Look what I found!

I was taking something out to the garbage and found that my cymbidium had bloomed. It's a magnificent thing, really much more lemony yellow than it appears here. Certainly good for a kick in the spirits. I decided to take a little walk around to see what else was up in the garden. LOTS of weeds so am hoping to do some hoeing today. The Queen Anne's Tears (a billbergia) has also bracht-ed out (as Calvin says, "I love to verb words!") and both hardenbergia's are covered with purple flowers. DS2 had cut the one outside the family room window to the ground in his fantastic yard clean-up last year and I was afraid it was gone. It was good to see it looking so happy.

Nothing like LOTS of rain to perk everything up. Even the violets are popping up again, and I saw a butterfly go past the window (couldn't catch what kind, though.) It's about time for the spring Monarchs to emerge. They get to the chrysalis stage, then just hang around all winter and emerge about this time of year, head out looking for food and come back in August to lay eggs. Since DS2 had pulled out most of the milkweed in his enthusiastic cleaning while we were gone last summer I was afraid we would lose the Monarchs, but I seem to have a few plants left for them here and there so will keep my fingers crossed.

Speaking of raising spirits, I must share this picture (and yes, I told DH I was going to do this). DH went off to the grocery store yesterday and had been home for a while when he came into my office and said something about reporting me to the Wive's Association or something for "letting" him go to the store "this way."

He said he had been rummaging around in his jeans drawer to find something to wear so he could launder his usual pair of jeans in preparation for his trip next week. He said he was so excited to find an old pair that he just pulled them on and headed for the store. He's still trying to convince himself that the jacket he was wearing (really just a long-sleeved microfiber shirt) covered this.

It didn't.

I did manage to get the Christmas tree down and - mostly - packed away. Today I'm hoping to get the rest of the decorations down and packed, too. It's going a little slower than most years because I'm trying to get rid of some stuff. Well, not exactly get rid of it yet - I'm sorting the stuff I don't want into a separate box so the boys can go through it and see if there's anything they want, then I'll get rid of what's left.

Finally, I did some stitching as we watched the returns from the primaries come in and

TAA-DAA!

I finished the sampler in the center of my "What Color is Spring?" quilt. Now I can start on the sashing, which is what I REALLY have been looking forward to. I was thinking that I would do one color at a time. No, that's not right. The patchwork part of the quilt is in color-coordinated rows: a pink row, orange row, yellow row, green row and so on. The embroidery design on the sashing between the rows also is themed on a color. The sashing after the pink row, for example, has pink hollyhocks, hearts and butterflies. The sashing after the yellow row has a big sun at the top, bees, sunflowers and fuzzy little chickies. The sashing after the blue has bluebirds. The sashing after the green is my favorite with grass full of green bugs. Like I was trying to say, I was thinking of doing all the pink sashing, then all the orange, then all the yellow. But my mom suggesting working out in one direction from the center so I don't get bored doing all one color at a time. Got me to thinking that for stability of the quilt it might be better to jump around while I work on this. We'll see.