Pumpkin Season and To-Do's

Happy pumpkin season, quilty friends!

After a hot, dry holiday weekend, today temps will

drop way down today.  Besides great fabric, nothing

makes me want to quilt more than fall weather!

It's coming in wonderfully early and it's very welcome.

After spending most of the weekend in the sun, I'm more

than ready to stay in over this spell of rain and cold.

With all of the outdoor work and pool time, I still did

a pretty decent job with the to-do's:

✓ 1) Quilt one, or more, of my 3 finished tops.

I finished quilting Meow but I was just all off.

Am I that rusty?  After just a month?

Somehow I'd forgotten my coffee that morning

and it was already past noon.  After some caffeine,

it got a little better but I'm still pretty disappointed.

Hubs says "oh, it's fine" so I'm trying not to let it

bother me too much.  Still, I'm not posting any

close-up finish pics.

Next I loaded up Squirrel in the Secret Garden. 

I'm a couple rows in and it's going okay.

 I think I've just been a little tired and a little achy with

the cool weather/rain moving in.  Add in the disruption

of having the hubs working from home and things are

just a little off.  But, I did meet my goal so there is that.

✓ 2) Sew garlic knot blocks together.

Also, choose borders and come up with a name.

I sewed all 120 blocks together and put a small

strip of the background fabric around it.

With the simple piecing, I'm wanting more out

of this quilt so I'm thinking about a pieced border.

Adding more color is probably not a good idea so

I might do something in all black--like maybe

flying geese or saw-tooth?  No name yet.

✓ 3) Garden work

Roast and freeze peppers

Prune, can tomatoes

Weed

All done but there are tons more peppers

to pick, though we don't really need them.

I'll leave this up to time.

✓ 4) Enjoy September!!!

So far, so good.

5) Just maybe:  choose and start a new quilt

For now I just have my eyes on some.

In other things:

Our front porch got a thorough cleaning before I started

placing pumpkins all around.  The huge jack-o-lanterns

are still growing and there are other pumpkins and

gourds to come but this is a good start.

And you can't have a fall scene without some mums!

 The entire thing just evolves over the season as I

add various touches here and there.

Every year is entirely different.

In the garden:

The 6,000 ladybugs laid eggs all over the place.

These moved into stage 2 larvae and within a

couple days, the one billion-zillion aphids almost

disappeared.  I have never seen anything like it!
The craziest thing ever to watch and I'm now

a believer!  I just didn't realize the entire

process took weeks and involved stages.

And I was ready to give up!

It seems like there is always something to learn

from the garden.

The chickens are now 12 weeks old, though it seems

forever-ago that I got them.  We really miss fresh eggs

but those probably won't start showing up till November.

Hopefully in time for holiday baking!

My to-do's for next week :

1) Bind and label Meow

2) Finish quilting Squirrel in the Secret Garden

3) Choose and start on border for the garlic knot quilt

4) Other things:

Continue canning tomatoes, fall decorating and 

make something yummy with the first pumpkin.

Happy quilting!

Linking up to:

Home Sewn By Us "Tuesday To-Do #57