After the rains we are getting flowers

Hello, everyone.  I love flowers, and right now we have a bunch of them.

This crinum lily came with the house. I have tied up the bud stems because they were falling on the ground.

I brought these daylilies over with us when we moved. Each flower lasts for a day.

These marigolds came up when we threw a packet of old seeds--that had been in the fridge for years--into some empty space in the planting box.

It's so nice to go out into the yard and find flowers blooming their little heads off.

Spring has sprung! edited to add links

Hello, everyone. Spring is indeed here in South Texas. The daily highs are in the 90's F. The nights are leaving the low 70's as we go on, the tomatoes are about to stop setting fruit, and we have flowers.

The first year of bloom on the Desert Rose plants we got as tiny things...one white one bloomed earlier, but now a red one is on stage. 

 

The big pink one is glorious but I can't get the picture to be right side up.

The fig has responded well to the pruning a few months back.

The native ruellia...sorry, the app doesn't like tall photos. 

We love flower season.

After 34 years, still going strong

Hello, everyone. My cactus is coming into bloom.

Thanks to the Easter rain, and the followup rain the next Sunday, a lot of plants are waking up.

 

I was going to include my Indigo Spires salvia, with its deep blue blossom spikes, but the photo turned sideways when I imported it.

This is a miniature basil plant. It's about 4 inches tall. It smells lovely.

An Easter project finished (updated to add link)

Hello, everyone.  I finished another Easter project, probably the last for this season.

This is the front. I started with a blank rectangle and imported the applique egg and the row of tulips.  (I will probably change this if I do it again. The row of tulips took a *really* long time to stitch out.)

Pages 2 and 3: Palm Sunday and then Carrying the Cross. Used without changes from the Resurrection Table Runner design.

Pages 4 and 5: the Crucifixion and Finding the Empty Tomb. Used without changes.

Pages 5 & 6: a Bible verse and the traditional Easter greeting. The Bible verse page was used without changing. The Easter greetings page is my own.

The back cover. Another page of my own.

This began as a banner/table runner embroidery pattern set. I added the front cover and the Easter greetings page/back cover to convert it to book format.

There is a lot of stitching in the rocky-ground portion of each image. I will, if I do it again, make the ground surface as an applique piece. (My Hatch software has the feature to convert a shape to applique.) This will make the pages less of a "bulletproof" experience. 

The Bible verse was digitized in block letters. I sewed it out with #60 thread, finer than the standard #40 embroidery threads. It came out a bit hard to read. (The dots on the i's were merged into the rest of the letter.) I was in an experimenting mood, so I swapped the block lettering for a scrip font for the next time. Haven't done a test prototype yet! 

The book pages ended up being 8 layers of cotton, so sewing it into a book was difficult. I suppose leaving off the back cover piece would help it a little. This one, however, will do nicely for a gift for visiting children this Easter. 

Pretty flower for Easter time

Hello, everyone.  

We have the first blossom from the new, little Desert Rose plants we got at last year's Home and Garden show.

I'm not sure which way these little pictures will be facing when it's published. The last one was an experiment to see how an extreme close-up of this large double flowered blossom would come out.

The top is a side shot to show the structure.

It's possible that another of these assorted-colors plants will bloom in a week or two. The first one, which finally got repotted into the biggest pot on hand, is also displaying some single flowered, deep-pink blossoms and a whole flock of buds are coming on.

A Fun Walk

Hello, everyone.  Yesterday we took part on a large community walk. The La Lomita walk is an annual event of Our Lady of Guadalupe parish in Mission, Texas.  It is a Palm Sunday event, complete with donkeys and palm fronds.

They begin at the parish church and walk the 7 km (about 4 miles) from there to one of yhe oldest chapels in the area, La Lomita. 

Preparing to leave

The leading edge of the procession. 

The donkeys go along, but they get to ride. It's pretty warm in the afternoon at this season.

At the end of the walk.

While it's billed as a walk, accommodation is made for people who aren't able to walk. Strollers, bikes, golf carts, and even a contingent of autos participate. We enjoyed our afternoon walk with everyone. 

A new project is completed (edited for spelling and to add link)

Hello, everyone.  It's almost Easter-time, and I found a little decorative project in the "to be made" pile, with its fabrics already chosen, and decided to finally do it.

This is one of the Sweat Pea designs. It's a machine embroidered applique, made in four parts. I elected to use Minky scraps and some fake-suede for the animal bodies. 

Spring feels like it's here...(edited for spelling)

At least, right now it feels like spring. (Last frost date probably 3 weeks away, but today is tee shirt weather.)

The fiddlewood,  the happiest of the three, is putting on a flush of blooms, while still having half ripe berries and some old, ripe, black ones. This fiddlewood is in partial shade. The others have at least 4 or 5 hours of straight sun every day, and they're less content. These are native to South Texas and are supposed to get around 8 feet tall with time.

Wow the formatting went crazy in here

 Hello, everyone.

My computer shows the pictures I uploaded--did that post from my cell phone--but they're huge and the sidebar things are displayed on top of the photos. I have no idea what happened, but I think the people in charge of maintaining Blogger have messed around with something (to "fix something") and it broke something else. Documentation is our friend!

A photo from May 2023 for today, to test the way it will appear when posted:

I believe this is one of the Holy Week parade platforms in Sevilla. Anyone who knows, please correct me if I have gotten this wrong. Note the beautiful shells on the right hand figure's robe.

Edited to add: this was posted from my desktop and it came out fine. Maybe the issue is in the Blogger app?

The famous pastry shop

Hello, everyone.

DH went out this morning, to find some breakfast, and brought back goodies.

Over the times we've walked Caminos, we often had a few days of "slush time" at the end. We're in a habit of spending those days in the city with the airport: Madrid. DH discovered the pastry shop in Puerta del Sol, probably because there is usually a line going out the shop door in the morning.

He also brought yummy things for me, a warm wedge of tortilla de patata and a cold carton of salmorejo soup. Salmorejo is in the gazpacho tribe of chilled soups.

The weather is surprisingly cool here for early June, so the warm tortilla was especially welcome.

Easter greeting to all

Hello, everyone.  It's a little late, for Latin Easter, and a little early for Eastern Easter. But I'm going to send out Easter greetings to all today.

This was part of the Easter decorations in my local parish this year. I was delighted by the candles and the butterflies. Kudos to the folks who worked hard on Holy Saturday to get things set up!

And this is an Oxalis plant we saw at Estero Llano Grande State Park last week. It's about 2 inches high.

An Easter decoration

Hello, everyone.  It's only about a week and a half until Latin Easter. I understand that Orthodox Easter is a week off from that this year.

I have gotten it together to hang an Easter wreath. 

Components: Dollar Tree wreath form and plastic eggs, Hobby Lobby fabric peonies and lambs quarters, JoAnn fabric hydrangeas, and an entire 3 yard roll of ribbon.

(I looked at the Hobby Lobby hydrangeas but I didn't like them. I checked out the ones at JoAnn while picking up the ruler holder.) 

It does put some cheer on the door, doesn't it.

Spring has sprung, or at least some rain

Hello, everyone.  We returned to Bentsen State Park the other day and discovered that there hD been rain there recently. (At our place, not so much.) There was moisture on some of the pavement and everything that could throw on a flower seemed to be doing so.

Tulipan is our native hibiscus shrub. It's related to Turk's Cap but the flower looks different. 

A small sample of the happy trees and shrubs. This yellow flowering tree is retama. It resembles paloverde from a distance but it grows where there is moisture.  The white flowering tree in front is wild olive, also called anacahuita, another native. 

We had a very enjoyable walk, for about 4 miles. (6K about.)

Color and stitch play

 Hello, everyone.

Since the phone is still being difficult when I try to upload a photo into a blog post, I am reverting back to the (more clumsy) method of emailing myself the pictures from the phone.

I was challenged to make something new recently by DD2. The format is "coasters." I am digitizing this myself, so there are of course a lot of iterations in the design:

First attempt:

I tried out the batting here, and the design, and also now know that this purple stripe is too busy for the design.

A later attempt:

Stash usage is happening, as y'all can see. I changed the lettering font of the words and did some work on refining the crown. (This one has been finished off into a future patch pocket on something. Interior purse pocket? Mixer cover decorative pocket? We'll see.)

After this, a wadder which has been tossed into the trash--you cannot do "backtrack" a bunch of times on the same spot, especially not when the stitch is already emphasized. Fortunately the needle didn't break. Unfortunately, I had to change it because it seemed to have gotten bent while the thread was breaking repeatedly in very nearly the same spot. 

After this, I figured out how to get rid of the extra "backtrack" commands and cut the little ornaments on the top down to one each. 

This next one has had the stabilizer trimmed and is ready to turn right side out:

This is still a rough draft, so when trimming I left the tuck-in flaps to make another future pocket. The stabilizer is black polymesh cutaway from OESD. In the event, I plan to use White and Natural thin all-cotton batting, with or without an additional stabilizer. But the Polymesh was on hand and the background fabric is on the dark side, so I used that on the repeat tests.

Probably when the coasters are ready to deliver, with ribbon and all, I'll shoot a picture of the set and post it. There may still be more repeats, though I sincerely hope not. I've been watching the Youtube videos by John Deer about fixing designs and also studying the online help of my Hatch embroidery software. Little by little, it gets better!

Beautiful Nature!

Hello, everyone.

After our most recent Sewing Club meeting, a group of us went for something to eat. When I was going in, I saw this:

Aren't the baby swallows just adorable? And if you let them live in the area they will gobble down mosquitoes, flying termites, and other things. During the times we had a swallow box in our yard there were a lot fewer yellow jacket nests, too. I love the various swallows!

Beautiful flowers in May

Hello, everyone. It's early summer in South Texas, but the flowers haven't given up yet. I took some pictures to share with y'all.

Wildflowers this spring

 Hello, everyone.  

This spring,  between the planted flowers,  the flowers that came up and were moved, and the flowers that just appeared,  we're really enjoying the view in the yard.

The first picture is a cactus pot we have had for years. Now that it's blooming,  every time I stop to look at it,  the little leaf bee pops up from deliriously rolling around in the pollen. I think she's afraid something will happen to the wonderful heaps of baby-bee food.

This cactus is sensitive to rot, so I have never taken it out of the pot it's been happy in all of these years. 

This next photo is a tiny thing that pops up in the grass every spring. I think the blossom is only about 1/4" across. 

I have no idea what it's name is. It's just simply pretty.

This flower, which is a little bluer than the photo comes out, is amazingly popular with the Monarch types of butterflies. It's a native, but it does need to be watered in my yard. I have it growing in a large pot and it's very happy there.

Yesterday for the first time I saw it being visited by a monarch variety butterfly.  

We're trying to be hospitable to the native pollinators, not only because they're pretty but also when food plants in the yard bloom, we hope the pollinators will find them and pollinate the blooms. Especially on the avocado tree!

Flower season in South Texas

 Hello, everyone.

I don't have the canonical bluebonnet pictures to show, nor Indian paintbrush, but I do have a couple little things from around the place.

The Mystic Spires hybrid salvia is still going strong from last year, with lots of new growth around the base and beautiful flowers.

Dill: a little love-note to the pollinators, and to Swallowtail butterfly babies as well!

I have no idea what this little blue-leaved, white-flowered thing is. It sprouts with abandon in the vegetable garden. After a while it gets weedy looking and we pull it.

This one appears to be a primrose of some kind. It may be spontaneous. Or it may be a completely surprising survival from some wildflower seeds that were planted last spring...and then migrated from their spot? I don't know. Spontaneity seems more likely. There are a couple of these in the garden. They have the four petals of the Oenotheras but that's all I can actually say about them.

Yes, all the cracks you see in the ground are really there. It's a dry spring, and even with regular  watering the soil just wants to crack. 

This garden also has tomatoes, some of which have flowers already, and a couple of eggplants, and a Spanish pepper variety. Separately there is a large pot with three more of those Padron type peppers, which look really happy.

Something we found west of Socorro

 Hello, everyone! 

We took the highway west from Socorro toward the village of Magdalena.  This is a small town with some scattered houses in the area as well. We learned later, see picture below, that Magdalena was a fairly important place around the turn of the last century.

Magdalena was the trail end and railway connection for a whole bunch of sheep and cattle ranchers.

The ranchers and their hands would stage a "drive" (just like the famous cattle drives from Texas to Dodge City Kansas) with a herd or flock of licestock. The creatures were encouraged to graze and move in a relaxed way. That way they would be in good condition when they reached the corrals in Magdalena for counting and pricing. It would take weeks to move the herds, with the cowhands or shepherds in tow and bringing the chuck wagon and spare mounts and so on.

I had not known of this smaller, west-to-east driving way.

While we were stretching our legs at this historical marker, we found ourselves--in 55F degree air--being snowed upon. 

We drove farther west, seeking the connecting northward paved road towards our lodging place for that night, and came to Pie Town. 

Pie Town is a small hamlet, but people who have an interest in hiking have probably seen references to it on Continental Divide Trail discussions and videos. We of course stopped to talk with a hiker we saw. The CDT through hikers like to stop at Pie Town for a hot meal or some pie. (When you're walking all day with your house and water and rations on your back, you build up an appetite! ) Just so you all know, we saw a sign on the food store that they're closed on Tuesdays...possibly as warmer weather and vacation season arrive they might be able to provide food then, too. I personally recommend that someone wanting to walk through there find a way to ask ahead of time if it looks like they'll be in Pie Town on a Tuesday. 

This was a really neat spot, and when we went west to Quemado and drove north we saw a lot of interesting scenery. (Take this as an advisory that the road, while good, is not a fast drive. Just enjoy the lava flows, the rock formations, and so on.) 

Two pretty flowers

 Hello, everyone. 

We were recently in Socorro, New Mexico. It's a small place, with a very pretty mission church. We parked near there to walk the pup for a bit and I saw some little wildflowers. 

I think they might be some kind of phacelias because of the curl their flower stalk forms.

At this time in Socorro it is early spring I think.