Unfinished Projects (of the quilted variety)

Sometimes it feels like nothing ever gets finished around here...weeding, mowing and trimming are rarely completed all at the same time (okay, never!) and even if they were things continue to grow and it is a constant effort to keep up. One that I enjoy, don't get me wrong, but one never really walks away from a garden thinking "my work here is done"!

I've been rummaging through some quilting stuff lately: a new baby born to my cousin's son, a friend beginning her own journey into quilting. While I've been digging around I snapped some pictures of the projects I will pick up again this fall when the weather turns cold and the gardens have been put to bed for the year. I didn't take the time to iron them and stage them in the yard like the quilting bloggers do, these are staged to hide the clutter in my sewing room and nothing else! I hope to do some nice photos of these quilts once I've done the binding, but that will be months from now. But anyways, the pictures:

I will give this little girl's blanket to my cousin's granddaughter. The bamboo batting is so soft and cuddly. It is actually leftover from a bigger project, so didn't cost any extra and the backing that I used is a sheet that my mom gave me long ago. Frugal! Gotta love it ;)

Also keeping the cost down, I quilted the little girl quilt myself. I'm happy with the results. I will do a post on each quilt as I bind them and actually complete a project at a time!

No idea how to rotate this picture. These half square triangles were all made with the remnants of fabric leftover from a larger project. I used a walmart batting which seems stiff and too thick...I'm sure the cost of the lovely bamboo batting doesn't work out to much more. When I buy the bamboo from the locally owned fabric store I am not only getting a better product but I am also supporting a local female entrepreneur. Win-win! I think I will keep this little blanket on hand for a last minute baby shower gift. The light colours are suitable for either a boy or girl, I think.   

This little 9-patch was one of my first attempts. I really like the blue and white but I don't know what I will do with it when it is complete. I like to support the local women's shelter, which gives a blanket to every mother and child who leave there to begin a new life. I would like to think of this little blanket helping a child transition into a life free of domestic violence.

Needs ironed though! Below is the quilt that I made this past winter. It has many of the tones that are found in my living room and throughout the house.

I am happy with the way it turned out and used the bamboo batting I was telling you about. I also had it quilted in town at that locally owned fabric store.

It turned out nice and soft, just what I wanted!

I live in a house and yard where new projects begin before others are completed...it can be chaotic and sometimes I long for a more orderly way of doing things. But this season of our lives is passing by so quickly, we are busy with family and a new yard and I know it won't always be this way. In fact, I am sure I will long for these days when I have a quiet house and time to work on projects uninterrupted. For now, we live and work seasonally. It is time to be in the yard and on the beach, so that is where we are. Soon it will be time to work indoors and I will happily return to these unfinished quilts. I will post another update then :)

A Hot Mess

Oh, it's hot. Saskatchewan is in the grips of a heat wave, a drought, and a record breaking number of out of control forest fires. It's hot, it's smokey, and it's starting to feel a tad apocalyptic.

There's a forecast for thunderstorms tomorrow and a week of showers. I sure hope we get it. I hope it rains and rains in the north and saves beautiful La Ronge, where I left a little piece of my heart. I hope no more property is lost and more importantly that no one is hurt. 

Not just another blurry picture, that's smoke from fires over 500 kms away. 

It's been around 30C (approx 88F) and last night was so smokey I didn't open any windows to let the house cool off. We do have a cool basement to retreat to if need be, but so far everyone has been happier in their own beds. The smoke lifted somewhat this afternoon and I've got the windows open trying to catch a breeze. 

It's not all been doom and gloom of course. I took my mom and kids to an open house at a local cheesiry. We toured the facility and watched the sheep being milked. Later in August I'm going to do a cheese making workshop there and I'm excited at the prospect of someday making cheese on my own.

Lined up and ready to milk. 

I didn't manage a picture of all the girls with their heads through but I was being courteous to everyone else who wanted a look!

I am trying to finish up the weeding in my food gardens before my kids start swimming lessons next week. We are driving back and forth to a local lake 5 days in a row. I'm a homebody and 5 consecutive days of being out and about is really my limit. I want my kids to enjoy the tradition of swimming lessons at a lake and so I'm going to grin and bear it. It's all about the memories, after all :)

We had a visit from our elderly neighbour. He is 75 tomorrow and invited us to his birthday party, and brought saskatoon berries and bubblegum for the kids. I am touched by the little things he does to help us out and we make a point of checking in on him and dropping off treats now and then. If you know an elderly person that is alone, I hope you take the time to pop in for a quick visit from time to time. It's particularly important to check in if there are major storms or power outages. The difference you will make in an elderly person's life is so worth the effort and you stand to learn a lot from a person happy to share their knowledge. Wherever you are this weekend, I hope you are enjoying good health and good weather!

Under Her Wing

Mama hen, at my parents' farm. She sat on her nest hidden deep in the long grass and hatched out 11 wee black chicks. When my mom moved her into the chicken house she slipped under the hen a guinea keet that had survived the briefly unplugged incubator. My boys inspect the hen house every chance they get and, yesterday, we saw the keet nestled up under mama's wing. 

A beautiful moment and a reminder to an often frustrated and frazzled mama to just set a spell and hold my babies tight up under my own wings. These days are passing by way too fast. 

The Garden That Didn't Grow

We are having a hot dry summer here along the Alberta/Saskatchewan border. Today we had temperatures around 30C and had a late afternoon thunderstorm which brought high winds and a bit of hail. Our yard received one inch plus two tenths or rainfall, while 4 miles away my parents had about half an inch. We are glad to have had the moisture and all my rain barrels are overflowing. 

The hot dry summer has had me asking, what would I do 100 years ago if it were this dry and my garden didn't grow? Surely it happened from time to time. Did families go hungry? Absolutely. Were some forced to town or onto the generosity of family? Undoubtedly. Back then if a person in the country could not or did not produce their own stores of food they could not last. Growing and storing enough food for one's family and one's livestock was the real difference between success and failure on the prairies. Nowadays, if you have a total crop failure such as I have had with carrots, peas, lettuce, spinach, kale, SIGH, you might trade with a neighbour for some of the things you have plenty of (so far, that would be onions), try the farmer's market, or you just say to heck with it and count on the grocery store for your missing produce. But this all has me thinking, 100 years ago on this piece of land I would be starting to feel a bit desperate.

There are some factors that would be different, of course. I would likely have quadrupled the amount of potatoes I had planted. I would have relied heavily on crops like turnip, pumpkin, squash and cabbage, and I would have a root cellar in which to keep them all. But here in my 2015 first-world-home, I have an entire area dedicated to water and heat loving tomatoes and peppers. I reserved one raised bed for my children to plant, and I have large spaces that are purely ornamental. My apple tree has 2 apples on it this year and the pear pollinator has died. I put in 10 raspberry canes last year but they immediately filled in with weeds and I have decided if they die it is probably a good thing. Something has eaten the strawberries before I can get to them, and I have 4 or 5 varieties of sunflowers planted for the birds and our pure enjoyment. It is obvious that this garden is not meant to sustain us through our cold 6-7 month long winter. But what if it had to?

Above, one raised bed that has produced nothing besides a couple sunflowers, some nasturtiums, and a couple bean plants. 

Below, sunflowers bent over from the driving wind and rain. I'm sure they will bounce back, but I must rethink how much of my garden is used to grow things not specifically meant to feed this family through the winter. 

I did plant carrots and greens and peas and I reseeded cucumbers, beets and peas when it didn't look good. The carrots and greens seem to be a write-off and there are so far only enough beets for a couple meals. The cucs are up but I am wondering what my yield will be, and I am thinking that this should be my last year of using the grocery store as my back up plan. Next year I hope to have space prepared to plant more and harvest more than I need, with the aim to get my family through the year on what we can grow ourselves. Of course this is not a revelation to many who garden. But for me it is time to step up and grow/harvest/preserve as though it is my only option. I am lucky enough to have the land, I am healthy enough to do the work, and I want to be able to make it happen in case the day ever comes where we must be totally self-reliant. Do you grow your annual supply of any one fruit or vegetable?

Air Quality, and Peony Love

We have had a beautiful stretch of very warm weather (for the Canadian prairies, at least). The trouble for most of us is the weather is a month early and has preceded any amount of seasonal rain. So although we've enjoyed some time at the beach, the 30C heat that we enjoyed all week is actually baking the crops in the fields and turning pastures to dust. If you're a farmer in these parts, you're probably getting worried.

I put the sprinkler on my garden every few days to keep things alive. I am lucky that I don't have to carry buckets of water. But most days I do. I run the sprinkler on the garden to cover more ground but water most of my flowers by pail. We have a couple large totes that I bought from the nearby Hutterite Colony (previously used for canola oil) that I use to catch rain. Then I also have my 3 rain barrels, and they have a bit of water left from the 8/10 rain we had a few weeks ago. Slowly I've used most of it to water my tomatoes and grape vines, and all the perennials near the house. Speaking of those, I'm having some serious love for the peony I planted last year. There are 3 new ones as well, but they haven't bloomed. I was so proud of the hot pink one by my shed....

Until I went to my mom's and saw her pale pink one in all its glory....

I do so love peonies!

It is a smokey, hazy day today--smoke arriving here from fires in northern Saskatchewan. My mind is on my friends there, hoping no homes are threatened and that the fires are soon under control.

It is smokey here, yes, and it is a reminder to treasure the clean air that we normally take for granted. To think of all the people that live in similar haze everyday of their lives...we are truly fortunate to live where we do. How is summer shaping up where you are?

A Garden Update, of Sorts

For some reason I'm having a hard time believing we are halfway through June. I have the odd sensation that we somehow missed spring, but I think I know why. Last year in the spring we had no lawn to speak of, just topsoil, and our driveway had exposed clay in places. We got extra gravel and our lawn grew last year so the mud and mess being tracked in was so much more manageable this year. It felt like the season of mud didn't happen, in a way :) add to that the fact that May was unseasonably hot and dry, and it just feels like spring didn't happen. Thankfully, things are growing although we have had minimal rain. We have our big totes in place to use as rain barrels so we can catch every drop of rain possible for use in our yard. 

I got a 6 pack of dahlias at a greenhouse. They are among my favourites but I've had no luck buying and planting the tubers. We had a touch of frost after I planted them out so 5 of them in the apple tree bed look scraggly and forlorn. But this lovely is on my sittin' porch where I can enjoy it everyday. 

My mom has had some success with her incubator, despite power outages and other mishaps. Unfortunately the day after things started to hatch the cord wiggled out of the incubator and the rest of her eggs were lost, including guinea eggs that we were so excited about. 

Lambo. 

Suzy. Our lambs are in our little pasture here and are a constant source of amusement. 

As for the garden, potatoes and onions are doing great and I planted 4 or 5 varieties of sunflowers that have all come up. It will be so much fun to watch them get taller than us, along with my first ever crop of corn. I started pumpkin plants early and managed to plant them out successfully. That is actually the first thing I've started indoors that survived hardening off and transplanting, so I'm excited to have grown our own jack o lanterns and pumpkin purée. 

My spinach, kale, lettuces and carrots are slow to appear and I dread a year without a fresh supply of beets. Our elderly neighbour plants a big garden and usually offers us part of his excess. This year we may be counting on his generosity:) likewise, I've replanted cucumbers which simply didn't germinate and my next crop has not come up either. It's a bit discouraging but I've had slow starters before, replanted, and ended up with everything coming up at once and being too crowded. So I guess I'll give things more time and concentrate on what is doing well. 

I also planted a row of asparagus and some tiny shoots have appeared in my straw mulch. I'm nervous to keep the weeds out of that row but we have really enjoyed the asparagus out of my brother's garden. It is definitely worth a try to grow my own. 

Last year I planted 5 grape vines and 3 survived the winter. I don't have a picture but I do need to come up with a trellis idea that works. Perhaps a post on grapes will be in order. I am never sure if I should jump the gun and blog about something before I know it will survive. But if I stuck to that around here I may never blog at all ;) how's your garden growing?

Around the Yard

Things are getting going! Sunflowers, cucumbers, potatoes, onions, beans, corn and peas are up. A few laggers might be reseeded if they don't appear soon. How are things in your neck of the woods?