Garden, early spring

This past week the weather was nice enough to get some garden work done. I replanted some deck planters, refreshed the soil in a pots of existing planters.

But some work I didn't need to do, all I needed was to take my pruning shears and snip a few blossoms.

The big purple bloom in the above close up is from my tree peony. It took 3 years for it to really start blooming, and now it blooms like crazy.

In the picture below is the same blossom, in the vase with some white lilacs. When we bought out house, 12 years ago, I bought several lilac bushes on clearance. I thought I got several different color lilacs, and planted them in several spots in the yard. Unfortunately they were mismarked, so most of them turned out to be the usual light lavender color. One was white. 2 years later I added another white lilac. Last year we found a dark purple lilac and my daughter planted that.

I love flowers, and I love flowers with a soft perfume to them. But my rose garden is in rough shape and needs a major overhaul. But for now I have lilacs & hyacinths.

My oldest daughters, 5 of 6 and 4 of 6, started several different veggies inside and transplanted them in late April. Unfortunately the slugs, squirrels and deer enjoyed most of them. Except for the pea plants, so we will have peas in abundance. A trip to the farmer's market, in the next few weeks, will be needed to get bigger vegetable starts. Andwe'll need to do some beer traps. Any other ideas to keep the slugs out?

Frustrated perfectionist

I haven't quilted in almost 5 years. That's when I got pregnant with 6 of 6. I can't machine sew when I'm pregnant, the needle going up and down gives me motion sickness. I spend a lot of time throwing up when I am pregnant. No need to add to it.



And I haven't had the space to set up the machine and a project where little hands couldn't get into things. I'm hoping maybe, just maybe, there will be space in a few months. I have 3 projects in mind, fabric already bought (oh yeah, pack ratitis, 1 project has been sitting in a bag for 5 years) and would really like to play.

I like quilting. Fabric is a good medium for me, it stretches a bit, so you can improvise the details a bit. I have lots of practice with that. I am somewhat of a perfectionist. Unfortunately I lack the talent to make my hands do what my brain sees. And then I become a frustrated perfectionist. So I stop doing ____ (fill in the blank). Fabric & gardening are forgiving of my imperfections.

It's too cold, windy & rainy to garden right now. And I don't have a space to sew. Maybe I'll just get another hanging basket of flowers to tide me over. And post 2 pictures of completed mini projects I have done, to remind me that sometimes it does all come together.

Lilac Time

It's been really cold & windy here for the first few days of May, but the lilacs are still blooming.

I finally found that banging the bottom of the stems with a hammer to crush them was the trick to getting the flowers to last more than a day.

These are the pale lilacs, the white and darker purple weren't open yet.