Back to sewing

 

I settled into my big cushy armchair yesterday planning to spend many enjoyable hours hand stitching these 20 pockets onto an envelope quilt for Juniper. I'm using this pattern,  "Letters From Home" by Crimson Tate.

I had already pieced and (minimally) quilted the whole thing, with the blocks looking like this:

I could have stopped there, but I wanted to add a pouch to each envelope so she can tuck little notes or other treasures into them, like this:

But within minutes of starting the hand stitching my thread had twisted and knotted several times, then I stabbed my finger. I cut off the knots, rethreaded my needle and started again but the same thing happened. I decided this was not going to be enjoyable, so I machine stitched all the pockets on and it was much more fun.

 

I had a lot of fun choosing fabrics for the outside and inside of the envelopes, trying to pick bright colors Juniper will like. I could probably make a hundred of these quilts with fabric from my stash and still not run out!

I found background fabric that says "Create Your Own Sunshine," which I love. Juniper is my sunshine.

I've been sending her postcards and letters since she was born and my daughter is saving them for when she learns how to read, but in the meantime she looks at the pictures. I hope she'll put them into this quilt when she's older, but for now I envision her tucking her little toy treasures into the pockets.

My daughter sent a picture of her this week playing with the neighbor kids. You know she's having a great wild child summer from her untamed hair, bare feet and elbow bandaid!

Have a colorful day

The monsoon started!

Tucson's summer monsoon has arrived right on schedule. Actually, a day early. 

The "official" monsoon season here is June 15-Sept. 30, but this year the clouds and rain rolled in on June 14. Often, since I moved here six years ago, the rain hasn't started until July.

It makes for some really dramatic sunsets. I took all of these photos this week from my front courtyard. The light is incredible!

We need a spell of very hot days to get it started. I'm talking 100+ degrees. Then, shifting winds and high atmospheric pressure bring moisture from the Gulf of Mexico, swirling up from the southeast instead of the routine weather that comes from the west.

It pelts the desert with hail, roars with thunder and crackles with lightening. What the desert can't soak up turns dry washes and some streets into raging rivers, bringing both relief and flooding and in the last few years tornadoes. It's the favorite time of year for a lot of desert dwellers, and you see kids dancing around in the rain and adults sitting on patios watching the show. I've had so much hail in my yard that it looks like snow and my back yard has looked like a lake.

The first day of this year's monsoon its winds tore down a corner of my shade sail. When I got up the next morning it had torn down two more, so I took the whole thing down for the season. It's too hot to eat at that table anyway in the summer.

Average monsoon rainfall is about six inches, and a good pounding brings the temperature down by about 20 degrees. In the old days, it would rain every afternoon like clockwork with a quick hard downburst, but now it's much more erratic. And the few tornadoes we've had since I moved here were unheard of in the past. Climate change. 

Have a colorful day

Show us your flowers!

 From my daughter in Spokane, eastern WA

I asked my far-flung family to send pictures of flowers this week from their parts of the country for a colorful post, so here they are! I hope you enjoy the little tour.

The first two are from my daughter's yard in Spokane. The house is over 100 years old, and the flowers that came with it are old-fashioned roses and peonies.

______________________________

My daughter-in-law in Madison, WI

Farmers market flowers from my son.

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My sister in Pt. Hadlock, western WA

Wild rose

Washington, with its long hours of spring and summer daylight and wet spring, is lush with flowers. I really miss them since moving here.

Dahlia

Poppies

Poppy

Not sure what this is

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My brother in Solana Beach, CA,

near San Diego

My brother planted three colors of hibiscus ...

... and a desert rose, among other flowers.

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My sister visiting Minneapolis, MN

Lots of shade plants on neighborhood walks ...

... a front yard wildflower garden to attract bees ...

... and irises.

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Dave in Gig Harbor, western WA

Wild irises growing by a spring that his cats like to drink from.

My sister in western Washington just posted some flowers on Facebook under the heading of Celebrating Spring. Spring? I've been sweating out summer for months! Here's next week's Tucson forecast:

Me, in Hell

(June in Tucson, AZ)

Meanwhile, this is the year I finally gave up trying to keep flowers alive in the pot by my front door. It faces straight west into the hellish afternoon sun, and the shape of the courtyard turns it into an oven. So this week I pulled out the third coral fountain (a "hardy" plant that supposedly thrives in our sun) that died in that pot and replanted it with a metal Kokopelli stake and rocks. Take that, Arizona!

I also dressed the front door knob with a sleeve so I won't burn my hands anymore on it when the sun moves to that side of the house. My neighbor told me about them. Everyone who buys a house here should be given one by their real estate agent, along with a car windshield shade.

Have a colorful day

I can see clearly now ...

 

I finally admitted defeat and hired someone to clean my glass shower enclosure. This is how it looks now, above, and before, below. In my defense, I squeegeed (but not enough), and I had a white shower curtain hanging over the glass so I didn't realize how bad it was getting. 

It was really awful. I tried spraying with vinegar and all kinds of non-toxic mixtures, but nothing worked.

So I hired The Handy Family, a wonderful family (whose last name is not Handy), and they got it sparkling in no time! I had them pose behind the glass before they left. They also got my bathroom fixtures clean from hard water buildup and totally transformed my shower floor.

I'm too embarrassed to show you the before picture of the shower floor, but the after picture is below. Again, I scrubbed and rubbed with non-toxic cleaners and the Magic Eraser, but nothing worked. After they finished it was amazing! They used a machine to scrub it clean then recolored and sealed the grout and put four coats of a sealer on the whole floor to make future cleaning a breeze.

Here's what they used on the glass, rubbing it with very fine steel wool. But I won't have to use this if I just squeegee after EVERY shower. 

And this is what I can use to keep the shower clean. They said to spray it on the floor and walls about once a month, walk away while it works, and then just rinse with water. No more scrubbing. If it was in my budget I'd have them clean the whole house!

Thanks, Leana and Steven!

Have a colorful day

The Green Gentians bloomed!

 

The Green Gentians on Mt. Lemmon are blooming! This only happens once in their life, and not until they have existed for decades as a ground-level rosette of leaves. 

Debbie and I went back up yesterday and this time they were opening! Last week when we went up they were still tight buds. Here's that post: stalking-great-green-gentian.html

They can get tall -- and a lot of them were taller than us. We found them on Turkey Run Trail and another trail whose name I forget. I just followed Debbie, who knew where to look.

The flowers are arranged in rings along the stalk, like this. They aren't nearly as dramatic as the Queen of the Night in my last post, but it did feel magical to find them in the forest. I half expected to see little fairies flitting about them!

Here are some more facts about them:

* Their official name is Frasera speciosa, but they are also called the Monument Plant because of how tall their stalk can get.

* The flowers are typically about one to two inches across and characterized by their freckled, four-petaled structure.

* They produce an average of 600 flowers per stalk!

* Each stalk can yield about 66,000 seeds.

* Here's an interesting link from the University of Colorado: green-gentians-live-decades-only-flower-once

There was a lot of other green on the mountain, and it was a cool respite from the temps down in Tucson that hit 103 yesterday. It's about 20 degrees cooler on Mt. Lemmon, where we were at over 8,000 feet elevation.

This is the green view from where we had lunch on the patio at the Iron Door. It's a ski resort in the winter.

After lunch we went on two short walks on some other trails before heading back down to the desert and scuttling into the air conditioning.

Have a colorful day