I like #224

 
Welcome to another week of things to like!

I wanted to get up a post this week about the opening of our show at the Tubac Center for the Arts, but didn't have a chance so I think I'll just put the pictures here.  

The opening was wonderful!  Well attended and everyone was great about masking (yay!).  There was another show opening in an adjacent gallery space at the same time as ours so I think that also helped bring people out.  It was so so wonderful to only pieces by Mom and me in their own gallery and I love the way they looked together.  It was great to get in there to take some pictures before the space filled up.  This is the first time this show has hung in person, and it was great to be able to be there with Mom.

And our cousins came to the opening with us!  It was so good to see them.

In other news, this was a good week for pups!  Bentley managed to snag the chair at least once (along with my in-progress painted fabric), and Spooky only chewed up a few things that didn't belong to him.

My friend Melody has been doing a year-long Breed School where they get sent wool to spin from different sheep breeds each month.  She knit little bitty (~1-2 inches) sheep out of samples from each of the different breeds.  Aren't they adorable!

There are so few flowers in the garden as a result of all the horrible bugs that killed off so much, but I do have this petunia blooming.  It's special because it's one that was almost completely dead (only one green stem) that I rescued from a trash pile in our parking garage a couple months ago.  Now it's filled back out and this week came out with the prettiest stripey flowers.

I hope everyone is finding some good things this week in the midst of so much stressful news out of Afghanistan.  Click over to LeeAnna's for more things to like.

I like #223

 Once again I missed a week of I like posting, so there are two weeks to catch up on.  Last week I was on a whirlwind road trip to southern Arizona to deliver my art quilts (and my mom's) for our show currently hanging at the Tubac Center for the Arts.  The show turned out wonderful and I'll do a whole post about that this week.  

For now I'm glad to be back home.  It was a very long road trip, somewhere around 2,200 miles, and it rained most of the way coming back.  But it was a lovely trip.  I got to stay with my cousins and some friends from graduate school who I hadn't seen since before COVID.  Everyone at the opening reception was really good about wearing masks, and I got to spend some time in the Sonoran Desert which is one of my very favorite ecosystems anywhere.  My cousin Annie who I was staying with lives about five minutes from Saguaro National Park West, and one morning I got up early and went for a beautiful hike in the Tucson mountain area of the park.  They've had way more rain than usual and everything is blooming, super green, not quite as hot and even more gorgeous than usual.  So rare for August!

Hedgehog cactus!

The washes actually had running water in them (not just when raining)

I've never seen the ocotillo this beautiful.  They were so green with leaves so big and juicy.  They look like super soft green giant (!!) pipe cleaners.  Spikes underneath though of course.

The art center was down in Tubac, this was just outside Tubac.  This is in the middle of the desert, 20 miles north of the Mexican border.  Just insanely green and beautiful.  The day I walked around by the art center, it was 72 degrees and raining.  Two weeks earlier I'd been on the Canadian border where it was 95 degrees and so dry the trees were losing their leaves.  Just completely crazy.

My mom flew in for the opening, it was so fun to see her too.  She's here with my cousin Virginia.

And my other cousin Annie!

It was really a great trip.  I'm super behind now at work, and it's good to be home, but definitely a couple of weeks filled with blessings and things to like.  

And of course now that I'm home, my beloved pups!!

I was so happy Blue curled up under my sewing machine while I was working the other day. :)

And a cool Woodhouse toad in the yard!

I hope everyone has had a good week!  Click over to Lee Anna's for more things to like!

I Like #222

 

Welcome to another week of things to like!

First up this week is my crabapples!  I love my crabapples, I picked them all before I left on my vacation, and this past weekend I spent almost all of Saturday processing them, and then Sunday making jelly, crabapple butter, and fruit leather.  So very tasty.  I still have about half the juice left, so more jelly to come once I get some jars from my mom's place.

I love my pups!  They're such sweeties <3.  Spooky chewed up another dog bed this week, but still lots of snuggles and playtime and walks all around.

I'm really enjoying the garden.  I picked tons more tomatoes this week, and am eating them just as fast as I can.  So tasty.  And I have some really lovely big zinnias that just make me smile.  This giant grasshopper was trying to steal my tomatoes, and I rescued this one, but there were several others that had become food for other garden residents before I could get them picked.  

This pretty hibiscus tree was blooming in my friend Brett's yard; I had no idea they'd even grown here.

I love the fiber Christmas in July festival!  It's a smallish fiber festival between here and Tulsa, tons of beautiful yarn, roving, batts, and wool.  I always pick up some of the spun roving-wrapped wire, and this year I also bought some yarn.  I couldn't resist the neon pink (I'm currently out of neon pink), and the dark moody blue green (on sale even!) is to go with my orange hand dyed.  

I hope everyone is having a good week!  Click over to LeeAnna's for more things to like!

I Like #221

 

I've been absent for a couple of weeks (and late today) because I was able to take a couple of weeks and travel around the Dakotas and Northern Minnesota camping with my family.  I left my pups with my sister, but my parent's three dogs travel with them, so it was a wonderfully doggy vacation.

Here they are sitting (snoozing) with me in the back of the truck.

We started in South Dakota where we did some hiking in the Black Hills, and then went back down to Wind Cave National Park.  We went there last year (I love the bison and the prairie dogs) but we weren't able to go in the cave last year so we went back.

The cave was super cool- the boxwork structures were very different from the caves I'm used to.

From there we drove up through lots of prairie to Theodore Roosevelt National Park in North Dakota.  It was lovely, millions more prairie dogs to watch and love as well as some beautiful badlands with lots of vegetation and some wind-sculpted canyons.  I'd love to go back there with more time to hike.

After that we drove and drove until we got to Northern Minnesota.  We tracked along over the course of a week or so from the west (up near International Falls) edge of the Voyageurs travel pathway all the way down to Lake Superior and then along the Lake Superior North Shore.  It was a very watery trip, so fun and different from many others.

My parents and I and the three dogs stayed in their truck camper, and because it was so unseasonably hot and dry, we were glad to occasionally have full hookups since the solar charging system doesn't run the AC very well.

At a stop along the way in Lake Bemidji State Park we took a hike to a bog and saw lovely carnivorous plants, including pitcher plants (second two pics) and sundew (fourth pic).  We were traveling with long-time friends, and Susan (shown below) introduced us to an app called Seek which identifies living things from phone pictures.  We had a great time taking pictures of flowers and plants and insects (and dogs) and looking up what they were.

We next traveled to Voyageurs National Park where we mostly did water things, but we also took a great hike where there were some really cool fungi, including this Lobster fungus.

Mom and I did a lot of paddleboarding.  It was a really fun way to experience the lakes, calm and quiet, and very serene.  I borrowed a paddleboard from my sister, and it was great to be able to go out together. We got to paddleboard in Lake Roubeax in SD, and lake Kabetogama, Birch Lake, and Lake Superior (in Grand Marais harbor) in MN.  It's hard to take pictures while paddleboarding; my mom took them through her waterproof phone pouch (which is a little hazy).  I took a few with my phone out of its ziploc, but I was always afraid of dropping it in the lake!

Lake Kabetogama (in VNP).  It was pretty hazy the whole trip thanks to smoke from the wildfires in the west and in Canada (just north of where we were) and one in the Boundary Waters (fairly near to where we were).

Jordy loves the water.  We camped at Birch Lake (glorious and beautiful and quiet and not overpopulated) outside Ely where he was able to play in the lake.

The Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness is mostly used for multi-day backcountry canoeing trips, but we just had time for a short morning canoe trip on Slim Lake there.

Proceeding ever eastward, we took the ferry out to Isle Royale National Park in Lake superior.  It was a lovely ferry ride with great views of the island and landing float planes.

The vegetation was so different in the North Woods, lots of beautiful birches and ferns and tons and tons of different types of berries.  Unfortunately they're having a dry, dry summer. The fire danger is very high and we saw lots of dried up plants, trees that were already dropping their leaves, and berries that were way tinier than usual.

While camped in Grand Marais, we had a lovely day wandering around the town, doing laundry, and of course, more paddleboarding.  We paddled to some little coves where there were little pools, cool rocks, and lots of sea birds.  Lake Superior really has the feel of the ocean, it's so very big.

The last day we drove down Lake Superior to Gooseberry Falls, where we did a lovely hike and walked down to some very secluded lake coves. 

In spite of the haziness, heat, and dry weather, it was a really really lovely trip.  I love being outdoors and traveling with my family and their friends.  Such a pleasure.  Now I'm back home; glad to be in my own bed, but otherwise going a bit crazy trying to catch up!

I know I'm late to the party, but head over to LeeAnna's to see more things to like this week!