...and then there were three

These first peonies are fading fast...

...but I planted many different varieties.  Ruffles and more ruffles.

Peonies are such great old-fashioned flowers.  I'm going to have a massive bed of them when we finally settle somewhere!

Our house finches are growing quickly.  Do you see the feces around the edge of the nest?  For the first week or so of their lives, the adults eat the feces of the young, but after that, the babies void at the rim of the nest.  The rim of feces grows and grows until they, at last, fly away. They're considered pretty messy birds, although so far everything is staying in the fern.

The big news around here, though, is...GOZ. 

The nest I've been watching is still occupied, but ANOTHER clutch of eggs has hatched in an unknown location, probably a week or so ago.  First we had four little goslings, but now (gulp) there are three.  And we love watching them!

I was weeding by the pond this weekend and the adult geese brought the babies, bumbling, over the bank.  I sat quietly and watched as they fed all around me. 

Actually, it's quite wonderful to just sit outside with a camera.  I did the same thing in Indiana and there's so much to be seen.  This weekend, the weather was mild, and I worked quietly as the goz padded around.  Small brown birds skimmed the water for gnats and mosquitoes.

A pair of ducks preened and swam in lazy circles.

A slug, disturbed by the sudden loss of weed cover, headed for darker pastures.

A black rat snake popped his head up in the ivy to watch my progress.

It was so peaceful.  The weather has been so delightfully cool around here, mostly in the 60s and lower 70s, so it's been the perfect time to get outside and work in the yard.

Everything is fully green now...

...and maybe the long, hot summer won't feel quite as long, since spring has been so good to us this year.

Have a great week! 

cat lap fever

BABIES!

The house finch eggs hatched last week and the babies have been growing steadily.  They'll be on the nest for another 2 weeks.  Hard to believe that they'll be ready to fly away soon!

A goose is nesting down by the pond.

She rarely leaves the nest and when she does, stays close.

I don't hear any peeps yet.  The eggs are still nestled in piles of goose down.

We do have some "hatching out" this week.  The peonies have blossomed!

I think the centers look like sea anemones.

I've been spending a lot of time in the yard lately.  It's so green!

Sometimes I find an intrepid explorer in the hellebores.

Sometimes I find other things, too.  I have to be careful when weeding our stone walls.  I've found black widows and snakes here.  I can't forget my nemesis, the fire ant, either!  Even if you don't see a nest, you have almost invisible free-ranging scouts, very aggressive. 

This weekend I nearly grabbed a juvenile snake that I'm fairly certain was venomous.  His head was triangular, not like the gentle rounded slopes of the garter snake.  He seemed more aggressive, and I didn't lean in to get a look at his pupils.  Later, I was crawling through some bushes and shook this out of my hair later:

It's just another reason that here in the South, I prefer to do my gardening when Todd is home...just in case!

Inside, the cats have been doing the usual...

...and while I don't have a spare second for crafting right now, I did highly enjoy opening this package of cheerfully-colored fabric for a future scrap quilt:

I especially love the yellows.  I have all sorts of ideas for these bright fabrics I've been finding lately, but regretfully I folded them away for another day. 

Our big spring clean is nearly completed!  Only another week of work, and then we'll be able to slow down and move into 'maintenance mode.'  I look forward to long walks, board games by the pond, and cozy evenings knitting, with a cat on my lap, of course. 

Have a great week!

fat stacks

Thank goodness for a long, cool spring, but soon it will be warm enough on a regular basis for skirts!  I'm definitely casual and not fussy, and my absolute favorite thing to wear in the summer is knee-length blousy cotton skirts with t-shirts and sandals.  So comfortable.  I've picked up a ton at thrift stores, since these were briefly in fashion several years ago and made a big showing at Target, but I'm excited to start making my own.  I can just buy 2 1/4 - 2 1/2 yards of any fabric that catches my fancy and off I go!  I just found two recently that felt very spring-y and fun.  One is dark navy with carrots and the other is light grey with blocky fireflies.

I've been buying a lot of fabric lately.  I'm absolutely in love with light, cheerful prints and have been buying stacks of fat quarters (quarter of a yard) almost every week!

These are for scrap quilting and oh, I can't wait to make another one.  My scrap boxes have been dramatically enhanced.

I've been buying other cuts of fabric, too, when I see something potentially useful go on sale.  Something I have very little of, but want to start building up, is a stock of "background" fabrics - fabrics on a light background with a neutral or lightly-colored print.

I don't have time to quilt right now, but hopefully soon I will start on another...or at least finish one of the THREE I'm currently in the middle of!

Meanwhile, nice spring days here.

Our clematis vines are in full bloom...

...although they aren't as dramatic as the ones at the local botanical garden!

I love to see their shade garden beds.  It's such a great lesson in non-flower placement, paying attention to leaf shape and color.

Love seeing little seed pots around, too.  I can't WAIT to start growing things again!

The cats are loving the warmer temperatures too.  Sitting in a sunbeam...

...and waking up from one of those 15-hour naps!

A 15-hour nap sounds pretty good right now.  Have a great week!

ren-egg-ade

With the exception of two wiltingly warm weeks, this spring has felt much more like an Indiana spring than one in South Carolina.  It was 38 degrees when we woke up yesterday, and today's high is 58.  I love it!  Lots of blue skies...and hot air balloons over our house!...

...and other signs.  Ants crawling on my peony buds means that they'll be opening soon!

We have house finches nesting in one of our hanging ferns!

They've tried to nest here for years, but I've put balled-up pieces of aluminum foil in the ferns to keep them out.  It's not an ideal place to nest.  They're constantly disturbed as we go in and out of the front door, and the fern also has to be watered regularly.  But I was lax this year about my deterrents, and eggs were laid.  So now we're all going to have to just roll with it!  The female has another week to sit on the eggs, and then the babies will be on the nest 11 - 19 days after hatching.  BABIES!!  And speaking of babies, we should have goslings running around in about 3 weeks.  I can't wait! 

I saw my first anole of the season last week.

Every day, the tentative leafing out of the surrounding trees becomes more pronounced, and all of the azalea bushes are ablaze right now.  I never realize how tired I am of dull brown, dead branches until I see these tender green shoots!

We finished another home improvement project.  Todd's dad came down from North Carolina to repair our deck...

...and I spent several days staining it (screen door webbing causes the photo distortion here).

The cats are incredibly interested in all of the exciting outdoor changes!

Meanwhile, I finished a project I've been slowly picking away at for a couple of months.  My Adelaide sweater! 

I learned a really valuable lesson here.  I measured every few inches as I knitted up from the bottom, but I kept getting gauge so stopping measuring.  My knitting got looser and looser, and by the waist I discovered that I had 3" of extra fabric.  Here is where I should've frogged the sweater down to the bottom band and started over with smaller needles, but I didn't.  "What's three extra inches?" I thought.  Well, the looser knitting made the sweater a little longer than I prefer, but that's not the main issue.  The arms are fine, and I always knit tightly in colorwork sections, so that area is fine too.  But from bottom band to colorwork band, that extra three inches means that a sweater that's supposed to fit snugly against the skin now bags.  It's just too big.  The good news is that I recently took a "sweater surgery" class on Craftsy.com.  I can literally cut this sweater in half, unravel the excess length fabric, and graft it back together.  I can also cut excess fabric out of each side, although I'm a little unsure of that process.  I'm putting the sweater aside until next winter, and then I will fearlessly chop into it!  Meanwhile, I'm ready to start another one!  I originally knitted Ysolda Teague's Pumpkin Ale for my sister-in-law a few years ago (modeled on a friend at the gym):

I've decided to knit one for myself in maybe a deep red or mustard color.  I also want to re-embroider this German language shelf liner that I made a few years ago: 

The work is sloppy and uneven.  I loved the idea and the expression ("There is no more lovely, friendly, and charming relationship, communion, or company, than a good marriage.") and was in a hurry to get started.  I think I will use plain white cotton fabric and navy thread, but perhaps a different font.  So lots of fun projects in the works! 

Have a great week!