reviving a quilt, fucking blue jays and grackles, and winter is done

Sunday morning still cold, in the 40s, wet and overcast but thankfully the wind has finally died down. It's not supposed to warm up until Tuesday.

Jade was in town visiting her parents and us. Some of you may remember that during Jade's Granny Camp visit ten years ago she wanted to make a quilt. She designed it, picked out the colors and fabrics, cut and pinned the pieces together, arranged the squares the way she wanted them while I did all the sewing. It took us all week to finish except for the quilting. The next week I stitched knots on a 6” grid in lieu of quilting. Here's the quilt top and a link to the post showing it being made.

Years later she went off to college but did not take her quilt and one of my daughter's orphans moved into her room with his dog and at some point the knots didn't hold and the back and the batting got torn and it was tossed in a basket for future repair. So that's what we're doing. Friday we washed it because, well, it really stank, smelled so bad she had to roll down the window in her car between her parent's house and ours. Yesterday we ripped out all the stitching on the bias seam tape edging and freed the quilt top from the torn back and batting. Next visit she'll return with new fabric for the back and new batting and we'll put it together again. In the meantime I'm going to see if I can find someone fairly local to do the actual quilting for us instead of knots.

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I had to bring in the bird feeder twice today, once because a blue jay was tossing seed out left and right looking for the few peanuts in the mix (note to self...get some cracked corn and peanuts for the blue jays). I chased it off twice and then finally brought the bird feeder in. The second time there was a flock of grackles mobbing it. Sorry, not feeding grackles even though there has been two or three hanging around for a couple of weeks which I tolerated barely. Now it's empty and the blue jay keeps coming back to double check. I've had a bird feeder for years...YEARS...and never had them come to it until this fall and winter.

Speaking of winter, it's officially over. This is the pecan tree by the barn.

Now that I've cleaned out the cleaver I've turned my attention to the walking onion flower/seed heads. A very rough guess, this 5 gallon bucket full that I have plucked off represents maybe a 6^th of the yard.

And I finally got over to check out the wisteria in full bloom on the fence over at the shop yard.

I even poked around underneath and found some new growth coming up off a branch that rooted itself into the ground. One of my neighbors asked for a cutting a couple of years ago. First I tried to sprout some seeds but they didn't, then I thought I would cut a notch on a branch and get a rooting ball and fill it with peat moss and see if I could get it to root but I never acted on the thought. So I was happy to see this new little rooted start so I can dig it up and cut it loose and give it to them in return for the bottle of tequila they bring me when they go visit family in Mexico.

No clever or tidy end, just done.