One month later

   Wow, it's been a whole month. I didn't think I'd write much this last month since I was gone to California for 10 days and otherwise across the street.
Quilting has definitely been put on the back burner temporarily. I have even missed meetings at church. I am hoping to get things back on track re: my quilting starting with the comfort quilts. We have a meeting tomorrow so I will prepare for that later today.

  It is supposed to be hot and humid today so I will retreat to my sewing room later but only after I finish the three passes left with the long arm on the raffle quilt.  Only a few classes at Studio 3 have been cancelled cause I was gone and the holiday was in there.  So see, I have been doing some quilting.
  Re: quilting, the rest of this summer I want to focus on making comfort tops with the ever-growing pile of orphan blocks. Here is just a few more from the stack that I am auditioning. I will collect the rest from Studio 3 and sort through them. Perhaps even preparing a kit and passing it on to the gals at church.






    Our trip to California was fantastic. After flying overhead all these years I decided to take a slower route to see the scenery. I'd wanted to see the giant Sequoias since I first learned about them as a girl and never had the opportunity when I'd gone west to teach. I told Mark we could wait till he retired, so finally we went. I didn't want to drive there (we are in SE Wisconsin) and I didn't want to fly so we took the train. I really enjoyed it.  We took the train as far as Reno then rented a car and drove down the East side of the Sierra's to Yosemite Park. Then we drove through Yosemite and south to Kings Canyon  and Sequoia Parks. I never thought to fly back from there so we reversed the route and took the train back home. It is indeed a beautiful country and the trees are really awesome.  So glad we went. I won't share pictures cause really all you need to do is google images of the trees or parks.

     And as it is summer I've been outside. I've taken to calling my restoration project across the street my 18 acre garden. We are not doing a complete restoration but the removal of all the invasives still  qualifies it as a restoration. Between 11 acres of woods and 7 acres of the wetland we have our work cut out for ourselves. Some days we do nothing and others finds us "weeding" as we cut and/or poison the most invasive non-native species. I am continually amazed at all the wildflowers I keep finding. Though I am sure they have been there all along, because of our work we now have access to them and they can thrive and be enjoyed. This patch of Canadian Anemone was actually found growing along side the road a few miles from here. A huge patch that would fill my house, that we'd never noticed before.