And So It Goes

                                          And the squirrel said, "Not so fast, lady. Nice try."

Bird vs. Squirrel

 

I love the birds.  I love feeding them and watching them and listening to them and always have.

If one decides to build a nest on the house both PH and I alter our movements to accommodate the new momma and her family. If they build very close to our spaces we talk to momma and she gets used to us and doesn't fly off.  In spring when they wake us with their dawn chorus we don't mind. We love it. It's just fine.

But I don 't like the squirrels horning in on and emptying the feeders and since we live in the woods now there is no stopping them. If there is one there is a whole regiment out there. The tiny red ones are tenacious and I've done everything I could think of to deter them.  Nothing worked.  Not one thing. NOTHING.

I tried them all.  The sprays, the baffles, feeding them their own lunch, I even bought one of those toy orbi guns last fall to shoot little orbi gel balls at them and when that didn't work I tried a powerful squirt gun.  Nothing worked.  They would simply step aside, wait for me to close the door and be back before I put the toy down.  

Notice that black bungee cord across the roof of the feeder.  The feeder whose weighted perch was supposed to deter the squirrels.  They simply took the roof off and wallowed in the feed inside like they were in some amusement park ball pit.  So I tried bungee cords to hold the roof on.  They chewed through them.  Sometimes in the very day I put the cords on.  I tried this stiff rubber thick cord that I can hardly stretch to fit the hooks.  Chewed right through.  One day I put THREE cords on and they chewed through two of them in one afternoon's entertainment.  

But.  But one day I thought I figured them out.   I had bought some feed that is treated with hot pepper.  After all, the hot pepper suet is left alone so maybe the hot pepper feed? It works for this feeder. No one touches it but the birds. So I thought if I filled the house with this feed maybe the squirrels would leave the house alone, too.

 While searching online for a bag I noticed an ad for something "guaranteed" to repel the squirrels.  I had purchased other products guaranteed to thwart squirrels but nothing ever worked.  Not one thing. But, once again, I fell for the label and knew I didn't have anything to lose.

  Scroll back up.  Do you see the little bags with the red stinky balls in them?  THIS WORKS!!!

Never in my bird feeding life have I found something so small that absolutely works.  ABSOLUTELY. I don't know if I really needed to put two out but if one is good two is better, right? 

I told PH I didn't conduct the proper scientific testing by seeing if ONE of the two deterrent's, the feed or the stinky balls worked but I don't care.  One, ONE tiny red squirrel scurried up the pole, took one whiff and ran off.  Not one single one has come back. The birds can now eat in peace and my life of bird watching is much less stressful. 

Ahhh.

Won't You Be My Neighbor?

 Lousy weather lately so I put the houses together in rows.  The strips are still loose but so far this placement is good. It went together very quickly because the blocks were all constructed and waiting. 

 I made blocks with people in the doorways, enough for another row if I had added them but I changed my mind on that so this measures eight squares by 8 rows. It won't be big and I will put a border on but that's another day.  I've seen so many variations of the house quilts.  Trees interspersed, sashing here and there, but I kept going back to just the houses.  If all the blocks were the same it would look like a condominium complex.  This looks more like Lowell.  All the houses are different.

I don't name my quilts.  I just say something like, "the pink one"  "the liberty one" " the round sheep" "the crows"   things like that.  I imagine this will be "the houses."

But I almost ALMOST put this one single person in and called the quilt "There's one in every neighborhood." 

But then I decided to be nice.  I put Mr. Rogers in as the one single person in the doorway.  He's on the top row in the center overlooking his neighborhood. 

Afterglow

 

Not much today-the weekend was so nice I'm just kind of basking in the glow.  

Sadly, I didn't take a single photo.  We spent Saturday watching our grand daughter playing two LaCrosses.  Weather was perfect, sunny and just warm enough that we could take off our sweaters. 

Mother's Day Sunday daughter and her clan were here for dinner.  We made a paella and had a cavalcade of desserts. I made what I thought was going to be a silky, smooth pots de creme and I gave it a Brule crust. Sugar cookies from an 1870's recipe belonging to Patrick Henry's granddaughter, and a cream cheese pound cake. But the pots de creme recipe is going down.  It didn't stay pudding-y, it solidified into a true solid ganache. Ugh. Too much!  That's one recipe I won't save.  

Today I told PH it seemed strange not to be baking something and then saw the rhubarb I cut the other day sitting in the refrigerator.  Blueberry muffins swapping out the blueberries with the rhubarb took care of that.

Our weather is clear and cool.  Too cool to sit on the porch and read but they offer the 80's by this weekend.  

If we are going to have a couple more cool days I dug out the house blocks I made ages ago, trimmed them and will put them together to at least get them that far.

We are a bit tired of the unusually cool weather but the flowers are blooming, the birds nesting and grass needing to be cut. And I told PH come July we'll wish for this cool weather. 

Art

     When we go to a quilt show we take photos of the quilts we like, right? Some quilts speak to us and some don't. Sometimes it's the workmanship, the overall look, the colors, the imagination or ingenuity. Maybe you're with a friend whose taste is opposite yours.  She may like modern, you like traditional. They may like art quilts and you don't so much.  Art quilts are certainly a medium no different than paints in a tube but sometimes that's disputed.  Personally, I am a believer. As a medium art quilts are important. I just could never make one.

     I fall into the traditional. I like to think I maybe could do what I'm looking at so the art quilts don't generally ring my bells. Maybe they do yours.  That's what we call variety.  

     Today I went down to our arts council building because Friend Barb reminded me they had an exhibit I had overlooked. 

     It was a three part show.  Some quilts, some representation of blooms in photos or paint, some sculpture in fabric. 

     I'm including in the first three photos the philosophy of the sponsor of the quilt part of the exhibit, and the explanation of the theme.  It looks like a lot of reading but I learned a lot by taking the time. Put your reading glasses on and take a minute.

    After you read the sign board titled Emerald Green all becomes clear. 

Since we take photos of the things we like or that speak to us, these were the ones I took a photo of. All of the quilts required at least a spot of green in them.

I love blue.  The quilting on this was amazing and I had to really look for the green.

I've spent many a sunset standing on the lake bluff at our house when we lived in South Haven looking for the elusive green flash. This quilt made me smile and wish I'd have thought of it.

This was just pretty.  Poison ivy in the fall, those red leaves. Other than the hint of green in the ferns the white flowers have a teeny french knot of green in them.

We are seeing political statements in quilts lately and being hung in shows and I applaud them. This one really made me stand there and read what this quilt had to say.

I shrugged and walked past this.  Didn't like the colors. But I stopped and read the maker's statement and went back to get my nose closer.  

The embroidery is the quilting stitch and then I decided "wow." Maybe, too,because this one was done by hand.

I didn't care for this quilt (the green is embroidered in the pictures of the sunflowers.)  Then I read the statement and thought otherwise.  The picture shows VanGogh licking his brush. Explanation below.

This was done by the quilter who quilted Charlie's quilt. 

So, out of 34 quilts hanging in this exhibit, these were the ones that personally spoke to me and so I took a photo.  There were others I just didn't "get" but that's art.  And it was a lesson in first impressions versus taking the time to take a second look. 

Show and Tell part 2

 

OK, show and tell from retreat last weekend.  I apologize for where we were standing to show. You can clearly see we were competing with a work station so the quilts don't necessarily star in the pics, but you get the idea.  

I'll just name the stitcher and let the quilt work speak for itself.

Sally

Sally

Sally

Lisa

Lisa

Lisa - this is the same pattern as the one above but one for grand boy and one for grand girl

Barb

Barb

Barb

Barb

Barb

Ginger

Ginger

Colette

Colette

Colette

Colette

Colette

This was a challenge Barb set up.  She brought five fats and we were to bring one piece that we thought would work well with what she brought.  Then we each got a piece of all five she brought to make a 6.5 inch block then and there, using five of the pieces, no thinking allowed.  Sheesh!  Making me do math off the top of my head? Really? AND remember, I don't have a machine with me.  AND she timed us! I used Barb's machine, one of those that could launch the space shuttle.  Mine is on the top.   Then we picked a number from 1-10 and the one who came closest to the number Barb wrote down took the lot.  Sally won and the other part of this is she brings something back to next retreat with all of these in the finished product.  

Show and Tell

 Ha!  You thought that meant I was going to show you pictures of the quilts everyone brought to retreat last weekend, but I decided to save that for another day.  Instead I'll show and tell about the place we were and the people we are.

One thing we are NOT is a member of Scrub Stitchin' and while I will never be able to make that carousing weekend retreat ours fell on the same weekend and we had a beautiful time together. 

This is the place.  You know how when you walk into a vacation rental or your own cottage or pull your RV into a spot for a rest you can actually feel your heartbeat relax?  That's this place.  We are well taken care of.

Our weather was almost perfect. We had some rain but also one perfect day and another wanted to be perfect, struggled a little but it worked out.  There are ponds. Pine forests. Meadows. 

On the perfect day that turned into a perfect evening sitting outside for a bit just listening to the bullfrogs and peepers and geese - well, who could sit inside and sew?  

Our beloved innkeepers retired.  Luckily for me they moved very close to me so I can and do see them a lot.  These are the new innkeepers and they all passed the test.  But then they are the niece, nephew and husband of the former innkeepers so they knew the ropes and here were asking for our feedback.  Did they pass, they asked?  Indeed.

So, while we are a much smaller group than the Scrub Stitchers - good things come in small packages - and not nearly as rowdy we had SUCH a good time.  

This head dress is about as crazy as we get.  After showing Jenny's photo of her as Ursula everyone was quite sure they'd never dare!  Good for you, Jenny!

We were a little worried for this year.  We were down to just four of us but two new people joined and we couldn't have asked for two nicer additions.

Barb is our organizer

Colette was a new addition this year and she fit in immediately. She does phenomenal work.

You've heard me talk about Sally, who does teeny tiny piecing.  

Lisa is a Master Gardener, that title is hard won. She is the 'youngest' of the group.  Or are we the oldest?

Ginger is our other new addition.  It's amazing how completely she and Colette fit right in. Like we've known them forever.

Another time I will show some of the work everyone brought for quilt show and tell.