What Are Quilters Blogging About Today?

It has rained most of the week, which has been wonderful for tamping down the wildfires. It has made the grass and weeds grow, and brought the azaleas in full bloom. I’ve been taking more photos of them. We have this deep pink, along with the pastel pink and white ones. A few days from now, there should be blooms all the way down the driveway.

My Merlin app says we have a blue-grey gnatcatcher in the local avian choir, but I have not seen it yet. They look a lot like a titmouse without the tufted head. There ...

The azaleas came into bloom this week with about half of the shrubs well into their spring show, just lovely! We have a lot of bushes inside the driveway island and down the edge of the meadow along the driveway. My favorite ones are the white ones. Luckily, the cold nights do not seem to have damaged the blooms significantly.

There are a few brown edges here and there, but mostly they are pristine.

I love the soft pink of this one, and it was full of big bumblebees busily collecting pollen.

On another white azalea, there is always one ...

Spring is arriving when the ajugas bloom, although this week has been a full-on Blackberry Winter with lows near freezing, and that will continue into next week. It may damage the plants that have already begun to bloom, like the azaleas, but these ajugas can take it. We have lots of clumps all over the lawn out front and the back yard. Most are purple like these.

Here and there are white ones.

The dogwood is blooming, this year a pretty white. Some years the blooms tend to a greenish color.

They are just lovely, looking like springtime at the ...

It has been an up and down week. The beginning of the week we still had wildfires out of control, with the air full of smoke for a couple of days. Rain brought some relief, thank goodness. The clear blue sky with a few clouds was a welcome sight after a night of rain. At this point, the fires are under control, 79-100% contained, the evacuation zones have been canceled, and the burn ban is lifted.

The redbud is blooming in full now. Usually I spend some time out on the veranda with my good camera to once again try ...

The garden is coming more alive with more daffodils making an appearance. I don’t have as many as I usually do, so I have to be happy with what does bloom. These are yellow cups and petals, such a delicate color. But they got a little bedraggled in the wind that has been blowing lately.

The redbud will be in full bloom soon.

On the feeder, the goldfinches are almost fully changed into their summer frocks of bright yellow. The bluebird on the back of the feeder is the one using the birdhouse.

This is a downy woodpecker, noted ...

This month teases us with nice warm days, followed by freezing cold ones. I am ready for it to moderate, and be warm enough during the day to run around without a coat. The daffodils are coming up, and just starting to make buds. I am hoping for some happy flower faces soon.

A few more are coming up in the circle too.

I got this photo of a pretty bluebird sitting on a limb. I’ve been seeing a bit more activity at the birdhouse, and I have hope that they are going to raise a family there this ...

Time for a Sunday Chat, so get a cuppa and settle in for a long and picture heavy post. I have so many things to share today as these past couple of weeks have been busy! The bird feeder has been very active lately with really cold nights. My Sweet Babboo has kept the birds happy with the premium sunflower hearts again, after they rejected the other seed he bought. The suet cake is being consumed at a rapid rate and we have to put out new ones regularly, so much so that I ran out of ingredients to make ...

It was a rainy day last week when we planned to make a trip out to Lake Lure to deliver quilts, and preview the route we were planning for a car club drive. All the quilts that have been collected since the last delivery were in this shipment, including these lovelies plus more than a dozen more.

My Sweet Babboo filled the car for the drive, putting quilts and bags of other donation things in the back seat. First stop was the humane society thrift store to drop off a couple of bags of items culled from around the house ...

This time of year I begin to think about the garden. Recognizing my inability to kneel on concrete anymore, I did not start seeds in the basement this month. I’ll just buy some plants after our final frost date if I want to do tomatoes in the brick planter again. My luck with squash has been dismal, so I think I’ll just go to my favorite local farmer’s market produce stand for those. Last fall, I ordered some bleeding hearts and a few other plants online with plan to convert the front flower bed into all perennials ...

It was a fun week this past week, with a couple of days to sew, plus Virtual retreat on Friday. I got out the scraps from the mis-cut pajama pants, and I think I may have enough fabric to get a top, if I find the right pattern.

Going through my pattern boxes, I did find a top with princess seams. This might work since I do not have enough width to put a piece on a fold. I needed to move on to another secret project, so I’ll come back to this in a bit.

This week we ...

Since we didn’t do the house party because of the snow, I had two pints of blueberries to use up. I decided to do some blueberry muffin tops, with a basic muffin recipe from my Good Housekeeping cookbook. I use a Muffin Top Pan, one that doesn’t have a deep well.  This gives you beautiful tops (the best part of a muffin!) without deep dry bottoms. I forgot to take photos, but these show what I did, same as another time.

The pan gives you beautiful muffin tops, with nicely browned bottoms. Yum, breakfast!

I made my Butternut ...

This week seemed super busy with various things and a big chunk of a day wasted with a stressful situation that ruined my creative mood. All was solved by the end of the day, but it was just maddening. When these things happen, I just have to slow down, and take a breath with a pretty dawn view, or marvel at the unexpected blooming of a violet in the kitchen. It just finished blooming a couple of weeks ago, and it was a delight to notice one morning that it had three blooms, and more to come.

The birds have ...

It has been three years since we’ve seen snow, and of course when it finally came it ruined some fun plans. The overnight house party we were going to do was canceled as the roads were just not safe with ice under the snow. Ah, well, My Sweet Babboo doesn’t mind having to eat the two pints of blueberries I had purchased for blueberry pancakes for breakfast. He’ll get blueberry waffles this morning, and some muffins for later. The champagne for the planned mimosas will hold until we reschedule.

Knowing the weather was coming, My Sweet Babboo ...

Every January, I change the cluttered holiday decor over to a cleaner, simpler theme. It almost always puts me in the mood to clean out, clear out, and reduce. Most years, I’ll pick just one or two areas in the house for close inspection and brutal reductions. This year will be more so than ever as we are looking to downsize in the next year or two. This means lots of things need to begin moving out. Although we love the view from our veranda and the wildlife, the acreages of land and this old house are getting to ...

I hope everyone had a wonderful holiday week last week, and that the fun continues this week. Once Christmas arrived, things definitely slowed down here. It has been a welcome respite from all the hustle and bustle of the season. I’ve had time to slow down, work on a couple of ideas, enjoy the lights on the tree, and watch the birds. They have been busy this week eating all the seed they can stuff into their beaks. Here, the red bellied woodpecker shares the bounty with a bluebird and a nuthatch. Colder weather and several days of rain ...

In the past two weeks, so much has happened with our quilt project for victims of Hurricane Helene. For the distribution of the quilts received I have concentrated on the areas hardest hit that have not been the focus of other groups. Boxes of quilts arrived over the course of a couple of weeks and I sorted some into categories to take to those who needed support. On a cold and overcast day, My Sweet Babboo and I drove down to Columbus, NC to meet Diane Nelson at Steps to Hope. Below on the left are Scott and Gay Pleune ...

This past week, we went with friends to see the Lake Julian Festival of Lights. I love this small, drive-through light show in a small park in Arden, NC. We go most years, but I have to say I had more fun this time than ever. We listened to Christmas music, circled the route twice, and laughed out heads off at the guys popping off with comments on walking in your winter underwear, and women’s underwear.

This Christmas elf was conducting the band of three musicians from atop a mushroom. This one was animated with the conductor waving his ...

Holiday season can be so much fun, with parties and games, holiday music and gatherings with friends. We had a silent auction at our recent MINI club holiday weekend, along playing fun racing games with these little pull-back cars. The napkins were given to me by a friend, and we put them on the bar for everyone to enjoy rather than the plain white ones.

Our theme was British Invasion Christmas, and My Sweet Babboo took his Tardis for photo ops. I put British flags in the greenery. I didn’t get a photo of the centerpieces I made, but ...

With the weather turning decidedly toward winter, this past week was a good one for hunkering down and doing things inside. I got my fall decor put away, and all the Christmas decor is now up. I have my Santa collection displayed on the Victorian corner shelf next to the tree. The tree has been trimmed to the max, and I still have ornaments in the storage chest that won’t really fit on it – unless I hang them on the backside against the wall which doesn’t make a lot of sense. I was surprised one morning this past ...

On a cloudy morning this past week, I was having a cup of coffee when I heard some commotion outside. At first, I couldn’t identify where the noise was coming from, but when I opened the front drapery, there were eight turkeys up next to the house having a bit of a squabble.

They were clucking and squeaking, rushing at each other, flapping wings and puffing up. They separated apart, then the largest two began to compete with each other for the dominant position in the flock with a display of tail feather fans and puffed up chests, dragging ...