The dogs and I just want to get back on the wilderness trail but this is what I saw at every entrance.
Today we’re going to see if we can trim away parts of each tree or limb to get by with a golf cart.
I started picking up the walnuts and got about half done and I’ll try to finish today. Then my back and my knees can rest. I’m looking forward to church tomorrow and a bridal shower to follow.
And this wild chair cover from a jellyroll called Bloom. I hope I can get it quilted soon. Both of these projects have been done for awhile – I haven’t been sewing at night lately. I wonder why.
Quilts back from the fair – I’m glad I won’t have this big job next year. Now I have to put all these away. It’s just a lot of work for nothing. This is going into the category of I DO NOT CARE.
Reader photos
Lots of work to restore your wilderness trail but please be patient & don’t hurt yourself. It will get done! Love those pictures of that terrier butt. Also those fried potatoes sure brought back memories. This was a dish my Dad loved to cook for all of us hungry kiddos.
Des – isn’t it funny that we remember things like simple fried potatoes?
Mary, what is raw fried?
Sandra – most times I boil my potatoes, cool them in the frig till I need them and then slice and fry. They don’t take long at all. Raw fried is just that – slices of raw potato with added onion that start out very hard and must cook to soften and then brown. Takes quite awhile – sometimes an hour from start to finish – but so worth it. A potato from the ground to the supper table can’t be beat!
Amaryllis needs a border I think….. perhaps with the dark blue and yellow in the blocks. Hang in there with your cleanup! Have a nice weekend….. church and shower!🥰👏
I’m playing catch up again. This year has been something crazy.
I can’t believe how destructive your storm was! You have cleaned up so much already and the rest will get it’s turn. Slow and easy wins the race. Call me a tree huggin’, dirt chompin’ druid but I truly believe trees (and other plants) are sentient beings and as such must be so distressed over the destruction.
I’ve loved the gardens, butterflies, quilts and critters shared lately. I wish I had something to share but as I said earlier, it’s been a crazy year. Thank you to all for sharing your treasures.
Pat in AZ
Pat in AZ – so what’s happened in the past year to make your life crazy? You can see what made mine crazy.
Mary, probably just life when you get this age. John’s shoulder surgery and the cataract surgery in both eyes and lead up and follow up appointments took up lots of time. Not begrudgingly being the designated driver but it breaks the routine.
Then we’ve had two grandkids visit, one for a week and another with his family of 4 kids for another week. Love them to pieces but another routine buster.
The little ones leave and three days later we both come down with the summer cold the little petri dishes with feet shared. Grrr
All better again and John tweaks his back so chiro appts 3 times a week. Again, I’m the DD but we’re down to 2x a week now so the end is in sight.
Things start to get back to normal and Tuesday he was doing some yard work, lost his balance and fell into our date palm! Anyone who is familiar with date palms know they have huge spikes, like darning needles. A trip to urgent care to remove barbs and stitch up slashes took most of the day. He looks like he wrestled a bear and lost.
Anyone else see a common denominator here?!? And he’s not even that old! Heaven help me! Lol
Pat in AZ – oh, it’s not hard to find the common denominator! Men in general are careless and women have to end up taking care of everything. They are helpless! If I die first Rick will have to get an apartment or condo in town because he could never do it without me. Do men close up the house at night? Put away the tools? Close the gates? Pick up the kitchen? I hate getting up in the morning to a messy kitchen. They know their wife will follow after them and handle it all. Just exactly like you’re going to have to handle your household and not only be the DD but the designated everything. I really laughed when you called the kids the little petri dishes!!!! The storm interrupted my routine and I’m still not back to it. I’m too old to have to adjust – haha!
THIS! Exactly how it works at my house!
Maybe you’ll hear of someone at church who could use the firewood and come clean up your trail of the big limbs. We use to have two black walnut trees and I was glad we took them down as our yard was a mess when they’d fall. And stained sneakers. The squirrels have some walnut trees out back they can eat from though.
Wildfire smoke is rolling in tonight so they said our sunset here on Lake Ontario is suppose to be nice tonight to see. Golf cart serves us to sit and watch it. I’m glad yours is still running too.
Kathy – there used to be two walnut trees – one went down years ago. It’s such a beautiful branched tree I hate to take it down.
I feel your pain for the loss of all those trees and large limbs laying on the ground. I don’t envy you the cleanup, but I know you will get it done. Please be careful getting the trail open, no sense in getting hurt out there. We used to have black walnut trees, and I hated picking them up every year, then I got one of those grabber things and it made my life so much easier. I can’t imagine picking up two golf carts full! Yikes!! I went outside early this morning to water all my flowerpots and the air quality is at a “dangerous” level. I was outside maybe 15 minutes and now my eyes are watering. It’s going to be like this for the next 3 days, so I plan to stay inside and get some quilting and baking done. I hope to bake a pound cake and have blueberries and strawberries as the topping. Pot roast is in the crock pot, so meals are done for 2 days, yea.
Beautiful pictures today. I spent the morning pruning the tomato plants. They got very big because of so much rain in July . We got 12 inches. Now I can see my tomatoes. I picked my first watermelon. I hope it’s ripe. It’s hard to know. You could put a border on your wall hanging, but if it was mine I would bind it with one of the yellows.
When I had my eyes examined and needed new lenses, I wanted to keep my frame from my sunglasses but wanted the new lenses. NO, they couldn’t do that so the only option was to buy all new glasses (Walmart was going to charge me the same anyway). After that, I went to a small private optometrist and guess what – no problem. Never going back to any of the large stores again. My experience has been they are all crooks. Love the pictures today.
Mary, I’m sure Hazel looks at the wilderness trail as a great big wonderful adventure.
Weather in southern Minnesota a great except for the smoke coming from the fires in Canada.
Have a good day everyone.
Janet, out here in SW Minnesota there are no small, privately owned optometrists left. You are right that they would let a person use the same frames, but a big no to this from a big box store. I am happy for you that you have that option!
Mary and fellow followers of this wonderful connection blog! I really enjoyed your photos today, I love the 30th Anniversary Quilt, and your other quilt photos, I think you could add a border to the Amaryllis block, perhaps a solid color to frame up that lovely block. You have done a great and miraculous job cleaning up all those branches and leaves in your yard and work in progress on the wilderness trail. You will get there as far as clearing things up and out of the way so you can continue the lovely rides thru the grove. It is 74.5* today with a chill to me in the air, I hear it will be hot and humid next week. I am enjoying the flowers in my gardens, and I moved some sedum to sunnier locations so I hope they will enjoy the move as well and grow a bit! I think the shade and roots from the maple tree stunted them. Soon my cosmos and zinnias should be blooming, I save the seeds from the marigolds and cosmos and plan to do the same with the zinnias as well. Next year I am doing a totally zinnia garden, cannot get enough from those colorful flowers! Today I am going to work on some patriotic wallhanging and tablerunner projects…one at a time but I think I have three to do. (Overkill on the ‘I love that’). Be well!
ok, i think you might just be a bit overwhelmed by the storm damage to be able to reasonably access the job of putting away the fair quilts. there may be no pats on the back for a job well done. no help to hang nor put away. a whole lot of time and effort, love and care, gone unrecognized.
BUT… you brought joy to those passing by, inspiration to anyone who looks and says, “ooh, that’s pretty”, a safe harbor to families and friends who chose to “meet up under the quilts”, and sweet memories to anyone who has ever been wrapped in the warmth of a quilt!
leave them out and enjoy them.
give yourself pause
and know you have checked off a job well done.
Kit, you said that so much better than I could,
but that’s exactly what I was thinking.
We may never know how many people we inspired, comforted, cheered,
but it still happens 🙂 🙂
I agree with Kit and Susan. I’m sure toting, hanging, retrieving, refolding, and storing all of those quilts for display at the fair is a thankless thing. Is it possible to put a sign up somewhere near the display. On it there could be a little history of the quilts. Or something about each quilt- the pattern, why certain colors were chosen. Or a game of seek and find certain quilts. Perhaps someone from your area will read this blog and volunteer to help you. You are such a blessing to the quilting world.
I’ve seen a lot of Mary’s quilts over the years, and I still saw many for the first time at the county fair. They are such a great addition to the building. Kit, Susan and Martha, I really appreciate your comments about how Mary may not know the pleasure received by others seeing her lovely quilts. That is absolutely true. At the same time, it is nice to be appreciated and thanked for going to all that work and I don’t believe Mary received any sort of appreciation. Women tend to be the ones that are on the open fair class committees and I have found frequently older women are not that nice. Some need to go back to kindergarten to learn how to play well with others. May those of us reading this blog not be someone who should repeat kindergarden.
I consider myself a charter member of your I Don’t Care Club since I saw the first posting. Absolutely loving my membership!
My daughter was already a member of this club!! It’s so nice that we can enjoy something together!! I have joined!!
Peggy S
My husband recently bought a battery-powered pruner made by DeWalt that cuts through brush like butter. It will cut limbs up to an inch thick Very Fast, but watch your fingers. It just zips through limbs. I am wondering if that would help with your enormous project. Black and Decker makes one too but it doesn’t cut as large of a limb.
Do you know the name of the red quilt? Love that quilt. I think it would be a great one for a grandson.
Your Monarch photos are beautiful. We have lots of them flitting around the flowers too.
I used to wear glasses and loved to look at myself in the mirror. The wrinkles disappeared. Since cataract surgery (both eyes) I have 20-20 vision. Eeeekkkk
Sue Smith – we have a couple of these little trimmers and they’re actually pretty fun to use! They’re like the red quilt, too – I’ll try to follow up on that
To Sue Smith in OR
RE: The Red Quilt
This was #5 of the Moda Frivols kits called Atelier. There was a kit for each month of the year packaged in a cute tin with pattern and fabrics included. Don’t remember the year, but it was pre-Covid. The fabric was Petite Prints Deux by French General. Finished size 30 X 33. Maybe you can find it somewhere online. If not, there is a similar quilt pattern called Pie Chart, 2006 Karen Snyder, The Fabric Shop Network, Inc. I hope this info is helpful.
Mary, that work on the wilderness trail looks dangerous. Oh, be careful. Living up to its name. Looks like a lot of work. But you’ve never been afraid of work! Can’t be if you live in a farm!
That Amaryllis quilt looks pretty. Anything you can add would be pretty, too.
The butterfly pictures are beautiful. The contrast of the colors against the flowers is so pretty.
I Also love the pink/red colors in the quilt hanging from the Country Threads sign. For Keeper’s chair?
Carolyn – yes, for Keeper’s chair – next year
What a job ahead of you to clean out the wilderness trail! Oh, my! Please be careful…
I think a bit of a border would be nice on Amaryllis would look good, but it is also good the way it is – such a pretty quilt! And I really like that 30 Stars quilt – very pretty.
Had to laugh at the cartoon – my house would look so much better if I could leave my glasses off! I broke one of the bows on my glasses this week so I took them in to see if they could be fixed. I didn’t realize I had purchased these frames so long ago – of course they aren’t available anymore. I had to order new glasses. They did apply some shrink-wrap to the frames to hold them together until the new ones come it, for which I’m eternally grateful! (It looks and holds much better than the electrical tape I used…)
Gail – same thing happened to me with my favorite glasses – frames no longer available so had to chose new one and I don’t like them nearly as much as those I broke.
Yowsa! What a lot of work on the Wilderness Trail! I liked the counter balance of the beauty of the flowers and quilts in today’s blog. Just seeing all that work to be done makes me sore.
I have been enjoying the mid 70’s temperatures, low humidity, and gentle breezes. I wish we had more days like this.
Take care.