Blooms

I've been waiting patiently for my flowers to bloom this year and it finally happened!

My hydrangea took a while to get going, but it's growing big and strong now!

I LOVE my stargazer lilies and they're in bloom. They're so full and big this year even staking them wasn't enough to hold them up. 

Plus they're tall. The one still standing on it's own to the left is taller than me. Most of these stalks have an average of 15 flowers on each one. They smell so good this year. 

The lilies don't last very long each year so I have to share them while they're around. Did you have good luck with your blooms this year?

My lilies

So this year my lilies have been growing so much, so much that they're about as tall as me. I'm guessing I have two to three times the blooms this year vs last. 

They kinda started to fall over. I've staked them every year and they've never needed it, til this year that is...

They're soooo pretty and they smell wonderful!

I just love these, but then I have this bush/tree/thing that I don't know what it is:

It's blooming right now and I don't know what it is. Any ideas? The flowers look like this:

Any info would be helpful! Keep in mind I live up North and this thing gets exposure to the cold. Thanks!

Summer Rain Brings Pretty Flowers

It seems like every year I try to put in flowers we get the most horrible weather and they barely survive if at all. Well, last year I put in a small hydrangea bush and then it was 90+ degrees for what seemed like forever. Even with watering it everyday, it just wasn't enough and it didn't look like it made it through the winter.

 Well, I was wrong and it seems to be thriving in this mild heat with plenty of rain and humidity!

 The color seems to change every week or so, right now it's a bit more magenta than lilac.

 Plus it seems to have doubled in size over the last week or so. This is an ever after hydrangea so it's supposed to bloom over and over again all year long (til winter hits atleast!)

Plus I love this time of year because my stargazer lilies are starting to bloom! I swear I have close to 100 blooms this year and I'm afraid I'll miss the peak of them while I'm in Holmes County the next few days for the MAAFRA Fabric Show, but I'll snap some pictures and share those too!

Bing Bing Bing Bing Bing

That's how I feel my days have been lately. I've been super bust prepping new patterns and quilting and getting ready for upcoming shows and Spring Market and and and...

There's been lots of late nights and spring allergies along with that which has been depleting my energy levels just a smidge so unfortunately I don't have anything to share with you today.

It's weird here in Ohio, we had one warm weekend followed by a couple cold ones with snow followed by another warm one. It's nice to have those warm days and the sun that comes along with it, but that also means allergies run rampant and there's lots of sick people around. I'm going to do my best to hibernate and work into the wee hours of the morning so I have things to share. But until then, here's what I'm hoping to see in the coming weeks:

Is anything blooming yet in your neck of the woods? These tulips (yes, they're tulips) are slowly making their appearance, but have a while before they look like this.

My Beauties!

These flowers have since bloomed and now look a bit worse for wear, but I wish they were still around.

They're a type of tulip that looks more like peonies... I fell in love with them and planted the bulbs last fall.

I was a bit worried the weird weather we had was going to harm them, but all it did was confuse them a bit. There's two different colors, one was supposed to bloom early spring and the other late spring... They both bloomed at the same time because we were going through periods of 80* weather here one day and freezing temperatures a day or two later.

They're in the same flower bed as my stargazer lilies and I just checked on those, I think they're going to be great this year, and maybe even a bit early... Some of them are already over two feet tall! Crazy!

I'm hoping to get the vegetable gardens in this weekend, that is if I can tame the parsley that took over the one garden it seems! Wish me luck!

Lackluster

So I'm not going to give you excuses on why I haven't posted lately, just the truth. Honestly we've had the craziest weather I ever remember for this time of year. So weird that in the last week it's been over 80 degrees, we've had thunderstorms... and tonight the low is 20+ degrees.

Seriously last week I had the best of intentions of everything, but with the weird weather or something we had crazy power outages in our area. I wanted to use the long arm one day - power was out. Then I was at work - power went out so I had to stay late to catch up on all the stuff I couldn't do which = no quilting.

Then Ben and I took my parents out to dinner, went to stop by a store to get a rake for Spring cleanup (Ben broke our rake last year) and half of the store was out of power... Not this half was out and that half wasn't. Half of this section was out, some place over there had power, the gas station in the parking lot was fine, but the adjoining strip mall was even worse. Some stores only had power to the big signs out front. Some stores only had power inside. Only one store had total power. It was weird, but owell. We're driving home and all is well until we pull on our street and try to use the garage door opener about 15 times before we realize WE are out of power... Our neighbors had power, their neighbors had power. For about 4 or so streets that we could see the first 2 or 3 houses didn't have power, but the next 3 or 4 houses did, and after that everyone else towards the lake was out.

Needless to say I'm still playing catch up. Honestly I wanted to chat, but I couldn't. Now that I think the power issues are worked out, we have a bigger issue - my bulbs I planted are blooming or coming up and as I mentioned before the low tonight is 20+ and I'm afraid they might suffer, so I hurried up and took pictures while they're still pretty:

 My first Paper White bulbs... I love them and to think, tomorrow they may be gone :(

 I planted 2 different kinds of tulips that look more like peonies and they're both starting to grow, but I'm hoping they'll be okay. The front row is white...

 The second row is a dark pink... The only bulb not blooming at the moment are my Stargazer Lilies... maybe they'll be soon!

 My Japanese Maple is budding nicely, I haven't checked to see if it's grown, but I'm sure it has!

 And we have a new critter in the back yard. This small woodpecker has been raiding the squirrel nest when they're out feeding and stealing some of their nest materials. He's so little! And fast!

Just as I took the bird's picture the squirrel happened to come across this apple... (I'm guessing) and sat in a tree for about an hour and just ate and ate... They eat so much!

So, unfortunately I don't have many updates for you at the moment. hopefully later this week I will finally catch up and show you some new things. Have a great week!

I lied...

In my defense at the time I didn't know I was lying...

So, sorry I've been a little MIA, but you know how in my last post I mentioned my little issue with poison ivy but it should be all good because I'm not allergic - WRONG!!!

For the last week I have been fighting the nasty-ness that evil weed causes and it's not been fun. I have it all over my forearms and so that's made all sorts of things interesting... so I've been wearing long sleeves to avoid touching just about everything, but we like many people are going through a bit of a hot spell right now and that's not making it any better.

But the good news is I found a medicated scrub that's working wonderfully and it's clearing up...

Also, today is one of my favorite days of the year - my Stargazer Lilies are blooming!!! So, nothing quilty today, but once this poison ivy goes away I'll get something on here to show you...

Take care and I will chat with you soon!!!

How Does Your Garden Grow???

Before I get to the garden, I forgot to show you all this bag I made out of Bliss. Yeppers, it's another Charmed Living Tote (small version). This one is uber girly and I just love it! I made it a few weeks ago and promptly took it to the quilt shop to show it off and forgot to take a picture first!

 And can I say, I am so proud of my garden - it's been so nice to have! And some of those plants are just growing so big! The tomatoes, cilantro, dill, and corn are all waist high on me...

 The herbs have really taken off and it's been wonderful to just run to the garden and grab some fresh whatever for dinner that night. So far the purple basil and cilantro probably have been used the most.

 And the tomatoes!!! They're HUGE!!! Can you see all the green ones in there?

 But the coolest thing of all about this garden are the tomatillos. These are just big puffs right now, but eventually we are going to have Mexican night quite often around here to use up some of these. And I might try and make my own Salsa Verde - any suggestions on a good recipe???

 Look at the corn. It was knee high last week, this week it's waist high. At this rate by next week it'll be taller than me!!! And I thought it wasn't going to grow...

To go along with Mexican night will be our first crop of Cubanelle Peppers!!! I foresee plenty of tacos, burritos, nachos, and whatever else we can think of very soon - which is fine with me!!!

And this all started here on Memorial Day... big difference a little over a month can make!!!

Are you gardening? How is it going over at your place? Also, if anyone has a suggestion for a good focal bush or plant for the shaded area of my yard, ideas would be appreciated. I'm having a hard time finding something "pretty" with substantial size to fill this shaded void of my yard. And unfortunately it's the first spot your eye goes to in the yard and right now it's a pile of dirt...

Oh, and FYI - poison ivy has berries on it for those of who who might not have known that little tidbit like myself. Luckily I'm not allergic, but we have a corner (well, you could see it at the top left of the last photo) that was getting overgrown with this stuff - we had no clue what it was but it looked like poison ivy...

Meanwhile some little berries started to grow, we live in a wine-ish country and we have wild grapes in other areas of the yard, so naturally we thought it might be grapes. To shorten the story, killed the plants anyway, then decided to double check today... It's poison Ivy alright. And the worst part is all 3 of our neighbors at that corner have it in spots that they don't take care of so it grows over, under and through my fence into my yard and I can't get rid of it!!! I'm running out of options...

Do I just let it grow and avoid it at all costs while having this horrid corner to an otherwise well kept yard, or try to kill it and kill it and kill it every time it creeps over from one of the neighbors...I'm feeling stuck between a rock and a hard place on this one...Any ideas on this subject would help too!

Thanks for chatting and please let me know if you have remedies for any of the "stuff" I mentioned above. I thank you in advance for any suggestions you could throw my way.

Gotta go sew for a bit and work on some other projects before heading back to work tomorrow. I'll talk with you later!

The Latest On This End...

So, the two newest patterns will be ready to ship this week! Here's pictures as promised of the larger version of the Charmed Living Tote:

So the one on the left is the larger version compared to the smaller version on the right. They're both quite large, but the larger version is HUGE!!! It would be the perfect bag for a day at the beach or to haul a quilt around or something...

Or I was also thinking this could be a wonderful reversible bag if you made the lining out of lined fabrics that are more and more available these days to coordinate with the outer fabrics. you could have the lining out while at the beach and then flip it with the lining in to put all the soggy clothes in for the drive home. Just thinking...

And I'm planning to start a new project sometime soon (if the garden and weeds let me!) I wondered what you think of the fabrics and colors?

I love the paisley print in the stack above, but I'm a sucker for paisleys...

I'm not quite sure of the goldish one in the center there, but if I blend in a couple other prints it might not seem so bold. It's actually pretty neat and I didn't notice it til I got the fabric home - that piece fades from milk chocolate brown to gold.

It was all inspired by this piece here. I was looking for the newest and greatest three color quilt combination. I was so afraid of something too traditional or primitive, and I didn't want to do the same thing that's been done a hundred times over. Any guesses on what this might turn into?

Speaking of that, I need to go sew a bit before I have to cook dinner. I'm going down to the NQA Show in Columbus on Thursday, I've never been to it before and I'm so excited to go! I'll take tons of pictures and show them later this week.

Also, I'm going to be at Shipshewana in a couple weeks for a day with the Moda Bake Shop at the Farmstead Inn. If you're planning on attending, let me know and I'd love for you to come up and say Hi! I'll have all sorts of goodies there and it should be a fun time.

So, tonight's the first dinner with herbs straight from the garden - Fish Tacos with fresh salsa using some of the Cilantro from the herb garden. It smelled so good when I picked it! I can't wait to try it! I'll let you know how it went! Talk to you all soon!

They're Growing!!!

I feel like one of the biggest dorks on the planet. I know it's only been a little over a week, but I have baby produce!!! Just look how much my garden has grown in a week:

 I have baby yellow beans...

 and green beans. I planted these just last week and look at them already!

 Corn that was planted just last week too

 Baby tomatillos... these are gonna be perfect for Mexican Nights...

 And I was all excited, then I woke up yesterday to really dark clouds. And then the wind came, the horrible rain and the hail - Oh, the hail. And when it finally started to let up about an hour and a half later - this is what my back yard looked like. Sorry it's blurry but it was still raining cats and dogs.

 And do you see my drowning garden. Yes that is a raised garden in that mess - not so raised if you ask me. Luckily it came quickly and went away. The garden is drying out nice and only 1 yellow bean plant was harmed in the storm. We got over 2 inches of rain in about an hour. That water there is about 6 inches deep or more...

 But today it's over 90 degrees and it's all drying up. Then I looked in my window box to see my finger carrots growing. Only another week or so and they'll be ready!

And last but not least, some baby strawberries. I love my garden and I hope to make it wonderful and big to fill my pantry for the winter. And some snacks for now...

I live being outside but for the first time ever I had a really bad allergy attack - sorta. Over the weekend I was doing the normal runny nose, goopy eye thing. Then I woke up Sunday and had pink eye! I had allergies so bad my one eye was all bloodshot so off to the doctor I went and I've had to put drops in my eyes and wear my glasses (BOO!) instead of my contacts for the last few days. I'm thinking tomorrow might be the first day back to contacts (I despise my glasses). Thank goodness for 24 hour non-drowsy allergy meds!

I'll keep you updated and try to get some good pictures of the larger Charmed Living Tote tomorrow. They're calling for more storms, so wish me luck! Talk to you again soon!