with blossoms.

The apples, as usual, look nasty and woim-et (horticultural term meaning ‘done et by woims’).  A friend assured me that I could safely cut the worm holes out and have plenty with which to make applesauce and apple butter.  Poor dear; she must never have heard of Musselman’s. 

Once upon a time when I was a fresh-hatched newlywed, I decided to make applesauce.  I worked long and hard over what seemed like bushels upon bushels of apples (I never was known for moderation).  I didn’t have an apple peeler, either. 

Finally, the job was nearing completion.  But... I couldn’t understand why the sauce was such an odd texture, all grainy and odd.  The flavor was excellent... but... it just wasn’t quite right.  I put a pint into the blender and ran it on high for a bit, to see if that would help.  It helped, but it still wasn’t right.  My one and only cookbook – Betty Crocker – had no recipe for applesauce.  Why would I need a recipe, anyway??  Making applesauce should be pretty straightforward, shouldn’t it?

I called my mother.  “This applesauce isn’t right!”  I described it.  “The texture is like I made it in a sand pail without rinsing out the sand first!”

“How long did you cook it?” asked Mama.

Uh, cook it?

“Cook it?” I squeaked, doubtless sounding like a clueless, fresh-hatched, 18-year-old newlywed.

And then my sweet mother, who never, ever laughed at her children, ...... laughed.  And she couldn’t quit laughing.

“It’s not that funny!” I remarked just as she was collecting herself, which set her off all over again.

She told me what to do.  So I put my many giant bowls (how did my friends know they should give me half a dozen giant bowls for my wedding, anyway?) of grainy, uncooked applesauce into a couple of humongous pots (and how did they know they should give me a couple of humongous pots?), and cooked and simmered the applesauce until it was exactly right.  Mmmmm, mmmm, was that ever scrumptious stuff.  Larry had homemade applesauce (and homemade bread, which was one of my favorite things to make) for his lunch for quite a long while thereafter.  I shared several quarts of it, too – that’s what’s fun about cooking/baking/canning/freezing:  the sharing.  (Oh, and yesirree, I gave some to my mother and father, I did.  ;-)  )

Just think... if we didn’t have all these ‘calamities’, we wouldn’t have anything to talk about and laugh over these many years later!

When Larry and I got married, I was good at making yeast bread, pudding... and ranger cookies.  That’s it; those are the things I had learned to cook in Jr. High home ec.  But someone had given me a big Betty Crocker Gourmet Cookbook for a wedding gift, and I knew how to read.  For a while we had gourmet peas, gourmet mashed potatoes, gourmet hamburgers, gourmet scrambled eggs, gourmet water... 

Then I discovered that you didn’t have to add and do all that fancy stuff; you could just cook it!  Common sense to the rescue.

Larry, on the other hand, had been cooking for years – sometimes making flapjacks, bacon, and eggs on a campfire with his brother and cousins way up in the mountains near their home.  He was only 9 or 10 when he got the job of chuckwagon master on those expeditions – mainly because none of the other boys were any good at it.  So he showed me how to make all sorts of scrumptious things.  He still likes to cook, and most often makes our lunches on Sunday afternoons.

My sister gave me a big book on jellies and pies and tarts shortly after the applesauce fiasco – probably because Mama told her about it.  Everything looked so good, I just worked my way through the entire book, one recipe after another.  I had a few catastrophes... and lots of good pies, tarts, and jellies.  A couple of times, I gathered three or four friends, and we took my bright red Renault Le Car (I loved that thing!) driving alongside the Loup Canal, where we picked wild plums, apricots, mulberries, and crabapples.  Sometimes we kept the various fruits separate and made several different kinds of jellies and pies; other times we combined them.  I learned to use lemon juice to give it flavor and retain the bright colors, pear juice to sweeten it...  and add plenty of sugar to the crabapples.

Note:  I like quilting better than cooking.  People don’t eat your masterpiece, the very minute it’s done.

Note, version 2:  I suspect Larry likes my cooking better than he does my quilting.  But he’s polite enough not to say, and I’m smart enough not to ask.

When I was a little girl, we’d go visiting my Grandma Swiney in Shelbyville, Illinois.  I thought Grandma lived in a great big house with a great big back yard full of tall trees and flowers and bushes with stepping-stone pathways curving through it.

I was really surprised, upon going back to it after Larry and I were married and had several children, to discover that her house was rather skinny and tall (another lady rented the upstairs), and the backyard was quite small, really.  To a child, things seem bigger.

Anyway, Grandma would make applesauce, with just a little dab of cinnamon, not much.  She’d pull homemade bread out of the oven, get some homemade butter from the dry sink, cut a fat slice of steaming hot bread for me (I loved the heel), butter it generously, put some warm applesauce in a heavy stoneware bowl, and I’d take it and go outside.

My favorite place was an old wrought iron bench under the flowering wisteria vines.  There were tall, tall pine trees all around, lilac bushes here and there, and the ground was covered with flowering plants of all sorts.  The trees were full of birds, and if I sat very still, they might hop right down to the other end of the bench.

So there I’d sit, dipping my warm buttered bread into the warm, cinnamon-flecked applesauce, everything in the world exactly perfect.  Good memories.

Shortly after we got home from church last night, my brother called:  he’d tried putting his car into the garage, but the cable on the electric garage door had broken, and the door wouldn’t lift.  So Larry went to help him. 

The fix took half an hour.  The ensuing visit took three times that long.

Meanwhile, Victoria was visiting at her friend Robin’s house.  I decided to get a jump on today’s laundry and start a load of Larry’s workclothes.  Before long, the washing machine was in the process of escaping out the back patio door onto the deck.  At least, that’s what it sounded like.

Wouldn’t you know, as soon as there was a load of clothes hanging outside and another in the washing machine, Victoria got home, all in a froth because she’d forgotten to wash her clothes, and needed her work shirt and skirt for work today.  What this meant is that there wouldn’t be enough room on the line for all these wet clothes – and they certainly wouldn’t dry overnight.  There’s always too much dew – and last night the humidity was 84%.  It was hot and muggy.  And the dryer still doesn’t work.

This morning, Victoria got her partially-dry clothes off the line – the ones she needed for work – and let them dry in front of the fan in her room.  She headed out at twenty ’til noon – and forgot her lunch in the refrigerator and on the counter.

At least Earl May is right across the street from Dollar General.  So she won’t starve.  She’s working until 7 tonight.

This is a Band-winged Meadowhawk (Sympetrum semicinctum).

And now... the quilt is calling me!

,,,>^..^<,,,     Sarah Lynn     ,,,>^..^<,,,