Quilter's Run, 2011

Sandi, Bonnie, Tina and I spent the day visiting 9 quilt shops on the southern half of the San Diego Quilt Run. We started at Amadon's in Poway then headed to The Crazy 9-Patch in Ramona. From there is was down to Memory Lane, Rosie's (where I bought $100 in backing fabric) and Country Loft. We took a break for lunch at an Irish Pub, Houlies, in El Cajon. Great beer, interesting appetizers; fries in a curry dip. I had Irish Stew.

After lunch it was on to Cozy Quilts where I found a Strip pattern called Harvest for my Bali Pop package of strips. From there it was down to Chula Vista and Amathyst and Quilter's Choice quilt shops. Here I found a lavender batik for the background of the new Cozy pattern.

Missed tonight's sunset but here is one from yesterday...enjoy.

and here's yesterday morning's view with fog in the valley...you can see the peak of Mt Woodsen in the distance.



Gardening and Sunsets

I hate being sick...where this fever, coughing and sneezing jag came from I don't know but I'm not a happy camper. It's going on two weeks. On top of missing 3 days of work, when I did feel well enough to go in, my freekin car wouldn't start. Borrowed Dad's until mine is looked at and repaired on Monday.

I spent this morning positioning around 70 potted plants in the yard. Tomorrow I'll start digging them in a little at a time...still not fully well and my energy is low. It will be nice to get them planted, I bought them last Thanskgiving! The soil is damp and easy to dig so the planting will be easy too. I had my Dad's gardener come over and fix my sprinklers front and back. They work so much better now! Before the water was disappearing into the air, not much hitting the soil. Now, water is getting to where it is needed. Yeah!

Mother Nature was in her full glory again tonight. I leave you with another of her fabulous displays.

New Years Eve Sunset

The final sunset of 2010.

Happy New Year everyone!

Sue

Weekend doings

Friday, Dec 10, 2010:

I went to Tina and Andy's home to pick up a chair-and-a-half with ottoman they wanted to give me for my home. It's from IKEA and the slip cover is a great foresty green which will fit with my 'green' theme home. We also planned to go to Oceanside to see the Visions exhibit.

We first went to TJs to pick up an excellent Syrah from Austrailia, Henry Drive. It's a reserve lable normally selling for $30-50.00. TJs has it for $9.99. We each bought a case. From there we headed to Oceanside to see the new Visions Quilt Show..oh, Velda! What a stunning quilt of Zinnias you created! I want it but at over $100K, due to the economy, I need to pass. :-(

When we got home we loaded the chair and ottoman into the car and sat down to watch season 2 of Dexter. Needless to say, I spent the night, enjoying some of the Henry Drive purchased earlier, YUM!

Saturday, Dec 11, 2010:

Got home from Tina and Andy's around 11am and unloaded the chair. I thought I was going to need help but it was manageable. It's bigger than I thought or my home isn't as big as I thought! I'll find a good place for it as it's color is perfect and the chair is quite comfy. Maybe in front of the fireplace!

As sunsets go, this one on Dec 11 was exceptional in that it started at dusk by turning the surrounding mountains a beautiful lavender, purple mountains magesty! The clouds to the east were a beautiful glowing pink, the whole sky just glowed with that 'Tuscan light". After the sun set, the underlit clouds glowed all the hot colors in the spectrum...red, orange, pink, gold, yellow...stunning!

After the sunset was no more, the evening show was not over! A beautiful cresent moon set yellow then orange in the evening sky, truly an inspiring site. My camera didn't capture it well but it was a site to watch and enjoy.

Sunday, Dec 12, 2010:

It's not even noon on Dec 12th and it's already 83 degrees outside! I'm off to water my trees then put down more roundup to keep the weeds at bay. Soil is already too hard to dig so I'll have to wait until after the next rain to plant my many perennials. Rain is in the near forecast but...?

This afternoon, I'm going over to Mom's and help her set up her home for Christmas. I'll get a tree for my place next weekend...ran out of time this weekend. Boo...

Rainy weekend

This past weekend I was over at my folks to help out as Mom is still not on her feet after surgery. On Saturday I tore down her sewing machine/surger table and reassembled it into the spare bedroom. Whew! That was a job. I also vacuumed and dusted her room, moved the day bed under the far window and generally tidied up.

On Sunday I pulled a few weeds at my place while waiting for a 1/2 cord of oak firewood to be delivered. Wow! I didn't realize how much a 1/2 cord was...I think I'm good for the winter. ;-) In the afternoon I went back to the folks home to tidy up the rest of the house; vacuum, mop and dust. I also made a potato-leek soup for mom for the next few days. I should not have added the oregano. It overwhelmed the leek and thyme flavors. Last week's soup was better without it.

When I got home my neighbor Matt, the cabinet maker, came over with samples of my kitchen cabinetry. The kitchen was never finished off at the base and he mentioned he had the materials to do so. He brought samples of a railing that can be installed under the cabinets to hide under-cabinet lighting and molding across the top of the cabinets as well. The molding were only 1 1/2"-2" and too short for what I want. I'm thinking they need at least a 5" cap due to the height of the ceilings and cabinets.  He's going to bring over his catalog of moldings. He warned me they were EXPENSIVE...how expensive could the be? Stay tuned...I'll post when I find out.

I settled into watching Dexter at 6pm but the sunset was so spectacular I had to go outside to watch and photograph. The second image is a bit later in the evening. Wow! It sure was pretty. :-) I taped Dexter but he's on several times during the week so no biggie.

My new Kitchenaid heavy-duty stand mixer arrived last week. It's RED! I'm anxious to try it out. I'm going to stop at the store tonight and get makings for chocolate chip cookies. I'm adding pecans and walnuts, maybe cranberry too. Mom and Dad will like a little taste treat...I'll leave the cranberries out of Dad's...he's so fussy.

Oct 22, 2010 sunset

An image of last night's sunset was hard to capture on my camera. With the dark and heavy rain clouds just above the horizon the sun had but a few moments of drama before setting. The momentary deep lava-red glow of the sunset was stunning. My camera just didn't capture it in all its glory.

A Sua Casa

It has been raining this week. It is unusual in that this is the season for hot Santa Anna winds to blow in from the desert. Instead we received 3" of much needed rain. Yes the climate is changing due in part to El Nina. It has been predicted by the weather forecasters to be a drier year that last. It's not starting out that way!

I wasn't sure I wanted to get into blogging because I just don't have that much news to pass on. I think I will use this blog to post daily views of the sunset from my home and/or any other interesting happenings around my little hobby farm. Today's image is from a few days ago when we got over 2500+ lightening strikes. This is a rain cloud passing between my home and the view of Mt. Woodsen around 10 miles away. It was a beautiful day.



I was talking to my mom the other day when the subject of finding a good linguica came up. I haven't found one to my liking so I thought to try my hand at making it. Mom mentioned grandma used to make her own and used sour oranges to marinate the pork before stuffing into the casings and smoking. I thought she meant any orange that wasn't quite ripe and therefore would be sour. Nope, there actually are sour orange trees whose fruit never sweetens. This orange is what is used to make marmalade! I never knew that. So the hunt for a sour orange tree was on.

I started my search on the internet finding only descriptions of a sour orange and that the Seville was the most popular variety. I put out a request for help in finding one, since the Net let me down, to the Citrus forum on Gardenweb. One reply did come listing a nursery that had several varieties of dwarf rootstock. I was ready to order one when another post came thru to check Weidman Nursery in Encinitas. I called them, no luck but they said to try Clausen’s in Vista. Again no luck but Clausen's turned me on to Atkins in Fallbrook. Guess what! They had one 5-gal Seville left. I took a long lunch that day and headed to Fallbrook and picked it up. So now, I have my first citrus tree to plant this weekend. I plan on getting 2 more oranges, a Naval and Valencia, 2-3 lemons, Eureka, Meyers and/or a Lisbon, at least 1 lime and maybe a tangerine. No grapefruit for this gal!

One should learn something new every day and I did. Sour oranges do exist. ;-)