It’s late and I’m just going ahead with reader photos. Please answer comments among yourselves.
Eric, Nikki and Camber are coming tomorrow for several days – I’ve been busy with cleaning, laundry, cooking, baking and shopping. We’re looking forward to their visit!!
Sherry in Kasson MN, I love your quilts, especially the asymmetrical one.
Mary, enjoy your visit with your family. Thanks for the beautiful post, so many great photos! Thanks, 🥰
Great pictures, thanks for sharing!
You will be super busy the next few days and having a great time! We were at the beach last week with two of our grands. They are always fun! The quilts this time are stunning. If/when life slows downi, I hope to finish some! I love seeing everyone’s flowers. We are so lucky to have such beauty in our lives—quilts and flowers😀.
I read Jennifer Chiaverini’s new Elm Creek book on the porch today with a quilt and Squeak on my feet. It was wonderful to have the cooler air and we had LOTS of wind!
I know the feeling of cleaning for company. I don’t know where to run first. Not that our home is that messy but, I tend to see all the little things that need taking care of when I have company coming. Luckily I clean better in panic mode.
Oh, that lovely red gladiola steals my heart. Glads were a favorite of my mother, and she raised as many colors as she could find. We always had a vase of them on the dining room table during “glad season” and I remember the ruffled green ones were quite exotic at the time!
We had a sudden downpour and strong wind this afternoon that tossed the hosta blossoms along the front of our house. Purple confetti is all that is left. Sigh. But the temperature dropped to 77*. Something to be grateful for! Kris
Beautiful flowers and quilts today. Finally got internet restored yesterday.
Sherry, I’d be interested in pictures of monarch stages too.
Mary, enjoy your familys visit and your clean house. I can relate… My daughter is coming down for a visit and I’m cleaning too.
Mary thank you for taking the time to write the blog and download all the photo’s
I admire you for keeping up with technology, living on the farm with animals and finding
time to quilt. I really enjoyed the project of the month for UFO’s however somewhere along
the time I missed when this ended. Thank you for all you do and finding us people who need
support by just sending out cards. You have a heart of gold.
Enjoy your time with family. I will be excited to see how Camber has changed so hope you get some pictures for us. I remember her so little from your blog years back. Nothing like company coming to make you clean up. I’m holding off till winter – ha!!
Hi everyone, I just got back from the dog park. We have to go early before it gets hot. Love all the flower pics. Sherry yes please send pics of the Monarch’s. I’m going to work on a quilt sandwich today. Staying inside today. Everyone stay safe and cool
Amazing flowers, quilts and animals today. I looked them over scrolling back and forth many times. I have been trying to send photos from my phone, but it has been very cranky. I have so much trouble with it and its an iPhone, too. Supposed to be the best. Ha! So, today I will use my trusty camera. It never (knock on wood) fails me.
That little stuffed dog is adorable. He lays there just like real dogs do. Very cute!!
Is the quilt just under the orange daylilies a Dear Jane? It’s beautiful and looks very complicated.
We have so many talented ladies in this group.
It’s not a Dear Jane, which has many different and unusual small blocks, and a border with pieced triangular blocks. This quilt is made from just one block pattern, very similar to Fifty-Four Forty or Fight, a star with 4-patches in the corners. The blocks are colored in many different ways, so they look like different blocks. I love it!
Love the America quilt! But I love anything patriotic! Beautiful quilts & the flowers are just beautiful too. Last night sirens went off for a tornado watch. Very windy even today. We did get several hard showers of much needed rain. I took my hanging baskets down from the eves as the hot sun was just baking the plants. I hang them from large “S” hooks from the eves. It’s looks like they will recover. We have an over population of deer here as well & we do have problems with them eating our flowers & veggies. Irish Spring soap shavings have saved most of my flowers & my tomato plants are in pots on my patio that its impossible for the deer to get to. Unfortunately their habitat is being taken over by new homes & where I live we’re close to a river & they munch on their way to the river! They also empty our bird feeders in one night. So the bird feeders in the garage until next winter. Will hang I S soap by the feeder. I need to own stock in that soap company! Having problems with my phone. We depend on technology for so much. They can’t figure out why it shuts down except for the date. So I’m without phone service for 12 hrs & then service is restored. Always something! Back to the fixings place today! Prayers for those without power & hit hard by this terrible weather!
Alice, We all understand trouble with any technology problem. Your phone might be due to the storms because of Beryl. We have to use Irish Spring because of the rabbits eating my garden. My husband has all raised beds for vegetables.
Have a good day.
Janet, thank you for your comment on my phone. I finally took it to a fix it place & had a very nice young man who absolutely loves technology! He was able to unlock my phone as I couldn’t do anything with it. I have a Pixel & it’s less than a yr old. He explained that the Pixel phones are a bit quirky. He also got rid of some apps that were creating some problems. No problem with the battery, which I thought might be the problem. Unusually turning a phone off & back on will solve any technical problems. I simply needed to hold the buttons in longer, at least 10 seconds. This problem was a first for him, so he learned something, too!
Alice — I had an “elderly” phone that would shut itself down randomly. Turns out that it was due to the battery failing — it couldn’t hold a charge for long and even though it looked as if the battery were charged, it really wasn’t. If your phone is more than a couple of years old, it may need a new battery or to be replaced 🙁
Wonderful pictures today, flowers, quilts and pets. I will have to watch my milkweed plants for those white dots. Mary, enjoy your visitors.
I’m impressed with the scrap quilt, Beautiful! I’m working on a larger quilt now, can’t wait to get back to my scrap bin to make a few fall quilts.
Hope everyone in Texas affected by the hurricane can recover quickly. Wisconsin is seeing some effects today per the weather man.
Enjoy your day everyone. Enjoy your visitors Mary. Great to have friends and family with you.
Well, I was writing a comment and I think the lightening interfered! Wow! Quite the. Rain storm. It rains so easy now!
I loved all the pictures! I was especially interested in seeing the monarch egg. I will have to look at our milk weed plants. The stargazer lilies are my favorite!
Have a great time with your visitors!
This is Bernadette. The pattern for the large quilt is 54-40 or fight. I had these tri-rex rulers and had never used them and thought this would be a good pattern to use the scraps that would have u=otherwise instead end in the garbage. The other log cabin was my own scraps and a couple small panels to make the twin sized scrappy log cabin quilt. The two deer bucks were in our yard with three other bucks. They do a lot of damage to our flowerbeds like eating the tops off flowers. Our garden has a high fence around it, but the rain has drowned out many of the plants. Have a good day everyone.
I absolutely love both of your quilts. I like to do scrappy quilts as well. I have a lot of fat quarters in my stash and am trying to use them up.
Enjoyed the photos this morning.
It’s turning off hot again. I am prepping for a retreat Friday-Monday.
Mary,
I am so glad you figured out the blog I would miss hearing about nothing.
Here is my comment about nothing my washing machine stopped working the repair man came and fixed it it worked twice and quit again, he is here now and it is working fine for him let’s see what it does after he leaves.
Susan in Ohio
Susan – typical that it works when the repairman is there. This sounds like my dryer!!!
It is amazing that the tiny Monarch egg turns into the beautiful butterfly in quite a short time! Last year I ‘raised’ 17 eggs. I have several Milkweed plants that spread by seed each year. They seem to be one of the few plants in my yard that the legion of rabbits that live here don’t eat to the ground. I (or my grandsons, they are better at finding eggs than me) search for the eggs and we bring in the leaf and put it in my low tech incubator – an plastic jar with holes in the lid and a branch – and let them hatch, feed the caterpillar more milkweed leaves (they eat – and poop A LOT) and watch them go into chrysalis. About 10 days after they go into chrysalis, a Monarch emerges and I set them free. In my time of having milkweed in my yard – I’ve never seen a chrysalis on the milkweed – last year I let a couple of caterpillars stay on the plant and was monitoring them – one morning I checked and they were both gone. Either the wind blew them off into the rocks or the birds got them. If anyone is interested I can send Mary photos so you can follow along.
Yes, I would love to see your photos as the monarchs develop.
I would love to see them emerging, Sherry. Thank you.
Me too. I have milkweed plants for the butterflies but don’t know any more about helping them.
The photos are all so great! Glad to hear some of the readers survived the hurricane, we are supposed to get remnants today in form of rain, nothing like those in the rest of Texas!
Beautiful pictures again today. Thanks for sharing. Mary have a wonderful time with your family.
My sister lives in NE Texas and she said they survived Beryl with only some rain and not even all that much. We here in Southern IL had rain all day yesterday, some quite heavy. Rain gauge shows a little over 2″. The good news was we barely broke 70 degrees! We will be hot & sweaty by this weekend. Uck!
I too feel in love with all the quilts but Bernadette’s large one in particular. The monarch egg reminded me of one year when we found a monarch chrysalis on my milkweed. Mother Nature is fascinating!
Look at that little calf and the beautiful bucks with their stately horns. That’s why I am vegetarian, I can’t understand how anyone can look at God’s beautiful, innocent creatures and purposely hurt them or take their lives. I’m healthy, fat and sassy and haven’t eaten any animals or by-products in 44 years. My husband is a carnivore so I can – regretfully – cook for him as long as I don’t think about it and do it quickly. And I hate it but he needs to survive!
Thanks for showing us the monarch egg. We have milkweed all over the farm and I didn’t know what to look for, I was looking more for a cocoon. I have a friend who collects a couple of leaves every year and puts them on branches in an aquarium and watches the stages until it dries out as a beautiful butterfly and I would like to do the same. Now I can be on a real hunt.
One of my daughters is a vegetarian and her husband isn’t. After 10 years though he is eating more like a vegetarian. I always say that I’m going to make one meatless meal a week but it hasn’t happened yet.
Love all the pictures. The colors of quilts and flowers are so cheery. The animal pictures make me smile. My sons live in Houston. One son never lost electricity. The other son has been without power since the storm. His understanding is they will have it back by this evening. I hope so.
Today I will paint some door trim, weed garden, and maybe clean floors. Sounds exciting, right?
Good morning! I’m glad to report we made it safely through storm Beryl! We were under a tornado 🌪️ warning for about 2 hours and hid in our bathroom. Two touched down nearby and we had continuous gusts and heavy rain for a few hours. We lost several branches. Our internet was off till yesterday afternoon. God was gracious and spared us so much. Over 2 million without power and 8 dead so far.
I enjoyed all the pictures, flowers were extraordinarily beautiful 😻! Penny and Lucy say hey !
Pamela, I’m glad you’re safe. Beryl was a huge storm and all the way to Canada! It’s truly sad that there was some deaths.
I was wondering what kind of birds they were – so beautiful. I also love the calf. Regarding the Monarch egg on the milkweed, I have some supposedly native to Georgia milkweed in my backyard. I bought one plant. This species spreads underground. This year ( the third year since I planted the one plant) I have 8 plants. They grow really tall but I have not had any that bloomed and I have not seen any eggs. Don’t know enough to understand why and that native nursery closed so I can’t ask them questions. I will have to do some investigating. I loved all the photos.
Wow that monarch egg is so little, amazing how they survive. Like all the quilt pictures, flower pictures and animal pictures.
I can’t believe I am first to write a comment! Tonight on the blog and below the title and date there was “Leave a comment. ” I clicked on it and here I am! Lovely flower photos tonight. I am curious as to the pattern name of Bernadette’s large quilt (it’s the first quilt photo after the day lilies). Mary, you inquired as to how my visit in ND going with the 3 grandkids. The 11 yo and 9 yo finished there static 4-H events and in person judging was on Monday. The 11 yo received 7 blues and 1 red. The 9 yo received 5 blues. We will find out today (Wed it they received any higher award). Their chickens and the rabbit check in today (Wed.) with judging taking place in the morning. They will have the “sale” on Thursday evening. I grew up participating in MN 4-H. It’s interesting to see the difference between the states. In ND if a blue ribbon is received at the county level, the project is automatically eligible to go to the state fair. Also, for the animal sale the kids walk around the ring with their animal as people place bids during the live auction. (The people usually are company representatives.) The interesting thing is that the kids get to keep their animal and they get the money that their animal brought at the auction. So we’ll see how that goes on Thursday. The youngest grand is 3 yo. She loves playing pretend with her baby dolls. Today she was the pizza delivery person. Of course I ate the delicious pizza! What an imagination she has! Temperatures here have been nice but it is supposed to be 90 by the end of the week. Yeah, water balloon time!
PS: Again I want to thank all the readers who wished my mother a happy 100th birthday. She said she received 50 cards and most people wrote a note. She truly enjoyed reading them all.
Martha thanks for the card count. 50 is a lot of cards!
Loved the 4H stories. Great memories except for the time my dress received so much attention(unknown to me) I received a memo to call the extension office when our group was using our excused 1/2 day from school to enjoy the fair. I was to exhibit in the fashion exhibit. No way to get home for a slip to wear under a lightweight fabric dress. What a lot of maneuvering to walk with another entrant positioning myself away from audience side for the walk through. Laughing now but not then
Our leader made a heated visit to the extension office.
Brendalynne, your dress revue story is funny now but I’m sure it wasn’t back then.
I like the little white calf. We only had Black Angus as a kid.
Had you ever seen an all white one with such dark eyes?
ladies, thanks for sharing your quilts. i love them all. lots of scrappiness. the sand hill cranes. i thought they were in my backyard, but probably somewhere else. the white calf looks so innocent. they look so sweet when they are young. my mother’s cows liked to eat the rubberized parts of my honda many moons ago. it was horrid to reach for a handle that was covered in yuck! i started parking my car inside the fence and mother couldl park hers outside. they didn’t seem to chew on her car. go figure. i love the close ups of the flowers also. me and my black thumb. always appreciate pics of the gardens. the patriotic quilt is great. have never seen that fabric in the border. is that a land tortoise? my son has one but i’ve not seen it. today i sewed. got 20 rows of 8 stitched together. after supper i got to press them all and have the first 10 rows sewn into pairs. i might be able to get this second half finished tomorrow. i hope. (oops, just realized i haven’t shared this first half yet, sorry) stitched a bunch while on the phone with son (he’s in texas). told him my stitching is what keeps me sane and soothes my nerves. i have cut enough squares, etc. that i can sit and sew in smaller amounts of times. off to bed, hugs and prayers for all, patti in florida