Mystery solved....or at least half a mystery solved.  I was missing a couple of my dryer balls, and I found one!  Ripley and Jessie both get stuck in the garage, and one of them seemed to have found one.  I walked out this weekend and saw something on the floor....

I followed the trail of fuzz...

Aha!!!

I don't think it will work well as a dryer ball anymore, but at least I know what happened to it.  Now to find the other one.... 

 

The water lilies are blooming int he koi pond.  They are so pretty!  I need to do some work on the water quality of the pond, but the lilies hide a bit of that for me at least. 

I took a quick sunrise shot the other morning - Mt. Lassen from the back yard.

The "babies" are out with the "big girls" now, and everything seems to be going well.  There's always a risk that one of the older chickens will bully the smaller ones, but so far they seem to be coexisting just fine.  I still have to put the babies to bed at night - they insist on roosting outside the coop and I pick them up each night and put them in the coop to sleep.  Eventually they will get the idea where they need to sleep.  

 

My latest quilting effort - Formation.  Super easy and quick - I needed a full quilt to do, since all my other projects are the "block a week/month" type.  It was very satisfying to put this one all together at once (at least relatively - it took a couple of weekends to make all the blocks).  I got it as far as sewing these vertical strips together.  Next weekend should see it put all together, and then off to the quilt store to find backing fabric. 

The garden is coming in nicely!  We have a few days of rain, which will soak the ground and then should have some nice weather for a while.  I'm hoping for a bumper crop this year after adding new soil to the boxes.

My (mis)adventures in quilting....did you know reading ALL of the instructions is important???  I made 8 pieces that looked like this: 

 Instead, I was "supposed" to make 4 pieces that were opposite of each other:

  

It really does change how the whole block looks, lol! 

Here's the progress on the Riley Blake Challenge quilt - 11 of the 16 quilt blocks done. 

Some of the petunias I planted yesterday - now to remember to water them!!! 

 

My flowers are blooming!  On my list to do this weekend is to plant some petunias, but my perennials are doing great! The lighting was really nice yesterday, so I tried a couple of different shots for them..

 

Cindy M enrolled Alli in Special Olympics this year - they have a walking program.  Unfortunately, they meet at 3:00 for the group walk, which is awkward with Alli's schedule simce Cindy picks her up from her day program at 1:30.  They would have to hang out in town for a bit or go home and come back.  Neither of these options work well for Allison, so Cindy is walking with her independent from the group.  The group meets at the Sundial Bridge (for now - the location changes with the weather) so Cindy took Alli there for her walk. 

The Turtle Bay Arboretum is decked out for their Glowing Wild program.

 

And the quilt top is done, but not without some help....I had Jessie helping me sew:

James helping me press:

And Ripley "supervising" -aka napping.

 

I made the decision on how I'm going to put the Mystery quilt together.  This is still missing two columns, one on each side, because my design board isn't wide enough.

And here is my "helper" while I'm putting all those blocks together, and I use "helper" pretty loosely.  Usually she's sitting the fabric that I need to be moving.

I have blooms on the tomato plants!