Deer-ly beloved...

Rain at last!  After a week of stifling 90 degree temps plus high humidity, the recent rain has been so refreshing.  I'm not the only one to think so, either!  This spotted leopard slug (Limax maximus, or literally, the 'biggest slug') was out feasting early one morning.

Slugs are pests, but I like them.  "The homing instinct is strongly developed in this species, which, after its nocturnal rambles or foraging expeditions, usually returns to the particular crevice or chink in which it has established itself." (Wikipedia).  Just like me!  :)  

I caught sight of a mother deer and her two fawns after supper recently.  The babies were so young that they were still spotted, but they were still able to streak across the yard like two tiny bullets!

Fawns tend to keep their spots until they're about 3 months old.  Such sweet faces for the future devourers of our hostas!  

Lots of southern toads out too...so tiny.  This one is perched on half of an acorn, to give you an idea of size!

The heat and humidity after a rain always brings out the mushrooms.  I love to see them pushing through the mulch.

More flowers are blooming too.  The lantana bush is about four feet high.  It will eventually reach eight!

Daisies are opening up...

...and our front garden is mysteriously full of calla lilies.

This kind of weather brings a lot of work, too.  All helleborus flower stalks must be trimmed down, and their ground-level leaves snipped.  We have thousands of them now.  A SEA of stalks.

Bosewichte loves to help.

Borga is all smiles, too, once she gets outside.

It's not so bad, trimming all those helleborus.  I get to see all sorts of interesting creatures, like this fancifully-named Cloudless Sulpher caterpillar. Its Latin name is Phoebis sennae, so named for Apollo's sister Phoebe, the goddess of brightness and radiance.  I think the name fits, don't you?  

[If you are spider-sensitive, skip the next two pictures!]

I also see quite a variety of spiders.  This nearly translucent crab spider perches on a flower stalk and uses those long front legs to grasp its prey.

This tiny female wolf spider carries her egg sac with her wherever she goes. There are around 100 eggs in that little sac!

Away from the yard, I've been plugging away at my latest quilt.  I hope to have some pictures soon. Have a great week!

Disembodied heads and rainbows, instead

Part of becoming ultra-organized and taking time to appreciate the little things includes making a bigger deal out of heretofore-ignored holidays.  So when St. Patrick's Day came around, I decided to go all out.

First, the cookies.  A simple batch of chocolate and vanilla, but you divide up the vanilla batch and color it.  Rainbow order, of course!

You then roll each color into a log, Play-Doh-style, and smash them together.  In hindsight, I wish I would've rolled each color out flat so the distribution would've been more even...more like a rainbow and less like a peacock feather or a creepy rainbow eyeball.

Encase the log in chocolate...

Refrigerate, then slice and bake.

See the creepy eyeball?  Oh, well.  The chocolate isn't very sweet, and the vanilla tasted almost like frosting.  Delicious!  Here's the recipe if you want to try it yourself.  

Moving on to decorations...I found this 4-leaf clover banner at a thrift store for a quarter.

Green placemats and napkins...green-tinted flowers (helleborus from the yard)...a green box to set the mini vase in...

...and green ribbons for the chairs.

We felt very festive eating our rainbow cookies here!  Time-wise, the cookies were made over 2 days. The slice-and-baking day was very quick.  The "greening" of the dining room was done amid shifting batches of cookies in and out of the oven, so the whole thing was done in 30 minutes.  Not a huge time investment for a lot of enjoyment!

Speaking of time investment, though, I'm ready to put a fork in Fancy Baking Day.  My March effort was a total bomb.  I tried to make a strawberry fraizier - a lemon chiffon layer cake with homemade almond paste, homemade pastry cream, and homemade whipped cream.  I took a morning off work to make it and it ended up taking over 4 hours in total, not counting the clean-up after (which was considerable).  My pastry cream was runny, I didn't have enough almond paste, and the thought of trying to stack and decorate it in the fancy way the example showed was too overwhelming at the end.  I did it my own sad, slanting way, with strawberries sliding in the wet pastry cream and big empty patches from the scarcity of whipped cream.

At least the taste was amazing.  But...NEVER AGAIN.

I've very slowly been working on a new quilt, but my heart hasn't been in it.  I'm not crazy about the scrap fabrics (by the way, those corner stars have been fixed and now align with the rest of the quilt), and my lack of enthusiasm affected my work, with sloppy joins and wonky seams.

I guess I'll go ahead and sew it together.  Maybe I'll be more inspired.

Here is the quilt on day 2.  I'd thought it would be fine on the floor overnight, but I underestimated the vigor of our cats!

Speaking of cats and quilts...they might love them more than I do.

We're back to the season of beautiful sunsets...

But alas, the warm and intermittently very cold days have decimated our azaleas.  They should be going full-bore until late April, but the blooms are all spent now.  I got one poor-quality picture of the two under our living room window last week...

...and have eked one last limp bouquet out of one of the front bushes.

The real disappointment is that my very favorite double-ruffled azaleas didn't even get a chance to open up before the frost got them.  No more until next year...sob!

I've got a few last camellia blossoms around, their blooms frequently toppling over and rolling around on the floor like disembodied heads.  I'm not ready to rely on dyed carnations from the grocery store yet...I went out and cut tons of helleborus.

Helleborus last FOREVER in vases - weeks! - but I just don't like them much.  Maybe the brevity of the other bouquets make them a little more special?  Whatever the reason, I'm just glad that I've got SOMETHING to enjoy!  And there's always next year!

At least Todd is in a good mood, despite our poor flower season.  ;)

Have a great week!

February Pinks

For two glorious weeks in February, my favorite camellia blooms.  There's no tag on the trunk, unlike some of the others, and the landscaping plans don't mention specific plant variations.  I've looked at websites and gone on forums, and I think the variety might be Spring Sonnet.  An appropriate name!  During their brief window, I pick bunches every day.

Little bouquets...

Big bouquets.

They remind me of peonies and stay fresh in water for several days.

The helleborus are going strong...

The Snowflakes in Summer are coming up...

...and the rest of the camellias, more long-blossoming than my favorite, are still going strong.

Since it's been so warm, we decided to go to the Botanical Garden this weekend.  I'm glad we did...many of the magnolias are in bloom and look amazing!

Their daffodils are up, too.

And lots of things just on the verge!

The birds are out...

Some insects, too...

...and lots of lazy kittens in the sun.

We had a simple Valentine's Day, with small-batch chocolate cookies and board games.

Now we're opening windows, eating in the sun room, and just enjoying the weather and spring display!  The frogs have started singing in the evening.  Not the spring peepers just yet, but they're due in a couple of weeks.  It's one of my favorite sings of spring...listening for the Eastern Towhee song and the spring peepers.  Their song is pretty distinctive!

Have a great week!