Happy Day to all the Moms out there!  I should have a nice, sweet, warm-fuzzy-feeling type of photo for today, but instead I’ll post the woodchuck that we spotted up in a tree behind our house.

Today Tony & Lynn, and Rob will be coming over for dinner.  My third puppy, Dave, lives too far away (Virginia) to make it home for Mother’s Day, so we will miss him.  :>(  Hopefully we will get to see him this summer or fall.  Whether you’re a mom or not, enjoy the blessings of this beautiful day (and try to stay out of trees — that definitely doesn’t look comfortable).  Spring days go by too quickly, so I’m going to try and sneak in a little sewing this afternoon.

Sue

Well, I have my fabric pretty well lined up for Judy Laquidara’s Quilt for an Hour project, which starts May 19th.  You can view her blog via the link to Patchworktimes to the right.  I am going with a light yellow and deeper gold for the background fabrics.  I bought these two fabrics a couple of weeks ago at half price, just because I loved them.  Well, and because of the afore-mentioned half price!  (All the colors are off a little in the photo, washed out by the flash.)  My twelve other fabrics I’m pulling from stash (YEA!!!), and will be an assortment of browns, rusts, greens.  The rosy fabric towards the right has to go!!!

I finished June’s quilt, and I have been working on a wedding gift quilt — an Irish Chain in pale and rich turquoises, with some yummy chocolate brown.  Here is a photo of the blocks laid out together, but not sewn together.  And there will be borders yet to come.

Now for the birds.  Nephew Bill can’t understand what all this quilt stuff is doing in a site about the birds, so don’t tell him this is really a quilt site.  These pesky birds just keep sneaking in!  During this migratory time, I’m spending way too much looking out the windowws, but I am occasionally rewarded.  Below is what I think is a Catbird.  He’s not as small as the warblers, and spends his time looking for food on the ground.  We have an especially good view of the birds that would normally be in the tall grass/weeds behind us.  That is, until all the plant material grows back from the controlled burn of a week or two ago.

Today we watched this robin work and work at picking up a dried-up crab apple left over from last year.  He would pick it up by the stem, flip it around, and pick it up again.  He finally did eat it, but I think he had to get the stem off first.

While we were getting ready for dinner, a pair of Cedar Wax Wings decided to visit the neighbor’s crab tree.  They are competing with the robins for these leftovers from last year.  And, as we all know, sometimes leftovers are better the second or third time around!

Sue

Below is my finished chili pepper project.  It’s a cute, cute bag by Perkins Drygoods called “Twist and Shout”.  It went together really nicely, and it’s a nice shopping-size bag, and who couldn’t use a bag like that.  It’s quilt as you go, and very fun to do.

I also got  to work on June’s quilt.  It’s a large wall-hanging size or throw size.  I love the jewel tones.  It almost glows.  So time to get back to work so I can have it finished by our DayStitchers’ get-together this afternoon!

What a beautiful day today was.  Wonderful weather:  perfect temperature, slight breeze, mostly sunny.  And the birds were out enjoying it as well.  We spotted what we thought was a woodpecker, but after checking the big book of birds, it looks more like a Yellow-Bellied Sapsucker.  You can see in the photo where he’s already pecked his way through a lot of bark.  The sap from trees like this will not only feed the sapsucker, but warblers and hummingbirds will come and feed off the sap as well.

The little yellow-rumped warblers have been fun to watch, and today we saw another kind of warbler.  He has a rust-colored cap.  It looks like it’s probably a Palm Warbler.  I couldn’t get a very good photo.  They don’t sit still AT ALL!  By the time I find him in the view finder and get focused, he’s gone!  And did I mention they are tiny???  But my best effort today:

Sue

This morning I was catching up on reading some friends’ blogs, and stumbled onto a link to Judy Laquidara’s blog. 

www.patchworktimes.com

She has some interesting topics, including a Sunday Stash Report (you’ve GOT to read this), Quilt for an Hour, and Motivation Fridays.  So when you’re taking a little break today, go visit Judy’s site.  It’s a fun little trip you can make without leaving your chair!

Sue

We’ve had a new neighbor in our backyard the last couple of days.  He’s this little bird that flits, flits, flits — making him hard to identify.  All we could tell at first was it was blue-gray and white with a yellow patch on its head.  Finally, today he sat still long enough for us to identify him.  He’s a Yellow-Rumped Warbler.  Of the yellow-rumped warblers, there are two types:  Audubon and myrtle.  Our guy is a myrtle.  Myrtle is a tiny little bird, 4-5″ long, weighing less than an ounce.  Although they summer in the northern part of Minnesota, I don’t think I have ever seen one before.  I’d like to introduce you to Myrtle:

Usually we spend our time watching the birds out our windows, but the last couple of days have been another story.  Yesterday we woke to the sounds of a helicopter — very close!  Turns out, it was a small one-man helicopter with chemical tanks on each side, buzzing back and forth over our pond (Featherstone Lake) getting rid of some of those pesky mosquitos that are just waiting to hatch and visit us.

Today, we looked out the window, and we saw the association was having a controlled burn done of the wildflowers/weedy area between us and the park land behind us.

The workers did a great job of controlling the fire, but it’s still pretty unsettling to see fire that close to your house.  After today, it will be nice to go back to watching the birds!