Tucson's magical golden bloom

When Tucson's palo verde and mesquite trees burst into bright yellow bloom in the spring, they are every bit as spectacular as the cherry blossoms and fall foliage in other parts of the country.

An endless stream of golden yellow flows along the roads. Stopping at a red light gives you time to soak it in.

I couldn't photograph the most spectacular golden panoramas because I was driving.

My neighborhood is full of the trees, including this magnificent palo verde (which means "green stick")  next door.

It glows in the late afternoon light.

A few days ago a big limb cracked off during high winds, but it didn't do any damage as far as I could tell.

My ocotillo's red blooms, which also come out in the spring, really stand out against the yellow flowers.

And the yellow pops against our brilliant blue skies. Whoever thinks the desert is brown has never been to the Sonoran Desert in the spring!

It's a magical time of year here.

Have a colorful day

 

Visiting Juniper

 

I got back last night from a wonderful visit in Spokane with little Juniper, who's 15 months old and full of energy sometimes and other times is very calm.

They don't watch TV, so she's developed a real interest in books and entertaining herself, which makes me happy. All I have to say is, "Let's read a book" and she'll trundle over to her bookshelves and make a selection. She's more interested in turning the pages and pointing to the mice, fish, dogs, etc., than in having me read the entire story. I can't believe how many words she knows and how she seems to understand everything we say to her!

Another favorite activity is going to the playground, especially if there are other kids to play with. The older girls love playing with her.

She also "helps" organize and disorganize the shoe rack and kitchen items.

This family portrait speaks volumes -- Jade on the floor in his scrubs ready to head off to work while Julia tries to wash dishes as Juniper clings to her legs. I get exhausted just thinking about being a young parent.

I spent a lot of time with Charlie the cat while Juniper and Julia napped. And we saw a glorious full moon through their front-yard tree.

The food was fabulous! One morning we had pancakes with the prickly pear cactus syrup that I brought from Tucson. Julia has my sweet tooth, so she made chocolate chip cookies. Their family is vegan and Juniper is a really healthy eater, with some of her favorites being black beans, hummus, avocado, broccoli and fruit. It's inspired me to eat healthier.

My last morning I had breakfast at a diner in a fancy Great Northern railroad car.

Fried green tomatoes and French toast!

Have a colorful day

15 years of blogging!

My first post

Today marks 15 years of blogging! 

I've done 1,458 posts, 

about two a week.

Total views: 705,735

(And this is no April Fool's joke!)

I've posted about quilts, gardens, hiking, sunsets, friends, family and food. You've been with me through the highs (my kids getting married and my becoming a grandmother), the lows (my divorce), lots of new quilting projects, and the adventures (moving to Tucson by myself during Covid). You've buoyed me with your comments and your friendship. For this 15-year milestone, I'm wandering back through the memories. Come along!

Here's the link to my first two posts on April Fool's Day 2010 (picture above): https://sherriequilt.blogspot.com/2010/04/under-construction.html

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Most popular post

12,900 views!

My most popular post, which garnered about 12,900 views, is from Nov. 9, 2012: https://sherriequilt.blogspot.com/2012/11/an-easier-way.html

I wrote about how using a sticky solvable stabilizer to make my airy scarves is easier than the non-sticky Sulky Solvy. Who knew it would be such a hit? Here are some of my scarves, which I was selling back then.

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Most joyful post:

Baby Juniper

My happiest post was about meeting my first grandchild, little Juniper, who lives in Spokane. That was in January 2024. So tiny and sweet, and now she's a toddler happily exploring her new world.

Juniper at 14 months.

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Saddest post

Not so happy was the Jan. 19, 2019 post about the end of my 36-year marriage. But that ultimately led to me being able to move to Tucson, where I've wanted to live for decades and where I have made many new friends and find peace and joy hiking in the desert, so all is well now. 

Blogging helped me get through that first awful year. I started collecting quotes that gave me strength, and I still refer back to them often. 

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Both kids

got married!

My son, Keith, married Rachel on July 12, 2014.

My daughter, Julia, married Jade on Sept. 23, 2023.

And now they are three.

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The groups

I had so many groups in the 12 years I lived in Gig Harbor, WA, and you got to read all about the Feet & Forks, STITCH, the Yoga Girls, book club, Woolies, Sew Day, quilt guild, Comfort Quilts, and Harbor WildWatch. I hope I haven't forgotten any. In Tucson I have the Shady Ladies hikers and Book (eating) Club.

We supported each other through deaths, births, divorces, marriages, graduations, cancer, surgeries, diets, and the general aches and pains of getting older. But mostly we laughed!

The Feet & Forks walked twice a month, rain or shine, and then went out for lunch. If sweet potato fries were on the menu, we got them! And now we meet up once a year in the Southwest to keep walking, eating and exploring new places. 

Sew Day was five of us who met every month in each others homes to sew and have a fabulous breakfast and lunch. Here we are on my back deck in 2019, above, and in my sewing room in 2011, below. We looked so young 14 years ago!

One day we experimented with discharging the color from black fabric, below.

The Yoga Girls gathered at a party at my house in September 2018. We met through yoga classes at the Y and then started having coffee afterward several times a week and big parties once or twice a year that included our husbands. 

STITCH, the art quilt group that I started, was so inspirational. Most summers we took the ferry (above) to Andrea's house on Anderson Island to dye fabric or do other messy projects on her deck. Twice we had retreats at Anne's home on Whidbey Island where we spread throughout her house and sewed and laughed for a few days. 

The Comfort Quilters makes quilts for cancer patients, and it was one of the first sewing groups I joined when I moved to Gig Harbor in 2008. I've become fast friends with Carol, the founder. 

Harbor WildWatch, which I volunteered for, educates the public about the intertidal life of the Puget Sound. sea-stars-giant-nudis-and-harbor-lights.html. It was all new to me (I didn't know that live sand dollars were purplish black) because I'd never lived on the water before, except for the Rock River in Illinois.

We introduced beach walkers to the little creatures that were exposed when the tide goes out, like the barnacles and shellfish clinging to rocks and the many kinds of sea stars.

The Woolies meets at Pam's house monthly to work on wool appliqué, but one day Pam showed us how to dye wool with Kool-Aid, with luscious results. (Imagine what it does to your intestines if you drink it.) Check out the post for directions: dyeing-wool-with-kool-aid.html

I documented lots of good times with my Gig Harbor book club, above at a Christmas party, and my Tucson book club, wearing fancy hats for a Kentucky Derby party. The Gig Harbor group actually focused on the books, but in Tucson our meetings are a big potluck where we catch up with our personal lives and might discuss the book for 15 minutes LOL!

The Shady Ladies! I met Beth and Barb on a Meetup.com full moon hike in the Tucson Mountains soon after I moved to Tucson knowing not a single soul here. We were all new and single and they became my first Tucson friends, and we're still hiking together almost five years later. That's us on the Linda Vista Trail, below, half a mile from my house. Then Beth started the "book" club and that's how I made more friends.

I could go on and on with posts about the groups, but then I'd have to keep sorting through thousands of photos! 

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Flowers and Sunsets

The flowers were most spectacular in Washington, but Tucson sunsets are the best. I must've done hundreds of posts with flowers (and now cacti) and sunsets.

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Quilts and other art

This started as a quilting blog, so I guess I'd better include some quilting posts! Here are a few:

The post about my trunk show and talk: thanks-gig-harbor-quilters.html

I was a columnist for the Peninsula Gateway, and one column was about quilting: fat-quarters-stashes-and-stitches.html

I blogged about my quilting with painted sheer silk phase in 2010 ...

... and my crazy quilt phase as well as many more phases but I won't go into all of them.

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Getting philosophical

Sometimes my posts were philosophical, like this one: in-depth-of-winter.html

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The blog book

Every year I get my posts published in a book, because I think it's always good to have hard copies of writing and photos that you want to keep. Here's my 2024 book, with my favorite green on the cover.

The publisher, intorealpages.com filled an opening spread with a selection of the year's photos. And that's a wrap! Thanks again to all of you who follow me or just pop in occasionally. I love getting your comments! If you can't leave a comment on the blog you can email me at sherriequilt@yahoo.com. I hope to keep blogging about all things colorful for another 15 years!

Have a colorful day