stack of flannel fabric waiting to be cut up
neatly cut flannel blocks waiting to be sewn
The red crepe myrtles are putting on a show.
Red cottoneatser berries have replaced the pink cottoneaster blooms. The white hydrangea are blooming, finally. The pink and white yarrows are almost finished, and the white tall phlox are mostly surviving even if they are losing their blooms. Phlox are perennial, so the plants will come back stronger next year.
The red nasturtiums are annual though and didn't survive the lack of watering, but the red and pink portulacas -- annual moss roses -- are thriving (and okay, yes, there are some pale yellow ones too, but that's to help tie in the yellow tones in the pink and yellow roses).
And the White butterfly bushes are blooming.
So is the purple butterfly bush. Can you guess what color it was supposed to be? 
Last year it bloomed pink. And last year I moved everything pink or red to the front garden... or so I thought. The red daylilies cheerfully and perversely blooming in the back garden where I could swear I had planted yellow hyperion daylilies might also argue against me.
I don't think the purple looks too very bad though. The humming birds and butterflies are loving it. If I add a couple more spots of purple maybe I won't need to move the huge bush and it will look like I meant to add a touch of purple...
... Come to think of it, last year all those lovely moundy (pink) mums edging the walk had a suspiciously purple tinge to their blooms. 
"Can we do that, Mommy? Can we?"
"It just so happens," his mommy tells me, "that I have sticks set aside specifically to be making stick things with."
"Can we, Mommy?"
"We can." said his mommy and I.
Which is how I ended up inventing new stick horses yesterday.
Which led to a trail ride up to the blackberry patch.
Which is how I got streaks of blackberry "Indian paint" on my cheeks and a fern "feather" in my hair while a small cowboy whooped and rode his horse... that is, until the littlest cowgirl got tired and I became a horse myself.
"These aren't real horses you know." She said, waving her stick horse.
"They're not?"
"No. They're not. They're pretend horses." She was emphatic, serious, and so cute.
After a pause she added, "I'm getting tired."
Which is how I ended up carrying the littlest cowgirl -- and her horse -- all the way back down the mountain trail while the other two children ran ahead whooping and riding their new stick horses.
bounty from the garden
Those lovely large squashes on the right side of the colander are Ronde de Nice. An heirloom summer squash -- okay, basically a round zucchini. They're supposed to be picked when they are the size of golf balls. Clearly that didn't happen.
When they get to be 3-4 inches they are described as being excellent for stuffing...I had to assume that roughly 6 inches across might also be good for stuffing. So I found a few recipes, merged them, and four hours later (including the run to the grocery -- how could I be out of olive oil?) I had made... wait for it... "the best dish you've ever cooked."
Too Big Baked Stuffed Ronde de Nice
First they have to be hollowed out. Slice off a big lid (like you would for carving a pumpkin, but smooth) and scoop out the seeds. Scoop out the flesh until the sides of the squash are only about 1/4 inch thick. Set aside the flesh to be chopped up and add into the stuffing later.
Pour a little kosher salt into each hollow squash, pop the lid on and carefully shake it so the salt coats the insides. Then turn them upside down so the moisture drains out as they sit waiting to be stuffed.
The stuffing begins with olive oil in the bottom of the cast iron skillet and four or five sprigs of fresh rosemary. Just strip off the leaves and add to the pan. Finger shred a couple huge leaves of Genovese basil in as well. Plus a whole clove of garlic, rough chopped (that means barely chopped and wonky).
A package of ground turkey, some dried sage, a little ground black pepper, a sploosh of onion powder... this was the point at which most recipes called for sausage, but I had ground turkey defrosted, so ground turkey and assorted sausagey seasonings is what I used.
After the meat cooks through, most recipes want you to lower the heat and add a tablespoon or two of tomato paste. Well, I lowered the heat but I happened to have some of my cheater spaghetti sauce still in the fridge... Waste not Want not. Why open a new can of paste? In it went. (That would be tomato paste with some oregano, thyme, garlic powder, and a bunch of basil in it.)
Add the chopped up flesh from scooping out the squashes earlier. I left the bits with seeds out; I thought it would look better, and I wasn't sure if (given the maturity) they would still be tender enough to eat.
When that all began to look cooked down, I turned off the burner. Most meat stuffings are supposed to cool for a while now. Mine didn't. I was hungry and I knew it still had to bake.
More fresh basil leaves, and a whoosh of bread crumbs... the time to take this photo showing the mini-bread-crumb-mountain was pretty much all the cooling this stuffing got. Mix well, add some grated Parmesan, the nice "fresh" Parm, and we're ready to stuff.
They bake at 350 degrees for 40 minutes with their lids on. Then move the lids to the side and bake for another 20 minutes until the top is goldeny and the squashes are nice and tender.
... and serve...
The Common Eastern Native Bumblebee has a range from Florida to Maine, across to Kansas and Tennessee, even as far as the Dakotas; and it has been introduced in California and British Columbia since the failures of Western Native Bumblebees. 
Although most likely found as a wild bee, they are raised commercially for use in pollinating greenhouse tomatoes and the Maine blueberry crops. Bombus are particularly fond of blueberry blossoms and will fly to visit them even on cold or misty-rainy days. They are vegetarian, eating only nectar and pollen. (Pollen is actually a protein!) 
Like most bumbles the Common Eastern Native Bumblebee produces no stores of honey for the winter. Unlike honeybees who survive the winter on their honey stores, the social colony of 300-500 bumblebees will die in the fall. The newly mated bumblebee queen is the only survivor. She goes into hibernation in the ground emerging in the spring to begin a new colony.
Something elegant though, like this one from a Garden Design magazine. Of course that involves buying a chair and covering it with moss.... So maybe something more like this?
Okay, not seriously, because 10 or so years is a long time to wait for lawn chairs, even cool grow-it-yourself ones like these from Pooktre but it's so tempting. Check out their website.
What I'm really trying to decide between is this classic British seaside folding deck chair. Which I totally think I could make myself -- after all, I do have my own electric drill now -- with minimal effort.
Nobody this side of the Pond seems to have these, so short of importing and freighting them from Jolly Old England, I'd have to make it myself anyway if I want one. And I do love the look.
I'm also liking the very different look of these romanticized Adirondack style chairs
which I found at Victorian Trading Company. My reaction to the photo was "That would look great on my patio." My reaction to the (with shipping, over $800 each!) price tag was "HAH! Not for two bits of scroll on some one-bys! I could make six for that price."
So I'm not sure if I want to make these because I really would like them in my garden or just because I'm sure I could make them for so much less. You know, if you don't count the cost of the power saw -- I wanted one of those anyway.
Opinions?
Photos in this post are images from the internet I copied to my inspirations file. I am ashamed to say I have forgotten where I found most of them. If you recognize the photo please leave a comment I would love to acknowledge all my sources. Thank you.
I positioned the orchard in the back corner of the yard for two reasons:
I planted them late last fall, getting them in the ground just before it froze -- I was planting them during our first snowstorm. This spring they bloomed and most of them tried to set apples.
The Grimes Golden and the Arkansas Black didn't bother with trying to fruit in their first year. The Cox Orange Pippin, and Washington Strawberry tried but gave up and dropped their fruit. The Pound was doing well but the tree is still to young for the weight of those big apples and they dropped too.
I'm spending some time with my Dad this week, and we're having one of our semi-annual Walker, Texas Ranger marathons. He's got season three on DVD now.
It's not high-brow or literary, and it's certainly not British or in any way Anglophile... and you're right, westerns really aren't my thing. But Dad loves pretty much all westerns and truth be told, when it comes to Chuck Norris at least, I'm all right with that.
Sure, the female characters are typically one-dimensional but that's okay because the male characters are generally a little one-dimensional too... and they treat the women with courtesy and respect or they get kicked in the head by a Texas Ranger. [On the one hand I object to the excessive use of force, but on the other hand I'm tempted to take a few karate lessons myself -- common courtesy is a dying art. ]
The plots are naive, the dialog predictable, something always blows up, someone always gets shot, and the good guy always saves the day. Which, right there is why I like watching Walker with my Dad.
We sit there sharing time together. Sharing a belief that it is possible for the good guys of the world to triumph. Sharing a hope that the bad guys (real-life bad guys) will lose. That there are heroes drawing a line in the sand and defending it. That somewhere on this planet and in this country there are still genuinely good people willing to stand up and fight for honor and decency and justice.
It might be simplistic... okay, it is simplistic, but sometimes a dose of simple, a dose of old-fashioned straight shooting, a dose of knowing wrong from right is exactly what we need to see in this world.
new hair
total body remake
and eyelids.
