Dan's Ramblings

Dan here ~

Thursday evening, by just about anybody's standards the last few days have been hot. Too hot to breathe even. I thought twice about going swimming but I never did. I did put my bathing suit on and went out with the net scooping up snails. The pond now has an abundance of Chinese Mystery Snails. They are invasive as they over compete with native snails and carry parasites as well. I have been going out on these warm days and gathering up a gallon and a half or so of the damn things. They range from small 1/2” things up to about 1-1/2”. I scoop them up and when the fire is good and hot I dump them in. Boy don’t they sizzle and crackle. Lots of excitement here on Green pond.

Tonights sunset was nice, but as I’ve said before I prefer the shot after sunset with a time lapse. Here is tonights. 

I have started already getting rid of under producing plants. This was not a good year for me. I am still learning this concept of micro gardening in containers. When something does poorly there are not many more of them in other areas around the property like in the past. This years wild fluctuations in temperature have made some plants go crazy and others die back. I dumped some today and pulled some others in an effort to have what is left look half decent for this weekend. We’ll see. (remember that is like time will tell).

The lilies are all over for the season and hard to believe the grands are heading off to college over the next couple weeks. That’s right, summer is very quickly going to be over. You all know what comes after that for me, fall means the removal of a couple tons of leaves from the beach. I’ve grown to look forward to that almost as much as the dental work I’ve been having this year. Inevitable but not enjoyed. There will be a little time before the leaves start falling. Hopefully we get a nice fall and it doesn’t end too quickly.

In the studio I finished quilt #22 for 2025. 

2025-25

This time I went with trying to get rid of a couple border fabrics and playing some more with more of the striped fabrics I found in our stash. I used two different stripes and made V-block stars with the stripes in the corners and fussy cuts from sections of the border fabric. I used fussy cut sections from the border fabric to get the frames I used to get the blocks to 12” finished. This left me with a bunch of sashing strips for the next quilt. You will see that next week as I used them In #23. I will be putting the borders on later this evening. I thought that the blocks in #22 looked like the old test pattern after the TV networks shut down for the night. At least that’s what they did when I was a kid. You could not watch TV all night.

Stay safe and enjoy your weekend, I’ll try and do the same.