Old MacDonald

E, I, E, I, O and all that stuff.......Here are a couple of lame gardening pictures because watching plants sprout up from the ground from seed amuses me beyond belief. Below is a picture of my very first sunflower sprout. This is the beginnings of a mammoth sunflower and is supposed to get 12 feet tall. It's also supposed to have edible sunflower seeds. Have to remember to tell the kids that the seeds have to be toasted before eating. Here is a mess of watermelon plants. These are going to be transplanted this weekend. A few will be set aside in an attempt to grow them square(thanks to Crazy Aunt Purl--check her March archives), the rest will be your basic run of the mill watermelons.
Below you will see the very first ever produce I've attempted to grow. It's a little, bitty, teenie-weenie bell pepper. Isn't it just the cutest thing?Can you see the next little cluster of bell pepper pots in the background just above the pepper? (Yes, D-O-R-K, that's me)
I'm container gardening because we've been treating our yard for a few years for fire ants. So I'm not planting anything edible in the ground(I really don't expect the kids to eat the sunflower seeds). Also being in a hurricane zone I can move my produce into the garage when a hurricane is headed this way. I have the beginnings of blooms on my Better Boy tomato plants but nothing worth taking a picture of at the moment. The romas look like they are beginning to bloom too. There are little pods on my jalapeno plants. I've started a wall of mammoth sunflowers on the side of my house. I planted 8 seeds over the weekend and will do some more digging this weekend to plant more seeds. The ground over there is really dry and hard and I don't have a tiller so I'm kind of tilling it myself with my trowel. Yes it's the hard way, but I'm hoping in a month or two I'm going to have a sunflower house(http://www.dashdist.com/blackbird/LooseFeathersClub.html
scroll down to Loose Feathers 2005-then scroll down a little more and you'll see Sunflower House, not Sunflower Charms, scroll down a little more) that's what I want, happy, glorious sunflowers all over the place. I started some red sunflowers in two decorative pots. Not sure how they will do. I have them on the patio table and I'm going to see if they do as well as the ones in the front of the house. I'm planning on moving my tomato plants and bell pepper plants to the back yard as soon as it's getting more hours of sun per day.

Random Monday

Managed to finish House #4 on Carriage House Samplings Houses of Hawk Run Hollow this weekend. Only five more blocks left to stitch on this piece.
Probably won't have any more progress reports on this piece for at least a week probably two. I'm going to start working on House #2 and it's kind of a busy block. In other crafty news I pulled out my hexes for my Grandmother's Flower Garden afghan and want to start making more of those. I was going to use a Red Heart Gold for the center of the flowers but I don't know if I care for it or not. This afghan is a stashbuster for me so I'm trying to make it from yarn I have around the house. I do have some bright yellow but I think it's too bright and the gold is a little dark for the center of my flowers. I plan to sew a few together today to see how it looks.

Can't Believe I Forgot....

To thank Andrea for her comment and to tell her that her Mairmaid's Song is great! I have this stitched too but your frame is fabulous. I used a putty linen instead of the sheeps straw and opted for a primitive frame, but your frame really pulls out the colors in the piece. Y'all go check out Andrea's album at City Stitcher. All of her finishes are beautiful. I hope to eventually have a finished HOHRH too.

Here is a pic of my framed Mairmaid's Song:

Where Did the Week Go?

First of all I want to thank Karen, CJ, Melissa, Sue and Amy for your comments and kind words. They are appreciated. I've been sick all week and haven't really stitched too much. So finally I made myself not go back to sleep after taking the boys to school and went over to the beach and caught the last few minutes of the sunrise.
All over the beach there are these blue jellyfish. I haven't had a chance to look up the exact name but this time of year they wash up all over our beach.
Here are three clustered together and below you will see the blue trail:

The picture above is of Momma Beach. It used to be a county beach but the county, in it's infinite wisdom, sold it to the state on the promise of the state building us a marine sanctuary. The state backed out of the deal because so many tourists would come down here in the spring and drown over on the Gulf side because they don't heed Red Flag warnings, so the state determined that a marine sanctuary would not be a good thing. But the joke ended up being on the state, after Hurricanes Ivan and Dennis they gave all the land back to the county because the state didn't want to rebuild the park they spent no less than three years building. No one can access Momma Beach at the moment without climbing the fence, that would be trespassing(people do it though), because the state park at the moment is condemned because of all the hurricane destruction and the county hasn't cleaned it up and opened the land to the public yet. Until a few years ago the gulf side of this particular section used to be a nude beach.
Above are the Pagodas. Both the tiki hut like building and the one with the green roof were completely destroyed after Ivan and were back and ready for summer when Hurricane Dennis hit last year. They've finally rebuilt and are back up and running again. The building with the green roof is the Sailor Grill, they have a bakery-great cheese pillows-a cheese danish/donut thing that is fabulous and they also have the best burgers around. A Pagoda burger is a favorite of mine. The sunsets are also gorgeous from here. It felt good to get out of the house and walk for a little while but it felt better to get back in the car, get home, take a shower and go back to sleep. Hopefully I'll have a pic of a finished House #4 tomorrow and I want to take a pic of my HOHRH as it looks up this point.

Stitchin', Knittin' & Sproutin'

Fairly productive weekend around here. Below is the progress I've made on House #4 on Carriage House Samplings Houses of Hawk Run Hollow. Next we have one full alien face on Stitch N Bitch's Alien Illusion scarf. This is the front:
Here's the back:
Wicked cool, no? And below you see the sproutin' portion of this post. Last weekend the spousal unit and I planted watermelon seeds in two cups. They sprouted yesterday:

We started four more cups of seeds on Sunday. We also put out a bell pepper plant, two Better Boy tomato plants, some basil, flat leaf Italian parsley, and I planted two lavendar plants last weekend. The parsley was supposed to have been cilantro but I wasn't paying attention and got home only to discover my mistake. Plan to get some Roma tomato plants this week and also want to start some zucchini seeds.

So I Posted The Wrong Heron Pic....

Two posts within an hour or two of each other, wow! I need to get a life.
This one is much better(ok it's still crap as far as good photos are concerned). I didn't resize it as much as the one in the last post. But what do I expect from a camera held together by duct tape? I love herons so much. I could sit and watch them for hours. North of us they nest in trees along the highway. I guess near water runoffs. Yes, I have Crossed Wing Collections Great Blue Heron in the stash. Doesn't the sound look spooky in the fog? The water was so flat, like a pond.

Small Town Saturday Morning

Here are a few random pics from around town this morning. The first three were supposed to be farther down the post but that's how it goes sometimes. For some reason I can't rearrange them. I really hate that this picture of the heron isn't any better. I'm going to see if the other one I took is better and post it later. I was so excited to see him wading in the sound.

The picture below is of a new LYS. I say new, the DH discovered it the other day when we were having lunch and it's in the same plaza as one of our favorite local restaurants, it's at the very end of the strip and we never have a reason to wander to the end of the plaza. Come to find out it's been here since August, 2005. YIKES! The ladies who own it are very nice. The yarn selection is small but they do carry Cascade 220 and had a good stock of needles of all sizes. I hope to be a very supportive customer. Hurrican Ivan hit my area in September, 2004. This is still part of the bay shoreline. It's where the walkway that used to take you all the way to the Best Western hotel now just sorta stops. As you can see it's still trashed. Breaks my heart. All these outdoor shots were taken about 7 am this morning and it was foggy and a bit misty. I was also using the old camera because I still haven't picked up any new batteries for the new camera.
This morning we saw this barge stuck on a sandbar. Not a good thing.
Thirty minutes or so later he was all straightened up and back in the channel.
Here are a couple of ducks kicking back in the sound. They were enjoying their stroll along the shoreline until DS#3 decided to run them off.
This area here used to be full of ducks, geese, turtles, fish, all kinds of wildlife. Hurricane Ivan and then Dennis in 05 took care of it. They have finally got it cleaned out. The Butterfly House is the building in the background.
Here's another view of the wildlife area.
Here's an attack goose that lives there and chased me all over the place. He kept sticking his head through the bars. I think he was hoping I'd have some bread. Next time I will. Only geese and ducks live in this little area at the moment. I hope turtles move back in soon.
This is DS#3 making good use of the new playground equipment. He loved this Batmanesque swingy-glidey thing.
For some cat cuteness, this is Pirate. He was sleeping on the desk and his little tongue was sticking out and it was too cute. Can you see the little bit of pink below his nose?