Close encounters

I'm playing catch-up again.  This time however, I won't attempt to do it all in one post!

We seem to be in "encounter" mode at the moment.  So far this month we've encountered dirt, dogs, doctors, neighbors, grandchildren, quilters, roast pig, birds, quilts.....  All the usual stuff and more.  The most unusual....for me anyway.....was this morning's close encounter of the venomous kind.  Yep.  A copperhead.  This azalea sits in the middle of an old garden that's ringed by a simple rock wall (just showing at the bottom of the picture).  I busied myself trimming dead stuff out of the bush, started raking up the pine straw and leaf litter and knelt down to put a couple of fallen stones back on the wall.

While on my knees I pulled a few weeds and picked up some debris with my (gloved!) hand and FREAKED when I realized I'd had my hand on this snake.  I rushed into the house and immediately started sending texts to The Tramp saying maybe we should give up yards and gardening and move into a patio home or townhouse or even a high rise!  lol  Bless his heart, after his meetings he came home early to talk me off the ledge.

Before the snake, we'd spent a few days finishing up this flower bed.  It turned out to be a major encounter with hard clay, and rocks and left-over tree roots large and small.  We amended the soil as best we could, shoved in some plants, and the little fence to keep the dogs out and will just leave it to get on and grow.

The Tramp yanked the bugle weed (ajuga) out of the garden and I dug it in around the edges.  It looks amazingly healthy considering how we treated it....along with us and the dogs walking all over it.

The lettuce, cauliflower and broccoli are thriving in one of the square foot gardens.  It's fun (barring any snakes of course) to go out every night and pick leaves for our dinner salads.

I still have to put in some seeds here and there but the trellis is up and yesterday I put in some tomato and cucumber plants.

The dogs of course enjoy all the outdoor time with us, but they do more than encounter the dirt, they invite it back into the house with them.  Maisy is going through another phase of examining the wet shower stall in the mornings.  I wonder how I can tell???

I never know what I'll encounter when I check the bluebird box.

So this was a big surprise yesterday.  So new they can barely lift their heads.  :-)

We've been taking walks some afternoons when The Tramp gets home from work.  We were quite surprised to encounter chickens the other day!

On the weekend we went over to Mom and Dad's residence to check out the classic car show put on by the Rotary Club.  Very enjoyable.

And I discovered Mom has finished her Kim Diehl quilt!  Isn't it great?  I need to get mine quilted.

Ivy wasn't expecting this encounter.  Look at that expression.  She's checking to see if I'm going to save her from this indignity.  :-)

This amaryllis sat in a pot on the front porch for a year, being alternately drowned and cooked all summer, frozen in the winter, and kicked over endlessly.  I finally stuck the bulb in the garden about a month ago and oh my goodness!

It's graduation season and the t-shirt quilts have been rolling out the door.  

The two below are both sides of a two-sided quilt.  The client had so many shirts he opted for no sashing.  I really like the way they came out.

Full moon tomorrow!  I wonder what encounters it will bring?  :-)