We took the dogs out to the field for a walk last week.  The sun was out, along with the butterflies and the ducks.  I'm always amazed at the photos my phone takes - these were long-distance shots:

 

On a whim, I bought a couple of tomato plants a few weeks ago.I knew it was too early, but I was ready for Spring!  I had planted some sweet pea seeds in January, but they didn't come up, so I thought I just had old seeds.  The tomato plants sat in their containers for a couple of weeks before I even got them in the garden. A couple of weekends ago, I planted them, and planted some cucumbers and zucchini seeds. Last night, I have everything coming up, including the peas that I thought weren't growing! 

The tomato plants haven't done much yet, but...we have temps in the 70's this week, so I expect to start seeing some growth on them.  I also plan to grab some more plants today on my shopping trips.

And done!  I love this quilt - it's a happy quilt!

 

Spring was in the air...we are back to wind and rain.

 

Here's my progress so far on the Riley Blake Designs 2025 Quilt Challenge:

I'm staying caught up on this quilt, and I should have the blocks done by the end of May.  I also got in fabric yesterday for another quilt....

I did get the baby quilt finished at least...

Very simple, and pretty quick (if you excuse the time out for being sick...).  I had a picture of a quilt like this, and did my own pattern, since I couldn't find a prewritten pattern for it, so that part was fun.  I have it all boxed up and ready ship out to Michelle!

Allison is such a loving child - she shared her cold with both AJ and I....and it took us down hard.  She bounced back in just a day, but both AJ and I were out for a few days.  I did almost nothing but sleep one entire day.  I'm still dragging, and manage to make it through the day, but that's about it.  Hopefully the worst is behind me and I get some energy back!  I have things to do....like finish this baby quilt that I got started....

 

Well, the chicks "we" hatched didn't survive.  Cindy think she had the heating set up wrong for them.  The babies she bought (the Welsummers) are doing good though, and I think she plans on trying another batch of eggs.

 Spring is here - everything is blooming.  These bottlebrush flowers are the neighbors.

 

Cindy has the chicks now - and they are out of the incubator. 

 

She also picked up some more chicks - Welsummer chicks.She's put these in with the Araucana chicks - since we don't know haw many, or even if any - are female.  We were both hoping to get some Easter Egger chicks, but all chicks are in high demand right now and go fast when a shipment comes in.  The Welsummer breed is a good layer and tolerates heat, so should be a good addition to my flock.

One quilt finished!  The original plan was to get it done by Valentine's Day, and I had it partly quilted by then, but...it got set aside for a bit.  I got it quilted and bound this last weekend.

 

Sunday was a fun-filled, interesting day.....as a lead in to that, "we" have chicks hatching.  The eggs in the incubator at Cindy's started hatching Saturday afternoon. 

How does that fit in to a fun-filled interesting day???  Sunday was a "jewelry making party" at my house.  I had 7 extra women here (8 if you count Karen, who came in to watch Alli for me) chatting and making earrings, bracelets, necklaces, etc.  We had so much fun!  And then....we lost power.  The fun continued, as I went out to get the generator going, which I manged to do fairly easily.  Then, it ran out of gas.  Bummer.  When I went to add gas, I did not notice that there was a hole in the plastic gas can, so managed to poor gasoline all over the generator and myself.  Just bit frustrating.....and then I couldn't get it to start.  Sigh....good thing AJ was home - he got it started with one pull.  (Of course he did....)  Time to get gas off of me (with no running water because the generator doesn't run the well) and back to the part.

Cindy also lost power at her house, and by this time had 4 chicks that had hatched in the incubator - one hatched after she left for the party.  She does not have a generator, so....she fetched the generator to my house.  So now we have a bunch of women oohing and awwing over chicks.  The fun times continued!

I barricaded the incubator - the cats were way too interested in the chicks and kept pulling the line to the water out (keeping the humidity regulated is important)

 And some of the earrings I made....

 

Just how did they do this?  I was cleaning up the sewing room yesterday (not much sewing this weekend, bummer....) and noticed that the thread on my sewing machine had mysteriously been re-routed.  Somehow, "someone" managed to get the thread from the spool wrapped around my speaker.  Good thing I noticed before I sat down to sew.....

 And the quilt top for Wooly Stars is complete!  I love it!