Sarah Lynn's Nature's Splendor: Journal: Birds & Flowers ...... & Camper Placemats

Male English sparrow

Last Monday, Hester sent a picture of Keira sitting on a blanket in their yard, holding a dandelion. “She loves going outside!” said Hester. “It always makes her so happy. She says hi to people out walking, and to their dogs. 😄”

“You were like that, too,” I told her, “friendly with people. But when Lydia got to about age 1 ½, if we were going for a walk and you greeted someone, she’d look horrified, eyes huge, and say under her breath, ‘Hestuh!’ and when you looked at her, she’d shake her head, ‘no!’ Somebody might talk to her! 😲”

And now Lydia is raising a little girl – Malinda – who’s very much like that.

Male house finch

I spent Tuesday morning working in the yard. By noon, I was all squeaky clean again, curling my hair, sipping coffee, and watching the birds at the newly-filled feeders.

The temperature had made it up to 59°, and it was all bright and sunny.

I ate a belated breakfast, and then I headed upstairs to work on the beaded piping for the New York Beauty quilt.

For supper, I broiled chicken breast fillets with lots of spices, and cooked a white and dark rice combination, with plenty of butter. When the chicken was done, I cut it up and added it to the rice. I baked some cornbread, popped some broccoli into the microwave – and, wonder of wonders, it all got done at almost exactly the same time. We had peaches for dessert. Mmmm, that was a yummy supper.

That night, I finished preparing the beaded piping for the New York Beauty quilt.

Tulip

Wednesday morning, I worked in the flower gardens. I cut down volunteer trees... pulled out enough crabgrass to fill two wheelbarrows... and separated and divided peonies. There will be peonies in the front yard!

A little after noon, I sat down at the table to eat something, and a house wren in the lilac bush right outside the kitchen window burst into song, and sang his heart out. Funny how one of the littlest birds has one of the loudest (and prettiest) songs. 😊 It was 75° and sunny, and that little wren sounded positively delighted about it.

Male American goldfinch

I headed upstairs to load the New York Beauty quilt and pillow shams on the quilting frame (not at the same time, heh) and give my new glide foot a try, quilting on the Venice lace. Larry had put the conversion kit and new glide foot on my Avanté Monday night.

The pillow shams were my ‘practice pieces’ – and the glide foot worked perfectly, traveling smoothly over that lace without displacing it or rumpling it in the slightest. The shams were soon done, so I loaded the quilt, and got four of six rows done before time for our midweek church service.

Afterwards, we chatted with Lydia and Jeremy for a while, then went to Wal-Mart for some groceries and a gift for Aaron, our oldest grandchild. He’s 18 now! We got him a set of cleaning agents for his Ford Escape SUV.

Thursday, I finished the last two rows of quilting on the Venice lace. It’s hard to see the stitching on the lace, but you can see it on the back. (It’s that curved area of loops and waves; I followed the design in the lace.) Once done, I removed the quilt from my frame, picked up the beading piping and reached for the folding table that I set up beside my cutting table on which my sewing machine sits. The folding table, sitting at my left, supports the quilt as I sew on piping or binding or suchlike.

Teensy spots a bird

And then a pop-up box made its appearance on my laptop, playing its little jingle: my brother and mother-in-law’s first anniversary was Saturday! (For those of you who don’t know, my brother is 22 years older than me... as is my mother-in-law. They married last year, after losing both their mates to cancer some years before. You can see their wedding album here: http://sarahlynnspoetry.blogspot.com/ )

Forget about that beaded piping! I needed to make an anniversary gift! And I knew exactly what I wanted to do.

Female house finch having a bad hair day

First, I created a design in EQ8 for a couple of placemats. After printing the appliqué pieces on newsprint paper, I set up my lightbox, traced the pieces onto freezer paper, and cut them out. I pulled fabric... cut the background and ironed freezer paper to fabric... trimmed...

And that was enough for that day; it was bedtime.

Friday morning, I debated working in the yard versus sewing placemats. Both needed to be done. I therefore decided... I shall do both. An hour in the yard won’t hinder me much.

American robin

So I worked away on the flowerbed in the front yard, unearthing all the bricks with which I lined the garden a couple of years ago, transplanting a few wayward lilies, and removing a pile of volunteer grape vines that have threatened the life of the clematis.

I walked into the house – and was astonished to see that I’d been out there for 2 ½ hours.

Time flies, when you’re having fun! 😉

Look what was keeping me company, whilst I was havin’ all that fun: ß

No, it’s not a rattler, or a python, or a cobra. It’s only a scared baby garter snake.

I told him to hold still while I dashed in the house for the camera, and he obligingly did so. Once I had the camera aimed at him, he put on quite a show, curling and striking, even though I was several feet away, much too far for him to reach. He was certainly fast, though! In half of my photos, his head, with mouth agape, was all blurry.

I put all the gardening tools and the wheelbarrow away, and scurried inside to scrub, shine, polish, curl, and eat before trotting upstairs to starch and iron the edges of those appliqués under.

By bedtime, all the appliqué pieces were stitched down. I use a narrow blanket stitch, and put them on by machine.

The wind was howling around the eaves that night. It sounded like the house was coming apart at the hinges. 😲

There would be no working in the flower gardens Saturday morning; it was cold and rainy and windy.

I worked on the placemats all day Saturday, and finished them by 9:00 p.m.

And... here they are! Yep, vintage campers and pickups. The two inner ‘borders’ is actually a double flange.

Tom Montgomery, a missionary from Mexico City, was at our church Sunday, preaching both morning and evening services.

We gave the placemats to Loren and Norma after church that morning. They were quite pleased. It always makes it worth the effort, when people love what you make for them. 😊

It was in the low 40s here this morning, with a windchill in the 30s. It finally made it up to 48° by 10:30 a.m., but the wind was gusting at 35 mph. Too, too cold to work outside. Besides, I needed to go to town to pick up Teensy’s thyroid medication. I didn’t realize until the veterinary office was closed Saturday that there weren’t enough pills to make it through Sunday; so Teensy didn’t have his dose last night. Didn’t want that to happen!

Male American goldfinch

His medicine costs $31. There are 100 pills in the bottle, so that’ll last 50 days. The lady at the desk told me they have a new policy requiring people to call 24 hours ahead of time for prescriptions. Wonder why? It’s not like they have continuous long lineups of people waiting for their pet prescriptions. It takes the office workers about three minutes to put the info into their computer and slap a sticker on a bottle. Whataya bet they’ll have pet owners complaining loudly about that?

I couldn’t give Teensy his medicine when I got home, as he was outside somewhere, exploring. If he’s not too far away, he’ll come when I call him. If that doesn’t work, I can whistle. (“Not the song whistle,” as Dorcas once said.) Teensy almost always comes when I whistle, unless he’s really far away.

Male Northern cardinal

One morning when I was working out in the yard, there was a cardinal in a nearby maple tree, singing like everything. I whistled back at him, and he answered me. It keeps them going for a long time, answering my whistles. 🐦

And it brought Teensy on the run, to rub around my ankles and meow and purr. Silly cat. Maybe he had an identity crisis when he was young, and got himself mixed up with a dog?

Our niece Rachel, who makes beautiful cakes and pastries, is conducting a Mother's Day giveaway, and in order to enter, she’s asking for people to give stories of their mothers and/or grandmothers. So here’s my story:

When I was a little girl, we’d go visiting my Grandma Swiney in Shelbyville, Illinois. Sometimes we went on Mother’s Day, which meant I got to miss the next day from school, which was fine and dandy, even though I loved school. I thought Grandma lived in a great big house with a great big back yard full of trees and flowers and bushes with stepping-stone pathways curving through it.

Blue jay

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 lived upstairs), and the backyard was quite small, really. But 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 bread for me, 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.

Common grackle

So there I’d sit, dipping my warm buttered bread into the warm applesauce, nibbling bites of it, and thinking that everything in the world was exactly perfect.

Larry is working on his red pickup tonight, as he did Saturday evening, putting the repaired head back into it. For some reason, he can’t get it to fire up.

Loren and Norma came a little while ago, bearing still-warm-from-the-oven cinnamon rolls. Mmmm, yummy. I put the frozen Schwan’s cookies I’d just gotten out straight back into the freezer. Norma’s cinnamon rolls top Schwan’s cookies, always!