Gardening

 April 30th.

May 15th.

May 27th.

 It's been years and years since I've had a real vegetable garden.  The past few years we've grown tomatoes in bags of potting soil,  layed on top of the ground and covered with pine straw, which is great but requires lots of watering.  
Last year John bought 3 of those Topsy-Turvy bags which required even more watering.  One mocking bird thought it made a great place for a nest in May.  I know it was like a sauna in there once it really got hot outside. She moved out in June. 
We probably spent $50 for the few cucumbers we picked from one bag.  I think it was just too hot for the tomatoes.  We gave the bags to our SIL Jesse to try to grow flowers on their porch this year.   
This year I decided to put the plants in the ground under the clothesline posts (same place I put the bags of potting soil) so I have 2 mini gardens.  I planted tomatoes, zucchini squash, basil, cucumbers and summer squash. I saw a couple of tiny zucchini last night.

Happy Memorial Day

We waited until evening to go out on the lake.  Evan (16) has had lots of experience sailing and he likes to drive the boat too! John and Emily are enjoying the ride.  We also had Tracey, Molly and her friend, Sarah.

Our cove gets pretty muddied up with all the boat and jet ski traffic on Holiday weekends so we went out in deep water to swim - -  well  mostly just jumping off the boat. It was just getting dark when we got back to the boathouse. 



He's a Believer

Our friends Joe & Dee have been visiting at the lake this week.
Joe caught this 4 pound, 24" catfish off the dock today using my homemade catfish bait.  (I made him pose with the jar of bait)
He has been an outdoors man all his life but he said he had never used hot dogs for fish bait!

John used to use a vile paste that looked like peanut butter but smelled absolutely horrid for catfish.  I used to tell him that I didn't think I wanted to eat anything that was ingesting that.  Thankfully he doesn't buy that stuff anymore.

BTW - The fish was released back to the lake.  - We went out for a seafood dinner in the evening.

What I did at the lake..............

 I sewed this border on the Spiderweb II quilt top.  Not at all the fabric I had planned to use.  From a 1.25 yard piece (partially used) -  I had 4 pieces 3" x 4" and a strip 1.5 x 8" leftover.  It looks better in real life especially considering my photography skills.



I made a journal cover! I used the directions from the Exuberant Color blog.   I had jotted them down in one of my 'someday' notebooks  back before Christmas.  Her directions were very clear and easy to understand.  I used some of the leftover fabrics from the spiderweb quilt.  I sewed and quilted it with a Singer Featherweight which is what I sew on at the lake.  Very basic but I'm happy with my first attempt - Thank you Wanda from Exuberant Color!

I

A Better View

This heron decided to get a better view of the water from the top of our neighbor's boathouse this morning.  I love watching them stroll up and down the water's edge.

The water is a little high today.  When we bought our property at Lake Gaston the water level was always constant. Around 2000 VEPCO (Virginia Elec. & Power) started selling water to the City of Norfolk, VA.  Now the water level varies some but not so much that it is a problem.

Spiderweb II

I really like the sashing and inner border fabric that I picked out for the Spiderweb II Saturday (Stonehenge- Norcott).  I also bought a beautiful, silver gilded, multicolored dragonfly fabric with a dark blue background that I was planning to use for the outer border.  However, once I had sewn on the sashing it just looked out of place even though the colors were okay.  It made the quilt look overdressed- kinda like wearing a prom dress to a baseball game!
I did find 2 nice batiks at home that I can use - it is a scrap quilt after all - we'll see. 

New Homes

John made these cute little bird houses last week and put them out in the back yard.
Last year he had two large Leyland Cypress trees removed from this area.  We planted yellow knockout roses, hollies, and a Crepe Myrtle back there last fall.