Spring Beauty

The azaleas and rhododendrons around town have been so gorgeous this year.  We have several that bloom at different times.  These were last week.

More are blooming this week.

Dogwoods & Tall Ships

Our one and only dogwood is in full bloom this week and so pretty.

I've spent the last two days working on the latest block for Lyn Brown's Baltimore Album BOM. This week's block is the Tall Ship Pilgrim and it took a little bit of time since I'm doing needleturn on all of these blocks rather than fusing them.

I also used embroidery to indicate the simplified rigging instead of inking as suggested in the pattern.

Seven blocks are now complete and I can't wait to see what the remaining five will be.

You can read the story about the ship Pilgrim on Lyn's site.

Blooms

My Christmas Cacti have all been busy putting on a show the last two weeks. I have five and four of them bloomed in late October/early November as they always do. I usually get a smaller bloom mid summer as well. But all five surprised me by setting buds in early January and they started opening by the middle of the month.

I didn't think about taking pictures until a couple were almost done but here's an idea of the range of colors among the plants.

I love this red



Salmon/cream

white with light pink

I was ecstatic when I saw the buds appear on the next plant. It's a start that I received from a cousin in Iowa about four years ago. The mother plant belonged to her grandmother and is probably close to 100 years old. I took about 3 sections of leaves and rooted them in water, then set in potting soil and I've been waiting and waiting. This is the first bloom and it had about 6-7 nice big flowers. I'm thrilled!

I guess the hoya was trying to keep up with the cactus as it started blooming again too. Or maybe it's the other way around since the hoya has been blooming about every 3 months for the last couple of years.

Here you can see three flower clusters, each in a different stage of opening, one fully open, one formed, but not open and one just beginning.

I tried to get a close up and don't know how to set my camera so that it's not blurry, so my apologies. These blooms are just gorgeous! And there are going to be at least 8 of these this time around.

While all that was blooming in the kitchen windows, I've been making blooms in the living room recliner as well this week. Since my goal again this year is to dig into those UFOs and unquilted tops and get 'er done, I decided to work on some applique started in 2006. A group of online friends worked on a Baltimore Album quilt project that one of the members designed using EQ blocks as a starting point.

I made 17 blocks back then and set them aside. I thought I wanted three more to have 20 blocks for a good sized wall hanging. But now I've decided I may do 25. We'll see when I run out of blocks I want to make. I've added a few to those in the original project.

This is what I got done this week:

My design with a little embroidery thrown in:

Don't' those birds look familiar? I told Tom I didn't want to put the date on in case I didn't actually get the quilt finished this year. He suggested I should do exactly that as an incentive to get it done! So I did. We'll see if I have to rip it out! LOL.

There's a link to my earlier blocks on my sidebar (look under the UFO list). Or just click here


Now ask me why I'm posting this at 3:13 in the morning. Another night I can't get to sleep!

Stargazers

No quilting pics again today. But I have to share photos of my gorgeous Stargazer Lilies. They get better every year. We counted over 30 blooms today and more to come.

I will forever associate these with my Grandmother, Esther. One reason is that I gave her some Stargazer bulbs for forcing indoors a couple years before she died and know that she enjoyed them so much.

The other reason is that my lilies were blooming like this the day we returned from her funeral in Iowa. She died 15 years ago yesterday. I think of her all the time and miss her so much, but have to admit that when these beautiful flowers bloom for me every year I really feel her presence.

Play-off Saturday

I'm not a football fan..not even close. But it's impossible to live where I do without catching Gorilla fever. Pittsburg State University has the winningest all-time NCAA division II program. They have qualified for the national play-offs 17 of the last 19 years. They have recorded only 21 losing seasons in their 95 year history.

Today is round two of the play-offs and the number 3 seed Gorillas are playing number 2 seed Northwest Missouri State in Marysville, MO. It's 20 minutes into the game and NW is ahead by 7. I'm sure the stadium is packed with Gorilla fans capable of urging the team to change the situation. (Update...as I write the Gorilla's came through and it's now 7-7).

On another note, my trusty "Christmas" cactus is once again performing as a "Thanksgiving" cactus. Actually I have four of them that have changed to blooming sometime between the end of October and about the first week in December. A fifth is growing but hasn't reach blooming size yet. It's a slip a cousin gave me from an ancient mother plant that belonged to her grandmother. I used to believe I had to put my cactus outside during the summer, keep them in the shade and only lightly watered in order to get them to set buds. But I didn't get that done about three years ago and they bloomed anyway. So now I leave them in the house all year long. I guess we aren't in the kichen, where they reside, very much in the evening so they still get their requisite hours of darkness. Here's the one currently blooming: