Patriotic Finishing Pieces

 A couple of weeks ago Denise sent me a photo of a Freedom Flock that she had finished and she was showing me the frame. Denise had found it online and it was on sale when she got it. I immediately went to Hobby Lobby's website and couldn't find it on there, but I kept thinking about it.

Debbie is so good about saving all the good stuff she sees on flosstubes and Instagram and sharing it all with me. Last week she showed me a "pear" that Recovering Monogamous Stitcher had shown. If you go to about the 12:45 mark, you will see the finished pear. She used this little patriotic hair "bow" on top of the pear and it was so cute.

After adding a couple of the patriotic hair bows for both to the online cart for us, I went searching to see if they had the patriotic frames back in stock and they did! Not on sale but I showed Debbie and she liked it too so we each ordered one of those.

I hope to get projects finished in time to use both of these this year but, if not, there's always next year (I hope!).

I had already checked our local Hobby Lobby and they didn't have the frames. When I was back in there after seeing the hair bow, I checked on that and they didn't have that either, though they have rows and rows of patriotic items. My guess is that Hobby Lobby has LOTS of patriotic fun things, as well as other seasonal items from time to time, that are on their website but not in the stores - maybe in some but not in all so I'm going to start keeping a closer watch on the website.

The Spring Garden - 2026

 We're now five days past the middle of April. I had planned to get the garden starts planted around April 15 -17 but am still waiting. Next week, we have  a night or two with lows in the mid 40's. When Accuweather says 47, that's usually about 42 at our house in a valley. I almost always count on 5 degrees lower than the prediction, which is for in town. We also have several chances of hail. I guess I'm a little cautious because last year I lost every plant I had started due to hail but, waiting until there's zero chance of hail probably means no garden! So, I'm REALLY hoping to get things planted by the first of May. Crazy but we've had a couple of days where the high was 90 degrees. Where cilantro was planted last year, the seeds dropped, cilantro sprouted and has already grown and bolted - even while we're having nights that get too cool to plant tomatoes and peppers.

Another weird garden thing . . this pepper is going to get harvested before I ever get the plant out of the temporary cup and into the ground. Funny that it's a jalapeno - the pepper I'm having so much trouble finding in the grocery store. Hope this means I'm going to have a good crop of jalapeno peppers!

Waiting til the cold and hail has ended could mean planting so late that everything burns up in the heat. Gardening can be great and productive for many years, then there can be years of failure - we're pretty much at the mercy of Mother Nature. I really appreciate those farmers who work so hard to provide food to feed our families.

Vince had a couple of places he needed to go yesterday and one of them was Menard's so I went along because I wanted an electric (battery powered) sprayer. I'm tired of pumping to get the pressure needed. I often use the sprayer for fertilizer and I often use the sprayer for Neem oil/water mix. We got this one.

I knew we would want a Ryobi because we have quite a few Ryobi products which means many Ryobi batteries and chargers. This one has two 2 gallon tanks; a battery and a charger. It can be used as a backpack sprayer or carried using the handle. According to the info, 30 tanks full can be sprayed on one battery. That could mean I wouldn't have to change batteries more than once a month. Doubtful . . but maybe. I don't spray every day but some days I go through several tanks of spray - whether it's Neem for bugs and/or fish emulsion for fertilizer.

We've had so much rain and wet days (I am not complaining about the rain - we needed it badly!) but some of the grapes now have rust so I pulled off as many affected leaves as I could and cut back some of the vines that seemed the most affected. I need to get out there one evening in the next few days and spray the grapes with Neem oil/water just as the sun is setting.

I know NOTHING about growing grapes or raspberries. From the raspberries we harvested last year, I'm going to say they require zero attention so that leaves me to learn about grapes. From what I've read, grapes don't really need bees for pollination but do bees come to the grape flowers, whether needed or not? That's why I'm not going to spray Neem until dusk . . do not want to harm the bees.

The grapes are at the calyptra stage so I probably don't have to worry about the bees yet, right? Please correct me if I'm wrong and feel free to give me any advice you want to share. I would love to get enough grape juice to last us a year . . not happening any time soon but maybe some day.

The horseradish is doing great. We love it when it's young and tender. I add it to salads and love to best on tuna salad sandwiches. Other uses: slice, saute and add to omelettes or use in place of lettuce as a wrap.

The raspberries have exceeded my expectations. We planted them down that center row and you can see how many have popped up outside their "bed". I've dug up five or six of the runner plants and moved them to another bed. They look good so I'm hoping they survive and produce next year.

I'm going to stop complaining about this bed where I haven't planted potatoes in four years but every year, it's full of potatoes that have grown from tiny little potatoes that were accidentally left behind. I'm not planting any other potatoes this year. If these grow and produce, then I have what I'm going to consider a perennial bed of potatoes (though I know they are not perennials). I had been trying to make this a second asparagus bed but I'm giving up. The potatoes have won this battle.

I am not a flower gardener. Most anything I grow has either a food or herbal remedy type value but we have four peonies. Our first year here, at the end of the season, I found this peony at a big box store and it looked like it was beyond saving. It was on the $1 rack in the garden center. I had never grown peonies but had always heard how amazing they were so I got it, came home and planted it. The next spring, it had a couple of blooms and they were so pretty and smelled so good that we bought some kind of variety pack that had three more peonies and that's how we ended up with four of them. When I walk out the back door, I can smell them and I love them.

There are other things in the garden that are looking good - onions, rhubarb, garlic is just about to produce scapes.

So many of y'all are probably having scary weather today (Friday evening). Even though a lot of the warnings didn't materialize, thank goodness, we've had tornado chances, some pretty high, every day this week except Thursday. I was never really afraid of the weather until the Joplin tornado in 2011 and now, I find myself really being a weather wimp and I try to do better because Cooper is a big weather chicken and I  he senses my fear.

I try to keep the TV off and depend on the weather radio to let Vince know when we need to get in the safe room so today I took a long nap. Woke up to find my timing was off and the storms were going to be later than they had said earlier. I do have a headache - not weather related probably. Vince asked if I wanted aspirin and I told him wine was probably better but I opted for the aspirin.

OK. Lots of places have it way worse than we do . . Illinois & Wisconsin according to Ryan Hall. I'll stop complaining. 

Today Vince had some errands to run so I went along for the ride. Really, I went along because he said we could get lunch at Texas Roadhouse! I took the measurements for 4th of July Rules.

I could finish that one in the next week or so. I found two pieces that might work for getting this one fully finished. Once the stitching is done, I'll figure out how I want to finish it and, of course, I'll share it all when it's finished and fully finished.

Racing to Beat the Storm

 Today was my day to go stitch with Debbie and it was the day I drive up to her place. We've had storms predicted for almost every day this week - not tomorrow. In fact, Vince had a doctor's appointment scheduled in Kansas City and convinced them to do it by telephone/video so we would have to risk driving through storms. Yesterday Vince and I were debating about whether I should drive an hour north to cross stitch today but this morning, we both looked at the weather and decided it was safe to go, so long as I got home by 5 p.m. Early in the afternoon Vince called to tell me the storms seemed to be moving faster and he thought I should come home earlier. He said definitely be on the road by 3:30. I looked out the window about 3, towards the west which is the way the storms were supposed to come in and it seemed to be getting dark. I asked Debbie if she thought it looked darker and we both agreed that we should probably go ahead and call it a day. We got packed up. I left, made a pit stop at Freddy's for a shake and got on the interstate. The sky seemed to be much lighter towards the south (the way I was headed) but when I got off the interstate, headed west, I thought . . at best, I'm going to get in some rain but hopefully no hail. I prayed that I would make it home safely. The memories of the Joplin tornado can get me really nervous on days like this.

I drove into the driveway, got out and walked around behind the car and it had started raining.

I thought . . that's weird. I JUST pulled into the garage and there's not a drop of water on my car. I started looking more closely and nope, not a drop.

After I came inside, talked with Vince for a minute, loved on the dogs, then looked at my phone and saw a note from a local news station "Gnarly Storm headed to Carl Junction/Asbury area. History of damaging hail and power lines down." I'm not in those towns but they're 5 - 7 miles northeast of me. I was cutting it pretty close and was very thankful that I made it safely. 

It seems like lots of places near us have way worse weather predictions than we do so I'm hoping and praying everyone stays safe and hopefully doesn't sustain damages tonight.

Index With Symbols Received

 Thanks to a VERY nice reader, I now have a copy of the key (symbols that go with each color).

I do believe I could have matched colors with what I've already stitched and compared those symbols to what I needed to use but that was making me quite nervous and stressed. I can't tell you how relieved I am to have this.

Thanks to all of you who offered assistance, even if it was just moral support.

Butter Croissant Sourdough

 Not sure how I came across this recipe for Butter Croissant Sourdough. Saturday I started the bread and baked it this morning.

My dough doesn't always come out of the banneton looking so good.

I pre-heated a Dutch Oven that was too small and had to pre-heat another one that was still almost too small so my boule got a little squished.

Vince and I both thought it was one of the best breads I've made in a long time.

Tomorrow we're having tuna salad sandwiches for lunch . . and I can't wait. I'm going to go ahead and get another loaf of this bread started tomorrow too.

The Next Five Day Project

At this point, I'm not guaranteeing that I will work on this project for five days because I do not have the key that tells me what symbols go with what colors. At least three years ago, Oscar shredded about 1/3 of the paper chart. I didn't worry so much about it because I had made a PDF and had it in Markup. I guess I was frustrated and put it aside with this much done on it. Or maybe (probably) a new chart caught my eye and I switched over to working on that one. You know how I am!

When I got it out this afternoon to work on it, I opened Markup XP and I had not copied the key. In the early days of using the app, I could not figure out how to get the key included in the project so I just left that part off and used the paper key (chart). Now, I have no idea why I struggled with that because it isn't hard and here I am without a key because I didn't take the time to figure out how to do it. Or, maybe because my dog was out of control and shredded my chart. Either way . . I'm frustrated!

I'm thinking with as much as I have done, I can look at the symbol I'm supposed to use, find somewhere else where I've stitched that symbol and match up the colors. If not, I'll probably put it aside, get over my frustration and order a new chart.

I've looked at the floss (Vikki Clayton Silks) and noticed there were only two colors I had not used yet but then I realized those are just second bobbins of colors I've already used so I think I can figure this out. As I figure out a color, I'm going to make myself a key. 

If I can figure out the colors, I'm going to work on this one for five days and IF I make decent progress because there is so much done already, I may stick with it and get it finished so I don't have to pick it up again and deal with the key issue.