Celebrations, Visits & Living Life

It has been quite a year, so far. The wedding was beautiful. Everything fell into place, and the weather cooperated. The wedding party was composed of all the attendants the bride and groom had hoped for, including the grandchildren as flower girl and ring bearer.

Since then, we have had a few visits with the grandchildren, including a few days while their parents were in town when they stayed with us. Grandpa got to have them help him feed the birds and there was the obligatory fishing trip. We are looking forward to another couple of visits before they return home with their other grandmother.

The garden has been going through its paces. We have milkweed growing and hope to entice some monarchs to our yard. The lilies, both day and tiger, have been blooming profusely. In addition, we have a volunteer trumpet creeper that is blooming and will, we hope, attract the hummingbirds. (We do have feeders, but the volunteer is a nice addition.) The gooseberry bush produced an enormous amount of berries. The cherry tree was also prolific. Now the raspberry bush is beginning to set fruit.

I have slowly been putting my studio to rights. I've made some progress since the picture above, but not enough to call it done. One thing I am trying to organize is specific projects with the hope that it will help me to tackle them sooner. In addition, I have been thinking more lately about mending, both to take care of items and get more use out of them.

I've been reading a lot about the latter at pages instituted by Jen Gale. She has a blog at My Make Do and Mend Life. She had a Facebook page associated with a decision she had made to blog about mending for an entire month. While I was unable to fully participate in mending during that time -- it was right in the middle of the preparations for the wedding -- I did follow it and was able to contribute some, I hope, helpful tips. Now, I am thinking more about the issue, especially in light of my continued interest in downsizing and not having more than I need. I expect I will talk more about the subject in future posts. For now, it seems enough that I have finally gotten back to the blog.

I hope you are having a wonderful season. Until next time, I wish you peace and all good.

Finding Direction

As some of you will know, if you have been following my blog, I have been searching for a clearer direction for my work for some time. All of the research and introspection I have been doing has, finally, born fruit. In addition to making a decision about the types of products I will offer and the use of primarily re/upcycled and/or vintage materials, I have narrowed down my design focus to the environment and endangered species. It has been a long process to get to this point, but I expect making the decision will free me to be more prolific.

 

I have, finally, been able to get another of the pieces I had been working on finished. Decisions about the quilting kept holding me up.

Until next time, I wish you peace and all good.

 

 

 

Migration

The hummingbirds are migrating. Since we added a second feeder this year, we have had dozens of visitors. (The pictures are a little blurry, for which I apologize.)

Especially thrilling to me are those times when a hummingbird will stop and sit for a while in one of our bushes or trees, as several of them have, allowing me to get a close up photo.

I wish you similar thrilling moments to enjoy during this changing season.

Peace.

Visits & Visitors

We had quite a few avian visitors to our yard in late August and early September. The hummingbirds found our feeder and raspberry bushes good sources of food on their migration through our area. While I've taken many photos, most are blurred due to the speed of their wings. However, I was fortunate to catch one at rest, briefly, in our lilac bush.

On another occasion, a hawk that had been following a group of crows was chased into that same lilac bush, giving me another opportunity for a photo. While you can't tell from this picture, it appears to be an immature red-shouldered hawk, rather than one of our more common red-tailed hawks.

I have been working on a priority quilt that I intend to offer to The Altzheimer's Art Quilt Initiative. It is made of materials I inherited from my dear mother-in-law and others purchased at the quilt shop in her home town at the time of her death. While she was not officially diagnosed with altzheimer's, she did have some form of dementia, as I've mentioned before. I am happy that I can do something to help advance the research to end this cruel disease.

I have also begun working on Christmas gifts. Before you groan that it is too early, let me explain that I come from a family of seven, and we still come together at Christmas to celebrate. Since I am the youngest and a grandmother, you can imagine how many people that entails. Even though I only concern myself with giving gifts to my siblings and the children in high school or younger that is a lot of gifts. Of course, you have to add to that my own children and their spouses/significant others/children, four of whom are now on the other side of the country, necessitating shipment of gifts in time for Christmas. Scarily enough, I'm already behind.

We did take time out recently to visit one of my sisters in Wisconsin. We were about a week early on the peak colors for fall, but did get some good pictures on the trip. Here are a few with which I was quite pleased.

I hope that you, too, are enjoying the changes in season, wherever you are, and until next time, I wish you peace and all good.