Home again, home again...

Well hey, I'm back. My plans for Spring got upended when a weeklong visit with my parents turned into much, much longer. They're getting so old, and fragile, and moving them out of their house at this point would cause more confusion than good...so we kids motor on, providing a level of support that's acceptable to them, and hoping and praying for their health and safety.

I spent a great deal of time in the garden, laying down mulch and rescuing Dad's roses from Canada thistle, my new nemesis.  It wasn't until after I'd spent an entire day yanking 597 of them out of one bed (yes, I counted) that I read that doing so could potentially split the root (which can burrow 15 to 20 FEET), resulting in two new shoots, and twice the headache. Sure enough, within just a few days those suckers started poking back up through my fresh mulch, and I spend the next weeks cutting them off and applying Roundup in an effort to stem the tide.

On the upside, a few days of unseasonable warmth nudged the roses into action. They get about a month of unbridled bloom before the Japanese beetles descend, so I was happy to get some good pictures.

That last one is an old fashioned, on a bush that once belonged to my great-grandmother. It's close to a hundred years old and still going strong. My grandmother gave it to my dad when my parents bought their  house in 1952. That gift turned into a lifelong obsession, a seat on the district Board of the American Rose Society, and ~300 rose bushes (currently -- at some point we had more than 600). One look at his yard and you can tell where my fabric hoarding gene comes from.

And hooray for hand sewing projects! I thankfully took my hexie project with me to work on. It finished at 35.5" x 7.25" -- odd dimensions, I know, but it's made to hang in a particular spot and should fit perfectly. It's a little wonky along the edges (I didn't cut the hexie halves as carefully as I should have), but that will get covered up with binding anyway. I also could have been more precise when I cut my fabric pieces now that I see them showing through so clearly. There were some other challenges, and I have yet to speculate about quilting it -- for now, I'm just happy that it's done.

Not bad for a first effort, and I don't think it's my last. Hexies are fun!