WOW! Can't believe it's been since February since I have posted. I quess things have been pretty dull around here.  Well, here's a little something to brighten your day.

For 4th of July someone took these poor innocent white orchids and dyed them blue. Yes, they are lurid! There are not as many now as there was before, so someone is buying them.

The last couple days we have had a little snow, a few inches at a time. Total about 3". This morning the sky was blue and the snow was still on the trees and bushes. Muy Bonito. Here are a few snaps we took. LOTS of birds in the backyard.

There is a thin layer of ice on the lake, and of course the water is way up in the backyard from all the rain we have been having. Makes for pretty in the snow.

The Centennial Trail, Most of these tracks were made yesterday, some by Sadie and I when we took our afternoon walk.

Sadie posing for me. What a pretty snow dog.

I threw some snow balls so she could show off her agility. Not bad for an old girl.

She enjoyed trying to catch the snow balls. If she caught one or not she went ahead and ate a little snow.

Jim and I decided to adopt our foster dog, Sadie. She has been with us for a year, she's 12 1/2 yo. She likes it here and we have gotten attached to her too. She had a not so good life before she came to us and doesn't need to go through the new home process again. So as a welcome to our family gift I made her a place mat for her food and water dishes. I used left over fabrics from the aprons I had made for Jodi and I for dog walking at the shelter. It is approx 16x22, has a thin layer of batting inside to help soak up the water from her chin, (she is a very sloppy drinker!).

Here is our Miss Sadie. She sleeps with her paw over her snout quite often. Very cute. Another person has shown interest in her. Someone who has a real love for Goldens.

A couple nights ago my groomer (a neighbor) called and said there was a stray dog accross the lake at the boat launch. He was just lying in the snow. Jim and I rushed over there and met her and her husband. The dog, an Anatolian Shepard, very tall, very skinny, very friendly, very hungry. So Jim and I loaded him up in the back of the Vdub, brought him back to the ranch. I took him and Sadie for a short walk to go pee, came back and let him in the house, he hesitated like he hasn't had a lot of house time. He gave Sadie a good going over with his nose then they pretty mush ignored each other. We put him in the sun room for the night. It was pretty cold but he is a big outdoor type dog. Unfortunately every time one of us would go out to check on him he would wake up and start barking. None of us got a lot of sleep that night. Monday I took him into the shelter. I will try to keep up with what happens to him and let you know.

Here are two sets of place mats I made for my Mother for Christmas. One set is made from 4 different batik fabrics, the other four are just simple cottons. I like the batik ones best. Guessing which ones she will like is a crap shoot. Both coordinate well with her dishes, I used her sugar bowl for my sample.

I have no idea why this picture came out sideways, I didn't take it like that, and I couldn't figure out how to rotate it to make it correct.

I also made a bag for my Mother for Christmas. It's for carrying her library books to and from the library. The fabric is like a light weight canvas (duck) fabric. The fabric was white and I dyed it a pretty teal and added a brown woven strap. I found a Celtic knot design on-line, traced it and drew it on with a fabric paint pen. The center circle is a batik, I hope it isn't too New Agey for her. The bag is 13" x 11" x 6". ( I don't know way this paragraph is blue and underlined, it was not intentional. I have sooo much trouble every time I blog. The whole thing seems to have a mind of it's own, and it just pulls my along for the ride.)

Quail !
We have had a sweet covey of about a dozen quail scurrying around the yard for the past week or so. It is so cute to see them running from one place to another as if they are on a very important mission.

During my recent trip to see Janice, David and Rosie, I enlisted Janice in one of my "Lucy" ideas. I know she likes abstract impressionist paintings, soooooo, I thought wouldn't it be fun to have her do her take on a Jackson Pollock painting on a piece of fabric and I would make a tote bag out of it for her. I had some duck cloth fabric (light weight canvas) someone had given me almost 20 years ago. I really like how both her painting and the tote bag came out. The tote is over sized so she can use it to carry her painting/drawing supplies to school or wherever. Click on the photo to see the painting up close.

Spuds!

Here is our Potato harvest for this year. Two reds, two whites and two different fingerlings. I bought two packages of fingerlings a couple of years ago, each package contained about 6-7 tubers. I plant the unusable, too small, soft, stating to grow, tubers each year. This year we harvested a very big crop. Yum!


Jack-o-Lanterns

Jim and I did carved pumpkins this year. can you guess whose is whose?