a nice vacation it's been

Well, technically it still is vacation. But tomorrow is Friday, and after that it's just regular time off, so for all intents and purposes it's almost over. But I won't dwell on that.

Nolene and I made the journey to Arkansas to see sister Sue and her family. All are doing well, and I'm glad to say Troy gave me a few plants to bring home. I've got about half the mums in the ground and the flags too (I don't know if there's a "proper" name for them, but I think they remind me of an iris). Some of the flags were from Troy's garden, the others were growing untended out by the trees and wanted to come home with me. There's something about getting transplants from friends and family...it's like you're bringing a bit of them home with you.


Nolene has some canna's that were originally from my house in Burleson. I hope to get a few from her in the next few days or so. First I have to prepare for them, but I'm making progress.

Today I worked on preparing a bed for some marigolds and daisies. It's coming along nicely, and they're in the ground, but I didn't get a pic. Maybe another time.

On our trip, Nolene and I did some geocaching. For those not in the know, it's a form of "treasure hunting" using a GPS. We found 10 caches, and we each picked up a travel bug to continue on their journeys. It's always fun to track down the coordinates, and see the clever way people hide their caches. One was attached with something like a c-clamp underneath a bleacher at a rodeo site. One was in the cap of a chainlink fence, and another was in a pvc pipe. Always interesting, and usually a challenge. I especially like the ones that are around cemeteries. It's nice to visit these sites that are kind of off the beaten path, and would have very few visitors without this reason to come to it. By the way, it's all very respectful and this particular cache was hidden outside of the fenced in area.

The travel bugs are items that cachers attach a numbered tag to, and place them in caches to be picked up and moved around the country and world. The one I got is called "Sew Me the World", and it has the tag along with a metal bobbin on a chain. I took a picture of it with my leaves in the wind wip (work in progress, also known as ufo...unfinished object), and posted it for the owner of the tag to see. I've put out a travel bug that's called Quilter's Omnigrid...the 2" omnigrid square, and I'm hoping that people will log pictures of it with their quilts. If you click on the picture, you should be able to see the travel bug in the center.

By the way, the quilt above will have a "Mr. Wind" face up in the upper left corner blowing air through the leaves.

Ok, that's it for now. Catch you later, and hopefully I won't be whining about going back to work. After all, I've only got 11 months and one week till I retire! But who's counting?