gardens, quilts and unexpected gifts

we're growing some different plants this year than we've ever had before

the one there in the metal tomato cage is a tomatillo -- we had never even cooked with these things until the last couple of years when our son-in-law introduced us to them

he had grown some in his garden last year, so we decided to try it this year -- if all those blooms set we'll have lots of them!

the plants along the fence are potatoes -- the fun thing about potatoes is that you don't have to go to the garden shop to get the plants -- nope -- just pick out the potatoes in your 'fridge that are starting to sprout a bit, cut them into chunks with an eye in each chunk and plant them

they took a while to come up, but they're looking great -- and the leaves are really pretty

so far our garden looks great -- we had about 5 days of cool damp weather that really gave the little seeds a jump start, and now we are supposed to have several days of 90s which should really send them on their way

now we're doing the "NO HAIL!" chant on a daily basis
the quilting of the flower piece continues

it's not really clear in the picture, but there in the center is the first of the stems of the sunflower

moving along but slowly!


yesterday morning I had a doctor's appointment -- just the usual get the prescriptions for the blood pressure meds and review the tests from the health fair sort of thing -- oh yeah, and take a look at the sore foot (which she says is probably a stress fracture and if I had insurance we'd be talking x-rays and possibly a soft cast, but since I don't we'll just be dealing with it)

while I was sitting in the waiting room I was working on afghan squares -- I always take along some kind of handwork when I'm going to have to wait anywhere -- there was another couple in the waiting room that asked me what I was working on and I explained about Close Knit Hugs and the good work we try to do in disaster areas -- after they left, the young man who had been working on his Ipad asked me if he could give me some money to buy yarn to make more squares and handed me $5 -- seems his grandmother used to knit and he had fond memories of going to the store with her to pick out yarn for afghans (one of which he still has) and he thought it was something she would approve of

wow! it's amazing what can happen when you do knitting in public!