The weather has been wonderful today - warm but not hot (low 80's), sunny, breezy, many beautiful blooming things. The two photos above are of the Golden Chain Tree (Laburnum spp.). These are flowering now beside the roadways and look wonderful!
This is a flowering black locust tree, many of which are blooming away in the verges as well. So pretty. :) Locust trees are fairly common - the wood does not rot so fence builders of old loved these medium sized trees. I don't know whether the species is native to the New World or was brought here from Europe by settlers.
I went looking for native-to-Maryland plants to consider growing in my (ahem, much neglected) garden. Most of them I've found so far are annuals or need full sun. Sigh. We only have half days of sun in the far back quarter of our yard (too far away to enjoy).
I managed to get up at a 'normal' time today (9:30 a.m.) and go to the weekly daytime meeting of Faithful Circle quilters. I haven't seen most of these folks since it was winter - was a great day. I took the 30's embroidered flowers quilt top I just bought to show/share. Lots of happy quilt chatter, show and tell, and lunch afterwards. A group of nine of us went to a local Tex-Mex place called Mi Casa. Food was good, conversation was delightfully invigorating. :)
After lunch I drove south to visit my local quilt shop, Springwater Designs. I was searching for more solids for my temperature quilt. I found a very nice blue for 'sky' and an agreeable light green ... but no dark blue (not even navy, which I do not want) for the low temperature end of the scale.
It was nice to see my Wool Club leader, Carrie Castro there - working on the long arm ... and helping/cheering on Alice Magorian, a friend and former employee, who was quilting a very nice (large!) flannel quilt on another long arm (Springwater rents long arms and is an active sales center). It was good to see Alice since I missed another luncheon of former staff members while I was away. :)
Once I got home, I sat down and sewed two more sections of the Octopus (J and K) - if I make only two a day, I have three more days of work to do yet. :) I thought I would make more temperature blocks, but after I had added the two new prints to my legend chart and ordered two more solids (pale silver for 'partly cloudy' and dark royal blue for 'low temp'), I wandered off to my computer upstairs and started doing other things. :)
I rented Thor: Ragnarok tonight from iTunes and enjoyed watching it while my husband went out for his first evening of summer league bowling. He was chuckling when he got home later - usually, summer league bowling is for pleasure and not very competitive (compared to winter, at least:). He managed to bowl a 209 average tonight and so will be spending all season trying to live up to it (I think his usual average is closer to 185 or so:).
Tomorrow is mixed pleasure and pain. I'm looking forward to taking Blue to the fixer, seeing Barbara for sewing in the afternoon ... and getting my second alergy shots (not!).
:) Linda
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