It's hard to believe April is here already! Where did the month of March go? I was a bit under the weather the entire month, coming down with the flu early in the month, then fighting that lingering cough, which eventually became pneumonia last week. I'm finally getting my energy back and have caught up on most everything around the house (with the help of all my wonderful family) so now it's time to catch up on the blog!
Even though I was not very energetic last month, I did manage to finish my final "Fiber Fall" chain, this one with the Earth theme. A portion of it is laid out on my worktable below.
Something put it into my head that I should add a little hand stitching to these, so before I strung them together, I added some detail with pearl cotton. I didn't embellish every rectangle, but I did do quite a few. It added a little more textural interest and kept my hands busy while I was on the mend. These will be hanging in the NSQG spring show early next month, along with all the others made by my fellow FANErs. I'm excited to see them all hanging together.
Of course, another great thing to do when you're lying in bed not feeling well is READ and I certainly did my share of that last month! Some of my favorites were The Boys in the Boat by Daniel James Brown (a fabulous non-fiction choice), The Cuckoo's Calling by Robert Galbraith (a mystery by J.K. Rowling under a pseudonym), The Magician's Lie by Greer Macallister, Garden Spells by Sarah Addison Allen, and The Hired Girl, a fabulous YA novel by Laura Amy Schlitz. I also read Where'd you go, Bernadette? by Maria Semple for the Light Bite book club that I lead at the Mahopac Library, and I just started The Readers of Broken Wheel Recommend by Katarina Bivald. So I kept busy while I was resting!
And now spring is here and I'm anxious to get outside in the garden again. We've had a few mild days here and there and I was so thrilled to see snowdrops, crocuses, and these little purple star-shaped flowers. I transplanted them all last spring and it was lovely seeing my efforts yield some beautiful blooms! These little purple things (don't remember what they are- will have to look them up) are all over the front lawn and I hope will spread as much down in the back.
As happy as I was to see things emerging and growing, I also see lots of things that need work. We had a couple of days of heavy rain in February and March that resulted in lots of silt washing over the pebble path as you can see below. I'll have to see if I can clean it up a bit one of these days.
Also we've had a shade problem in our backyard almost since we moved in, and that was twenty years ago! There are so many tall trees we could take down to give the area more light, but it's outrageously expensive, as well as disruptive to the lawn and garden. I've singled out this one very large oak that would give us the most bang for our buck and that will probably be coming down sometime this month, before it leafs out. I'm looking forward to getting some much-needed light back there (but heaven knows how we'll deal with all the branches. We have neighbors that will take the larger pieces to burn as firewood but the tree guy said the piles of branches will fill the yard if we don't chip them!).
In addition to that, I want to finally finish the stone steps we started last year. We've been scrounging the yard for large flat stones that will work as steps and have finally located another 3 or 4 that should bring us up to the top. That'll be nice to have done!
So we've certainly got our work cut out for us as far as the yard and garden go... I think I could keep a full-time gardener quite busy! But after the weekend, the weather here is supposed to get chilly again, so I'll refocus on interior things a bit longer.
