Lovely

Our lovely little bird house will not attract birds. It's right by the back door and, anyway, we have a cat and two crazy dogs who scare away all winged creatures. But I think it's cute and it brightens up the back entry. I painted over one of the OnlyChild's childhood creations (with her permission, of course). Painting is definitely not one of my talents; it was an experiment.

It's lovely that, even after two weeks of being under my unproven care, my tomato plants are thriving. We will have fresh tomatoes this summer.

And look at those lovely little green zucchini sprouts. My friend Cheryl says the vines will be sooooo long. I may have to thin these out, since I planted the whole darn package in one container. Hey, what do I know? I'm a novice gardener.

At the garden plot tonight, I noticed that in addition to the lettuce, there are onions, peas, carrots and potatoes sprouting. I was worried that I wouldn't know the veggies from the weeds but a lady I met at the garden reminded me that I planted my veggies in rows and weeds don't grow in rows. So, when things really start popping up, I'll definitely know what to weed out!

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Remember this tree? I was lamenting the lack of green, since Spring was so late in arriving this year. I took this picture of the lilac tree from the window of my sewing room, where I was hiding from the cold and snow in May.

This is the same tree this evening. Glorious lilacs. They were a bit late blooming this year; everyone else's bushes and trees seemed to have gorgeous, scented flowers on them about two weeks ago. We finally saw lovely purple this week.

I spent yesterday ~ all day ~ working on the BIG project for my course. It's worth 40% of the total mark, so I want to do it right. Boy, I worked hard... and I got quite a lot done, too. I thought I deserved to reward myself with some lovely sewing time. I worked on the Bunny Hill and Seasons of the Heart BOM blocks for May.

I need to do the little bit of embroidery on the butterfly's antennae, and the buttons aren't sewn down (I'll do that after I finish the quilt).

Bernice and I had a bit of a disagreement last night. She seemed to think that it was perfectly acceptable to pull the bobbin thread up to the top of the fabric while I appliqued. I kept playing with the tension, but it didn't seem to help the problem. Do you have any advice about this? I've tried different threads, different stitch lengths and widths, fiddled with the balance dial on the machine, checked the internet... I don't know what else to do.

Don't look too closely at this block. Those tiny hexagons were a pain to applique. A couple of them are not lined up perfectly. Oh well... it was late and my neck was soooo sore from sitting at the computer all day. I wonder why I thought it would be okay to sit at the sewing machine all night? Hmmmm...

I'm proud to say that I checked off every single item on my To-Do list from Friday's post. And today I did some school work ~ for my real job, not the course I'm taking. It was quite a lovely and productive weekend!

☺