My old-fashioned roses are blooming
like gangbusters.
In the early 1960s, when I was very
young, my mother cut clippings from her mother’s rosebush on a farmstead near
Arthur, North Dakota, and brought them home. I remember that the stems were wrapped in
paper towels, and she made sure to keep them wet all the way back, some 455
miles. She planted them, and after a few
years we had three big rosebushes from those clippings, on the east, south, and
west sides of the house.
Years later, when my mother was in the
hospital for what we knew was the last time, her house – the house in which I
grew up – was moved. In the dirt near
the basement, I found a large root in one of the dormant flowerbeds. I wasn’t sure what it was, but I brought it
home, divided it, and put the pieces into the ground around my yard.
Come spring, I found tiny red leaves
poking up from each of those sites, and knew: It was my Grandma Winings’ rosebush! I have grown three or four bushes from that
one root.
Do I tell this story
every time I post pictures of these roses? 😏
I saw a yellow
swallowtail butterfly Tuesday for the first time this spring. (Photo from Southern Roots Nursery.)
Tuesday evening, I received the
following email from Allstate Protection Plans (where we have the warranty for
my Acer laptop):
“Hi LARRY (they use his name because
our account at Nebraska Furniture Mart, where we got the laptop, is in his
name) (should be in my name, since I’m the one who pays the bills, but some
faux blonde at customer service told us they couldn’t change the name on the
account without making an entire new account and losing all our history) (she
was uninformed in various other minutiae, too):
“Good news! Your item has been repaired and has shipped
back to the address below. The tracking
number is 000000000000.
“Note: An adult’s signature will be required on
delivery. (Reckon that would be a
problem? Just a couple of weeks ago, I
answered the phone and somebody asked, ‘May I speak to your mother, please?’) You can track the estimated delivery date and
time by clicking on the tracking number above.
“We do everything we can to make sure
your repaired item is working perfectly. If for any reason you have issues with your
repaired item, please call...” and blah blah blah, etc.
The delivery date was Friday. Friday! That’s when I would find out if my data was
still intact or not.
Larry announced that the laptop was now
his; the email proved it.
In other news, my Double Knockout Roses
have started blooming! I thought the
poor little stunted bush was dead, earlier this spring. This color of red is difficult to photograph. I have never gotten a picture of these roses
that shows them as richly, deeply red as they really are.
That day, I got the turquoise quilt all
together (there were two borders, not just one, to add to it, to make it
match the pink one). Next, I needed to
piece together a backing for it.
Consider this: I didn’t much care for the pink, black, and
white quilt.
Sooo…
I drew up an identical pattern in EQ8 and proceeded to make a turquoise,
black, and white quilt just like the pink one.
Quilters are an odd sort, sometimes,
ay?
Oh,
and the quilts are growing on me, by the way. 😉
I made chicken and rice
for supper, using up the last of the chicken.
Yummy, I love chicken and rice with lots of butter, some salt, pepper,
and a few herbal spices.
I
headed outside at about 9:00 a.m. Wednesday morning, planning to work in the
flower gardens, but it was already stiflingly hot. So I hung the bird feeders and came back
inside. I would spend the day quilting,
instead. The turquoise Split-Blade
Pinwheel quilt was ready to load on my frame, after all.
It wouldn’t
be quite as hot the next few days; I would try to get the gardens neatened then
– starting at 7:00 a.m. instead of 9:00 a.m. Theoretically. See, there are two major drawbacks to my
gardening: 1) I am a night owl, and getting up early
interferes with my nighttime accomplishments; and 2) I just
plain don’t like getting hot and dirty. So why, pray tell, did
I plant a dozen large flower gardens around this place, huh huh huh huh huh?!!!
That
afternoon, I found a couple of pictures of Loren on Prairie Meadows’ Facebook
page. The first one is when some of the
Prairie Meadows residents took a trip to Hollywood Candy and Variety Store
in Omaha’s Old Market area. The second
is in the Prairie Meadows courtyard where they had snacks and drinks outdoors
on Mother's Day.
I finished quilting the
turquoise, black, and white Split-Blade Pinwheel quilt right before church, and
was glad for the break – singing, listening to God’s Word, and even resting my
aching back. 😊
After a late supper, I
trotted back upstairs, trimmed the quilt and removed it from the frame, then cut
the binding and sewed it together. Some
of the blocks were done for the bag and the decorative pillow, too.
Thursday,
June 8th, was Hester’s 34th birthday. Hester asked Andrew to take a couple of days
off for her birthday, and they went out of town shopping, going to thrift stores and antique
stores. Hester is good at finding all
sorts of treasures. She bought a bag of
vintage costume jewelry – and found a narrow, hand-hammered, delicate Sterling
silver ring in her very size.
I spent the day putting
the binding on the turquoise, black, and white Split-Blade Pinwheel quilt, then
completed the lined bag for it. I had to make a bag for it, because the
matching pink, black, and white Split-Blade Pinwheel quilt has a bag, and these
quilts are for granddaughters Carolyn and Violet (sisters); so they have to
have the same accessories.
The
quilt measures 64” x 76”. There is 40-wt. light turquoise Omni thread on
top and 60-wt. white Bottom Line thread on the back. The batting is Soft
and Bright 100% cotton, all pieced together from leftovers. The
pantograph is called ‘A Little Bit This’ (yes, I know that doesn’t make sense,
and no, I didn’t name it). 😉
The
turquoise-and-white swirl fabric on the back and in some of the triangles on
the front was left over from dresses I made for daughter Victoria (Carolyn and
Violet’s mother) and her friend (now her sister-in-law) Robin for our 2015
Fourth-of-July picnic.
This
quilt came about because daughter-in-law Amy found the pink quilt top at a
secondhand store, with the matching bag (unlined; I took it apart that night in
order to line it) and a block that was evidently for a square pillow
sham. She gave them to me along with a piece of bright pink fabric for
backing. I wasn’t particularly fond of the fabrics, but quilting improved
it a lot. Since Victoria once made herself an apron with similar fabrics,
I figured she at least would like it, and so probably one of
her little girls would, too – and then I remembered all that swirly turquoise
stuff I’d wondered what to do with. It,
too, is a little more ‘modern’ than suits my taste.
The
solution: make a matching quilt for the other little
girl. I couldn’t find a pinwheel block with that split blade pattern, so
I drew it in EQ8.
Here’s a secret:
((shhh...)) ((whispering...)) I highly
suspect that that striped binding (and it’s also lining the bag) is part
polyester – and I think it also has a little spandex in it. ((shhh...))
Someday, years and years from now, someone will wonder
why the interior part of the quilt wore out, but the binding still looks like
new. 😂
That evening, I polished off my meal by downing a yummy smoothie,
made with Kemp’s Heavenly Vanilla ice cream and Schwan’s frozen berry mixture
(raspberries, blackberries, and blueberries).
Mmmm, that was good.
Friday
morning, I received notice that my laptop was
‘Out for Delivery’. Would the data be
intact, or would it won’t? (Caleb’s
lingo, when he was about 3 – “Will it will, or will it won’t, do you think?” he
once asked, regarding whether or not a toy car he had unearthed from a toybox
would still work.)
The ETA was from 11:40 a.m. to 3:40
a.m. I was ready and waiting by 10:30
a.m.
You of course know when the laptop
would eventually arrive, and it wasn’t at 11:40.
Now, had I been in the shower at 11:40
a.m., that’s precisely when it would’ve arrived – and then they would
have hauled it straight back to the FedEx Depot, leaving me a terse note saying
that if I wasn’t around the next time a delivery attempt was made (with
no suggested time allotment for this second attempt), they would proceed to
ship that box straight off to Jupiter on the next available rocket.
I waited and waited. Then I waited some more. I waited with all my might and main.
The FedEx truck finally came rumbling
down the lane shortly before 3:00 p.m.
The delivery man didn’t even ask me to sign for the box; he just gave me
a quick glance and inquired, “Larry?”
I decided without a moment’s thought
that I was in fact ‘Larry.’
“Yup,” said I. (‘When conversing with Marylanders, talk like
a Marylander,’ that’s my motto.)
After all, just look at all the
feminine names for which ‘Larry’ could be the diminutive: Laurentia, Laryn, Lauren, Laurena, Laurencia,
Laurinda, Lauryn, Lorena, Lorene, Lorin, Lorinda, Lorine, Lorrin, Lorenza,
Laurentina, Laurentin, Laurentine... (Yeah, I looked it up.)
The delivery man handed over the box,
saying, “Heavy,” and went clumping off again.
The box, as usual, looked like FedEx
had used it as a wheel chock. And I’d sent
it off in brand-spankin'-new condition!
Rats. I should’ve packed that
box into a bigger box. I’d
debated doing just that.
I opened the box... carefully removed
the laptop... and plugged it in. The
plug was good and tight. The little
‘charging’ light came on.
I pressed the button on the keyboard to
start the computer.
It instantly came to life. The lighted keyboard did its ‘wave’ of colors
– indigo blue, teal, fuchsia, purple – just as I had set it to do. That gave my heart a strong lurch of hope.
Annnnd... the picture I had set to
first come on, a fjord in Norway, flashed onto the screen.
An excellent sign that everything was
fine and dandy.
I typed my PIN in – and there was
the Desktop picture of Berggasthaus Äescher, the cliffside mountain guesthouse
near Schwende, Switzerland.
Things were looking good.
I opened my folders. AND – all the data was
intact! I hadn’t lost a thing.
Whew. I mean to say, “WHEWWWWW!!!!”
Mah woid (in a Shirley Temple
accent)... I then discovered that a good many (not all) of the latest pictures
I’d taken, which are on the slow little HP laptop, are all in the big
Acer laptop, without me even transferring them.
How did
auto-synchronizing happen, with that dumb little slowpoke of a laptop?!
I should apologize to it; it’s smarter than I thought. Poor little thing; it tried.
Have I mentioned that my Acer laptop
is fassssssssst?!!! I am so relieved to have it back again,
in good working order, data and programs intact.
Half the day had been wasted while I
waited for the FedEx man, for I couldn’t go upstairs and sew, because I often
don’t hear people knocking when I’m up there.
But before I could get back to sewing, I had to make sure all my latest data
was on the good laptop. That didn’t take
long. I then shut down the little HP and
carefully put it away. Who knows when I
might need to make do with that thing again!
At least now it has a new cord and a new battery.
I then hauled the Acer and my big external
hard drive upstairs, started a backup process with it and with my other two smaller
external hard drives — and then I got back to sewing.
Raccoons
around here are a bit woebegone, since I’ve been bringing in the bird feeders
each night. Just look at this face: “Hey! Where’d my dinner platter go?!”
Raccoons
look fluffy and fuzzy and cuddly.
Raccoons might be fluffy and fuzzy, but they are NOT cuddly. Even the cute little roly-poly babies can act
aggressive, if they feel cornered.
A
small one came in our pet door early one morning some years back, waking me up
with its frightened chirring. I
recognized that sound the moment I awoke.
When I
went around the corner to politely help him back out the door, he snarled and
pounced at me! He was so funny and cute,
but I didn’t push his boundaries.
Instead,
I went out the front door, ran around the house to the back door, and opened it
so he could find his way out, since he couldn’t figure out how to exit through
the pet door. He went out, posthaste –
and then rolled and tumbled head over heels all the way down the deck
stairs. He scampered off, seemingly none
the worse for wear. Good thing they’re well
cushioned!
As I sewed, I prayed a ‘thank-you’
that my computer was home again, and complete with its many files and folders
and programs. I realize that my little
technology troubles are small in the scheme of things, but pictures like this
one of Andrew and Oliver, among other things, and even the price of the
machine, are somewhat important in my little world, and I had in fact prayed
that all the data would be left unharmed, even while I felt apologetic over
bothering the Lord with something so relatively trivial. But... “He sees the little sparrow fall...”
and “even the very hairs of our heads are numbered...” and I know He cares for
me! (I would still know that, you
understand, even if my computer had come back to me as blank as a field of
new-fallen snow.)
I was
happy that I could again use my ergonomic keyboard and mouse. The mouse was not compatible with the older
laptop, and the keyboard was only just barely compatible, and kept
losing connection. In fact, it lost
connection so often, it did an internal ‘permanent’ disconnect, so that when I
inserted the receiver in the Acer laptop, the keyboard did not come to life
again.
Uh-oh, I thought, pressing buttons and getting no response. When this happens, I go on pressing buttons
with increasing panic and decreasing results, until eventually it occurs to me
to look it up online.
In 30
seconds flat, I’d learned which button to press and hold in order to, in
essence, ‘reboot’ the thing. And
immediately it was working again.
Later that afternoon, I noticed
that a key on the laptop keyboard that had been practically all worn off was no
longer worn off. They must’ve replaced
it! Then I took a closer look and
wondered, Did they replace the entire keyboard?? It certainly looks and feels brand-new.
By
nightfall, I had come to the conclusion that the techs simply took my hard
drive out of the ailing laptop and slid it right into a brand-new one. This casing has none of the marks on it that
my other one did – such as scratch marks next to the touchpad from my
VeryFitPro watch, or wear on the touchpad itself. Also, the keys with little bumps or
indentations so that one’s fingers have guide-marks are just a little bit
different. The lid is slightly tighter. And when I slid plugs into any USB ports, they
felt different, too – as if they’d never been used before. There was absolutely no dust whatsoever in any
of the orifices of the speaker or the fan vents, or between the keys. The cord is exactly like
the original one that comes with the machine. It is not the replacement cord I sent
them. And
perhaps most telling of all, the speakers are better.
At
10:30 p.m., the reminder for the Saturday Skim for my MeWe Quilt Talk group popped
up and played its song, which happens to be ♫ ♪ Goodnight, Irene ♪ ♫ . Two weeks earlier, I had totally forgotten to
post the Skim, on account of not getting that notification.
Here’s
an example of last week’s Saturday Skim:
Good morning! Welcome to our
virtual quilting bee.
It’s time for our weekly Saturday Skim,
wherein we imagine we are together at a quilting bee, sharing coffee or tea and
a tasty delicacy of some sort, while we look at quilt patterns, tutorials, and
inspirations.
Today we have
Hazelnut Crème coffee
or Chocolate Hazelnut tea, whichever you prefer.
In the middle shelf of the refrigerator,
there are Chocolate Hazelnut Pots de Crème.
The spoons are on the
sideboard.
Let’s sit around the big table in the dining
room and look for quilty things.
(Don’t forget to check margins and tabs of
the websites; there are often links to other projects of all sorts. Also,
check the bottom of the page to see if there are more pages for that subject.)
https://www.apqs.com/free-quilt-pattern-stardust-baby/
https://www.battingsupersale.com/coins-le-croix/
Block 9 of Virtuous Wife
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1E8iK4qcQ66KKjBo1frLz10Q_wFWmpI8Q/view
If you have missed any previous blocks:
https://www.elefantz.com/p/the-virtuous-wife-bom.html
https://opquilt.com/tutorials/
https://happyturtlequilts.blogspot.com/p/patterns-and-tutorials.html
http://flossieteacakes.blogspot.com/p/tutorials-patterns.html
https://flyingparrotquilts.com/tutorials/
You
can’t imagine how much quicker and easier it was to put together that little
Skim with the Acer laptop than it had been with the little HP. The
screen is 2 ½ inches bigger. Copy and
paste is instantaneous, rather than a one- or two-minute process for each and
every item. Aarrgghh, that made me want
to throw things. I have things to do! Places to go! People to see!
OH! There’s a beautiful Baltimore oriole right
outside my front window, warbling periodically as it hunts for bugs. (Photo from The Spruce.)
By
bedtime, the turquoise Split-Blade Pinwheel pillow was done, buttons and
all. I put buttons on the pink pillow, too. I had three turquoise
blocks and several HSTs left over. Hmmm... What should I do with them?
Saturday morning was misty and rainy.
I got ready to go visit Loren.
A friend posted a pretty picture of
sunflowers, reminding me of the time we were traveling through Kansas, ‘The
Sunflower State’, when Joseph, who was about 5, asked in a somewhat urgent
tone, “Can we turn on that road up there?!”
He pointed to a country road we were fast approaching.
“Why??” Larry asked, slowing.
We were driving the six-door pickup and
towing a 48-foot slant trailer with vehicles on it; we didn’t just turn down
any old country road, willy-nilly, without knowing where we were going to end
up.
“So we can see the sunflower faces!”
said Joseph.
And sure enough, the ‘faces’ were all
turned away from the road, ‘looking’ toward the sun, as sunflower faces are
wont to do.
I assured him that we would soon be
passing another field of sunflowers on the other side of the road, and
we would then be able to see all their bright faces. 🌻
At 2:30 p.m., I put my paraphernalia
into the Mercedes and headed off toward Omaha.
Two minutes later, I
pulled a U-turn and returned home. The
tire that had been low last week was three pounds lower this week, definitely going
flat. And Bill’s Tire is closed on Saturdays. So I would sew!
First, I
lined the quilt bag that the unknown person made for the pink Split-Blade
Pinwheel quilt, using the same fuchsia fabric I used for the quilt and pillow
backing. Next, I decided to use up the three extra turquoise Split-Blade
Pinwheel blocks and the black-on-white (with a bit of pink or turquoise) HSTs
in a quilt for Willie, 1½, Carolyn and Violet’s little brother. The quilt
measures 40” x 44”. With the last few pieces, I made a small pillow top,
measuring about 10” square. Now they’ll all have coordinating quilts and
decorative pillows.
Michael,
my late nephew David’s oldest son, is helping take care of many of the details
of the business while Charles and Susan are in Scottsdale, Arizona, where Susan
is getting treatment for cancer. She is
doing all right, and her numbers are encouraging, though the treatment’s side
effects are sometimes hard on lungs and heart.
These
are teeny, tiny wildflowers, aka ‘weeds’.
Each of those little blossoms are smaller than my smallest
fingernail. If the plant wasn’t so tall
and gangly, I’d let it grow. But... it’s
a weed. It looks like a
weed. So... I take close-ups of the
pretty little flowers – and then pull them up.
A friend’s computer
monitor bit the dust yesterday. “Did you
have anything to do with this?!” she demanded.
🤣
“What, you think I might’ve
stuck voodoo pins in that slowpoke computer of mine, and then thought long and hard
about one of my friends?!” I retorted. 😅
I remember playing with
window sizes on a monitor we had on a desktop computer, back when the kids were
still home. If I knew one of them was
going to be using the computer, I liked to skew the window so it looked like it
was being viewed through a motel-door peephole. Or maybe I’d flip the window upside down or
sideways. Or set up autocorrect in Word
so that anytime someone typed a simple word like “and”, it immediately changed
to “I’m a birdbrained bubblehead” or some such piece of intelligence. Fun times.
(Can’t imagine why Teddy
once went off with the seat-and-back part of my office chair, leaving only the
rollered pedestal. I eventually found
the seat, tucked waaay back under the grand piano. I found Teddy around the corner in the
kitchen, trying hard to muffle his hilarity.)
There’s a male English
sparrow with two fledglings out on the back deck. He’s working hard to keep them
satisfied. One, evidently not getting
fed fast enough to suit his tummy, pecked Papa Sparrow on the tail and got himself
soundly reprimanded for the misdeed.
Another young sparrow
came hopping along, wings aflutter, begging for food, and I thought it was a
third member of the family. But no, he’d
evidently gotten himself in the wrong crowd, for Papa Sparrow gave the youngster
a good peck, sending him careening off in the other direction. He was shortly seen begging from another male
English sparrow. Let’s hope he got the
right Daddy this time.
It’s a bird-peck-bird
world out there!
A lady posted this
picture on my MeWe Quilt Talk group, writing, “What a quilt this would make!”
I, admittedly skeptical
about most everything, asked, “Those must be terraced crops? What kinds of crops, and where is it, and is
it a real, honest-to-goodness picture?”
She answered, “Yes, it’s
real. It was taken somewhere in
Indonesia. I thought it was really cool.
Just goes to show quilt designs and
nature really are intertwined.”
I looked up agricultural
products in Indonesia, and was amazed at all the things they produce. Just look at this list (scroll down to
Production): Agriculture in
Indonesia
At present, Indonesia is
the world’s largest producer of palm oil, cloves, and cinnamon; the 2nd
largest producer of nutmeg, natural rubber, cassava, vanilla, and coconut oil; the
3rd largest producer of rice and cocoa; the 4th largest
producer of coffee; the 5th largest tobacco producer; and the 6th
largest producer of tea.
Look at the pictures from
ground level: Indonesian
Crops. Now I understand why the photo from the air
looks as it does.
Yes, I admit, I was the
child who, upon learning a few details about this and that at school, would
hurry home and persuade my mother to take me to the public library so I could
check out books on the subject and learn more, more, more about
that particular subject. And just think
how many more things there are to learn and know today than there were then,
back in the 60s and 70s!
Larry moved the game cam
to another spot on the deck last night.
It’s farther away from the feeders, but will have a wider view. He put it on high resolution and switched it
to 20-second videos, as opposed to still shots.
Soon I’ll go check the card and see what kind of entertainment we’ve
captured. Here’s a shot the camera got
of a Eurasian collared dove yesterday.
And with that, I will now
go learn whether or not the pizza is done baking.
,,,>^..^<,,, Sarah Lynn ,,,>^..^<,,,
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.