It's a dirty job......

....but somebody has to do it.  Turns out it's me.

I spent most of this morning wallowing in the dirt in our badly neglected garden.  Not this part of the weedy mess garden.

But this part.  Finally!  Dirt, mulch, plants, and plates. Yay!   Next project is to paint the mailbox and post.  It's way overdue.

This is my favorite.  :-)

And to go with the "theme" I moved this cute wind chimey thing my brother's family gave me, from the porch to the garden.  I'm sure I've now cemented my reputation as the neighborhood crazy lady.  LOL

While I worked planting, lugging mulch, and digging in the plates, all around me I could hear the birds and cicadas, ducks splashing in the pond, toads and frogs.  Nice.  :-)

 
The squirrels aren't the least bit deterred by the uncut weeds lawn.

A couple of weeks ago The Tramp hacked down the huge azaleas that were blocking the view from the front window.  

How fast they re-sprout!  And will have to be trimmed again before we know it.  Ah well.

Tuesday morning I picked up Mom on the way to our quilting bee.  Around the corner from her house we experienced a traffic hold-up.  What IS that in the road???

Well darned if it wasn't a large male peacock, in full plumage, strutting slowly down the road with a line up of cars carefully going around it.  (Not counting of course the driver a few cars behind me madly honking his/her horn at us all.)  This is the stretch of road down by our old house and we often heard roosters but I'm sure we never heard peacocks.  Their call is very distinctive.  I wonder where in the world it could have come from?
   

As for sewing news, Monday I whipped up my swap blocks and got them out the door.

Monday evening I finally sat down with this Aunties Two pattern for flip-flops I bought at Symposium.  The clamps are off but the shoes are banished to the back porch until the Shoe Goo glue cures enough to stop smelling so bad!  I also made some yoyos to decorate them but I can't bear to sew them on yet.  Ugh.
 

I've been browsing Craigslist for a parrot playstand for Charlie to have up here in the Sandbox, and yesterday one showed up in my price range...finally!  (Cheap.)  Even better, it's brand new and unused.  Maisy approves but it remains to be seen if Charlie will.  Maybe we'll get a chance to try it out tomorrow.

Tonight we took a fast trip to the Apple Store to get a new case for my iPhone.  I had the free one Apple gave out which I didn't like much but it served the purpose, protecting the phone and fixing the really annoying drop in connectivity that caused Apple to give out the free cases in the first place.  What I hated about it most was that I couldn't get it off the phone when I needed too.  Grrrrr.

A few days ago The Tramp came home with this neat gift for me.  :-)  A Splash O2 Lite rechargeable extended battery pack and case for my phone.  I love it....most of the time.  It feels nice and it really does work well but for some situations it makes the phone a bit heavy to lug around.  And I don't need the extra battery life every day all day long, though it's fabulous when I do.  
 

So now I have this!  Cute, cute, cute....but I chose it mostly because it's easy on and off when I want to switch to the Splash case.

Maisy is singularly unimpressed.  (Unless of course I'm careless with it and she decides it's a good chew toy.  :-p)