Prepping for upcoming gigs and a peek into my garden

 

It’s  prep time for me; the New England Quilt Seminar is coming up Sept 21 – 28 (that includes travel days), Houston follows on its heels 6 days later with my son’s wedding in Tucson just 5 days after that. So I have massive prep to do. That does not make for a sexy blog post.

This pile is soon to be joined by a stack of blue squares and batting to form 250 practice sandwiches. I will then add 5 plastic “pins” in each sandwich, bundle them up and ship along with other bulky supplies for Houston. I will begin filling my shipping boxes for both Houston and New England after the Holiday weekend.

I taught a faaaabulous group of 17 enthusiastic brand new free motion quilters at Meissner Main last weekend. It was a blast!

Truly, some classes are gifts, with spectacular students, ready and willing to learn. It was so much fun and I am confident they will go out and conquer free motion quilting!

I always learn when I teach. Funny story – I said that if you have applique with a bunch of curves, you don’t want to put curves to curves, you want something linear or grid-y to juxtapose against all that curve. Ah, but one student disagreed and brought in her gorgeous wool applique in the next day that she had stippled around. And, it was fabulous! Her stipple was tight and that caused the applique to raise up dimensionally, which is exactly what you want. Hey, what do I know? I truly love it when a student challenges or corrects me.

I am also prepping for a 2-hour mini intro to free motion class this Sat to help celebrate Meissner’s 95th (!!) Anniversary.

Not to mention all the paperwork for upcoming gigs in 2026 and beyond, like Empty Spools 2027!! And I’m finishing up my Bethanne Nemesh class which was absolutely stellar. Also, my Son, DIL and grands are coming this weekend for the Holiday, yippeeee! So it’s been busy around here, but not a lot of great photos to go with it.

Soooo, I thought I’d share some photos of my yard, just for grins:

It always surprises me how less pretty landscape photos are than the real thing. I just love this view. What you can’t see is the mass of butterflies, lizards, bees and hummingbirds all day long. And in the evening, all the little lizard guys come out for Happy Hour. I just love that.

I have 8 Crepe Myrtles in my yard. My youngest son was born in Houston in early June and the road into the hospital was lined with Crepes, so they always remind me of him.

I love my granite outcroppings! We live in Granite Bay and our area is basically built on granite, with a veneer of topsoil. The moss on these guys will bloom as soon as the rains start in the fall.

Happy little blooming Kangaroo Paws.

This Thunderhead Pine is a big feature in the front yard. It’s actually the second one there. The first was even taller than this and died in 6 days when VOLES ate its roots. Grrrrr. These are very expensive and grow sloooooowly. We have controlled the voles.

A few random views:

Funny story about this guy. He was in my house and wasn’t doing well at all. There was just not enough light for him. So I was going to toss him, but it was a heavy pot and I stopped on the front porch to rest. I just didn’t get around to moving him and he began to thrive out there. He’s been out there something like 15 years! We do get frost, but he’s protected. I am shocked that he is thriving outside.

This guy started out as a 1 gallon pot and now he’s 3 1/2 feet across!

Geraniums are temperature gauges. If it gets above 90, they stop blooming immediately and will resume just as quickly when the temps drop. I know they are so common, but I love how the margins of the leaves are a bit lighter than the rest of the leaf.

They now have Impatiens that thrive in full sun!

The Smoke Tree is really smoking this year.

My pots are really thriving this year in the moderate temps.

I enjoy juxtaposing different textures and colors; makes for a beautiful vignette.

I hope you enjoyed a tour of my yard and garden. I might have something more tangible to write about next week! I’ll be linking up:
Nina-Marie’s Off the Wall Friday