No, I’m not in Hawaii…

This is my hummingbird feeder!  Each year for mother’s day David buys me a new hibiscus to put just outside our glass kitchen door.  It gets full sun and is therefore the perfect spot to grow a hibiscus.

The first year we had one it was instantly spotted by area hummingbirds and every year since, we’ve put another one out and it draws them back.  If we water it each day it will produce blooms all summer even in the 100+ degree temps.

This morning I was excited to jump into working on my guild patriotic quilt challenge.  It’s not due until Monday evening, so I have loads of time! I have the house to myself (a rarity during the summer) and thought I’d start here and then move on to my scheduled quilt in progress. 

Our challenge is to use 24, 5″ cream squares, 24, 5″ blue squares and 20, 2-1/2″ x 21″ red strips. I organized a swap with our guild, but didn’t actually participate myself.  I didn’t need one more thing on my plate the day before leaving for spring market. Now I’m gathering fabrics to use and I’ve spent a lot of time on my computer drafting ideas…

When I started this morning I had the flower blocks appliqued and started the sewing & unsewing and sewing & unsewing  assembly process!

 

It looks great in my head!  If I could just get it to work out in fabric…

Anyone ever read the book about the Wright Brothers?  I read and reread that book (at least the first three chapters) to my mom while I was in grade school.  Our school library had it and for some reason I was intrigued by it and I remember reading it to my mom out loud.  Anyway, Orville and Wilbur’s mom was a dress-maker.  She made her own patterns.  I see now where the brothers got their inventive minds.  Her motto was “if you get it right on paper, it’ll be right when you make it.” That has stuck with me to this day, weird huh?  I wish I could find that book!  I’d like to read the WHOLE thing now that I’m a bit bigger and have a little bit bigger attention span as well. I’ve got it on paper, but it’s a bit more involved than that when working with triangles…

But I digress, I had to walk away from it this morning. It was getting the better of me. So, to choose another project I just had to look through my kitchen door’s window and there it stood:

My poor hibiscus in its damaged pot.  Fortunately it’s the only storm damage that we’ve had from all of these incessant spring-turned-summer storms.  One afternoon we went from cloudy with a chance of rain to 70 mph. winds instantly and it took my hibiscus, all 50 lbs. of it and threw it across our deck!  Well, the poor pot couldn’t handle it. David bought it a new one a few weeks ago.

 

This beauty is HUGE and weighs a TON empty!  I know it’s going to have to be emptied each fall so it won’t break during the winter.  It’s going to take three men and a boy to do that not just me.   David said he’d had his eye on the pot at Home Depot for a couple of years and couldn’t justify spending an arm & a leg the money. When I asked him to find a new pot he decided this was his opportunity. He loves this pot!

Well, in my quilting anguish this morning I decided I needed some physical activity to clear my head.  I repotted my sad hibiscus tree and how it’s beautiful once again, probably prettier than it’s ever been although it had at least a dozen blooms on it July 4th even in its broken pot!

Now I see I need to get the Goo Gone out and remove that unsightly sticker AND THEN get back to my patriotic quilt challenge!!!

Got any quilting challenges right now?  Perhaps you belong to Heartland Quilt Guild too and you’re in the same boat as me? I’m not saying this is going to help my quilting when I get back to it, but at least something else has occupied my thoughts for the past hour!

Until next time,

Susan