Sobering

 On Wednesday, July 8 at 6 pm museums across America held a reading of the Declaration of Independence. All at the same time on the same day, large or small.  And our museum was part of the event.

Our museum has new travelling sign boards displaying what happened historically nationally after we declared our independence.  The national events were on the top row and Lowell's history in perspective on the bottom rows. 

This sign board explains why there is a Lowell.  We had here, in this area, in the confluence of the Flat and Grand Rivers the largest concentration of ermine in Michigan at the time.  When you see a royal wearing a robe with those black spots?  Those are ermine hides, the black tipped tail was what the royals wanted and likely came from here.  

That cabin in the photo?  It's the only drawing that exists of the first fur trade cabin in the area.  

            A replica was built a few years ago near the best guess spot where the original once stood.  

Our daughter stood on the porch of the museum, originally a home built in 1873, and explained to the gathering about the combined meeting all across the country and specifically Michigan, for the reading of the Declaration.

We had a respectable group come to hear.  It was church quiet. 

And the Declaration was read. 

I must say here, being political for just a moment, that this was the first time I've ever heard the entire Declaration read or read it myself.  We all grow up knowing what it meant but how many of us actually read it word for word?  We grow up thinking the document was the end of our affiliation with England but it was only the start.  I used to tell the kids at school,  "No, no, no. The Declaration was a letter we sent to King George saying, DECLARING we're done being your colony. George replied, "Um, I don't think so." Then there were eight years of war to prove our point and then the work began to actually DO what we wanted.  And we had to work hard for that.   

I sat there listening and was aghast at the similarities to today, the accusations against King George III, the reasons for our turning away from his rule, the call to do so, the obligation to do so.  I kept nudging PH as point by point was read of his 'crimes' against us.  

Remember the term historically used to describe King George?  The Madness of King George?  Well, here we are.  

Peas 'n' Berries

 

It's that time of year - it seems everything comes ripe at the same time.  Strawberries are done but blueberries, cherries, black and red raspberries, are leading the way now.  Corn is very tall so will be early.

Oh, and peas.  Friday we went to the pea patch for a supply.  We get a bag like this for ourselves and one for our sin-in-law who eats them raw out of a bowl like peanuts, and we gave a bag to PH's brother.

People line up, cars line up, it's a very busy place and they run out every day. You have to be there early. No, we don't pick them ourselves, they have a machine to do it and shell them. 

I wish I liked peas.

This is a labor of love.  Picking black raspberries can be considered a chore if you didn't love the berries so much.  PH won't pass by a wild patch along the side of the road but lucky for us a friend has a huge yard, lots of it wild and in that wild are a bazillion black raspberries. You just have to go get them. We had good rain this spring and the heat we've been enduring is only ripening them quickly.

Even if it's brutally hot like we've had last week, he's out there picking along the side of the road.  And then Friend Don said, "they're ready!" 

                 

So we went.  If you do this you have to want them.  We crawl through the brambles, thick with scrub weeds and berry vines, spider webs and mosquitoes.  No pain, no gain.

                           There will be many more this week as these ripen and PH will be out there. 

I need enough for two pies in January and this morning we picked 3.6 pounds.  Plenty for the pies but there are so many more berries maybe a batch of jam will materialize, too. 

THIS is summer.

Here's a sample example of the border Adelaide chose for her quilt.  I've laid it out here as a preview. I'm using all of the yellow and green batiks so there's variety and the little bar in the middle is the dots. I like it! 

Busy Camp Day

 Before I begin with this post's subject I have to ask.  Ceci is thinking of her quilt because I told her to begin thinking while I'm working on Adelaide's.  While she was here over the weekend she talked about some of the things she would like.  Turns out while she is thinking of the images she is also certain in requesting some of the fabrics she had in her previous quilts, starting with the one I made when she was born.  I gulped.  

Her job will be to get pictures to me of the fabrics she wants and then I have to see if I can find them - I thought almost certainly they won't be in my stash anymore as scraps and if they are they will be just that...scraps.  I did find a few.  Can't believe it!

So.  My question to you is how do I search out fabrics that could be 15 years old?  I told her I'd do what I could but no promises and some might just have to be close but not the actual.  Any ideas?  Websites? 

Today was the Lowell Museum's day camp  for kids.  We had a good size group and we kept them very busy.  They chose what they wanted to do from a list of activities.

Friend Laurie and I brainstormed for months about ours.  We were going to sew a first flag of the colonies, mostly referred to at the Betsy Ross flag.  Over the months we thought of every twist and turn we could imagine.  Our ideas morphed and simplified and finally given we would have the kids for a little over an hour, came up with felt.  

We tested our idea on three kids we knew who were of the age.  We tweaked even more, taking away the concept of the kids placing the stripes with US placing the stripes and dotting a bit of glue on the ends so they stayed in place for the sewing.  Wrong.  Glue doesn't hold felt, it sinks in and forms a glob that dries like cement and no needle would go through no matter how hard I tried.  

I started over and basted the strips at the beginning and the end of each stripe and that worked.

Before

During

Our job was to tie knots and thread needles. The kids were really into the project and SO proud of themselves when they finished!

First group we had nine kids, second group we had six.  The second group was mostly boys and they did the best stitching!

I loved their concentration.  Definitely used the stitch and stab method.

One girl made me laugh with her sewing the tablecloth to her piece.  She lifted it up and up came the table covering.  I told her I did the same thing when I was putting the basting stitched in the beginning and end of the rows because the piece was laying flat and caught the bottom.

I didn't get to see all of the projects but this one was printing with invisible ink like the spies did.

We had a lesson in soldiering

And there was a project of plate painting.  

There was tin can punching (Paul Revere's lantern) and beading a flag and stamping and writing with a quill and string art and designing a boat that would float. I didn't get pictures of those activities because Laurie and I had our hands full with our group.  

Each summer the day camp is a lot of fun but this one was particularly so.  

Berry Time

 Time for my annual post about strawberry picking. I went first thing this morning, arriving just as they were opening for the day at 7:30.  The field was quiet, sun was shining, it wasn't hot yet. It was perfect.

Did you know there is a berry picking etiquette?  Well, any U-pick situation has common sense manners.  When we lived in South Haven the activity was something people did while on vacation and it could be Katie Bar the Door with manners. 

1. Pick ALL of the fruit on the plant, not just the pretties on top. Move the leaves around. Pick all of it. Sometimes the best ones are hiding.

2.  Stay in your lane.  If someone is picking a row or a bush find a different one, this one's taken.

3. Please stay off your phone.  Some of us are there for the peace and quiet

4. Yes, it's fun to taste but the object is to pay the farmer for his crop not see how much you can eat without paying for it.  This isn't Costco.

5. Keep tabs on your kid - toddler or teen - doesn't matter. 

I went alone this morning and in 20 minutes picked 6.25 pounds

The pie.  I bragged to a friend the pies weigh ten pounds.  Close but not quite!

Many years ago I was cleaning fruit for a senior class party at my daughter's school.  A teacher was also in the school kitchen prepping food.  When I finished with my enormous bowl of strawberries I stood back, smiled and said, "Isn't that the prettiest thing you've ever seen?"  

"No," he said.

"What?" 

He said he grew up in a family of migrant workers.  He can't/won't eat anything he had to bend over in the hot sun all day long and pick in order to live. 

Now, I pick my own because I love it and thank goodness physically can still do it.  Many, many/most people don't.  They rely on going to the farm stand and buying their berries already picked.  Someone once told me she wasn't going to go out in that hot sun and do it herself.

Well.  

My feeling is this.  If you eat food and didn't grow it or pick it yourself then someone else did. 

Someone else bent over in that hot sun all day and did it for you, and like the trend now to thank a veteran when you see one, thanking a migrant worker isn't too far off.  There are some - and I won't name names but you all know which side of the fence I'M on - want all migrants gone from the US. 

I would love to see SOME people snarking around talking this talk bending over in the fields picking their food. 

Just sayin'.

Sunflowers and Such

 I don't know about you but I'm tired of the squirrel problem.  They've gone again so I have a break.  While they love the sunflower seeds and can smell that they are in the feeder from two hills away, they do not like the hot pepper treated seed so I'm doing ok with my battles if I keep the seeds hot.

Sure is pretty out there, though.  This is my view while on the computer. It can be a busy place.

Done with squirrels so here's an update on the sunflower quilt.  It's wrinkly because I am scrunching it into my hand to stitch and the pieces are pinned down.  I know, I know, there are other ways but I don't use those ways. No glue, no fusing, no machine, just thread basting for first placement and then pinned like a suit of armor that come out as I needle turn applique. Works for me.

Adelaide is guiding my hand with every step.  Every one of them.  I put something down, take a picture and send it to her and she edits. Or while she is here and can move something. I had pulled out the bright orange petals in the third flower but she put them back in.  

I showed her some border ideas and she chose one that will use all of the colors so that's good.

I AM following how the original picture of these flowers did the vein in the leaves.  The photo shows flat sided ends, and we all know points can be a pain so this works, looks good, Adelaide approved and so much easier.

We all know Jo knits scarves using tea bag strings.  That absolutely intrigued me and after her post telling how she does it, needle size, weight of string, I decided on January first to start saving my tea strings.  

I drink a lot of iced tea.  A lot. So I was curious about how long it would take to save enough strings.  Sometimes I use string bag tea, sometimes the bags don't have strings and sometimes I use loose tea so doing the math wouldn't work.  Besides, Jo doesn't count them, she weighs hers.  

This little knob is 7 grams and as you can see, a few of the strings have the little staple attached so I am aware this will affect the weight.  

Before we went to London in January I asked Brian to save his strings.  He said tea sold domestically comes in bags without strings.  Only restaurants have stringed bags. While we were there, I saved those.  And, Jo, he laughed hysterically when I told him why I wanted them.

Everyone I tell thinks it's about the craziest thing they've ever heard of.....till I show them the pics on her blog post.  Then it's, "ohhh, it's really not that crazy!"  

By the end of the year I may have enough for a bookmark, I am sure there won't be enough for a scarf. 

And So It Goes

                                          And the squirrel said, "Not so fast, lady. Nice try."

Bird vs. Squirrel

 

I love the birds.  I love feeding them and watching them and listening to them and always have.

If one decides to build a nest on the house both PH and I alter our movements to accommodate the new momma and her family. If they build very close to our spaces we talk to momma and she gets used to us and doesn't fly off.  In spring when they wake us with their dawn chorus we don't mind. We love it. It's just fine.

But I don 't like the squirrels horning in on and emptying the feeders and since we live in the woods now there is no stopping them. If there is one there is a whole regiment out there. The tiny red ones are tenacious and I've done everything I could think of to deter them.  Nothing worked.  Not one thing. NOTHING.

I tried them all.  The sprays, the baffles, feeding them their own lunch, I even bought one of those toy orbi guns last fall to shoot little orbi gel balls at them and when that didn't work I tried a powerful squirt gun.  Nothing worked.  They would simply step aside, wait for me to close the door and be back before I put the toy down.  

Notice that black bungee cord across the roof of the feeder.  The feeder whose weighted perch was supposed to deter the squirrels.  They simply took the roof off and wallowed in the feed inside like they were in some amusement park ball pit.  So I tried bungee cords to hold the roof on.  They chewed through them.  Sometimes in the very day I put the cords on.  I tried this stiff rubber thick cord that I can hardly stretch to fit the hooks.  Chewed right through.  One day I put THREE cords on and they chewed through two of them in one afternoon's entertainment.  

But.  But one day I thought I figured them out.   I had bought some feed that is treated with hot pepper.  After all, the hot pepper suet is left alone so maybe the hot pepper feed? It works for this feeder. No one touches it but the birds. So I thought if I filled the house with this feed maybe the squirrels would leave the house alone, too.

 While searching online for a bag I noticed an ad for something "guaranteed" to repel the squirrels.  I had purchased other products guaranteed to thwart squirrels but nothing ever worked.  Not one thing. But, once again, I fell for the label and knew I didn't have anything to lose.

  Scroll back up.  Do you see the little bags with the red stinky balls in them?  THIS WORKS!!!

Never in my bird feeding life have I found something so small that absolutely works.  ABSOLUTELY. I don't know if I really needed to put two out but if one is good two is better, right? 

I told PH I didn't conduct the proper scientific testing by seeing if ONE of the two deterrent's, the feed or the stinky balls worked but I don't care.  One, ONE tiny red squirrel scurried up the pole, took one whiff and ran off.  Not one single one has come back. The birds can now eat in peace and my life of bird watching is much less stressful. 

Ahhh.

Won't You Be My Neighbor?

 Lousy weather lately so I put the houses together in rows.  The strips are still loose but so far this placement is good. It went together very quickly because the blocks were all constructed and waiting. 

 I made blocks with people in the doorways, enough for another row if I had added them but I changed my mind on that so this measures eight squares by 8 rows. It won't be big and I will put a border on but that's another day.  I've seen so many variations of the house quilts.  Trees interspersed, sashing here and there, but I kept going back to just the houses.  If all the blocks were the same it would look like a condominium complex.  This looks more like Lowell.  All the houses are different.

I don't name my quilts.  I just say something like, "the pink one"  "the liberty one" " the round sheep" "the crows"   things like that.  I imagine this will be "the houses."

But I almost ALMOST put this one single person in and called the quilt "There's one in every neighborhood." 

But then I decided to be nice.  I put Mr. Rogers in as the one single person in the doorway.  He's on the top row in the center overlooking his neighborhood. 

Afterglow

 

Not much today-the weekend was so nice I'm just kind of basking in the glow.  

Sadly, I didn't take a single photo.  We spent Saturday watching our grand daughter playing two LaCrosses.  Weather was perfect, sunny and just warm enough that we could take off our sweaters. 

Mother's Day Sunday daughter and her clan were here for dinner.  We made a paella and had a cavalcade of desserts. I made what I thought was going to be a silky, smooth pots de creme and I gave it a Brule crust. Sugar cookies from an 1870's recipe belonging to Patrick Henry's granddaughter, and a cream cheese pound cake. But the pots de creme recipe is going down.  It didn't stay pudding-y, it solidified into a true solid ganache. Ugh. Too much!  That's one recipe I won't save.  

Today I told PH it seemed strange not to be baking something and then saw the rhubarb I cut the other day sitting in the refrigerator.  Blueberry muffins swapping out the blueberries with the rhubarb took care of that.

Our weather is clear and cool.  Too cool to sit on the porch and read but they offer the 80's by this weekend.  

If we are going to have a couple more cool days I dug out the house blocks I made ages ago, trimmed them and will put them together to at least get them that far.

We are a bit tired of the unusually cool weather but the flowers are blooming, the birds nesting and grass needing to be cut. And I told PH come July we'll wish for this cool weather. 

Art

     When we go to a quilt show we take photos of the quilts we like, right? Some quilts speak to us and some don't. Sometimes it's the workmanship, the overall look, the colors, the imagination or ingenuity. Maybe you're with a friend whose taste is opposite yours.  She may like modern, you like traditional. They may like art quilts and you don't so much.  Art quilts are certainly a medium no different than paints in a tube but sometimes that's disputed.  Personally, I am a believer. As a medium art quilts are important. I just could never make one.

     I fall into the traditional. I like to think I maybe could do what I'm looking at so the art quilts don't generally ring my bells. Maybe they do yours.  That's what we call variety.  

     Today I went down to our arts council building because Friend Barb reminded me they had an exhibit I had overlooked. 

     It was a three part show.  Some quilts, some representation of blooms in photos or paint, some sculpture in fabric. 

     I'm including in the first three photos the philosophy of the sponsor of the quilt part of the exhibit, and the explanation of the theme.  It looks like a lot of reading but I learned a lot by taking the time. Put your reading glasses on and take a minute.

    After you read the sign board titled Emerald Green all becomes clear. 

Since we take photos of the things we like or that speak to us, these were the ones I took a photo of. All of the quilts required at least a spot of green in them.

I love blue.  The quilting on this was amazing and I had to really look for the green.

I've spent many a sunset standing on the lake bluff at our house when we lived in South Haven looking for the elusive green flash. This quilt made me smile and wish I'd have thought of it.

This was just pretty.  Poison ivy in the fall, those red leaves. Other than the hint of green in the ferns the white flowers have a teeny french knot of green in them.

We are seeing political statements in quilts lately and being hung in shows and I applaud them. This one really made me stand there and read what this quilt had to say.

I shrugged and walked past this.  Didn't like the colors. But I stopped and read the maker's statement and went back to get my nose closer.  

The embroidery is the quilting stitch and then I decided "wow." Maybe, too,because this one was done by hand.

I didn't care for this quilt (the green is embroidered in the pictures of the sunflowers.)  Then I read the statement and thought otherwise.  The picture shows VanGogh licking his brush. Explanation below.

This was done by the quilter who quilted Charlie's quilt. 

So, out of 34 quilts hanging in this exhibit, these were the ones that personally spoke to me and so I took a photo.  There were others I just didn't "get" but that's art.  And it was a lesson in first impressions versus taking the time to take a second look.