OK, so I lie!

No sooner had I walked out of the den after completing my blog post for the day (stating that there would be no pictures) when I turned my head to take a peek out the livingroom slider and this is what I saw:


Aren't they just the sweetest!!

I know very little about deer, but I am assuming that these two are yearlings, recently booted out to make room for Mom's next litter. They were very cautious, but also very caring of one another, watching every move that I made:

I wish I had caught a picture of them as they ran off, white tails held high like flags. Most of our neighbors consider the White Tails to be pests as they really do a job on their gardens. They were headed for my hydrangea, which I am told, deer consider to be a delicacy, but C and I have the opinion that they were here before we were, so we are in fact invading their territory. I love to see them, think they are beautiful, and have never been a victim to their nibbling! Ahhhhhhhhhhhhh: it was a joyous sight for me!

Here's numero quatro in my series:


The paper towels seem to lend themselves to poppyish flowers, so I am attempting to let them do their thing. I've torn the edges on these girls, and while I thought the lower right one would be the best, I am now thinking that the top flower is the best. What do you think???? I am particularly drawn to the vibrant colors in the top 'flower' but I don't like the size of the stitched cirlce (too large). I will try again......but I truly had not intended for these to be flowers: they have just grown into them all by their own selves! Please leave comments and let me know your honest thoughts!!!

PEACE

Powerful Woman

No pics this morning, but I wanted to share this with you. I must give credit to my good friend Bobbie who sent it to me.

Live your life in such a way that
when your feet hit the floor in the morning,
Satan shudders and says,
"Oh shit....She's awake!"


PEACE

"Turn Out the Lights...........

the party's over"!
The two weeks of festivities ended with a bang last night, as we dined out with our friends Molly and Keith. Molly's birthday was Sunday, so it was a dual celebration. She gave me an adorable sign that says, "The best things in life are not things at all". It will hang in a special spot at the condo. Here is the gift card:


Quite appropriate from Molly, as we always sign our emails 'xo'.

Here was our view this morning...........ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh, so tranquil:

and here's what I was seeing from my sewing room as I dove into my circle series:

speaking of which, here is #2 in the series:

the background fabric is the same as in #1, but the circles are made from paper toweling that I used to mop up extra dyes when I was working out in the studio. Normally I use rags, but a paper towel was the handiest thing one day, and I loved how the dye wicked on it: a happy accident, I suppose!

Here is #3 in the series:
the colors don't show too well in the photo, and I was trying out a few different things with the circles: not sewing in a spiral and I had also dipped the edges in embossing glue and gold powder and heated them up. I had hoped for a better effect, but you don't know until you try! This is the same black Kona cotton background, but I discharged it this morning, and the discharging isn't as vivid. The paste is a day old, and perhaps that is the reason.

As for my perennial bed, things are changing there. The peonies and foxgloves have finished blooming and now another of my all time faves is making its entrance:

larkspur

I adore larkspur and all of it's varied colors. It self seeds so beautifully and will grow anywhere, including making its home in little cracks in stone walls! I bought one packet of seeds for a quarter several years ago, and it has given me season after season of pleasure. Thank you, Larkspur!

This is a French geranium, I believe. The first of these plants that I received from my friend Jeann has given birth to probably a hundred offspring over the past 6 or 7 years.

And talk about reseeding, how about this Echinacea:

I have both pink and white, but none of the new-fangled oranges and yellows. These babies sprout up everywhere and I just love them........as do the finches in the fall and winter, if I leave the seed heads on the plants and let them dry.

While I snapped pictures, my buddy was making himself comfortable in the shade, patiently waiting for me to go back in the house:

PEACE

Memorial Day Memories

parades
prayers in the park
roaring gun salutes
red geraniums
blue lobelia
burgers sizzling on the grill
white petunias
waving flags on cemetery plots

I spent a couple of hours in the studio yesterday evening, discharging some black fabrics and playing around with some t-shirt designs for a friend. I've had a recurring quilt design popping into my head for the past couple of weeks, and so after dinner and a walk with Barker, C retreated to the den for a movie while I headed out to my sewing room to attempt to recreate that haunting design on a fiber art card. Here's how it came out:

I've used a piece of the discharged black in the background, and some of my handdyes for the circles. I think the swirl in the top circle needs to be more pronounced, while the swirl in the bottom blue circle needs to be turned slightly to the left. Comments and suggestions? This is the first in what will probably be a series, while I try to get this design out of my head and make some sense of it. I wonder if I'm not alone with these designs that plague me: waking me up in the middle of the night, popping into my head as I drive down the road or while I'm enjoying a meal with friends. Does this happen to you too?

Off to the Opthalmologist this morning to have my retinas checked (is the plural of retina retinas or retinae???). My dermatological plastic surgeon tells me that the type of melanoma I have often reoccur on the retina and she suggests that I have mine checked frequently: oh joy!

PEACE

Sweet Sweet Sweet Baby James

The two-week birthday celebration is rapidly coming to a screeching halt, but I am going out in a blaze of glory!

Tonight we went to see James Taylor in concert at Chastain Amphitheater in Atlanta. Chastain is a grand old Atlanta park offering golf, tennis, swimming, baseball fields, a great art center, and this wonderful amphitheater:


The outdoor concert series offerings are always fabulous and the weather tonight made it even more special. Many folks bring small tables with picnic dinners, elaborate candelabra, etc. C and I went out to eat first and then shared a bottle of wine, and sweet baby James.

We love to watch James Taylor perform: not only is he punctual (the 8:00 PM show started at 8:08 with no opening act), but he seems genuinely happy to be there, he sings requests ("Steamroller" was the big hit tonight), and he does many encores: 3 tonight.

In thinking over past performers that we've enjoyed at Chastain, John Denver and Waylon Jennings came to mind. Ooooops: they've both passed on! Hmmmmm: well, this is our second JT show.........hope it won't be our last! I apologize for these photos, but I took them on my cell, as the tickets forbade cameras, but I think I was the only person in attendance who paid attention to that!

We have tickets to see Alison Krause and Robert Plant in July: should be another great show.

PEACE

All in a Days Work

While some folks went fishin' today

C and I labored in the garden. It was a warm and humid morning, but we had a few things we wanted to accomplish before the real summer heat sets in.

I spread cedar mulch around several beds, both to keep down the weeds and to hold in the moisture


I also pruned the Nandina and Pieris Japonica which had been obstructing the view from my sewing room out to the pool patio. Wish I had thought to snap a before picture, but here's how it looks now:


I planted some cucumber sets in my little patio veggie garden, and hope that I will be able to train them to grow up my butterfly trellis:

I also planted some marigolds in amongst my tomato plants:
Some folks took the afternoon off and read on the patio:


arggggh: the dreaded underline monster has returned!!!!!
For several months I have wanted to remove both the draperies and the blinds from these windows in my sewing room, and with the shrubberies pruned, what better day than today?


Here you can see I have the drapery on the right down and one window free of the blinds:

and here it is all finished:


I washed the windows and cleaned the screens.......no energy left to tidy up my work table, but I wouldn't know where anything was if I did!

One last shot of the patio:

Hope you had a great day!

PEACE

Wrapping Up the Week

We were forecast to have rain and possibly 'violent' weather this afternoon, so I took my camera out to the garden this morning to get a picture of the Arum, just in case it didn't survive the afternoon's activities. I love these white climbers:

And here's the Arum, now unfurled:
I turned around and glanced back across the pool toward the house. The amaryllis, campion and roses are putting on a show:
We purchased a new TV for the kitchen today, part of the birthday thing. This one is perfect: doesn't take up much space and the screen is bigger, so I can see the ball scores from across the room!

K & D called this evening from their Pacific Northwest vacation. They are freezing and we have been roasting! Such is life! I am green with envy: they are in Portland, heading out to the coast tomorrow and spending a week enjoying the lovely scenery.

I've started two new silk pieces today: one will be a charmeuse halter top for K, and the other is going to be a quilted wall hanging for our new condo. I'm also dreaming about another cotton and silk wall hanging. It's been too long since I've done any real fiber art.

PEACE

Ahhhhhhhh: Arum!

Thanks so much to Jeannie for finally putting me out of my misery! The mystery plant is an Arum! I received it as a bonus plant about 10 years ago when I ordered a ton of Spring bulbs for the yard, but I never wrote down what it was in my haste to get it in the ground. Let that be a lesson!

Here are the pics of my Arum plant that I took on Tuesday morning:


Here's how it looked last Spring when it was in full bloom:
I wonder if it will look like this when we get home this afternoon?

Jeannie, please email me privately with your address, as I have a little thank you for you for putting me out of my misery!

Thanks to everyone for the birthday wishes! The first week of celebrating was very sweet and I am quite exhausted. I hope that this next week is a bit more relaxing. Does that mean I'm getting old???

PEACE

It's My Party......

Remember that song by Leslie Gore? Well, I'm not crying, but today is my birthday and so it is my party! C told me last week that I would get my wishes for 7 days prior to and 7 days after my day...how 'bout them apples? Pretty sweet, I'm thinkin'! But I digress!

Yesterday morning, I took my daily amble through the perennial garden and here are a few things that caught my camera's eye:

another lovely amaryllis from a Christmas past

and here is that 'mystery plant' whose name escapes me!
Gerrie insists that it is "something or other", but I am not so sure! I wish somebody would put me out of my misery and tell me for sure what it really is!

This weird looking caterpillar was on my rose bush, eating petals on one of the blossoms and curling a few of the others:

It reminded me of a very poisonous caterpillar that lived in the Areca Palms surrounding our pool when we lived in Miami, so I steered clear of it!

And here's the rose: not too worse for the wear, eh?


And for those fans of dear Barker, here's our boy, striking a pose on the patio:


Yesterday afternoon we drove down to Atlanta with our friends Polly and Jeff. We had tickets to the second game of a double header between our Braves and the New York Mets. Stormy weather rolled in from the west and we decided to wait it out here in Midtown, rather than chance it at the stadium: wise decision on our part! The weather wasn't too bad here at the condo, but other areas of northeast Georgia were hit pretty hard. (Our daughter works as an engineer for Georgia Power and she was called out for storm duty, restoring power to customers until 5:00 this morning). We were still waiting out the rain happening at the ball field when this beautiful rainbow appeared in Midtown right before our eyes:


C took Barker our for a walk and returned saying that the sunset was gorgeous, so I took a peek out on our patio:


a view of the storm clouds from our condo:


We did indeed make it to the Braves/Mets game and our Braves were triumphant (6-2). It was a great game with home runs, stolen bases, guys getting caught attempting to steal bases, rookie pitchers throwing low heaters, rookie hitters making good contact, yada, yada, yada! And it's always fun with Polly and Jeff!

It was late to bed and relatively early to rise this morning. Being the Birthday Girl, I chose breakfast at the Highland Bakery:

You can see from the umbrella that there had been some recent severe weather! It was a beautiful morning, and we were able to eat outside, so 'you know who' was able to accompany us:


After breakfast we took a little walk around the neighborhood and found a cute little Vegan restaurant, so I had to take these pics for Carol, my Aussie blogger buddie:



We took our friends on a driving tour of some of our favorite Atlanta area haunts, including Little Five Points, Emory University, Inman Park, the Old Fourth Ward, Decatur, and the Dekalb Farmers Market. I spent some time perusing their extensive Australian wine cellar and after an exhaustive study of their whites, finally chose this fine bottle:

and it is good! Carol, have you ever heard of Woop Woop?????

P and J went home this afternoon and we were able to connect with K and D this evening, for dinner at the Glenwood:

K is looking mighty fine for only a few hours of sleep after restoring power to almost all of northwest Atlanta last night...........and I'm not too shabby for all those years of restoring law and order in my own little world!

As I sit here writing this, the moon is rising slowly but surely:


and it is all good: very, very good!

PEACE

and it was good!

In spite of my ongoing battle with the pollen and my sinuses, yesterday was a very good day! I spent a lovely hour or more in the flower garden, just puttering! Isn't this a gorgeous amaryllis:

Every year I buy several bulbs in the fall, we enjoy them over the holidays and then I plant them in my perennial bed in the spring, so we enjoy them year after year.

My foxgloves are just stupendous this year, and the False Indigo is about at its peak:


Sorry if I bore you with these photos, but I just cannot get enough of my spring flowers!

I also had some free studio time in the afternoon. I had been tinkering with new color combos and decided that this scarlet red would liven up the very dull background:


I ended up liking the results so much that I've kept this shirt for myself! Today was our church's picnic, so I wore the new tee and received many compliments.

Here's another, which is a special order for a client who wanted 'bright':



I'm trying out a new brand of tees. This is a size medium, but after washing, it appears to be a small to me. I like how the colors came out so muted. Even I can do pastels and muted colors occasionally!


OK, the comments are down, but the viewer numbers are still high........so what is the trouble? Am I boring you guys or what? What would you like to talk about? I feel like I'm doing all the work here.....I know that my family members are viewing too, and even they are not commenting! One of my friends said that she felt like she was being a voyeur when she read my blog, and she didn't want to leave a comment for that reason. Is that the problem? Well, I wouldn't be hanging it all out by writing and posting pictures if I didn't want folks to read and comment now would I?

Blogger is switching over to the RSS feed from Blogarithms tomorrow, so I'm not sure how that is going to affect our lives. I've always felt that change is good, but for some reason the RSS feed makes me uneasy. Hope the transition goes smoothly for all! NOW LEAVE A COMMENT!

PEACE