April Plans and Projects

"Spring is the time of plans and projects."

 --Leo Tolstoy

Happy April!

The garden is now showing spinach, kale, onions, peas,

scallions, radishes and carrots.  Typically I'm fighting

to get everything I can in as early as I can but this year

I'm a little more "chill" about it all.

The chickens have finally decided to ante up and we're back
to 5 or 6 eggs a day.  With 16 chickens, that's still not great
but with warmer weather and longer days, we'll get there.

I'm back to letting them out every afternoon.  This rooster

seems to keep the hens closer to the house and under trees

and shrubs so I don't worry about hawks as much anymore.

I love that they're out there on pest patrol.

In the orchard, our newly planted fruit trees are doing well.
Only the old apricot tree is in bloom--it rarely produces anymore
so the freeze we had this past weekend isn't too much of a worry.

The pears are budding and the peaches are right behind
them.  I pray we are done with freezes; it's been several years
since we had peaches.

We're in our last high school track season with our son.

He started it off well by setting a new personal record 

at the first meet with a 15'2" vault--he took 1st place.

From here on out there's generally a meet every week till

State at the end of May.  Mid-May brings graduation and

a grad party that will also be a Military Send-Off.

So as to the title of this post?

Plans and projects?

First, the April banner!

Another night-time pic; will have to catch a better one tomorrow!

I kinda flew through it but it's done.  And it's only April 2. 
Eleven down, one to go!

Other things on the queue...

I decided to try something on the outer border of the West Point
quilt so that delayed things a bit more.  And of course the quilt was
just a few inches too big for the batting that I have--you know, the
one of which I have 40 whole yards? Add in a trip to the store. 😒

But it's now on the frame and being quilted.  I didn't
squeeze it in as a March finish but no matter.
I'm just happy to be this close.

Timeless Traditions

When I need breaks from the long arm, I'll move back into the
sewing room to work on the charity quilt (modeled after the above)
that I'm now starting. This will be my first scrap/stash buster
of the year with hopefully several more to come.  The stash has been
steadily growing, no matter how many times I've told myself
that there are to be no more purchases till fall.

I came across these on an online quilt shop and couldn't
resist for $4/yd.  My reasoning is that I made such a big dent
in the Halloween fabrics last fall that there is finally ample room
for new.  It's a little hard to see but the top fabric has stars in it.
I thought this would make a great background fabric for
a lot of different things but especially for baby quilts...

And guess who has grandchild #2 on the way?
Due around Halloween so I'd say that makes my purchases
unobjectionable, right?  Ok, I didn't know at the time but we'll
keep that between us...

Happy quilting.