Design Wall Monday: So many projects and the garden

 I have so many projects going at once, I couldn't just pick one for my design wall Monday post. This one is my Linda Hibert Paper piecing quilt from last year. I really enjoy doing these and I'm trying to get this one done for the fair again this year. I'm not sure if I am going to finish or not. I also made a quilt for my husband who is retiring from the Military. I can't show that one yet, because he hasn't seen it yet.





This quilt is a colorful one my mom started and she gave it to me to finish. It seems like a pretty easy pattern. Lots of halfsquare triangles. It's just getting to it that is the problem. With my husband retiring we have been very busy getting everything ready for all of the company. We had a late winter here in Colorado. We had snow and cold nights well into May. We have finally gotten our garden planted. I am also working on two quilts from a mystery quilt I did a few years ago. Is it still a mystery if you know what it's going to look like?

The Known Mysteries.

Our Strawberries

So we finally got to work on our garden. I love the results of a garden. I love to can and I love all of the fresh food that comes from it. I hate weeding, but I know that will come and I am hoping I can keep up on it this year.   My sweet husband Mike got out on the first morning we weren't having crazy strong wind and got the garden tilled for me. It was much easier to plant everything with him doing that. This year we planted corn, beans, carrots, tomatoes, peppers, zucchini and herbs. We don't have a very big garden, so we try to squeeze in as much as we can.

 I absolutely love basil. It is my favorite herb. The one problem I have though is picking it and keeping it from seeding. This year I plan to keep up on that too.

 My tomatoes look so sad. We bought them a few days before we could plant them. We had planned to plant them the same day we bought them, but the wind picked up and it was so strong we were picking up branches from the back yard, in the front yard. Once we got them planted and watered they looked much happier.

 I love these little signs. (I like the ceramic ones better, but we couldn't find the right ones.) Every year before this I have just used Popsicle sticks. They worked but the didn't look that nice. The bright pink string behind it is to tell me where the rows are until everything pops up.

 Someone wanted some attention while I was sitting on the ground taking pictures. Lucy is definitely a sweetheart.

 I had to get in some pictures of my chickens. This one is Chickadee. My daughter thinks it's funny our biggest chicken is named after such a small bird. I love watching the chickens. They can be so funny some times.

 Here is sunshine. She is our quick one. When ever it is time for them to go back in the run, to catch the rest of the chickens all you have to do is reach for them and they crouch down and you can scoop them up. Not so with Sunshine. She runs and you have to chase her around the yard. At least the yard is not that big.

 And Shimano. I think she is at the top of the pecking order, but in general they are all pretty good to each other.

 Henrietta is my other chicken, but a little camera shy. She was sitting on this egg when I tried to get a picture, but she moved. (Not her egg, by the way.)

 See these nice egg boxes? I don't think the chickens do. They never lay in there and every time I try to get them, they just move everything out of there and lay where they want.

 We planted a bunch of flowers in the front yard. This area hardly gets any sun and we have struggled to get anything to grow there. Hopefully these flowers will do well.

 We have also discovered the only thing we can plant in this area is petunias. Every thing else gets eaten by the wild rabbits we have in our neighborhood.

 So since we can't have pansies in the ground we put them up in a pot. Maybe this year I won't loose them all to the hungry little animals.

 Before we got the pansy pot, we got this fuchsia. It is big and beautiful, but when we hung it on our pole, the pole almost touched the ground. We ended up hanging it from our tree. I was concerned about it falling out if we had a wind storm, but the crazy winds we had after we hung it up proved that the thing is not going any where.

 Mike looks very happy that he is about to retire. Yes, he is old enough to retire.

He also decided to weed the jungle that is our back flower garden. The weeds really take control back there, but once he was done it looked fabulous.