Grass looks greener in my sewing room!

Hi everyone,

For too long I've been on hiatus from sewing as well as gardening. That's why I'm posting these photos of my chicken pin-cushions: to encourage me to get through today's outdoor work chores. 

Chicken pincushion in batik cottons

Chicken conference

And right about now, I'd love nothing more than to be sewing. Plus, I feel badly about skipping a blog yesterday but you see, the gardens needed me. Desperately. I abandoned them last year, though I was perfectly healthy. I just took a wrong turn on the retirement road. I'll call it Volunteer Street! 

It all started with a quilt I made that I thought could earn a lot of raffle money for our community college's annual orchid show. Last April my quilt was done, and so, I thought, was my involvement! Of course the Orchid Show Committee urged me to join. Next thing I knew, I was rounding up speakers (orchid experts, authors, and biologists), curating an exhibit of 100-year-old pressed orchid specimens, soliciting for auction donations, exhibiting my quilt around the county and selling tickets. I could go on....but I won't. Lesson learned: be careful when you veer toward Volunteer Street.

Anyway, it cost us a summer of no garden maintenance and those sneaky weeds took advantage! Yesterday's garden antics involved a version of musical chairs that my husband and I dubbed "musical shrubs and trees." Our Western Massachusetts winter was cruel, and we lost several specimens. It didn't help that I mistook the Weigelia my husband suggested be moved into a lower garden....I dug up the wrong one! Had to dig another spot for that one as there was no point in returning it to its former home, now hidden by an ever-growing Japanese Maple. 

Two more evergreen shrubs had to be dug up and brought to the humus pile. We'd already eliminated two in May. Tim reduced our departed Redbud to a 4-foot trunk, which is held hostage by a mob of late-blooming irises around its base: only after they peak, can we can move them temporarily in order to excavate Redbud's rotten rootball. Whew, I'm tired all over again! And I still have to dig in the lilac I moved to make way for the lovely red-flowering Weigelia that my husband meant to be moved in the first place! To dig in the lilac, though, I first must clear a spot in the former garden plot, which looks like, well, an embarrassment. Ha! And just try getting a patch of grass repaired....gardening is not for wimps!

Now you know why the grass looks greener in my sewing room!

I wonder, do any of you ever feel like you took a wrong turn?

So many books, so little time!

Unfortunately, my husband and I got a late start on our garden cleanup projects (after lunch). Although we braved a light rain, we finally surrendered to a downpour within the hour. That’s when I decided to touch base with my blogging buddies.

What I’d really like to do is to curl up and finish my current book: And the Dark Sacred Night, by Julia Glass, or even start my book club selection: Why I Left the Amish, by Saloma Miller Furlong. However, there are indoor chores that have fallen a bit behind during our recent push to tidy up our gardens, so I must be brief today.

A Doxie bookmark I made for my husband

I’m also reading Appearances, A Journey of Self-Discovery, which is a memoir by Renee Alter, whom I “met” in my online book-marketing challenge. We swapped files in exchange for reviews. That reminds me: I am looking for additional reviews of my memoir–even though it’s published already as a hardcover. For the simple price of your honest review, I can send you a .pdf file of Water's Edge: Growing Up in the Heart of a New England Village. Please email: VickieNewmanBooks.com.

 On my reading table

At the same online course, I discovered another memoir: Souled Out, by Viet Nam veteran Michael Orban. In fact, I’m trying to connect him with the right people at the Minneapolis Veteran’s Hospital, through my brother-in-law (a Physical Therapist there), to see if they are interested in buying Michael’s story. I hope you’ll offer up a little prayer with me that Michael increases his readership, with this lead! I can’t think of a more deserving author.

My tea is done and I must run….but only after I ask:

What’s on your reading table or wish list?